“How far away from O’Hare were you when he was hit? One was a fighter pilot named Butch O’Hare. Official word arrived on December 9 that Butch was missing in action. Arriving at 16th and Wash-ington shortly before noon, Butch was guided to the back seat of a long, black open Packard, where he sat between his wife and mother. Edward “Butch” O’Hare was the Navy’s first flying ace, a World War II hero whose name would have been commonly known at the time, but has sadly faded out of view for most Americans. In his letter, Jackson quoted Rear Adm. Radford saying of Butch that he "never saw one individual so universally liked." Where is O’Hare? The man who ran Chicago during Prohibition was Al Capone. After the war, on April 19, 1947, Col. Robert R. McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, proposed that Chicago's new airport be named for Butch, who had often visited his father in the city. We swung in behind them, and Rand began calling out the range: three miles, two, one, a thousand yards. As they steamed toward Australia, Brown realized that he was in uncharted waters for the U.S. Navy. I unlatched the armor plate below me and crawled into the bucketing plane to sit on the green aluminum bench beside Rand. Phillips shot down one Betty. When he thought about the future he was creating for his son, he decided he had to do something to get his son out of the mob business. We saw a lot of transports getting under way, pulling up the anchor chains. Wake Island had fallen on December 23, Hong Kong on Christmas and Singapore on February 15. Butch O'Hare stood alone between the Lexington and the bombers. O'Hare International Airport describes its namesake as "a World War II fighter pilot from Chicago"—even though Butch never lived in Chicago. Selma left for San Diego to be with Rita and Kathleen. Paul Tibbets, a good friend of Butch's since their days together at Western Military Academy, says today, "He was a hell of a fine man.". Photographers' flashes exploded as Rita hung the medal around her husband's neck. After a crash course in operating the rear gun, Rand replaced our navigator for the Black Panther Operation. The Hellcat dropped gently. The next week, EJ's role in ridding Chicago of Al Capone was revealed in the April 26 issue of Collier's magazine. by Warfare History Network. He asked Radford to order the Black Panthers aloft. Phil Phillips with Hazen Rand as the radio/radar operator and Alvin Kernan (now an eminent literary critic) as the gunner, had not yet been launched when the Enterprise's fighter- direction officer abandoned Butch's plan. The most interesting word in this routine announcement, which occurs more than 3,000 times daily in the skies over Chicago, is "O'Hare." Butch looked at his fuel gauge and, to his surprise, saw that the groundcrew had not refilled Butch’s fuel tank. According to Thach’s oral recording, Butch later encountered the embarrassed young gunner and said, “Son, if you don’t stop shooting at me when I’ve got my wheels down, I’m going to have to report you to the gunnery officer.” His murder shocked the community and his family, but biographers, historians, and newspapers suggest that EJ’s ties to the mob connected his illegal greyhound dog races in Chicago with Capone’s sleazy underworld. His father, “Artful Eddie” O’Hare, was lawyer to Al Capone. The killing made the headlines and is covered in the biography mentioned at the end of this article. Since we depended on the fighters for protective firepower, I assumed we would go back to the ship once we lost them. Edward Henry “Butch” O’Hare rocketed to fame in February 1942 by singlehandedly taking on eight Japanese torpedo bombers bent on destroying the aircraft carrier USS Lexington and shooting down several of them. O’Hare became something of a celebrity, but to the pilots under his command, he was always just “Butch.” His service came to an end on the night … The FDO directed Butch and Skon toward Phillips' Avenger. At this point Phillips—at O’Hare’s request—turned on our running lights, and the fighters, all lighted up themselves like Christmas trees, slid suddenly in, coming down across our tail from below and aft, O’Hare on our starboard side wing one or two hundred feet away somewhat below, Skon on the port, bright blue in the flare of their exhausts, six guns jutting out of their wings, quite scary. Trivia (1) Father of World War II flying ace Lieutenant Edward "Butch" O'Hare, after whom Chicago's busy O'Hare Airport was renamed (it … Butch was born on March 13, 1914 in St. Louis, Missouri to Edward J. and Selma O'Hare. O'Hare's most famous flight occurred during the Pacific War on February 