Dean Caswell, Austin veteran and WWII Marine flying ace, has died

https://www.statesman.com/story/new...g-ace-dean-caswell-has-died/69512602007/

Dean Caswell, one of the last Marine fighter pilot aces of World War II, died at his Austin home Wednesday. He was 100.

Caswell enlisted in the Marine Corps in September 1942 and served in combat three times in three decades: in the Pacific theater of World War II in the 1940s, the Korean War in the early ?50s and the Vietnam War in the ?60s. Caswell was born in California and moved to Edinburg in 1922 so his parents could work as entomologists in the Rio Grande Valley. He made butter and ice cream at a creamery for $35 a week before he applied for flight training with the Navy in 1941.

He hitchhiked to Los Angeles just two weeks before Japanese carrier pilots attacked American forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.