Berks veteran of 3 wars is buried with military honors

World War II in Europe was in its waning days when Lt. James A. Zweizig of the 404th Fighter Squadron broke formation in pursuit of a strange looking German fighter plane on April 17, 1945.

The strange thing was that the German aircraft had no propellers, unlike Zweizig’s propeller-driven P-47 Thunderbolt.

When the smoke cleared from two blasts of the P-47’s eight 50-caliber machine guns, Zweizig had downed a Messerschmitt Me262, or Schwalbe, the world’s first operational jet-powered fighter aircraft.