James Finnegan RIP

Kyt · May 11, 2008

James Finnegan dies - shot down top WWII pilot

Sixty-three years ago today, James Finnegan, a young Army fighter pilot flying his P-47 over Nazi-occupied Europe, found himself in one of the most storied dogfights of World War II, and at the end of it, he downed the top enemy ace, Gen. Adolf Galland.

Years later, the two adversaries became friends, visiting each other in California and Germany, where they swapped war stories, refought old battles and talked about their families.

Mr. Finnegan, 85, died Tuesday at a retirement home in Marin County, where he was well known in law enforcement circles as an investigator, first with the old Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co. (later Pacific Bell), next with the Marin County district attorney's office and, finally, as a private detective.

(Galland, who survived being shot down by Mr. Finnegan that April day and managed to land his crippled jet at an airstrip near Munich, died in 1996.)

It wasn't until decades after the war, thanks to a war history researcher, that Mr. Finnegan learned he was the one who shot down the famous German pilot and the two began corresponding. Finally, in 1979, they met, when Galland came to the Bay Area.

"I was kind of in awe," Mr. Finnegan's son Dennis, the retired undersheriff of Marin County, said Friday. He recalled how he watched these two old war dogs meeting up for the first time in more than 30 years. "They were both very engaging people. (Galland) was very animated, a very good storyteller. And what I learned was that he wasn't a Nazi. I got the sense that he was a hunter and this was more about the hunt, more about winning than anything else."

In an interview Mr. Finnegan gave 12 years ago for a Web site devoted to Galland's career (members.aol.com/geobat66/galland/galland.htm), Mr. Finnegan said that on the day he shot down Galland, he was escorting some Allied bombers when he "saw two objects come zipping through the formation, and two bombers blew up immediately. I watched the two objects go through the bomber formation, and thought, 'That can't be a prop job ... it's got to be one of the (new Messerschmitt Me) 262 jets."

He fired off a 3-second burst, then hit the throttle on his P-47 and found "I was going so fast, I went right through everything, and guessed my speed at about 450+ mph." Mr. Finnegan figured he had hit one of the German jets, but wasn't sure, so he "recorded it as a probable." The "probable" turned out to be Galland and he was indeed shot down.

During the war, Mr. Finnegan met an Army nurse named Frances in France. They married after the war and began a family.

He worked as an engineer for Pacific Telephone & Telegraph and during his off-hours he kept flying planes until, at his wife's urging, he grounded himself until the 1970s, when their children were all grown and he could take to the skies again.

"She was fine with it," Dennis Finnegan said. "She used to fly with him all the time." Frances Finnegan died three years ago.

By 1977, Mr. Finnegan was working as the San Francisco liaison between Pacific Telephone & Telegraph and law enforcement agencies. When he retired from that position, he got a job as an investigator for the Marin County district attorney and later became chief investigator. He retired from that job in 1987 and opened up a private investigator business, which lasted until he had a debilitating stroke in early 1998.

Mr. Finnegan is survived by two daughters, Michelle Sabourin of Santa Rosa and Kathleen Willmers of Kenwood; three sons, James Finnegan of Fresno, Dennis Finnegan of Novato and John Finnegan of Long Beach; 12 grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.
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Kyt · May 11, 2008

USAAF James Finnegan-P47

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James Finnegan RIP

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