During World War II, Mr. Geller, a second lieutenant, piloted a B-17 bomber on 34 missions.
Vince was commissioned as a 1st Lieutenant fighter pilot, was assigned to the Aleutians and later trained combat pilots before his inactivation.
But for my money, the most remarkable of all may be that of my uncle Don Harten, who as a young lieutenant co-pilot on June 18 , 1965 managed to survive a head-on collision at 30,000 feet between two bomb- and fuel-laden B-52s, each about the size of a 747 and each traveling about 500 mph, during a nighttime aerial refueling maneuver above the South China Sea.
He is a former lieutenant and helicopter pilot in the United States Navy.
Except the part of cigar-smoking, heavy-drinking ace pilot Lieutenant Starbuck – played by Dirk Benedict in the 1978 original – is filled by Katee Sackhoff.
An audio released by Isis threatened to kill Mr Goto and the Jordanian pilot Lieutenant Mu'ath al-Kaseasbeh unless a prisoner swap was carried out within 24 hours.
He served in the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy from 1944-1947 aSub Sub Lieutenant (A) RNVR pilot trained by the U.S. Navy.
He was a graduate of MIT in civil engineering and served in both WWII and Korea as a lieutenant and Navy pilot aboard carriers.
The Jordanian airforce recently claimed to have degraded Isis's capabilities by 20 per cent after air strikes against militants were intensified in retaliation for the death of pilot Lieutenant Muath al-Kasaesbeh.
Lieutenant Pritchard, the pilot, and Petty Officer Bottoms, the radio operator, were returning from the crash site of an Army Air Force B-17, where they picked up Corporal Howarth, the B-17's radio operator.
Isis claims Mueller died at the end of last week as Jordan stepped up its air raids in the wake of the burning death of its pilot Lieutenant Muath al-Kasaesbeh.
