Citation: Albert L. Marting, ed., “News Flashes,” Baldwin-Wallace Alumnus 22, no. 1 (1944): p. 7.
Twelve seconds and two Nazis down is the record of 1st Lieutenant Ted P. Vandervort, Jr. of Fairview, Cleveland. For the last ten months he has been piloting one of the army's fanciest bombers that at a speed of 450 miles an hour, dives and drops its load. "It was little more than a month ago," Ted related on arriving on a thirty day leave, "that we were strafing road works and air fields around Rome. As two ME-lO0's approached I closed in to 100 feet and gave one a short burst of slugs in his belly tank. A terrific blast hurled my plane sideways a couple of hundred feet. As I looked around I discovered I was right behind the second plane. I fired four short bursts into his cockpit and motor. His motor started burning and he just went into a nose dive and crashed on the runway. We flew the coop then. It had been a hard day, I can tell you."
A former student of Baldwin-Wallace, Lt. Vandervort was among the first to take A-36 planes into combat. He has been awarded the Air Medal and seven Oak Leaf Clusters for his 60 combat missions and recommended for the Distinguished Flying Cross for bombing the German Air Force Headquarters in Sicily.
