Horace Seaver Carswell, Jr. was born in Fort Worth on July 18, 1916, to Horace S. and Bertha Rea Carswell. After excelling in athletics at North Side High School and graduating in 1934, he attended Texas A&M College, then transferred to Texas Christian University, where he lettered in football and baseball and earned a degree in Physical Education in 1939. In 1940 he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps as a Flying Cadet, completed flight training in Tulsa and at Randolph Field and Kelly Field in San Antonio, received his wings in November 1940, and served at Randolph Field and Goodfellow Field, where he met and later married Virginia Ede in October 1941. After stateside assignments following the U.S. entry into World War II, he was transferred in April 1944 to the China-Burma-India Theater of Operations and the 374th Bombardment Squadron, 308th Bombardment Group. As a major, he commanded radar-equipped B-24J bombers at Liuchow, China. On October 26, 1944, during a nighttime interdiction mission over the South China Sea, his aircraft was badly damaged by Japanese anti-aircraft fire while attacking an enemy convoy. He brought the plane to the China coast and ordered his crew to parachute to safety, but when two crewmen could not bail out, he remained aboard searching for a place to land until the aircraft crashed into a mountainside. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, which was presented to his wife and young son. In 1948 his remains were returned and buried in Fort Worth, and that same year Army Air Field was renamed Carswell Air Force Base in his honor; its airstrip is still officially named Carswell Field.