H&H PILOT WINGS

[Costa]

being as H&H pilot wings are not that common, I acquired these. name scratched on back is to a LT. BW O"NEAL.

[mghcal]

Nice wing. As you mentioned you just don't see many H&H wings. Have you searched for a possible match to the name? I found a Benton W. O'Neal who retired as a Colonel and died in 1986. https://findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=3038873 Of course there could be other possibilities. I no longer have ancestry.com to see how many possible matches there are for B W O'Neal in the AAC.

 

His son was also in the service so it's a bit of a difficult search. I did find this Benton O'Neal was in the 25th Bomb Squadron crew #249 and it looks like he may have been the lead crew for that squadron and a Major at the time. It'd be interesting to find what he did prior to being trained as a B-29 pilot. I'm sure he had some combat experience either in 1942-43, they were fairly picky when it came to choosing early B-29 crews. He saw a lot of action in China-Burma-Japan.

 

[Costa]

very interesting------ no haven't done any search. it is a difficult endeavor many times. if the first name was in full it would give you an edge but, initials make it hard. what you found very well could be him