My Dad, somewhere on an aircraft carrier in World War II; he was a fighter pilot in the navy during WWII. He earned the Navy Cross Medal for extraordinary heroism in combat (second to the medal of honor) and came home to live a quiet life and raise a family.Submitted by TampaSaint t3_11a8qn8 in OldSchoolCool
Southern_Snowshoe t1_j9uliq3 wrote
Reply to comment by TampaSaint in My Dad, somewhere on an aircraft carrier in World War II; he was a fighter pilot in the navy during WWII. He earned the Navy Cross Medal for extraordinary heroism in combat (second to the medal of honor) and came home to live a quiet life and raise a family. by TampaSaint
That’s a great story! Funny, my father also said he felt fortunate to not be a Marine or soldier slogging it out in the jungle. I remember him saying more than once, “Barring being forced down, I always knew I had a warm dry bed waiting for me and that I wouldn’t be sleeping in a muddy ditch.”
I missed the link you mentioned. I’ll check that out. I happened across a photo of my father last year in the Wikipedia article on his ship, the USS Bismarck Sea. Buried in the article is a photo of an accident unfolding on the deck and a crumpled individual in the middle of the mess. It seemed very similar to a story Dad told me about an accident he was involved in, so I dug a bit deeper. Sure enough, it was Dad. He was mentioned in the photos source material. (He was virtually uninjured but his plane captain and another pilot were lost).
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