Though once lost, 1st Lt. Jack McWilliams will not be forgotten

The article was sandwiched between the war news that dominated the front page of the Feb. 8, 1945 Daily Inter Lake, bounded by larger headlines trumpeting the First Army’s push through the Siegfried line, plans for paratroopers to jump across the Rhine and diplomatic talks about a post-war Europe. 

The headline read simply: “Lt. Jack McWilliams is reported missing after ariel foray.”

The two paragraph write-up underneath reported that the news had been delivered to Mr. and Mrs. J. V. McWilliams by telegraph. The flier, a member of the Flathead High School class of 1940, was last seen on a mission over Germany in January of that year. The War Department expressed its deep regrets. 

Nearly a year would pass before the War Department declared McWilliams dead. It would take six years for authorities to find and identify his remains in France, not far from the border with Germany.

That wait was “hell for my grandparents, not knowing what happened to him,” said Janice Sterner Jones, a Kalispell resident and McWilliams’ niece.

Jones, a retired school librarian, and a small group of relatives and friends will travel to Kauffenheim, France — near where McWilliams’ P-47 Thunderbolt crashed in the winter of 1945 — to remember the fallen 22-year-old in time for Veterans Day this year. The people of the French town erected a memorial for the young American flier in 2023. 

“The French people still honor these men even today and they pass that honor down to their kids,” Jones said. “They take their kids and they tell the stories about how these Americans, the British and the U.S. and all the other allied countries, helped save them and these pilots gave their lives for them. And they take their kids and make sure they understand this still to this day.”

Her uncle was, by all accounts, a small man, Jones said. When he tried out for the football team in high school he couldn’t make the cut. But he was determined, she said. 

“My mom said he probably weighed about 125 pounds, but could kick teeth just as well as anyone,” Jones recalled. 

He was also interested in aviation, she said. In 1942, he joined the Civilian Pilot Training program in Kalispell, according to his obituary published in the Daily Inter Lake on Feb. 6, 1946. But McWilliams struggled to find a job in the field and eventually headed to Texas because he heard he could get a job refueling planes there, Jones said. When that fell through, he enlisted, she said.

“He didn’t have money to buy his own plane and couldn’t get a flying job so that’s when he joined the [Army Air Forces],” she said.

McWilliams’ lack of a college education meant he was not initially slated to become a pilot. He also had a bad eye, Jones said, but underwent surgery to get it fixed. And as the war dragged on the need for pilots grew. 

“My mom said he ate tons and tons and tons of carrots to make sure his eyes stayed healthy,” Jones recalled.

Eventually trained on a P-40 Warhawk, McWilliams earned his wings in Texas in February 1944. He was given a P-47 soon after. He headed overseas in July of that year, but not before getting married to Jean Bull of Lakeside.  

McWILLIAMS ARRIVED in Europe as a member of the 405th Fighter Squadron of the 371st Fighter Group in the Ninth Air Force, according to retired Lt. Col. Terrence G. Popravak, Jr., who wrote a detailed account of the Montana flier’s final mission ahead of the unveiling of his memorial in 2023. McWilliams’ obituary noted that he flew over Normandy and in southern France and later Germany’s Rhineland. 

His 36th and final mission came during a German offensive meant to relieve pressure on its forces fighting in the Battle of the Bulge, Popravak wrote. Drawing on operational reports, Popravak determined that McWilliams’ squadron’s targets that day were German strong points and mobile guns on the far side of the Rhine in Buhl, France.

On the return trip, McWilliams and his comrades ran into 15 Me-109 fighters intent on a hit-and-run attack. McWilliams’ flight leader called out a warning, but it wasn’t enough. McWilliams’ P-47 was hit and the fuel tank exploded, according to Popravak. His fellow pilots watched as the burning Thunderbolt spun toward the ground, a parachute nowhere to be seen. 

While McWilliams’ fighter-bomber disappeared into swampy ground, his comrades put together a missing in action report, Papravak wrote. 

Jones said the loss hit hard back home and prompted her mother to join the Women’s Reserve of the Naval Reserve. When planes flew overhead, all she could think about was the likely death of her brother, Jones said.

“She was determined more than ever to do something for our country in his name so she joined the WAVES,” Jones said. 

Jones’ grandmother, meanwhile, wrote letter after letter looking for news on her son. 

“There she was, she was constantly writing letters to them, saying have you found anything? There are letters back and forth saying we haven’t found anything yet,” Jones said. 

Jones has one of those letters in her possession. Written by Brig. Gen. Leon Johnson of the Army Air Forces in 1946, the correspondence notes that no mentions of McWilliams’ plane were uncovered in recently translated German records. 

“I wish to express my sympathy to you on your loss,” Johnson concluded the letter.

A BREAK came in 1951 when a U.S. military team drained the swamp where McWilliams’ Thunderbolt crashed, according to Popravak. The subsequent search turned up human remains and .50 caliber machine guns with serial numbers that linked them to Williams’ plane. 

The Daily Inter Lake carried news of the discovery in its Jan. 27, 1952 edition. 

“Long hope is ended for parents of Lt. McWilliams of Kalispell,” read the headline.

His remains were bound for Kalispell soon after. 

“Knowing my grandmother, she would have wanted him home, she would have insisted,” Jones said.

According to the subsequent obituary, “a large congregation of friends assembled” at the Community Methodist church of Somers for the 22-year-old’s memorial service. 

For Jones, a lot of what she knows about her uncle only came to light as she was moving her mother to Red Lodge in 2003. During the packing, she pulled out a large trunk overflowing with clippings and mementos, she said. 

“I started pulling all of this stuff up, and asking questions and that’s when I started to get all of these stories,” Jones said. 

She discovered that a small town in France had erected a memorial to him just as serendipitously. Her younger sister was doing an internet search for McWilliams when an article detailing the monument effort popped up. 

The news “shocked us because we hadn’t been notified it was being done,” Jones recalled.

Although they missed out on the dedication, Jones is excited to visit Kauffenheim in November and meet the present day inhabitants of the village as well as pay tribute to her uncle. 

Everyone on the trip is “in admiration of all that my uncle was able to accomplish and the willingness he was to give his life,” she said.  

News Editor Derrick Perkins can be reached at 758-4430 or dperkins@dailyinterlake.com. 

    Janice Sterner Jones of Kalispell holds the officers hat that belonged her uncle, 1st Lt. Jack McWilliams. A resident of Somers, McWilliams was shot down in Europe in January 1945. (Heidi Desch/Daily Inter Lake)
  

    1st Lt. Jack McWilliams of Somers. McWilliams, a P-47 Thunderbolt pilot, was shot down over Europe in January 1945. (Photo courtesy Janice Sterner Jones)