The following appeared in The State newspaper on Sept. 5, 1945.
“VII Fighter Command Headquarters, Iwo Jima – The distinction of being ‘the only pilot in the United States Air Forces to have flown the first and last fighter-escorted mission of World War II’ was claimed here by Captain Kitt R. McMaster, Jr., of Winnsboro, South Carolina.
Captain McMaster flew the first bombing mission escorted by fighter pilots in August, 1942, on two strikes against Rouen, France. That day he piloted a Spitfire, protecting B-17s. On Aug. 14, 1945, he flew a P-51 Mustang as escort for B-29s. Between the two dates, Captain McMaster flew 98 missions in all theaters of World War II. He was a member of the 12th Air Force in both North Africa and England, and has three kills to his credit in Europe. From Iwo he flew seven missions… Captain McMaster holds the Air Medal with ten Oak Leaf clusters.”
WINNSBORO – McMaster’s son Kitt R. McMaster III, also grew up in Winnsboro along with his sister Ellen McMaster Nicholson. Now a retired pathologist, Kitt III resides in West Columbia where he set out to record his father’s service – which covered all major theaters of the war from 1942 to 1945 – in a book earlier this year. Titled Kitt R. McMaster, Jr. World War II Pilot, the book is available at the Fairfield County Museum and a copy is also catalogued at the County Library.
The following is a summation of Kitt III’s published account of his father’s service.
As a boy growing up in Winnsboro, Kitt McMaster wanted nothing more than to be an airplane pilot. He may not have envisioned himself as a fighter pilot in a war, but that was to be his destiny.
The book is short, but it is a full story of his WWII exploits: his pilot training in the United States before Pearl Harbor, his first assignment in England, his long tour of duty in North Africa and the Mediterranean, and finally his experiences in the Pacific where he flew Very Long Range fighter-escorted bombing missions over the Japanese Empire.
But the book is also a story of love as well as war.
It includes how Captain McMaster first met Frances Simpson of Clinton, SC, about three months before Hitler invaded Poland in September 1939, how as college students they fell in love, and how they finally kept their promises to each other – to be married – during Captain McMaster’s one furlough during the war.
Fascinated by the newly emerging jet age, Kitt McMaster intended to pursue a post-war career as an officer in the newly constituted United States Air Force. After a post-war tour in the American Occupation Zone in Germany, he, Frances, and their two children, were stationed at Turner Army Airfield in Albany, Georgia.
In the book’s final section we learn what necessitated his return to civilian life and brought the McMaster family of four back to a settled life in Kitt’s hometown of Winnsboro.