Moshe Aaron (Moe) Rosenbaum moved with his Labor-Zionist family from Poland to Brooklyn when he was eleven months old. When WWII broke out he interrupted his studies to join the Air Force, serving as a navigator in the Mediterranean theater (where he came into influential contact with Jewish Brigade members). Shot down on his 13th mission, he served out the war in a POW camp in Germany.
Convinced that mechanical engineering would be a most useful specialty in the Jewish state-to-be, he left school in the spring of 1948 a month short of graduation and came to Israel to offer his skills. Unfortunately, his service was cut short on May 21, 1948 when a C-46 plane he was navigating with supplies from Czechoslovakia crashed into a low hill due to ground fog on its way into the airfield in Israel. Moe was the only casualty, crushed by shifting cargo - a crated half Messerschmitt.
