Biography gleaned from www.westpointaog.org

Graduate United States Military Academy Class of 1940



Joseph Michael Cole, Jr., was born October 1st in 1917 in New York City. An Army child he was born while his father was stationed at Fort Tilden, New York. While at Fort Hamilton he attended Manhattan's Regis High School. Joe took high honors from the parochial school and was valedictorian with honors from high school. In 1936 after a year at Braden's Preparatory School he received a Presidential "at large" appointment to the Military Academy.



Unhappily, his mother died six months before his graduation in 1940. At graduation he stood 120 among 449 and was initially assigned to the Coast Artillery Corps. However he secured a transfer and immediately began training in the Air Corps. This took him first to Santa Maria, later to Moffet Field and then to Stockton where he got his wings. His first assignment was to the Salt Lake City Air Base flying B-17s and B-18s.

It was on yearling furlough in 1938 while Joe was at home in Brooklyn that he met Dorothea James at Fort Hamilton. Her father, Col. H. W. James, was on duty with the Eighteenth Infantry at that post. Dorothea was home on vacation from Vassar. Joe having graduated and entered upon his flying training in California, a happy chance took Col. James to California the following winter. Joe and Dorothea were married in the chapel at the Presidio of San Francisco on the twenty-first of June in 1941. Joe then undertook a course in meteorology. After that he was assigned to Will Rogers Field, Oklahoma, as Weather Officer for the Forty-seventh Bombardment Group. He was ordered overseas as Weather Officer for the Sixth Fighter Wing and later with the Eighth Fighter Command. It was with this last command that he established weather stations in the British Isles. He received his promotion to Lieutenant Colonel in November of 1943 shortly after his twenty-sixth birthday. In the meantime Dorothea had established their home in Carmel, California, where a daughter was born on the twenty-second of April in 1943. Joe was very proud of his lovely wife and little girl whom he never saw.



The formal announcement "Killed over Chesham, England, February 22, 1944." was all the information provided. His Commanding General wrote - "a young officer possessing an analytical mind, with the moral courage to back up his mental decisions without equivocation. He can be relied upon, yes, Joe Cole could be relied upon. This same officer said after his death, and it could not be better said:...He was a splendid officer and was doing an outstanding job. He was intensely popular with the men...in addition to the friendship which all of us felt for Joe, he had earned and at all times retained our utmost respect...People like Joe don't come along very often. There is no one who can fully replace him in his work."