Story of WWII Veteran Thomas Dewey Adams Jr.

Today News 25’s Toni Miles shows us one WWII veteran here in South Mississippi with a sharp memory and heroic tales of his first-hand experience and participation in world-changing events now chronicled in an oral history by the Brown Condor Mississippi Aviation Heritage Museum in Gulfport.

The sound of a roaring aircraft engine fills the air, possibly Keesler airmen on a training mission. Down below at the Mississippi Aviation Heritage Museum in Gulfport, Thomas Dewey Adams Jr., a World War II veteran in a class all his own, tells his story. “I was part of about 400 men that came to Keesler, and we were the first class.”

The Virginia native landed here in South Mississippi back in 1941 for airplane engine and mechanics school, a new training program launched at what was then the newly-activated Keesler Air Field, a base to support the WWII training build up.

Eventually Adams would fly as part of a bomber crew in the Pacific Theater during the tail end of World War II. “I flew 26 missions, and the war was over.”

At age 24 there was no room for errors, but plenty of faith. “We had an hour and a time for the airplane to be at a certain point and go on a bomb run. No lights, no nothing. I, like everyone else, was saying the Lord’s Prayer. I didn’t have any fear of flying. Once in a while you think about all that water and all those sharks.”

Preserving the history of our veterans has never been more important, especially when it comes to those who served our country during World War II. Mississippi Aviation Heritage Museum Board Member Chuck Eastman said, “We have a limited amount of time, and that is one of the things that has driven us to put this museum together is that we capture that history so we can learn from our past.”

What better way to do that then through first-hand accounts from living legends and history like Adams, whose stories are now chronicled and will be passed down for generations to come thanks to this and other oral history projects by the Mississippi Aviation Heritage Museum.