Son of James Louis Webb and Rilla Le Davis.

2Lt. James Louis Webb, Jr. was a World War II combat pilot.
He was killed on a training mission when his P-51 Mustang crashed off the coast of Japan.

The following article was published in the Big Spring Daily Herald on Sunday, May 18, 1952:

USAF Honors Memory Of Lt. J. L. Webb

Name Base For Hero
Of 49 War Missions

The lieutenant glanced off his wing and caught his breath.
The P-51 Mustang, with veteran fighter pilot Lt. James L. Webb Jr. at the controls, shuddered and went into a spin. Almost as in his boyhood days when he brought up the head of a fractious pony with a jerk on the reins, Lt. Webb righted the plane.
Over the radio, Lt. Dewald, who was flying his wing, called: "Meet you on top of the overcast."
"O.K.!" Lt. Webb pulled her nose up. He never got through the overcast. Instead the plane roared into a dive. Three hundred feet off shore it happened.
Today, as the Air Force Base here is dedicated formally as Webb Air Base, it will be in memory of this Big Spring man who crowded in 49 combat missions in World War II and re-enlisted in 1948 to make the Air Force his career.
The story has its beginning in Sweetwater. J. L. Webb had met Rilla Davis in Dallas, where she was going to school. They were married and moved to Sweetwater. Their first child was a girl, Nina Rose. Then, on July 20, 1924, cards went out announcing an event of great importance to the family that day - the arrival of James Louis Webb Jr., a nine-pound boy.
The "junior" bore testimony to the usual pride of a male heir, but almost from the start "Sonny" was his mama's boy. Later when weighty decisions came up, he would spend hours talking it over with "Bubba," as he called his mother.
Nationally there was talk of chicken every Sunday and two cars to every garage. In Big Spring, with the added stimulus of a new oil field, things were even more attractive. The Webb's got a chance to open the first agency in the city devoted exclusively to Buicks, so they made the move.
The next two years were wonderfully full ones. The family raised a new home at 112 Lexington. There were trips back to Sweetwater to visit friends. In the summer, vacation trips took them to California.
Sonny had been bitten by the horse bug and his parents got him a black Shetland. The colt got to be almost a fetish with the boy. Finally when he began to string up like most boys do, his feet would drag the ground. So the Webb's sold the pony and replaced it with a little Paint. Sonny would pull its head up and make it rear on its hind legs so that the young rider could grab his hat and extend it high in the air just like Hoot Gibson and Jack Hoxie.
About all he could talk about then was the time when he would be grown up and become a rancher.
However, he was a perfectly normal youngster. When autumn rolled around, he donned a weather-beaten helmet and a pair of over-sized football pants. Occasionally he paused long enough to have his picture snapped in a characteristic quarterback pose, arm cocked for a long throw. As the seasons changed, he religiously changed his attention to various sports.
And religiously, too, he attended his Sunday school and was baptized into the First Methodist Church by Dr. J. Richard Spann. Although he never got to be and Eagle Scout, he was a member of Troop No. 3 under Jack Hodges. Camping, more than test passing, appealed to him.
He was not one to shirk his studies. Report cards from those early years show him to be what you would call a "straight A" pupil. Lurlene Rogers rated him in the high 90s the first year, Mrs. S. M. Smith and Mrs. A. S. Smith graded him with A's across the board, and he was still that sort of pupil when he was in Grace Mann's fourth grade at South Ward.
Still and all, he wasn't a bookworm. His ability to grasp quickly was frustrating to his sister. More than once Nina Rose (now Mrs. W. L. Walker of Tulia) complained to her mother that she had to dig and dig to make good grades, whereas Sonny seemed to be able to get them without a great deal of effort.
When he was promoted from the seventh grade into high school, Jimmy Webb wasn't at the head of his class. What was more important to him was that he was a member of a boys quartet with Billye Welch, Don Lewis and Junior Madison. They got to sing at the graduation program.
Hi grades were good enough in high school, and he concentrated on his football, although he was almost a flyweight. It was not until his junior year that trying began to pay off for him. He weighted all of 121 pounds but he was a scrapper. When the Big Spring Yearlings lost to Lubbock's junior team 16-7, Jimmy was the hero. "Big Spring trailed in the second quarter when James Webb intercepted a Lubbock pass and raced 45 yards to the end zone," said a newspaper story. Other accounts told how he looked increasingly good in practice.
The following year he was up to 140 pounds, and he and David Lamun, who later was to march to immortality as a member of the plodding Infantry, were on the Shorthorn team together. It was written of one of the games that "James Webb was the Shorthorn's most brilliant performer." Later he rated second string and got to be with his bosom friend, Arvie Walker.
In the summer he was turning 15, Jimmy Webb got to make a trip to New York and visit with the C. K. Bivings, who were former residents. It made a lasting impression on him, not because he got to take in the World's Fair and was "close enough to reach out and touch them" when King George and Queen Elizabeth visited in New York. Rather, it was a trip to West Point. He was awed and he never quite got over it.
From that moment on, he had his heart on someday marching on the green with the cadets at the United States Military Academy.
There was a lot of talk of war. The United States had been called the "arsenal of democracy". Even at the baccalaureate service for his commencement, Dr. J. O. Haymes spoke on "Values that Outlast War."
