Two months after surviving a mid-air ordeal that earned him the Medal of Honor, Lt. “Red” Morgan flew the lead B-17 in the first bombing raid on Berlin on Mar. 7, 1944.

Born in 1914 at Vernon a stone’s throw south of the Red River, John Cary Morgan did most of his growing up in Amarillo. But he finished finish high school at New Mexico Military Institute at the insistence of his father, a prominent attorney.

Late in life after his hair had turned white, Morgan remembered it had b...