Remembering Bush at war … 75 Years Later
He was one of the youngest, if not the youngest, aviators in the long history of the United States Navy, receiving both his commission as an officer and his wings three days prior to his 19th birthday. In a little over four decades, he would be elected to serve as the 41st president of the United States.
But, on this day, 75 years ago this month, the wings of George H. W. Bush’s TBF Avenger bomber were on fire and the cockpit was rapidly filling with smoke. As he simultaneously pushed on toward the target and prepared to bail out, he knew it could not be long before his aircraft exploded.
If anyone had ever been born with a proverbial “silver spoon in his mouth,” it was George Herbert Walker Bush. Both his paternal Bush lineage and the maternal Walker line were known for their prominence, wealth and power.
Yet unlike most others in such a privileged position, Bush was not raised with feelings of entitlement or elitism. Instead, his parents consistently sought to emphasize character and service in the rearing of George and his siblings.
Off to war
Imbued with a sense of duty, honor and country, and with the required permission from his parents for an underage enlistee, Bush joined the Navy on his 18th birthday, June 12, 1942. That, coincidentally, was also the same day that he graduated from high school at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. The first time he ever saw his father cry was when he accompanied him to Pennsylvania Station in New York City. There George left for initial naval training at Chapel Hill, North Carolina and, ultimately, for war in the vast reaches of the Pacific Ocean.
Over the next 13 months, Bush would undergo aviation indoctrination training in North Carolina, actual flying instruction in Minnesota and Texas, familiarization in Florida with the TBF torpedo bomber that he was to fly for the rest of the war, and practice bombing runs over Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Along the way, he would learn how to takeoff from and land on an aircraft carrier at sea, on, of all things, a converted cargo ship with a retrofitted flight deck on the waters of Lake Michigan.
Now a newly commissioned Ensign with Navy wings of gold, he was assigned to VT51, a flying squadron located in Norfolk, Virginia. The squadron would soon be attached to a brand new aircraft carrier named the USS San Jacinto. When the San Jacinto left Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in December of 1943, it was headed for war in the Pacific via the Panama Canal. George Bush was still six months shy of his 20th birthday as he sailed toward deadly combat half a world away.
No sooner had the San Jacinto arrived in the central Pacific war zone than Bush was handed his first combat mission on May 21, 1944. The target was Wake Island, previously a U.S. possession, now held by the Japanese. Tense and filled with adrenaline, he and his crew managed to survive. Other combat sorties quickly followed. In June, he was forced to make an emergency landing on the water. After successfully executing this dangerous maneuver, he and his two man crew were quickly rescued by a nearby Navy destroyer. The young pilot, now only one week past his 20th birthday, was quickly gaining a reputation as a skillful and courageous airman.