Pilot To POW:

The Story of P-51

Fighter Pilot Dan King


By Steve Decker

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Steve Decker learned to fly in 1966 at Morgan Hill, California.  It was the fulfillment of a dream that began thirty years prior.  He was age seven, in the depths of the Great Depression, standing in the yard of a hardscrabble farm near the town of Florida, New York.  A great red biplane came rumbling by low and slow.  He could see the pilot looking down from the cockpit.  The young boy stood transfixed as the plane flew from horizon to horizon.  In that moment the fire was lit, someday he would be where that pilot was.  Eventually he owned several small planes and meet airmen from all walks of life.  Dan King was one of them.

 

The true adventures of World War Two U.S. Army Air Force fighter pilot Dan King, who flew a P-51 over occupied Europe escorting bombers and attacking targets on the ground before mechanical failure forced him down inside the Third Reich, sending him on a harrowing trip across enemy territory in the custody of the Luftwaffe guard who saved his life twice. Once in the POW camp he was then mistaken for a enemy spy by his fellow prisoners, until a comic incident revealed he really was an American after all. A story of the man and his adventures, but also his marrying the woman he loved, his training and his return home.