The only thing that was keeping him out of it was his age. He was restless and his mother didn't think he had maturity at the age of 15 years to go off to senior college. J. L. Wood Jr. and Arvie Walker Jr. had talked some about going to New Mexico Military Institute. Jimmy's father had been living in Silverton for the past four years and his mother thought the discipline at Roswell would be good for him. That summer they came back by Roswell after vacationing in Ruidoso, N. M., and arrangements were made. He and his companions entered. The flabbergasted registrar wanted to know if "all the boys in Big Spring are juniors and their names start with W?"
Sonny loved his two years at NMMI. He averaged better than 98 in military tactics. Although he played football and polo (he almost had his eyebrow ripped off in a game), the military regiment interested him most. He got to be a sergeant in the cadet corps his second year.
He now felt that he was ready for West Point, but the principal appointment had been promised for that year. However, he did get the principal appointment to the U. S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. At first the thought of an "army" man in the Navy chafed him, but the more he thought about it the better he liked the idea. Alas, when he sent in his transcript, he discovered Annapolis required more math and he lacked half a credit in his easiest and favorite subject. That was almost more than he could bear.
The hope was kept alive, however, when President Roosevelt stepped up the rate of training at the Point and gave Congressmen two extra appointments. Having just had a principals role, the best he could hope for on this was an alternate's spot. He went to Fort Sam Houston and qualified easily - but so did the principal. West Point again eluded his grasp.
There was sill time to get in some more on his education, his mother kept telling him. But what's the use of going through the motions, he argued, when he would be called up sooner or later. Nevertheless, he yielded and entered the University of Texas the fall of 1942 and pointed toward aeronautical engineering. He pledged Chi Phi fraternity on the promise to his mother that he would come back and finish his college training when he got out of service.
In December, he couldn't stand it any longer. Sonny enlisted as an aviation cadet. When he came home at Christmas, he announced that he was quitting school. "Bubba" was insistent. Go on back to mid-term, she pleaded. Hang on until the call came through.
He did, but she well knew he was only going through the motions. His grades, for the first time in his life, were rotten. Jimmy, however, was thoroughly enjoying himself. It was almost like disrupting a dream when he got his notice to report for duty March 3, 1943.
After being processed at Sheppard Field, he was sent to Texas A&M for three months for "CIT" training. He snapped back into his old interests. He did well and was a member of his squadron's ball team.
In rapid succession he was sent to San Antonio, the to Fort Stockton for primary, and to Goodfellow Field for basic before he got his wings at Foster Field in Victoria on May 25, 1944.
Sonny had always said he would wait until he got out of the service to marry; then he began to say he would wait until he got his commission. That's about the way it worked out in the autumn of 1942, he had met Doris Elizabeth Taylor, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Edward Taylor of Austin.
Plans for marriage had to be hastily revised, because instead of furlough he got an assignment for a fortnight of gunnery instruction at Matagorda Island. On June 11, 1944 he met Doris at the altar of the All Saint's Episcopal Church and the Rev. Joseph Harte solemnized vows that made them man and wife.
There was hardly any honeymoon, because the Army Air Force whisked him off to Tampa Florida, up to Georgia, over to Meridian Miss., down to Louisiana, and then to Savannah, Ga. In January 1945 he was writing from England, a beautiful country which somehow had sun that shone and shone and yet somehow didn't seem too warm.
" I have yet to see the place I would trade for one inch of old Texas," he wrote nostalgically. "I can't even understand half of what they say." As an afterthought, he observed that "You should see the food. Actually, it is better than in the States."
Although he wrote fairly regularly, he never said much about his flights. Not a line of any of his letters ever were scratched. His family had to learn largely from press releases that he had earned the Air Medal, then an Oak leaf Cluster, another, another -until there were eight, he said, although his separation papers said nine. In six months he crowded in 49 combat missions with his P-51 and if he ever got a scratch, he didn't report it.
Then in July of 1945 he was shipped back stateside. Time rushed by rapidly, for he was in a race with the stork. Ten days before he got back, Doris bore him a daughter, Karen Elizabeth, at Austin on July 28.
The night he went up to the hospital to see Doris and the baby for the first time was the only time he ever wore his ribbons and medals. This was only because his mother begged him and told him how proud it would make his wife. Reluctantly, he put on all his "Hash," muttering that "nobody cares about this stuff."
He had his 30-day "recuperating" furlough and awaited deployment to the Pacific. Luckily, Japan capitulated and by December Sonny had been separated.
His mother had worked at the Big Spring Bombardier School all through World War II. Her nerves were almost gone and she thought maybe she would be better to leave "home" for a time at least. So Jimmy didn't come back to Big Spring except to visit briefly.
He had three months to feed and so he was selling clay products in conjunction with his Dad. Plainview became his headquarters and he bought a home there. He had in mind to got to Texas Tech and complete work toward his degree, but this didn't work out.
TO BE CONTINUED.