20, 1942. His business card stated that he was a "secondhand furniture dealer," and there was a storefront, stocked with junk, next to a Chicago brothel he operated. With severely limited ammunition supplies, he was able to shoot down five Japanese bombers, which is how he became the first Naval recipient of the Medal of Honor during the Second World War. LT O'Hare and his wingman were the only U.S. Navy fighters available in the air when Japanese 2nd wave of bombers were attacking his aircraft carrier Lexington.. Butch O'Hare was on board the aircraft carrier Lexington, which had been assigned the task of penetrating enemy-held waters north of New Ireland. Butch took emergency leave for his father's funeral, then reported back. A year and a half after his classmate's death, he would lead a special group of bombers trained to drop at least two atomic bombs--one on Germany and one on Japan. But he still insisted that everyone call him Butch. Chicago's O'Hare airport is named for Edward "Butch" O'Hare. Hellcats rose to confront the Bettys, but one managed to damage the Independence with a torpedo. Up to this point, the war news had been consistently bad. Age: 29. The passengers hear a whir and feel a clunk as the pilot lowers the landing gear and locks it into position. But Phillips was an aggressive naval aviator, and after a time he decided to strike out for himself. Came back and agreed, after a 1930 luncheon meeting at the Missouri Athletic Club in downtown St. Louis, to turn over to the Internal Revenue Service certain financial records of Al Capone's. The following year, … “Butch, this is Phil. At 19, he married Selma Anna Lauth, and they started their family in an apartment above her father's Soulard grocery store. I fired back into the first plane as it glided down toward the water to crash and burn. Eddie O'Hare was born as Edward J. O'Hare. “Butch” O’Hare was the first Naval Ace of WW II. In early June 1942, Butch arrived in Hawaii to take command of his old squadron amid the fleet's celebration of its victory at Midway, which would put the Japanese on the defensive for the remainder of the war. Rand in pain but staring out of the tunnel window, had a good view of the exchange of fire, but he missed O’Hare’s plane slipping under us, just forward of Skon, and away into the dark. He was good at gunnery. Butch’s father was murdered on the day of Ensign O’Hare’s first training flight. Skon slid away instantly to follow O’Hare, and then returned to join up on us again when he could not find him. We turned away from the burning plane and started into a firing run on another. On February 20 of this year, the CBS program Sunday Morning aired a segment celebrating O'Hare's Medal of Honor flight. Facebook Twitter Email. Below are VADM Cullom’s remarks given during the commemoration at O’Hare’s most notable place of remembrance. On November 10, 1943, his air group was assigned to the USS Enterprise, which joined a task force bound for the Gilbert Islands southwest of Hawaii. The real deal. Achetez neuf ou d'occasion Bringing up the rear were 350 students from Western Military Academy. Butch O’Hare, the war hero after whom Chicago’s O’Hare airport is named, was the son of mob lawyer Eddie O’Hare. “I’m going to get ten of those bastards! Then came the Jefferson Barracks band, marching veterans, a truck packed with photographers, Butch's car and other open cars carrying dignitaries. But for us the evening was by no means over. The plane is marked with five Japanese flags, representing the five enemy bombers he was credited with shooting down . I looked again and he was gone.”. From the beginning, the fighters were far ahead of us, hoping to catch a snooper before dark closed in, and we fell farther and farther behind. As the second wave of bombers approached, Butch and Duff realized that they were the only American fighters positioned to attack. They got me and Butch O'Hare and his wing man and my wing man, but that's about all, because the bomber formation was getting pretty close and the skipper wanted to be able to maneuver. This is where he met his wife who was working as a nurse. In 1939, two years after Butch’s graduation, the O’Hare family made headlines when EJ was gunned down by hitmen suspected of being hired by Chicago gangster Al Capone. At 10:45 a.m. April 21, 1942, Butch and Rita were ushered into Roosevelt's office, where the president promoted Butch to lieutenant commander and awarded him the Medal of Honor. There’s a Jap on your tail. Why Edward Henry “Butch” O’Hare Is the Real Top Gun. On November 8, 1939, EJ was driving his new Lincoln Zephyr home from the dog track when he was