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>John van Kuren ("Scarsdale Jack") Newkirk, death-dealing leader of the A.V.G. Second Pursuit Squadron, was killed last week. Newkirk had started to be a marksman at the age of five, when he got a bow & arrow. When he was ten his friends in Scarsdale, N.Y. dared him to shoot the first person who came along. That person happened to be the county sheriff, but Jack let fly anyway. When he grew up he studied chemistry and aeronautical engineering. A double mastoid operation in childhood almost kept him out of the Navy's air school at Pensacola, but his hearing was normal and he squeezed in. His weak eardrums were twice ruptured during dive-bombing practice. They healed. Last summer Newkirk married a Michigan girl; she took a defense job in California when he went to the Far East with the A.V.G.
After bagging 25 Jap planes, Squadron Leader Newkirk was awarded a D.S.C. by the British Government. To his family he wrote letters describing the flora and fauna of Burma; he told of killing a seven-foot cobra in the barracks one day.
Newkirk's last combat was a raid on the Jap airdrome at Chiengmai in Thailand. He and his squadron dived low, burned or shot up 40 planes on the ground, machine-gunned the Jap pilots as they ran for their cockpits. At the edge of the field a Jap gunner with a machine gun mounted on a truck drew a bead on the enemy leader's plane, poured a long burst into its belly. While all the others zoomed away, Scarsdale Jack's plane stalled, shuddered, crashed in flames.