Boulder loses a most exceptional man

WWII Fighter Pilot Capt. George Lichter Passes Away in Boulder

Boulder lost a great man this past week. His name was George Lichter and his life was extraordinary, to say the least, as his impact was felt not only by those closest to him but also by his nation and the world. George’s 91-plus years resembled the roller coaster ride he came to love when he first climbed on board in 1928 in Coney Island. His life was a non-stop series of thrills, falls and soaring triumph, and his just-published biography, quite aptly, is entitled Ups and Downs With No Regrets. George once summed up his personality — “I like anything novel. If it’s new and there’s a risk, I want to be a part of it.”

Growing up in the midst of the Depression, George learned to fight at an early age and he kept fighting for the rest of his life. He came from a working class immigrant neighborhood of Italians and Jews in Brooklyn, battled what he called “rabid antisemism,” fought off street toughs, and then in 1941 joined thousands of others to fight for his country. He signed up for war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed.

George’s lifelong dream was to become a fighter pilot since he first set eyes on a little passenger plane taking off from Graveshead Bay in Brooklyn when he was only six years old. He kept the dream alive throughout his youth, and World War II gave him the opportunity to take to the skies. After he earned his wings in the United States Army Air Force, George was sent to Bottisham, England, an air base in the south of a nation refusing to surrender to the German forces threatening to bomb them into submission. When George and his fellow pilots visited London they were astonished to see throngs of citizens sleeping in the subways and in cellars as their homes and businesses were attacked on a nightly basis. He was so taken by the resolve of the British people and Churchill’s stubbornness to surrender that he declared himself a lifelong Anglophile.

George first saw combat action in the winter of 1944 as he and the 361st Squadron flew endless raids over Nazi-occupied Europe. It wasn’t long before George engaged in battle with enemy Messerschmitts over France and Poland. Though his P-47 Thunderbird was shot up time and again, he always returned to fight another day. On June 6, 1944, George and his squadron members were in their aircraft hours before dawn. When they took off into rainy weather, they knew that the war would not, and could not, linger much longer. Soaring over the English Channel, George was witness to one of the most spectacular sights of his life — an armada of military ships stretching from the English coast to the shores of France. This was D-Day when the greatest landing of forces in history was to take place at the crack of dawn and in the most inhospitable weather. “I was worried sick about those guys,” George said. “We were up in our planes, far from the action and we knew so many of them were about to die.” That day, George and his fellow pilots would attack every train, bus, truck and car headed toward the coast in an effort to keep the Germans from reaching the beaches of Normandy. George clocked more than eleven hours of combat flying by nightfall. His plane was one of more than eleven thousand aircraft in the air that day to charged with supporting the landing. By the end of the day, ten thousand Americans had been wounded and more than 2500 killed in action.

At the war’s end, George had racked up an astonishing 88 missions. He returned home to New York a decorated war hero, a moniker he would always deny. George had been awarded battle stars for air war, battle stars for the invasion (D-Day), the European Theatre ribbon with battle stars and other accolades. “I’m not a hero,” he said to me while working on his biography, “I did what I had to do. My grandparents came to America to escape the kinds of persecution that the Nazis were committing in Europe and I had to try to stop them.”

After the war George started working in the fabrics industry but in 1947 he heard the kind of news he could not ignore. “The Jews of Europe who were DPs (displaced persons) had no home to return to after the Holocaust. They wanted to try to put the past behind them and start anew in Palestine. Although the United Nations granted Israel statehood, Israel was about to be attacked on all fronts by its neighbors. I felt as though the Jews would be killed in a matter of weeks but I had to try to help. It was a pretty hopeless situation. The Israelis had no air force while Egyptian pilots were bombing Tel Aviv without opposition.” 

George contacted the Israeli secret service and was sent to teach the pilots of the first Israeli air force in secluded air bases in Czechoslovakia. The best planes they had were put together from scraps of German WWII aircraft. Meanwhile the Egyptians were flying British-supplied Spitfires. The irony was not lost on George or his students — they were now training in the same German planes that George was trying to shoot down during WWII. Before the year was over, George had won a reputation as the most esteemed flying instructor, and his recruits had quickly come to rule the skies over their homeland. Decorated by the Israeli government over the years for his distinguished service in the most critical hours of the nation’s existence, George was once again labeled a hero.

Following the war in Israel, George returned to the business world and headed a very successful fabric enterprise, able to retire a few decades later and start a charitable foundation that exists to this day — the George Lichter Family Foundation. George relished his life of retirement in Boulder since he moved here in 1996 to join his three children and their families. He greatly enjoyed taking his friends to lunch, with one of his favorite spots being The Med on Walnut Street. Though 91 may be considered a “ripe old age” by most standards, somehow George never seemed old. He was quick, alert, charged into a room, loved to laugh and drove his late model car wherever he needed to go — right up to his last days. He will be greatly missed by all who knew and loved him.

If you’d like to read his biography, it’s on amazon.com. http://www...