I think we should have this In Honor of
all the Fins
Lt. Erick W. Kyro, 5th AF, 35th FG, 41st FS
FLYING FINN's squadron number was 75 with a large letter F on the fuselage.
"Erick Kyro graduated from the University of Michigan with a BS in Forestry in 1940. He worked as a forest ranger for a time. He occupied living quarters on top of a mountain and kept a lookout for the smoke of a forest fire. He also worked at the Vickers manufacturing plant in Detroit for a short time.
Erick believed that war was coming so he enlisted volunteered before Pearl Harbor. From March 12 to June 2 1941, he served in the U.S. Naval Reserve at Grosse Ile, Michigan, and soloed the N3N Navy biplane.
When Navy bureaucrats processed his paper work they noticed that Erick had been born in Canada. They decided that he could not continue in the Navy since the rules at that time required that all new Navy officers must be native born. This turned out to be a lucky break because Erick’s Navy classmates became pilots of torpedo bombers. That group attacked the Japanese fleet at the Battle of Midway in June 1942. All the planes were shot down and only one man survived.
Erick transferred to the US Army Air Corps as a flying cadet beginning on November 7, 1941 -- exactly one month before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Erick trained at Kelly Field in Texas, learning to fly progressively faster and “hotter” military aircraft. He continued to serve as a fighter pilot throughout World War II.
Erick Kyro was called to active duty. Anna attended Erick's graduation from flying school as a pilot and his commissioning as a second lieutenant in the US Army Air Corps at Foster Field, Victoria, Texas, on 3 July 1942. William visited Erick while Erick was delayed in San Francisco awaiting shipment overseas. Erick was sent to the combat zone in New Guinea in September 1942
Pilots did not have an easy time during W.W.II. When Erick first arrived in New Guinea he was assigned to share a tent with seven other pilots. Erick was the only one of those eight pilots to survive.
As a fighter pilot, Erick flew 215 combat missions, 480 combat hours, in P-39 Bell Airacobra and P-47 Republic Thunderbolt fighter planes in New Guinea for 17 months during W.W.II. His P-39 was named “The Flying Finn.” His missions were mostly bombing and strafing enemy positions in support of Allied ground troops. However, he did shoot down one enemy bomber.
Erick Kyro returned to the US in March 1944, still on active duty. Erick married Violet Erickson in Detroit on April 8, 1944, in a Finnish language ceremony"
excerpts from The Biography of William Arvi Kyro
by John K. Dixon and Erick W. Kyro (April 2006)
http://www.dixonsite.net/kyrobio/kyrozero.html <good by it's self>
Erick also flew P-400 SISU <Finnish for Guts>
His P-400 was named SISU, which had the name painted in white pseudo oriental-type letters on the sheet metal just above the twelve-stack exhaust ports and below the aft glass canopy. This airplane also had the squadron number 75 and the large letter F.
He flew this mission against a Japanese gun emplacement in Shaggy Ridge. This was the only know mission in New Guinea when the P-39 used as dive bomber.
http://www.aerothentic.com/photos/noseart/P39s/p39flyingfinn.htm"I arrived in Port Moresby on October 1, 1942, and was assigned to the 41st Fighter Squadron at 7-Mile airstrip. My first flight was in a P-400 on 15 October 1942. My last flight in a 41st Squadron Airacobra was at Tsili Tsili, near the Finesterre Mountains, on 28 November 1943 in a P-39Q-6.
I was then an instructor at the Fighter Replacement Center in Charters Towers, west of Townsville, Australia, all of December 1943 until the last log entry there on January 13, 1944. At Charters Tower I flew P-40, P-38, P-39, P-47, Wirraway, and O-47 type aircraft. The O-47 was an old US-type reconnaissance, mid-wing monoplane in which I took the mess sergeant to Cairns to buy and transport spaghetti materials for our mess. I was with the 41st squadron until Gusap, in the Markham Valley of New Guinea, having flown 215 combat missions, 480 combat hours. My last flight at Gusap was in a P-47D-3 on February 28, 1944. I left for home at the beginning of March, 1944. "
Erick Kyro
http://www.pacificwrecks.com/people/veterans/kyro.htmlMaj Gen. Erick Kyro is 94 and resides in Southfield, Mich.
