War Department Recommends Flying Cross for Jewish Flier Who Bombed Japanese Warship

The War Department has recommended that President Roosevelt award the Distinguished Flying Cross to a Brooklyn Jewish youth, who, very likely, actually launched the bomb from Captain Colin P. Kelly’s plane which sent the Japanese battleship Haruna to the bottom of the Pacific, it was announced here today. The hero is Corporal Meyer Levin, U. S. Army Air Corps, son of Samuel and Leah Levin of 1504 E. 33 Street, Brooklyn. He, it was disclosed, was the bombardier on board the Kelly plane, which twice attacked and finally sank the Haruna off the Philippines.

Levin is 25, a graduate of Brooklyn Technical High School, who also studied at the Brooklyn Engineering School of Aviation. He enlisted in the Air Corps June 6, 1939, served at Fort Slocum for a while and then in Hawaii. Last September he was one of the 75 men who made the hazardous flight to Manila under Major Emmet O’Donnel. He is still “somewhere in the Philippines” among the seven members of Captain Kelly’s bomber crew who survived, balling out to safety at their commander’s orders when the plane was hit after the Haruna sinking.