JOHN P. MANFREDI, LCDR, USN

John Manfredi '52

Date of birth: September 27, 1928

Date of death: November 26, 1965

Age: 37

Lucky Bag

From the 1952 Lucky Bag:

John Philip Manfredi

Brooklyn, New York

Lover, as he was known by his wives, was delayed in his assault upon the academics here at the Academy by a two and one-half year tour of duty in the Fleet. As an aviation tech third class, he received a Regular Navy Appointment after successfully attending NAPS at Bainbridge, Md. An avid fan of photography, J. P. spent his idle hours here at the factory contributing to the Log and Trident. Although active in plebe lacrosse, subsequent years found him completely engrossed in that king of sports, "dragging." Being very much at home in an airplane, John hopes to make his career Naval aviation.

John Philip Manfredi

Brooklyn, New York

Lover, as he was known by his wives, was delayed in his assault upon the academics here at the Academy by a two and one-half year tour of duty in the Fleet. As an aviation tech third class, he received a Regular Navy Appointment after successfully attending NAPS at Bainbridge, Md. An avid fan of photography, J. P. spent his idle hours here at the factory contributing to the Log and Trident. Although active in plebe lacrosse, subsequent years found him completely engrossed in that king of sports, "dragging." Being very much at home in an airplane, John hopes to make his career Naval aviation.

Loss

John was lost when his F-4 Phantom II crashed on November 26, 1965 immediately after taking off from USS Forrestal while operating in the Mediterranean Sea. The other crewman was also lost.

Other Information

From an email from Jerrold "Zack" Zacharias on May 4, 2017:

John Manfredi was in an F-4 Phantom squadron on Forrestal and they were scheduled to do some night intercept work with one of the destroyers. I was the Air Wing Operations officer at the time and John had some concerns about the operation. So we had a meeting the afternoon before the flight to cover the procedures and any questions that John had. He was catapulted off the forward cat that evening and it appeared that he over-rotated the aircraft on launch, it stalled, flipped upside down and hit the water inverted in front of the ship. John Manfredi's wife and kids were over in the Med at the time and we had to notify them that John had been lost. That was a tough one.

From the February 1966 issue of Shipmate:

LCdr. John P . Manfredi, USN, was killed in an aircraft accident on 26 Nov while piloting a Phantom F4B assigned to the USS FORRESTAL in the Mediterranean. Memorial services were held on board the carrier.
LCdr. Manfredi was born in Brooklyn, N. Y. He received a fleet appointment to the Naval Academy, from where he was graduated in 1952. After flight training at Pensacola he was designated a naval aviator in June 1954. His tours of duty included Fighter Squadron Thirty-One, from Sept. 1954 to April 1959; the Advanced Training Command at Chase Field and Corpus Christi, Tex., from May 1959 to July 1962, and the Naval War College at Newport, R. I., from July 1962 to June '63.
After completing Replacement Pilot Training at Key West, Fla., he reported to Fighter Squadron Seventy-Four in March 1964 as operations officer. He is survived by his widow, Terry, and their children Sharon Ann, 12, Sherri Ann, 11, and Terri Lee, 9, who were in Naples, Italy, en route to meet him at Malta at the time of his death.

He graduated the Naval War College in June 1963.

John was survived by his wife and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. (Note: as of April 1, 2017 the picture on that site was of a different gravestone.)