The Heroic Death Of Nile Clarke Kinnick Jr. Honoring Him For His Services During WWII.
Nile Clarke Kinnick Jr. (July 9, 1918 – June 2, 1943) was an American naval aviator, law student, and college football player at the University of Iowa. He won the 1939 Heisman Trophy and was a consensus All-American.
He died during a training flight while serving as a United States Navy aviator in World War II.
Kinnick was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1951, and the University of Iowa renamed its football stadium Kinnick Stadium in his honor in 1972.
On June 2, 1943, Ensign Kinnick was on a routine training flight from the aircraft carrier USS Lexington off the coast of Venezuela in the Gulf of Paria.
He had been flying for over an hour when his Grumman F4F Wildcat developed an oil leak so severe that he could neither reach land nor the Lexington,
whose flight deck was already crowded with planes preparing for launch anyway. He followed standard military procedure and executed an emergency landing in the water but died in the process.
Rescue boats arrived on the scene eight minutes later but found only an oil slick. His body was never recovered. He was one month and seven days away from his 25th birthday and was the first Heisman Trophy winner to die.
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