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Polk County News | Photos | Breaking News

Fighter Ace And Felon: The Saga Of Abner Aust

Posted Oct 16, 2007 by Billy Townsend

Updated Oct 16, 2007 at 08:24 AM

The oldest inmate in the Polk County Jail is Abner Aust, an 86-year-old retired Air Force colonel and certified World War II fighter ace who shot down Zeros over Tokyo. He’s been in prison for the past seven years on convictions of solicitation of arson and solicitation of murder. You can read his story here. It ran today on the front page of the printed Tribune.

And here’s a little bonus for PCNB readers. Because of space, we had to cut the following passage, which focuses on Aust’s reaction to losing a friend and fellow pilot in WW II and what it meant years later to the friend’s nephew:

Aust, like most of the men of WW II, also lost friends. One of them was Capt. John W.L. Benbow, killed over Japan during a mission on July 16, 1945. Benbow and Aust had trained and socialized together before deployment.

When Benbow’s plane disappeared, Aust quickly composed a handwritten letter to Benbow’s wife back in the United States describing how Benbow disappeared into clouds at 8,000 feet and wasn’t seen again.

“I am very, very sorry that I have to bring you such sad news, but I feel it will be a lot better this way than to have to wait for the army. They are so slow and a person could go mad waiting for mail for such things,” Aust wrote, adding that he was sure Benbow bailed out and would return home eventually as a prisoner of war.

Years later, Benbow’s nephew John, a North Carolina pediatrician, began to research the background of the uncle he was named for but never knew. That led him to Aust, with whom he exchanged letters. Benbow said an inmate who learned of their exchanges sent his own letter, describing Aust as mentor and an inspiration to him and other inmates with military backgrounds.

Benbow would like to meet, in person, the flying ace who’s become a link to his uncle.