Farewell to Lieutenant Colonel David Hamilton, the last aviator of the D-Day Pathfinders

This Thursday we received the sad news of the death of the last of the Pathfinder aviators from the Normandy landings.

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The D-Day Pathfinders were an elite force of twenty C-47 Skytrain aircraft and about 200 paratroopers that were dropped at 00:15 hours on June 6, 1944 over Normandy, specifically on the Cotentin Peninsula, in order to prepare the dropping zones for the paratroopers of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions of the US Army. These Pathfinders were the first US troops to arrive in France on D-Day.

Hamilton was a member of the 9th Troop Carrier Command, the unit of airmen that flew the C-47s that dropped American parachutists on Normandy. Yesterday, the Commemorative Air Force (CAF) announced his death at the age of 102, on Sunday, January 5.

The CAF recalls that Hamilton was born on July 20, 1922, and enlisted in the Army Air Force on December 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. "He trained as a C-47 pilot and was assigned to the 436th Troop Carrier Group of the 9th Air Force, stationed at Bottesford Base in England."

In addition to D-Day, during World War II Hamilton also flew as a C-47 pilot in Operation Dragoon over southern France in August 1944, five missions during Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands in September 1944, and delivering supplies to the surrounded 101st Airborne Division during the Siege of Bastogne in Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944.

Hamilton left the Army in 1945 but re-enlisted during the Korean War, where he flew 51 missions in Martin RB-26 Marauders. He retired from the U.S. Air Force in 1963 with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He was awarded the French Legion of Honor, the Dutch Order of Wilhelm, the Distinguished Flying Cross, five additional Air Medals and two Presidential Unit Citations.

Additionally, Hamilton participated in the development of the AIM-9 Sidewinder missile and contributed to intelligence analysis during the Cuban Missile Crisis. You can see an interview with him by the CAF in 2021 here:

Fly high, David. Rest in peace.

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Photo: Commemorative Air Force.