b. March 6, 1913U.S. Army Air Corps Enlisted Service Dec. 1933-Dec. 1936
U.S. Army Air Corps, Sept. 8, 1942-May 1945
L. Needham was a good athlete and his prowess at high school athletics made him an object of recruitment by the 1930's peace-time Army. He signed up with the Army Air Corps for a three year period of service in Dec. 1933 and served 2 years, 10 months active duty. Most of his effective duty, though, was on playing fields across the South.
He played football, baseball and basketball for Barksdale Field at Bossier City, La. where he was based for his period of service. Quite a group of athletes were recruited at the same time that he was and many of them went from there to other areas of service with the Army Air Corps. Needham has continued an active participation in athletics all his life and at 82 years of age seems much younger and still plays a very good game of golf. He got acquainted with the game through caddying for golfers in 1923 in Pineville, La. and has continued to play as opportunity permitted since then. In retirement he works two or three days a week as starter for a golf club and earns playing privileges. After his service experience he worked four years at Angola. When they moved to Baton Rouge and John Leonard went back to work with the railroad, Needham found himself a job with the Dupont Chemical Co. plant at Baton Rouge where he worked for two years before signing up the with the Army Air Corps for Glider Pilot training on September 8, 1942. A part of his training was at nearby Louisiana State University; then he went to an Airfield at Hamilton, Texas, and other bases for further training. He later attended gunnery school and then engineer school for medium airplanes. Before going to England he had qualified as a gunner-engineer for the flight crews of B-26 Martin bombers.
In England he served with the U.S. Ninth Air Corps, 574th Squadron, 391st Bomber Group. After the invasion of Europe in June 1944 he was based at an air field in France, then in Belgium in order to fly bomb and strafing flights in close coordination with ground forces. His squadron, flying out of Waterscheid, Belgium, was granted a Presidential Citation for their participation in stopping the German offensive called the ``Battle of the Bulge,'' Dec. 23-26, 1944. He took part in fifty-three combat flights altogether and completed his overseas assignment on May 3rd, 1945. He had been recalled to the States to attend an Army Air Corps Officer's Gunnery School which would have made him a commissioned officer. His last two flights were in the new A-26 planes which were attack fighter-bomber planes. He held the rank of Tech. Sergeant as he returned to the U.S.A.
After reaching England and failing to secure a transatlantic flight, he took passage on the U.S.S. George Washington out of Southhampton for New York. While at sea Germany surrendered May 7th but their convoy proceeded to New York under full war-time alert as all German submarines may not have received word that their war was over. Arriving in New York on May 15th, he flew to Hattiesburg, Miss. where he discovered that under new regulations, he had enough service points to be discharged should he request it. This he did, and was back in Baton Rouge within a few days, and after two weeks rest reported back to Ethyl Corporation, the new name for Dupont Chemical, for work at his old job.