Coats, Lt. Kenneth W.

COATS, MUMMERT, OLSON

Posted By: Sheryl (email)
Date: 2/28/2011 at 19:34:40

First Lt. Kenneth W. Coats
[February 2, 1917]* - October 12, 1945

Mrs. Bonnie E. Coats has received official notice from the War Department that her husband, 1st Lt. Kenneth W. Coats, 29, was killed October 12, 1945, in the Bonin Islands, North Pacific Ocean.

Lt. Coats, a native of Sulphur Springs, was the pilot of a C-46 transport plane that disappeared in flight on the way to Iwo Jima. Another Iowan, Lt. Hugh Ford of Ida Grove, was a passenger on the plane, and has also been declared dead. The plane has not be located, however.

Lt. Coats left the states in February 1945 for overseas duty in the Pacific and had been ordered to transport home-bound men as far as Hawaii. He enlisted in the Air Corps in 1941 and was called to duty in 1942. A graduate of Sulphur Springs high school, he had made his home in Storm Lake when he enlisted.

He is survived by his wife, Bonnie Mummert Coats, whom he married in November, 1940; his parents, Mr. and Mrs. John Coats of Storm Lake; a brother, Eugene of Omaha; and three sisters, Mrs. Don Olson of Sac City, and Beverly and Phyllis Coats of Los Angeles (Storm Lake Register, 4-11-1946).

*"Family Trees." www.ancestry.com.