In Memory of
Major Peyton Spotswood Mathis Jr.
May 23, 1916 - June 5, 1944
Obituary
Maj. Peyton Spotswood Mathis, Jr., will be buried with military honors at Greenwood Cemetery at 2:00 pm on Saturday, January 3, 2015. The son of Peyton S. Mathis, Sr., and Laura Davis Mathis of Montgomery, Major Mathis was a 1932 graduate of Sidney Lanier High School. After earning a chemical engineering degree from Vanderbilt University, where he also played football, Peyton Mathis volunteered as an aviation cadet in 1940.
As a Lieutenant, Peyton Mathis was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and Silver Star for his World War II service in Europe and North Africa. Later promoted to Major, Mathis commanded the 44th Fighter Squadron in the Pacific Theater. He was killed in action on Guadalcanal on June 5, 1944.
His immediate family included his sister Helen Mathis Lutz Cumbus, half-siblings Warner L. Mathis and Amy Mathis Boswell, nieces Mary Ann Lutz Hooper and Helen Lutz Perkins, and cousins Mary Eleise Cravey and Lt. Col. John T. Cravey, all later deceased in the years that Maj. Mathis was missing in action.
Peyton Mathis, Jr. is survived by his widow Evelyn, half-nephews and -nieces Peyton Mathis III, Warner L. Mathis, Jr., Marcia Mathis McCabe, and Hazel Mims Mathis, and first cousin Laurette Cravey Kimbrough of the Davis family.
The family wishes to thank Mr. Anders Markwarth of Guadalcanal, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, and the people of the Solomon Islands for their efforts in recovering and identifying Maj. Mathis.
As a Lieutenant, Peyton Mathis was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and Silver Star for his World War II service in Europe and North Africa. Later promoted to Major, Mathis commanded the 44th Fighter Squadron in the Pacific Theater. He was killed in action on Guadalcanal on June 5, 1944.
His immediate family included his sister Helen Mathis Lutz Cumbus, half-siblings Warner L. Mathis and Amy Mathis Boswell, nieces Mary Ann Lutz Hooper and Helen Lutz Perkins, and cousins Mary Eleise Cravey and Lt. Col. John T. Cravey, all later deceased in the years that Maj. Mathis was missing in action.
Peyton Mathis, Jr. is survived by his widow Evelyn, half-nephews and -nieces Peyton Mathis III, Warner L. Mathis, Jr., Marcia Mathis McCabe, and Hazel Mims Mathis, and first cousin Laurette Cravey Kimbrough of the Davis family.
The family wishes to thank Mr. Anders Markwarth of Guadalcanal, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, and the people of the Solomon Islands for their efforts in recovering and identifying Maj. Mathis.
Stan Robinson (1970)
From: Emory Kimbrough -
A Sidney Lanier High School graduate missing in action since World War II has been recovered and identified by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command.
Army Air Forces Major Peyton Spottswood Mathis, Jr., played on the Poets football team, and graduated in the Lanier Class of 1932.
Maj. Mathis's remains will be returned to his family in a brief ceremony at the Birmingham airport on New Years Day, followed by a motorcade to Montgomery. Graveside services will be at 2:00 pm on Saturday, January 3, 2015, at Greenwood Cemetery in Montgomery.
Peyton Mathis earned a Distinguished Flying Cross and a Silver Star for valor in combat flying P-38s with the First Fighter Group in Europe and North Africa. Later in the war, he became the commanding officer of the 44th Fighter Squadron on Guadalcanal. On June 5, 1944, he suffered an engine failure on a mission to bomb Japanese gun emplacements on Poporang Island. At about the same time, the mission was recalled due to deteriorating weather. After jettisoning his bombs into the sea and instructing his squadron to land ahead of him, Maj. Mathis, for unknown reasons, aborted his final turn to land at Kukum Airfield on Guadalcanal and was last seen from the field disappearing behind hills to the Southwest. A pilot from another squadron then saw a P-38 flip over and crash into a ravine. A search party located the crash site that afternoon, but with the aircraft nose-down in swampy water, they were unable to recover Maj. Mathis.
In 1949, a Graves Registration company was unable to locate and recover the remains. The aircraft had likely settled into the swamp, and the crash site was lost to history for nearly seventy years until a Solomon Islands farmer clearing land spotted the tail fins of a P-38 in the swamp.
Peyton Mathis's first cousin John T. Cravey was also a Sidney Lanier High School graduate (Class of 1931) and also a fighter pilot missing in action during WW II. Remarkably, just a year before learning that Maj. Mathis's crash site was found on Guadalcanal, the family also learned that John Cravey's crash site had been identified on a glacier in the Alps. John Cravey, though missing in action until after the war, survived in a German POW camp.
Maj. Peyton Mathis's sister Helen Rose Mathis was also Lanier graduate (Class of 1931), as were Peyton's half brother Warner Mathis (Class of 1944) and half sister Amy Mathis (Class of 1942). Other relatives of Maj. Mathis who graduated from Lanier include first cousins Laurette Cravey Kimbrough (1938) and Mary Eleise Cravey (1941), John Cravey's daugher Susan Rebecca Cravey (1968), and Warner Mathis's children Peyton Mathis III (1967), Hazel Mims Mathis (1969), and Marcia Mathis McCabe (1973).
If further information or photographs are desired, please contact: Emory Kimbrough 205-759-2624 (H) 205-737-5546 (C) emoryk@hotmail.com