Sadly, one adopted Pensacolian never made it to the battles of World War II. Flying at any time was a dangerous profession but during wartime it becomes increasingly more perilous. US Navy Lt. Carl W. Hallen was born on February 19, 1916 in Waukegan, Illinois. After college, he enlisted in the US Navy on April 15, 1941 and entered flight school in Long Beach, California. He completed his flight training and received his wings of gold in 1942 in Corpus Christi, Texas. Further training placed him in the pilot’s seat of a Navy Dauntless dive bomber where he became so efficient that the Navy made him an instructor and transferred him to Pasco, Washington where he was put to work teaching new pilots. But even instructors needed combat experience so many of their best bomber pilots were sent to the Pacific as the war entered its bloodiest stage. To this end he was transferred to the naval air station in Maui, Hawaii for orientation training before boarding the carrier USS Essex. But on the morning of July 1, 1944, he and his bombing squadron were participating in a simulated pre-dawn attack on an American carrier sailing in Hawaiian waters. When the squadron entered a heavy rain squall Hallen lost visual contact with his flight and got separated from the others and was never heard from again. When he failed to return, the entire squadron searched for two days, but failed to find the least bit of wreckage on the ocean’s surface. They did find however a floating oil slick, which was all that marked the young man’s final resting place.
Lt. Hallen became an adopted Pensacolian when he married Miss Mary Elizabeth “Liz” Thweatt who was born on March 11, 1923 in Hazelhurst, Mississippi. Her parents were Navy Commander Troy N. Thweatt Sr. and Mary Holliday. Ironically, Mary’s father was a Navy pilot who had been licensed by none other than the great aviation pioneer Orville Wright of the famous “Wright Brothers.” Her brother Lt. Troy Jr. was also a Navy pilot with both Thweatt’s serving alongside Hallen in the Pacific. Elizabeth was notified at her home at 1508 East Jackson Street, Pensacola that her husband was missing and now presumed dead. She received a warm letter from his squadron commander, Pensacolian LCdr Robert Emmett Riera (Later Rear Admiral and Navy Cross Winner, Pensacola High Class of 1929) assuring her that the squadron had done everything in their power to find her husband, but all to no avail. Elizabeth would eventually remarry another Navy pilot Vince Jospeh Anania (1920-2008), from the state of Pennsylvania and an Annapolis graduate from the class of 1945.
When her second husband retired from the Navy they settled in Chapel Hill, North Carolina where she passed away on January 25, 2012. In a strange twist of fate, her daughter Mary Elizabeth Anania became the wife of the controversial presidential candidate US Senator John Reid Edwards (below) and died two years before her mother on December 7, 2010.
Pensacola News Journal 7-1-1944
1Lt USN Carl Halen, Killed in Training
Crash, Pacific Theater
Mary Elizabeth "Liz" Thweatt Hallen Anania (1923-2012)
US Senator and Presidential Candidate John Reid Edwards
RADM Robert Emmett Riera of Pensacola
and Pensacola High Class of 1929