180602-N-BK435-0014 DEVESELU, Romania (June 2, 2018)

180602-N-BK435-0014
DEVESELU, Romania (June 2, 2018) Capt. Charlos Washington, commanding officer for Naval Support Facility Deveselu, shakes hands with 99-year-old Romanian Maj. Gen. (ret.) Ion Dobran, a former World War II Deveselu Air Force Base Commander, during a base tour, June 2. Dobran was famous for shooting down American pilot 1st Lt. (ret.) Barrie Davis, assigned to 325 Aviation Hunting Group of the US Army Air Forces, near Galati, Romanian on June 6, 1944. During the US and Romanian dogfight Davis was forced to land his Mustang P-51 airplane in Ukraine. The American pilot visited Dobran 66 years later in January 2010 for the first time since WW2 during a event at the Bucharest Aviation Museum, an opportunity for the two pilots to tell their story on that day of 6 June 1944. (NSF Deveselu and AAMDS Romania are co-located with the Romanian 99th Military Base and play a key role in ballistic missile defense in Eastern Europe. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Jeremy Starr/Released)