Delbert Walter Burke

Delbert Burke enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve as an aviation cadet in 1940, and earned his pilot’s wings at Pensacola shortly before the attack on Pearl Harbor. As a former ROTC cadet and high school teacher, Burke was well-suited for the classroom and spent several months instructing new pilots at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi. In the summer of 1943, he joined VMF-225 and deployed to Ewa Field, Hawaii, for squadron training.

On 4 January 1944, Major Burke brought a group of pilots aloft to practice gunnery runs on a towed target. The target was “lost” – exactly how is no longer known – and rather than waste time and fuel, the division was instructed to practice tactics. Army Air Corps planes in the vicinity evidently decided to join in, and mock dogfights soon broke out between the Marine fighters and the 86th Combat Mapping Squadron.

Major Burke found himself “engaged” by a pair of Army pilots flying bulky North American O-47B observation planes. The exact details of the incident may never be known, but shortly before 0900 hours, Burke’s Corsair (F4U-1 #17812) collided with O-47B 39-77 piloted by 1Lt. Zareh A. Pachanian. Both aircraft were destroyed in the crash, and all four men aboard were killed. The wreck site was reported as “approximately two miles south of Barber’s Point.”