John C. Stratton

John Caryl Stratton, who received the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal with oak leaf cluster for piloting his B-24 “Liberator” on 62 missions over the Himalayas in the China-Burma-India theater of World War II, died Thursday, April 5, at his home in Naples, Fla.; he was 80 years old. He previously resided in Newtown and Roxbury.

The cause was cancer, said his daughter, Caryl (Stratton) Persson.

After Japanese cut the Burma Road, the main supply route between the Allies and China, US Army Air Force pilots airlifted supplies over “the Hump,” the nearly 30,000 foot elevations of the Himalayas, to support Allied forces, including Chiang Kai-Shek’s army, defending China against the Japanese. Mr Stratton said a typical cargo for his B-24 was 300-gallon neoprene tanks of aircraft fuel destined for the Chinese Air Force.

On one of his missions, Captain Stratton was forced to bail out of his disabled “Liberator,” parachuting behind the enemy lines. “They were looking for us, and we were so close to Japanese military personnel that we could hear them talking,” he once said of that day in 1945, “but they never found us.” Eventually Captain Stratton worked his way out to a tea plantation where the owners cared for him until he could be reunited with Allied forces.

Mr Stratton was born July 11, 1920, in Chicago, Ill. Following the war, he entered Princeton University, graduating in 1949 with honors; he also earned an MBA from the University of New Haven. He worked as chief liaison engineer for Avco Manufacturing, Stratford, and as president of Yankee Engineering Services, Roxbury, and of Stratton Realty, Newtown.

In addition to his daughter, he is survived by his wife, Lucille Waterhouse Stratton, of Naples, Fla.; grandchildren, Bridget Tuttle of Oxford, John Hallock of Bethlehem, Sarah Killing and Susannah Killing of Newtown; and great-grandchildren, Jeremy and Shannon Tuttle. He was predeceased by his son, John Caryl Stratton, II.

Mr Stratton was a member of the Order of Founders and Patriots of America, National Society Sons of the American Revolution, Distinguished Flying Cross Society, Hump Pilots Association, Caterpillar Club, International Arabian Horse Association, MENSA, Sigma Xi, and the New York Athletic and Princeton Clubs. He was recipient of a Presidential Achievement Award in 1981. In 1994, Mr Stratton was given Chinese Air Force Pilot wings by the Republic of China (Taiwan), as the citation said, for his contributions to keeping “…an entire nation alive under the greatest of odds.”

Cremation took place in Naples, Fla. A private burial service will be held in Roxbury.

The Newtown Bee         April 13, 2001