Mom's Father--James Dawson Grady

Here's a man that sadly I never met since he died in 1944.  And unfortunately I never knew much about him.  But my interest was piqued when two things happened: 1) I went to Europe and visited some World War II battle sites and the huge American cemetary at Omaha Beach and 2) I found some pictures of him and found out that he looked alot like me!!  Or rather, I look a lot like him. 

My maternal grandfather James Dawson Grady was born in 1917 in Los Angeles.  He married my Grandmother Mary Belle Tompson in 1940 and soon went to Army Airforce training.  While the training was in Stockton California my mother was born on February 14th, 1943.  He was soon sent to active duty and shipped out to France in 1944 to an AAF base in Etain, France.  It was in France in December 1944 that he crashed his P-61 night fighter while returning from a mission and died.  He served in the 425th Night Fighter Squadron (NFS).  For more information on the 425th NFS see this website:  http://www.skylighters.org/night_fighters/425.html  He was initially buried in the Omaha Beach cemetary in Normandy but was eventually moved to a cemetary in Los Angeles, California. 

About his life:

About his service in World War 2:  He was assigned to the 425th NFS and was stationed in France.  He flew several missions and from his letters it appears most of them at night as "intruder" missions to seek and destroy enemy targets at night.  His letters home detail his strafing attacks on trains and towns and reflect his knowledge that he was ending lives in his service.  In his final flight he was returning from a mission at 9:30PM when he appeared to have become disoriented by spotlights and crashed into parked vehicles after missing the runway.  He and his radar operator were killed instantly.