10/31/2026
On 31 October 1944, 19-year-old Second Lieutenant Edwin Bennett “Lucky” Wright of the 506th Fighter Squadron, 404th Fighter Group, Ninth Air Force, returned to his base at Sint-Truiden Airfield (A-92) in Belgium after a fighter-bomber mission against targets near Münster, Germany. What his ground crew discovered after he landed seemed almost impossible.
An anti-aircraft shell had torn an approximately eight-inch hole through one of the Thunderbolt’s propeller blades, which measured only about eleven inches across at that point. The official wartime caption noted that if the shell had struck roughly an inch and a half to either side, the blade likely would have sheared off entirely, almost certainly bringing down the aircraft. Yet Wright had not only remained airborne, he had completed his assigned attack, released his bombs, conducted additional strafing runs, and then flown the damaged P-47 all the way back to Belgium.
By the time of the Münster mission, Wright had already become well known within his squadron. This was the sixth occasion on which enemy flak had damaged his aircraft. Fellow pilots had therefore given him the nickname “Lucky Wright,” a title he had certainly earned. At just nineteen years old, he already had five and a half months of combat service and thirty-nine combat missions to his credit. By the end of his European tour, Wright had completed an extraordinary 88 combat missions. His decorations included the Silver Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross, and multiple awards of the Air Medal.
After World War II, Wright left the Army in 1946 but returned to service when called back during the Korean War. He continued his military career in the United States Air Force and eventually retired with the rank of Major. Although he had survived some of the most dangerous aerial combat of WWII and Korea, his life was ultimately cut short by illness rather than enemy action. Major Edwin Bennett “Lucky” Wright died of lung cancer on 15 October 1959 at the age of 34.
