Famed WWII CAP Pilot Involved In Dramatic Rescue At Sea

By Drew Stetekee, Special To ANN

96-year-old Eddie Edwards, a famed WWII Civil Air Patrol pilot and a winner of the first Air Medal of WWII to be presented personally by the President of the United States to any U.S. airman, has passed away. Edwards accepted his Air Medal from Franklin D. Roosevelt, along with one awarded to his anti-sub base commander Major. Hugh Sharp, CAP, in the White House Oval Office in 1943.

U.S. Navy photo 1943 courtesy of CAP Historical Foundation

Sharp and Edwards were so recognized for a dramatic sea rescue recovering one of two downed CAP pilots on anti-sub patrol off the Delaware coast early in WWII. Nazi subs were devastating U.S. coastal shipping heading for New England and Europe before the U.S. military had fully mobilized against them. Volunteer civilian pilots (using their own airplanes) formed the Civil Air Patrol to do the job, and did so until August, 1943.

Coastal Patrol Base 2's rescue amphibian was able to find one of the two downed CAP crewmembers but was damaged in the water landing at sea. With Maj. Sharp at the controls, Eddie Edwards crawled out on a wing strut to counter-balance loss of the seaplane's opposite pontoon. He hung there for ten hours while Sharp water-taxiied the unflyable Sikorsky towards shore. He had to be "pried" from his frozen perch by Coast Guardsmen who met the aircraft.

The actual rescue amphibian is now on display at the New England Air Museum at Bradley International Airport, Hartford, Connecticut, next to a CAP Stinson 10A typical of the downed single-engine CAP anti-sub patrol plane. Edwards attended the dedication of the  Sikorsky S-39 in the museum, restored in the 1990s by retired Sikorsky Aircraft employees. Edwards posed for photographers on the strut which he occupied for hours at sea in 1942. He said, modestly, that he was "only out there to escape the screams of the injured CAP flier inside."

As one of the most respected and long-lived of his generation of WWII CAP Coastal Patrol anti-sub pilots, Edwards was central to the WWII CAP story and the annual reunion of his squadron mates at Rehoboth Beech, Delaware, each September since 1946.

He was the last survivor of three leading CAP WWII veterans specially honored on-stage at AOPA EXPO '95 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, the site of another of the first three CAP bases which eventually grew to 21 anti-sub bases "From Maine to Mexico." Just a few of his Coastal Patrol Base 2 comrades now survive him.

FMI: http://www.caphistory.org/