MEMORIAL ARTICLE Published Assembly Oct '54 Alexander Turner Cochran   No. 16120  Class Of 1946  Died April 21, 1952 in an Aircraft Accident, near Okinawa, aged 27 Years.

It was 1500 hours, Monday, 21 April 1952, on Okinawa. F-94 jet planes from the Fourth Fighter Squadron, Naha Air Base, were up in pairs practicing radar intercepts. The pilot of one of these planes, Robert B. Moore, Class of 1947, noticed a column of black smoke rising from the waters of the China Sea at a distance of several miles. Flying over to investigate, he discovered two oil slicks some 300 yards apart and a quantity of debris, among which he could identify parts of a fuselage and an earpiece from a headset. He immediately called the Naha Control Tower. Rescue planes and boats were dispatched to the scene and all planes known to be in the air were ordered to report. All reported but two; one piloted by Captain Glenn Hill and the other by our son, Captain Alexander Turner Cochran, better known as "Turner" to his classmates, and as "Al" to his later associates in the Air Force. There had apparently been a midair collision, cause unknown.

A puff of smoke in the sky; an oil slick on the water. It was as simple as that, and our younger son had gone before his time to join the Long Gray Line. For us, his parents, it was the over-simplification of a lifetime.

Alex was born in the Cadet Hospital at West Point on his mother's birthday, May 2, 1924. His brother, now Major John H. Cochran, Jr., General Staff Corps (Artillery), Class of June 1943, was several years older. At no time during the first sixteen years of his life had Alex evinced any particular desire for a military career. Then, in 1940, he saw his first Army-Navy Game. From the moment the Corps marched on the field West Point became with him an obsession. He walked the halls of Congress, got his own appointment and finally entered in 1943. Having attained his first objective, a second one became paramount. At that time, aviation training was being given concurrently to cadets in sufficient scope so that wings were awarded at the time of graduation. His second objective became then, primarily, the Air Corps and secondarily, fighter aviation. Both portions of this second objective were also reached. A few months after graduation he married Jane Elliot, daughter of the late Colonel A. Dana Elliot, Ordnance Corps, and the following year a daughter, Marielyn Cochran, was born to them. In December 1950, Alex was shipped out to the Far East where he performed his quota of combat missions over Korea. In early March 1952, his little family was permitted to join him at Naha for what proved to be a final six weeks of their life together.

In writing a memorial article of this type, it would be wonderful to be gifted to the extent of being able to voice a philosophy, or even to be able to coin a phrase adequately expressive of feeling. However, the writer and his wife can only say that they are deeply grateful for the privilege of having had Alex with them for the all-too-few years of his youth.

 
 
 

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