Veterans Day Honor: World War II Mustang Pilot Visits Creve Coeur Airport

By Carmelo Turdo

The Aero Experience salutes military service veterans with a look at our recent visit with World War II P-51 Mustang pilot, Thomas A. "Tony" Gibbons, during a family gathering at Creve Coeur Airport. Now 102 years young, Gibbons enjoyed the visit with family and friends at a hangar party held in his honor by Greg and Vickie Vallero that included an appearance by Paul and Jennifer Barnett and their P-51 Mustang, Rosalie. As twilight neared, everyone boarded an aircraft or car and then assembled for a photo shoot that included the P-51, a Stearman and two military vehicles. Here we show the taxi out to the west end of the airport and a photo sampler.

USAAF 1Lt. Tony Gibbons served with the 348th FG in the Pacific Theater of Operations, flying 125 combat missions in the P-47 and P-51 from September 1944 to August 1945. After hostilities ended, he continued to fly patrol missions over China and Korea, including several flights that lasted over eight hours. He flew in the Reserves until the end of 1949 when he pursued his engineering career at McDonnell Aircraft in St. Louis. His son, Michael Gibbons shown above, retired as a senior executive at Boeing. Tony Gibbons flew with Paul Barnett in Rosalie last summer, and that story is featured in the Spring/March 2022 issue of NATA Skylines magazine.