killed by a shotgun blast, fired by one of two men in a car that sped past him. "Oh, Mother, don't be ridiculous," Marilyn responded. Japanese snoopers were already in probing the fleet before sunset, and fighters from the Belleau Wood shot down one Betty. Gunners in the Bettys fired back. He shot down five and seriously damaged a sixth. Edward H. "Butch" O'Hare never lived in Chicago. Edward “Butch” O’Hare. The loss of his mentor caused Vraciu to make a promise that he shared with his wingman at the time, Willie Callan. View Source: Share. Butch O'Hare, first and foremost, is known as one of St. Louis's most celebrated World War II heroes. Rand was in the tunnel again, while I remained, somewhat unsure about all this, as the gunner in the turret. Were you shooting too?” And then, there it was: “Did you hit him?” I walked away shouting. Like Butch, he survived the battle. View Source: Share. He was just the opposite, outgoing and exuberant. In Fateful Rendezvous: The Life of Butch O’Hare, Steve Ewing and John B. Lundstrom’s outstanding 1997 biography of O’Hare, the authors wrote, “As … “Where were they? It was at that point that, attracted by our lights, one of the Bettys, as confused and blinded as we were, tried to join up on the American formation. P.O. The Japanese had big airfields several hundred miles to the north in the Marshalls out of which they were flying medium bombers, known as “Bettys.” Loaded with torpedoes, they would fly down and try to find the American fleet, hoping to sink a carrier or two. O'Hare's son was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1942. Wikipedia's entry includes mention of a daughter, Kathleen, who was born in January or February of 1943. The Enterprise would launch these night-fighter teams at dusk, and the fighter-director officer in the carrier's combat-information center would direct them toward Japanese planes as they appeared on radar. There’s more. In January, Butch's squadron was transferred to the USS Lexington. by Legacy Staff November 26, 2013. The obituary was featured in The News & … But the intruder fired first, from its nose down into Butch's Hellcat. "There's a Jap on your tail," Phillips radioed Butch as he ordered Kernan to fire. He contacted the IRS and offered to rat out his boss. His father, “Artful Eddie” O’Hare, was lawyer to Al Capone. He landed at sunset—and heard the news of his father's death. The squadron, meanwhile, was joining an air group that would fly the new, bigger and more powerful F6F Hellcat fighters off newly constructed carriers. They charged their machine guns and attempted to fire test bursts. On the following Saturday, a parade was held in St. Louis. Phillips took us down to drag the surface for another long half-hour before giving up and making our way at about 2100 back to the Enterprise. Four, five, ten, then twelve. The author served as a gunner in an Avenger torpedo bomber, the first Navy plane to carry airborne radar. Chicago’s international airport is named for him.) President Franklin D. Roosevelt realized that the country badly needed a live hero. Lt. Cmdr. Shortly afterward, Skon and the Avenger's crew saw something "grayish-white" appear below, splashing into the sea. In 1945, a year after his death, the Navy named destroyer DD 889 in his honor, and the crew of USS O’Hare carried his legacy forward. Read more >>, The magazine was forced to suspend print publication in 2013, but a group of volunteers saved the archives and relaunched it in digital form in 2017. It wasn’t a mortal wound, unless he bled to death, but it was sure a painful mess. Primitive instruments with a small green screen about five by seven inches, they had a sweeping arm that briefly lit up as it crossed the location of other planes—terribly difficult to read—with a maximum range of about ten miles, and precise only much closer. She said she was Catholic and could only marry a Catholic. The torpedo plane was inevitably flown by Phillips as squadron commander. In August 1943, Butch was promoted to air-group commander, overseeing three squadrons. Eddie O'Hare was born as Edward J. O'Hare. A single bullet had come through the plane just forward of the armor on the floor where his foot had braced while he peered into the radar scope, and it had torn off the side of his shoe and foot. Retrouvez Fateful Rendezvous: The Life of Butch O'Hare et des millions de livres en stock sur Amazon.fr. EJ went straight to the top. The American ships protecting the carriers raised a dense curtain of anti-aircraft fire, and Radford maneuvered the entire task force to deny the Bettys any good torpedo-attack angles. In the opinion of the commanding