In 12 games with the Bulls, Loos batted .400 (12 for 30) as the team went on to capture the Piedmont League’s playoff championship despite finishing fourth in the regular league standings.

Loos played with the Dayton Ducks of the Class C Middle-Atlantic League at the start of the 1941 season. “The Ducks were in the same League as the Erie Sailors,” recalls his youngest brother, Richard. “Sometime during this summer, Mother and I rode the bus to Erie to see Gus play. I remember three things from this trip. We met Gus at his hotel, the lighting at the game was very poor and Gus’s team lost.”

Loos batted .243 in 44 games with the Ducks, and finished the year with the Columbia Reds of the Class B South Atlantic League, where he hit .298 in 47 games, handling a pitching staff of future major leaguers including Arnold Carter, Hal Erickson and Johnny Kucab, and helping the club win the league championship.

The 24-year-old had made steady progress through the minor league system, and was keeping in shape during the off-season playing basketball with the league-leading Young Republicans in Pittsburgh’s Municipal League when news of Japan’s devastating attack on Pearl Harbor at Hawaii reached the American mainland. Two weeks later, Loos turned his back on professional baseball and enlisted with the Army Air Force.

Training as aircrew, Loos completed navigation training at the Pan American Airways Navigation School, Coral Gables, Florida, southwest of downtown Miami. The navigator's job is to direct a flight from departure to destination and return. He must know the exact position of the airplane at all times by determining geographic positions by means of pilotage (determining the airplane's position by visual reference to the ground), dead reckoning (estimating your position by using course, speed, time and distance traveled), radio (making use of various radio aids to determine position) and celestial navigation (determining position by reference to the stars).

Loos graduated as a second lieutenant and was assigned to the municipal airport in Long Beach, California, where an area on the south side of the runway had been converted into an Army Air Base operated by the 6th Ferrying Group of the Air Transport Command. Loos served with the 9th Ferrying Squadron, delivering various tactical and support aircraft from factories to overseas departure points in the Pacific area. Between July 1942 and June 1944, ferry crews from Long Beach made 1,258 overseas deliveries. In addition, they delivered over 40,000 aircraft to destinations within the United States.

About 3,000 servicemen were stationed at Long Beach Army Air Field. The base was about a ten minute bus ride to Ocean Boulevard and downtown Long Beach. The Douglas Aircraft Company plant, employing thousands of workers, many of them young females, was located on the other side of the runway at Municipal airport.

During this time, Loos played for the formidable 6th Ferrying Group baseball team. Often having gaps in his flight assignments which allowed him to play for days at a time, Loos found himself on a ball team that included Red Ruffing (Hall of Fame pitcher for the New York Yankees) as manager and player, Harry Danning (all-star catcher for the New York Giants four consecutive years), Chuck Stevens (first baseman for the St. Louis Browns), Max West (all-star outfielder with the Boston Braves), and Nanny Fernandez (shortstop with the Boston Braves).

The 6th Ferrying Group were a real powerhouse team and Ruffing pitched them to a 4-1 victory over Camp Pendleton for the Southern California service championship on October 11, 1943, defeating fellow future Hall of Famer Ted Lyons.

The 26-year-old also found time for romance. On September 10, 1943, he married 19-year-old Alice Marie Goodwin of Apex, North Carolina.

In January 1944, 1/Lt. Loos was the navigator for 1/Lt. Thomas M. Palmer, who was the ferry pilot of a Consolidated B-24J Liberator bomber that was one of five planes to be delivered to the Eighth Air Force Service Command in the United Kingdom. From Long Beach, California, the planes traveled to Lincoln, Nebraska, then to Presque Isle, Maine. From there they headed south to British Guyana in South America. At approximately 10:00 A.M. on January 16, 1944, they departed from Atkinson Field, near Georgetown in British Guyana, bound for Belem, Brazil, where they would refuel and complete the next leg of the journey to Europe.

No contact was made with Loos’ plane after take-off from Atkinson Field.

Once time had elapsed for the fuel reserve to be depleted, a search was made for the missing plane. On January 17, two North American B-25 Mitchells searched the route between Georgetown and Suriname, while the Navy Patrol Squadron at Zandery Field in Suriname, searched as far as Clevelandia in southern Brazil. In addition, all transient planes were briefed to be on the look-out for the missing bomber. The search continued until January 19, when wreckage was spotted by aircraft in a large swamp in an isolated area 37 miles southeast of Atkinson Field. There was evidence from the air of an explosion and fire.

A rescue party reached the wreckage via the Abary River on January 26, but was unable to locate the bodies of the crew. A second investigating party reached the scene on February 12 (almost a month after the crash), and was successful in recovering the bodies of five of the seven airmen, including Lieutenant Loos. The bodies of First Lieutenant Palmer and Second Lieutenant Martin Stern were never found (the others recovered were 1/Lt. Lawrence M. Stanley, Jr., S/Sgt. Earl A. Hoegensen, T/Sgt. Joseph J. Thomy and S/Sgt. Hugh M. Sharpe. 2/Lt. Stern and S/Sgt. Sharpe were not crew members but passengers aboard the plane).

Following an investigation, it was assumed that an explosion had taken place aboard the B-24, causing it to fall from the sky. What caused the explosion will never be known.

At the Batavia Clippers home-opener on April 30, 1945, Loos, who was posthumously awarded the Air Medal, was remembered in a flag-raising ceremony and moment of silent prayer.

After the war, Loos family were visited by one of his former 6th Ferrying Command baseball teammates. “Nanny Fernandez was playing with the Boston Braves and they were visiting Pittsburgh to play the Pirates,” remembers Richard Loos. “Nanny came to our house for dinner. It was a wonderful gesture on his part and my parents were deeply touched.”

1/Lt. Loos’ body was returned home to Pennsylvania in 1948 and is resting in the family plot, Section A, Lot 43 in the Smithfield East End Cemetery in Pittsburgh

Walter G Loos Jr