LIMA — In the fall of 1942, Lt. John Leppla, a Navy fighter pilot serving in a fighter squadron on the carrier USS Enterprise in the South Pacific, wrote a letter to his mother in Lima he hoped she would never receive.
“This letter will not be mailed unless I fail to return from our anticipated mission,” Leppla wrote in the days before the late October 1942 Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands. “However, if by chance I should be reported missing in action, there is always the possibility that I may be alive as a prisoner of war or even be marooned on one of the many islands in the Pacific.”
The letter was published about a year later in the October-November 1943 issue of Westinghouse Magazine. The letter, the magazine explained, “was delivered to his mother after he was reported missing in action following an important air battle in the Pacific area.” Leppla had worked at the Lima Westinghouse plant before the war.
In the letter, the 26-year-old pilot wrote of his confidence in his ability and that of his comrades.
“Yet some of us must pay for our success,” he wrote, adding, “Death holds no horror for me. I have seen it many times and expect it sooner or later.”
Leppla was born May 7, 1916, the son of George William and Grace Simington Leppla. His family, which included three younger brothers, resided in Perry Township, and Leppla received his elementary education in the township schools. He went on to Lima South High School, where he starred on the football team before graduating from Purdue University and subsequently taking a position in the Westinghouse Engineering Department.
In September 1940, Leppla, who was a member of the Navy Reserve, left for training at the Glenview Naval Air Station north of Chicago. While receiving more advanced training at Pensacola, Florida, the News reported that Leppla “narrowly escaped death in February 1941, in a collision of two Naval training planes 1,500 feet above Bayou Grande … His less fortunate comrade was drowned when both jumped in parachutes.”
After further training at Miami, Florida, and San Diego, California, Leppla left in August 1941 for Pearl Harbor. By early 1942, as the country battled to regain its footing in the wake of Pearl Harbor, Leppla was flying with a scout plane squadron attached to the carrier USS Lexington. On March 10, 1942, Leppla earned the Navy Cross. According to the citation, “Ensign Leppla pressed home, in the face of heavy anti-aircraft fire, a vigorous and determined dive-bombing attack on enemy ships, and as a result of this attack, at least one ship was sunk.”
In May 1942, the Lexington and another aircraft U.S. carrier, the Yorktown, were ordered into the Coral Sea to intercept a Japanese invasion force bound for New Guinea. During the ensuing fight, the first important sea battle between American and Japanese forces, Leppla again was in the thick of the fight, during which the Lexington was sunk by U.S. ships after sustaining heavy damage from Japanese aircraft. Leppla’s plane was the last one off the Lexington, which reports described as blowing up “like a firecracker.”
By June 1942, Leppla was back in his hometown on leave.
“Attired in the spotless white uniform of a U.S. naval officer, Lieut. John Leppla, former South high athlete who took the last plane off the doomed U.S. aircraft carrier Lexington before it was sunk in the Coral Sea battle, made the initial speaking appearance in his brief but exciting war career Wednesday before the Lima Lions Club,” the News reported June 25, 1942.
Leppla, “tanned like an agriculturist,” according to the News, “in a modest, complacent tone of voice,” described “attacking a large Japanese carrier and of the Jap’s Zero fighter planes attempting to intercept the American squadron.”
Although Leppla was reticent with details of the engagement when speaking to the Lions Club, he was more forthcoming when speaking to friends a week earlier.
“Displaying shrapnel scars from the now historic Pacific battle, Lieut. John Leppla said his plane’s crew brought down five Japanese bombers and scored a direct hit on one of two Jap cruisers which were lost in the battle,” the News wrote June 18, 1942.
“When the Lexington went down, all of Leppla’s belongings went along with her – excepting, as he put it, ‘the clothes I was wearing, my naval aviator’s ring, and my dog tag,” the News wrote. Leppla said he couldn’t “wait until I get back into action,” the newspaper added.
“Most of the boys feel this way about it. They much prefer carrier duty to shore duty. There’s the other side to it, though. I’ve lost practically all my buddies,” he said. “This is the tough part about it all. Maybe that’s why we’re all so anxious to get back and get to slapping at the Japs again.”
Leppla was back soon enough. In a letter to Lima friends in September 1943, Leppla joked, “In the future mail will be increasingly hard to find. Sometimes we get rather far off the postman’s regular route.”
He was in fact with a fighter squadron which included Elida native Lt. Edward Feightner, attached to the USS Enterprise. On October 26, 1942, Leppla’s plane was shot down while trying to protect a group of U.S. torpedo planes at the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands.
In his book on Guadalcanal, author Richard B. Frank wrote that Leppla’s “split-second choice” to try to protect the torpedo planes rather than joining a larger force of U.S. fighter planes cost him his life.
“The Zero pilots rapidly shot down Leppla’s Wildcat and two others, whose pilots became prisoners of war.”
On Nov. 20, 1942, the News reported that Leppla’s parents had received a telegram from the Navy declaring him missing in action. “The Navy pilot’s many previous narrow escapes from death gave hope to his relatives and friends that he once more may reappear somewhere in the fighting zone.”
That hope was rekindled about two months after Leppla was shot down when unfounded rumors circulated that he had been found.
“The Lieutenant’s mother said she placed no credence n stories circulated since before Christmas that persons in the Lima district have received word from a friend of John that related that he had been found and was in a hospital,” the News reported Jan. 7, 1943.
“That isn’t John’s way of letting me know,” Mrs. Leppla told the newspaper. “If the story were true, I would have heard from him.”
On Jan. 18, 1946, with the world again at peace, Leppla was “officially reported killed in action,” the News reported. “Wearer of the Navy Cross and two gold stars, Lt. Leppla gave his life to save his flight…”
In his letter to his mother before the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, Leppla wrote, “We who are gone must be considered the price of freedom, the sacrifice for greed. Some must die so others may live. I am glad to be able to give my life in the hope that some day man will stop fighting and live peacefully.”
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