Cletus Wellington Tusing

Cletus W. Tusing graduated from Moorefield High School with the class of 1939 and was a clerk. | | He volunteered for the Air Corps of the Army of the United States in Washington, District of Columbia on 3 January 1942. | | Statement of Capt Burton D. Yartan, who flew in the same mission: "On February 29, 1944, I was leading Barnshoe Yellow flight. The Squadron took off, formed, and climbed to altitude normally. We were on course at 27,000 feet, about to make rendezvous with the bombers at approximately Lingen, Germany. At this time, I noticed Lt Tusing, my number four man, flying rather erratic formation. His ship went into a slight glide, dropping down a couple hundred feet. However, he came right back up into formation, so I surmised he had just used the dive to avoid overshooting. Two or three minutes later, approximately 1150 hours, I noticed Lt Tusing's ship starting down again. He made a 90-degree diving turn to the left and passed under me, where I lost sight of him. Before I lost sight of him, I called him and asked him what the trouble was, but I received no answer. Shortly after I had lost sight of Lt Tusing, Lt Fletcher, my number three man, made a diving turn to the left, attempting to locate Lt Tusing. As soon as Lt Fletcher had passed under me, I peeled off to the left also. Lt Fletcher had not been able to locate Lt Tusing, so he joined formation with me and we circled several times in the vicinity, losing altitude and searching. In this vicinity, the horizontal visibility was good, but the air-to-ground visibility was very poor, restricted by thick haze, and the ground obscured by an 8/10 cloud layer at 6,000 feet. I called Lt Tusing again and again, but received no answer. We were at approximately 18,000 feet at this time when I saw a lone ship, low, going away from us in a southwesterly direction. I immediately started down. There, I noticed that instead of one plane, there were five in a wide search formation. I eased to get into position for a bounce, informed the other two men in the flight, and went down. We came up on them from the rear at 7,000 feet and identified them as being P-51s, broke away and picked up a heading of 270 degrees and returned to the base."