Schilling, David Carl, born 15-12-1918 in Leavenworth, Kansas. 
to Carl Fielding Schilling (1889-1941), age 51, 
a few months after Adolf Hitler.
His family moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where David went to high school.graduated from Dartmouth College 
with a Bachelor of Science degree in Geology in June 1939.
Schilling joined the United States Army 
in September 1939 as an aviation cadet and received his commission in the Air Corps 
upon completion of flight training in May 1940. The following summer he became one of the original members of the 56th Fighter Group. 
under command of Lieutenant. Colonel Davis D. Graves. 
The later Brigadier General Davis Dunbar Graves, age 40, was the Commander of the US AAC Fighter Wing. He was an “Observer” in the Co-Pilot seat with 310thBG, 381stBS, Flight Leader Lieutenant Edgar Dudley Dorman, they took a direct hit (by FLAK) over the Target of Porto Santo Stefano, Iyalt on 08-02-1944. There were no survivors.
Schilling arrived with the group in England in January 1943 as commander of the 62nd Fighter Squadron 
and began combat missions in April flying the P-47 Thunderbolt, recording his first kill on 02-10-1943. Schilling was promoted to group executive officer in August 1943 and to group commander on 12-08-1944, commanding the 56th Fighter Group until 27-01-1945. He was promoted to full colonel on 01-10-1944, at the age of 25. “Hairless Joe”, coded LM-S was his personal P-47 
from July 1944 up until his last documented combat mission on 05-01-1945.
In his time in Britain, he became the sixth-leading ace of the 8th Air Force, 
scoring 22½ kills against Luftwaffe aircraft. On 23-12-1944 he downed five German fighters to become one of the 38 Army Air Force “Ace-in-a-Day” pilots. Schilling flew 132 combat missions in two combat tours with the 56th. He also destroyed 10.5 enemy aircraft on ground, while strafing enemy airfields.
After the war, he again commanded the 56th Fighter Group and pioneered long-distance jet operations in the P-80 Shooting Star. In early 1948 Schilling conceived an operation called Fox Able (phonetic for “Fighter Atlantic”) in which jet aircraft, then ferried to Europe by ship, could be flown across the Atlantic via Iceland and Scotland in 900-mile legs and sold it to Air Force Chief of Staff, General Carl Andrew Spaatz.
Carl Andrew Spaatz (born Spatz; 28-06-1891 – 4-07-1974, age 83), nicknamed “Tooey“, was an American World War II General. As commander of Strategic Air Forces in Europe in 1944, he successfully pressed for the bombing of the enemy’s oil production facilities as a priority over other targets. He became Chief of Staff of the newly formed United States Air Force in 1947. Spaatz retired from the military at the rank of General on 30-06-1948, and worked for Newsweek magazine 
as military affairs editor until 1961. He also served on the Committee of Senior Advisors to the Air Force Chief of Staff from 1952 until his death; and was the first President of the Air Force Historical Foundation during 1953. From 1948 until 1959, he served as the first Chairman of Civil Air Patrol’s National Board. In 1954, Spaatz was appointed to the congressional advisory board set up to determine the site for the new United States Air Force Academy.
Spaatz died at the Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C., on 14-07-1974, age 83,, from congestive heart failure. Spaatz was buried at the Academy’s cemetery in Colorado Springs, Colorado
In the summer of 1948 David made Fox Able a reality and took the 56th Fighting Group to Germany in a show-of-force response to the Berlin blockade. Just prior to this, de Havilland Vampires of No. LIV Squadron RAF 
had made the first jet crossing, flying from the UK to North America.
In 1950, he flew from RAF Manston in the United Kingdom to Maine in the United States, in the first nonstop trans-Atlantic flight by a jet fighter. Using probe-and-drogue flight refuelling, Schilling, flying an F-84E Thunderjet 
and another F-84E flown by Colonel William Dee Ritchie, 
were refuelled by first a Flight Refuelling Ltd (FRL) Lancaster tanker near Prestwick, Scotland, followed by a refuelling from another FRL tanker, this time a Lincoln near Iceland. 
Schilling takes off from Hawaii to lead his squadron the rest of the way across the Pacific Ocean (1952)
In a third and final tanker rendezvous, Ritchie’s nose probe, which had been damaged in the refuelling with the Lincoln, was unable to transfer fuel from the final tanker, a USAF KB-29 offshore from Labrador, forcing him to eject over Labrador when he ran out of fuel. Ritchie was safely picked up shortly afterwards. Schilling’s refuelling went as-intended and he landed at an airbase at Limestone, Maine, after a flight of ten hours and eight minutes. For this flight, Schilling received the Harmon Trophy. 
In 1952, he took command of the 31st Fighter Escort Wing at Turner Air Force Base, Georgia, flying F-84 Thunderjets, and led a non-stop flight across the Pacific Ocean to Japan in Fox Peter One.
Death and burial ground of Schilling David Carl.
On 14-8-1956, while serving as Inspector General in the Strategic Air Command’s Seventh Air Division, Schilling died in a car accident on a narrow, two-lane country road in England between RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall — Royal Air Force stations used by the U.S. Air Force.
Colonel Schilling was driving a Cadillac/Allard sports-racing car; he, General Curtis Emmerson “Iron Ass” LeMay, 
and other race enthusiasts had each purchased a model to form a stable for Sports Car Club of America events. On the day of the accident, he was driving to Mildenhall to meet at the Officer’s Club with an Army lieutenant who had expressed interest in buying the car. At fairly high speed, he approached another car from behind, intending to pass. The cap he was wearing started to blow off and as he reached up to grab it, the car skidded sideways and struck the stone side-railing of a bridge at Eriswell in Suffolk, cutting the car in half at the driver’s seat and causing the front of the car to topple into the stream below.
Schilling, age 37, died instantly. The day before his death, he had flown his last flight in a B-47. At the time of his death he was on Temporary Duty (TDY) from the HQ of 7th Air Division at South Ruislip to RAF Lakenheath. David was married with Georgia May Weidman Schilling who died very young on 17-03-1950 (age 28), both are buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. Section 8, Site: 459.
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