Baseball in Wartime - George Gamble

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Those Who Died That Others Might Be Free

George Gamble

Date and Place of Birth: 1916 Monroe County, New York
Date and Place of Death: December 4, 1944 French Indo-China (now Vietnam)
Baseball Experience: Minor League
Position: Outfield
Rank: Second Lieutenant
Military Unit: 26th Fighter Squadron, 51st Fighter Group USAAF
Area Served: China-Burma-India Theater of Operations

George E Gamble Jr was born in 1916 in Monroe County, New York. He signed with the Sydney Mines team of the Cape Breton Colliery League in 1939, a four-team league at the heart of the hard-nosed coal mining community of Nova Scotia in Eastern Canada. It was a pretty rough league and the local miners were diehard fans. A number of times the Princess Colliery failed to operate because most of the miners were at the ballgame. And the miners didn’t like their team losing - the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had to rescue umpires on a number of occasions at Brown Street Park. Gamble hit .305 for the Miners and drove in 22 runs. In 1938 he joined the Rome Colonels of the Canadian-American League where he batted just .178 in 14 games.

Gamble entered military service on September 11, 1942. He served with the USAAF, earned his pilot's wings as a fighter pilot and was posted to China with the 51st Fighter Group flying P-51 Mustangs.

North American P-51 Mustang

On December 4, 1944, flying his 29th mission out of Kunming, Second Lieutenant Gamble was strafing a Japanese locomotive east of Lang Chiai in French Indo-China when his P-51 was caught in the explosion caused by a hit on the locomotive. The P-51 crashed almost immediately killing George Gamble.

Added August 11, 2006. Updated January 23, 2008.

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