George Cookman Wilson
Aviation Radioman Second Class, U.S. Navy
04051004
Bombing Squadron VB-102
Oaklyn, New Jersey
Died: December 9, 1944
Near Bougainville
Missing in Action — Buried at Sea
Tablets of the Missing
Manila American Cemetery
Manila, Philippines
Introduction
Aviation Radioman Second Class George Cookman Wilson
Aviation Radioman Second Class George Cookman Wilson graduated from Collingswood High School in 1938. Entering the Navy in March 1941, he received training at Noroton Heights, Connecticut. He was sent to the San Francisco Port of Embarkation, and shipped out to Hawaii in July 1941. His plane was burned at one of the Hawaiian Islands on December 7, 1941. On his first flight after Pearl Harbor, he returned to Pearl Harbor with his PBY aircraft full of bullet holes. He had seen action flying out of Hawaii, and at Guadalcanal.
George Cookman Wilson was the radio operator in a Navy PBY-1 Catalina Patrol bomber which, on a three-plane bombing mission, collided with another aircraft while on the bomb run near Bougainville. His body was not recovered, and he was declared dead by the Navy on December 10, 1945. He was survived by his father, Mr. Raymond Edgar Wilson, of 115 E. Clinton Avenue, Oaklyn, New Jersey, and a sister.