Billy Southworth, Jr.
William Brooks Southworth (June 20, 1917 — February 15, 1945), known also as Billy Southworth, Jr., was an American professional baseball player (1936–1940) who became a decorated bomber pilot in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. Rising to the rank of Major, Southworth was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal after completing 25 bombing missions in the European Theater of Operations in 1942 and 1943.[1] He lost his life at age 27 while leading flight training for the Boeing B-29 Superfortress, when his aircraft crashed into Flushing Bay, off the Borough of Queens in New York City, in early 1945.
The son of Baseball Hall of Fame manager Billy Southworth, he was born in 1917 in Portland, Oregon, where the elder Southworth was playing as an outfielder for the Portland Beavers of the Pacific Coast League. Southworth Jr. grew up in Columbus, Ohio. He graduated from East High School and attended Ohio State University. An outfielder like his father, Southworth signed with the St. Louis Cardinals, for whom Billy Sr. was then a minor league manager, in 1936. He played five seasons in the Cardinal and Philadelphia Athletics organizations, reaching the top minor league level for 15 games with the 1940 Toronto Maple Leafs of the International League.[2]
After the end of that season, on December 12, Southworth enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps and, according to the website Baseball in Wartime, he was the first U.S. professional baseball player to enlist in the armed forces prior to World War II, almost a year before the Bombing of Pearl Harbor.