Albert Anson Dorrance, Jr. was born on January 30, 1920 in Shanghai, Shanghai Municipality, China. He was the son of Albert Anson and Rafaela M. Tennent Peoples.

2nd Lt. Dorrance was the Co-pilot of the C-47 42-101025 which took off from station 464 in Merryfield, UK to drop 18 paratroopers over DZ-D as part of Operation Albany during the Normandy invasion. Their target time was 0134. Their plane was the last of five waves to cross the Cotentin, over air defenses now on full alert. To complicate matters, there were heavy clouds at 1500 feet, gone unreported due to the strict radio silence. Some pilots decided to pull up and find their DZs with the Eureka-Rebecca system, others went low to obtain a visual of their DZs, and a rare few stayed the course through the cloud bank. While approaching their drop, the plane came under heavy flak fire. It exploded in mid-air at 0142.