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(First featured in St. John Fisher College News and Events)

Austin Hancock's interest in historical airplanes uncovers story of World War II aviator missing in action.

For Austin Hancock ’15, historical airplanes have been more than a hobby. A lifelong visitor to the National Warplane Museum, located near his hometown, he has volunteered as a tour guide with the museum’s Tuskegee History program since he was 12. His interest in aviation soon jumped from historical documents to the immersion experience, as the 24-year-old holds a private pilot’s license and can even fly World War II-era airplanes.

A marketing major and museum studies minor, Hancock’s particular interest in the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African-American aviators of World War II, turned into intense curiosity. He began researching locally-raised men who served as Tuskegee Airmen and one name on the registry, Flight Officer Leland H. Pennington, stood out.

“I saw his name, and ‘Rochester NY’ next to his hometown and did a quick Google search,” he said. The query uncovered an old article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that described Pennington as Missing in Action.

Wondering what happened to the aviator, who was a member of the Tuskegee Airmen’s famous Red Tails squadron, Hancock dug deeper. “I was captivated, and immediately contacted the author of the article in hopes of getting in touch with his family,” he recalls.

The reporter connected Hancock with Charlene Watkins and Cyrillia Pennington, half-sisters who live in New Orleans, Louisiana. During a segment with New Orleans news station WWL-TV Channel 4, Cyrillia told the story of how her mother married Leland Pennington, who joined the service before she was born. He was listed as Missing in Action when Cyrillia was only two years old. Cyrillia said that her mother remarried, and spoke little of her first husband, leaving her wondering what her father was like.

Hancock and Watkins quickly connected, and he shared with the sisters everything he had found about Pennington.  The aviator was on an escort mission and is presumed to have crashed off the coast of Zadar, Croatia. His plane, a P-51B Mustang, was named "Lucy Gal,” after his wife.

Further sleuthing at the Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County revealed more living relatives of Pennington’s, and soon, Hancock was uniting the sisters with Leland Pennington’s cousin, Al Fields. The distant family members met in person last summer in Niagara Falls.

With the united family’s full support, Hancock’s simple curiosity has turned into a crusade to recover Pennington and his missing plane. “Our plan is to somehow, someway, raise the funds necessary to conduct a search and bring Pennington and his plane home,” Hancock said, noting it could require $1 million to conduct such a search. But the results could mean a full military burial for a lost hero and the opportunity to restore “Lucy Gal” to flight.

“The plane would serve as a flying tribute to all those brave Tuskegee Airmen who paid the highest price to preserve our freedom during World War II,” Hancock said.

While he continues to uncover more information about Pennington, Hancock is also working to honor other aviators like him. “My ultimate goal is to build my own business, a World War II-style flight school, museum, and bed and breakfast called Final Victory," he said, adding that he plans to return to flight school to earn his instrument, commercial, and flight instructor licenses. “It’s really about telling the little-known stories about aviation and World War II, about the ordinary people who were able to accomplish extraordinary feats.”