EDDIE EDWARDS AND HUGH SHARP 


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Diamond State Chapter / Air Force Association
A feature article from the Sentinel...

The Eddie Edwards Story

 As told by Eddie Edwards, himself, at the Chapter's December Meeting. New Castle, Delaware
-- Eddie Edwards was born in Sparta, North Carolina in 1913 and moved to Delaware in 1928. He had an early interest in aviation and learned to fly in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. Eddie joined the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) in early 1942. On March 1, 1942, Eddie reported to DuPont Field. From there, between 15 and 20 CAP aircraft flew to Rehobeth. The Delaware flyers later flew to Atlantic City where they met with Gil Robb Wilson, Earl Johnson and Richard DuPont. Eddie participated in his first operational CAP mission out of Rehobeth Beach on March 10, 1942. He flew as an observer and John Benedict was the pilot-in-command. During that flight, they noticed a what they believed was a ship awash and later determined that it was a submarine making a crash dive. This was the first German submarine sighted on a CAP mission. The aircraft was unarmed, but at a later date CAP missions were armed with bombs and/or depth charges. Eddie would fly as pilot-in-command from March 11, 1942, through December 2, 1942. He then joined the Navy as a pilot and served an instructor.


On a day in July, 1942, the CAP unit at Rehobeth was notified that a CAP aircraft with two crewmembers had gone down near Winter Quarter Shoals located about 85 miles east of Ocean City, MD. Eddie and Hugh Sharp gathered up all the equipment that they felt that they would need for a rescue and launched in a Sikorsky S-39 seaplane. Once on scene they sighted one crewmember and landed in rough seas. During the landing, the left out-board strut was damaged. They recovered one crewmember but could not find the other one. They could not takeoff due to the damage to the strut and began to taxi back to shore. The aircraft began to take in water due to the damaged strut. So, to counteract the imbalance, Eddie climbed onto the right wing and sat on the tip of the wing. A Coast Guard ship reached them after about two hours and towed them very slowly to shore. Eddie sat on the wing for about 13 hours until they reached Chincoteague Coast Guard Station at about 1 AM. For this heroic action, Eddie Edwards and Hugh Sharp were awarded the Army Air Medal by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in December, 1942.


Eddie now lives in Warwick, Maryland
and frequently attends Diamond State Chapter meetings.