475th's Aces
Captain Paul V. Morriss
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| Paul Vernon Morriss was born in Buford, Georgia on 13 May 1920. He applied for Army
pilot training after Pearl Harbor was attacked on 7 December 1941. His class graduated one
year later, and Second Lieutenant Morriss went to the 337th Fighter Group for transition
training in Florida. He was subsequently assigned to the Seventh Air Force, joining the
15th Fighter Group in Hawaii. Though trained as a single engine pilot, on 15 July 1943 he was transferred to the Fifth Air Force's 475th Fighter Group, flying the P-38H Lightning. Based in New Guinea, First Lieutenant Morriss flew a Lockheed named "Hold Everything" with the 431st Fighter Squadron. He logged his first Japanese plane shot down three months later, splashing a Mitsubishi Zeke fighter in Oro Bay on 15 October, one of nine victories credited to the squadron that day. That success was followed by and an Aichi Val dive bomber at Cape Gloucester on 26 December. There ensued a five month dry spell, but on 4 June 1944, Captain Morriss encountered and destroyed a Japanese Army Oscar over Moisnneom Island. On the 16th of that month he claimed two more of the Nakajima fighters, becoming yet another ace of the "Satan's Angels." Little is known of Morriss' postwar career, but he died in Norcross, Georgia on 22 August 1980 after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage. |