officer of the Lexington, O’Hare single handedly saved the Lexington from serious damage or even loss at a time when a Pearl Harbor depleted U.S. Navy could ill afford to lose a carrier. Butch O'Hare graduated from the Western Military Academy in 1932. I certainly didn’t feel like talking about it to anyone as abrasive and unpleasant as this man. O'Hare was gunned down on the streets of Chicago & the man who ordered his murder married his fiancé several months later. He began his offensive after the IRS determined that Capone had never filed an income-tax return. Save to Suggest Edits. In July 1941, Butch O’Hare met his wife. As dusk was falling, the public address system told us that a large number of Bettys had been picked up on radar on a bearing that would lead them to the ships. The captain has turned on the seat belt sign. But Butch was dispatched shortly after Pearl Harbor was bombed. Story Two – Butch O’Hare. It all developed so fast that training took over from thinking. Butch said goodbye to Rita and Kathleen in June, and his squadron returned to Maui. Plinking at cans and bottles tossed in the river, Butch became quite a marksman. He burned with ambition. On July 26, the Hoogses threw a fabulous luau on the beach at Maui as a sort of graduation party for the squadron's rookies. Copyright 2020 SLM Media Group. EJ could afford the house because one of his first clients was Owen Patrick Smith, commissioner of the International Greyhound Racing Association. With Butch at WMA and his two younger sisters, Patricia and Marilyn, busy at school, EJ began to expand his business interests from the St. Louis levee to Chicago. © Copyright 1949-2021 American Heritage Publishing Co. All Rights Reserved. In July 1941, Butch took a break from training to ferry aircraft, picking up a F4F-3 fighter from Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn. A prisoner later said a dawn air strike killed the Japanese commander. O'Hare's fighter had, in fact, been hit by only one bullet during his flight, the single bullet hole in F-15's port wing disabling the airspeed indicator. Rogers organized a luncheon at the Missouri Athletic Club with IRS agent Frank Wilson. Getty Images Edward J. O’Hare pictured slumped at the wheel of his car after he was shot to death in 1939. Born in 1893, EJ O'Hare was an Irishman whose name meant, in Gaelic, "sharp, bitter, angry." The Avenger that was to guide them, piloted by Lt. Cdr. Butch, however, was not the first in his family to create headlines. 0. Special Series Simon Says NPR's Scott Simon Shares His Take On … Realizing his fatal mistake, he began firing. How many did you shoot down?”, The tone was hoarsely aggressive, and I felt the night flight was a complicated and deeply personal thing. Did big business there. On November 8, 1939, EJ was driving his new Lincoln Zephyr home from the dog track when he was killed by a shotgun blast, fired by one of two men in a car that sped past him. If it had been done before, it was certainly not standard procedure, and Phillips, despite having thousands of hours as an instrument instructor, had never done it, even in practice. St. Louis, MO 63119 Less than a year later, he would fly a plane of this type into history. Butch and his wing man, Duff Dufilho, were launched from the Lexington, and they watched the aerial battle as they climbed to combat altitude. LT “Butch” O’Hare Navy’s First Flying Ace. He would not have enough fuel to complete the mission and then get back to his ship. Wilson led a group of IRS agents that worked with Eliot Ness' band at the Justice Department. The two .50-caliber guns firing in the wings felt like they were tearing the plane apart. But EJ grew tired of working with thugs. His hours of gunnery practice paid off as the bombers dropped out. Reluctantly he dropped out of formation and headed back to the fleet. Naval Academy. When he thought about the future he was creating for his son, he decided he had to do something to get his son out of the mob business. Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com: accessed ), memorial page for LCDR Edward Henry “Butch” O'Hare (13 Mar 1914–26 Nov 1943), Find a Grave Memorial no. Butch had two sisters, Patricia and Marilyn. I overhead Kernan tell Commander Phillips that he was opening fire and Phil in turn told Butch, ‘Butch, there’s a Jap plane coming into your tail.’”, “Then Butch’s lights went off. Upon landing at sunset, he learned of his father’s murder. By 1943, the war was moving fast—new carriers, new airplane squadrons—and in November our air group, commanded by Lt. Comdr. One headline read, "60,000 give O'Hare a hero's welcome here." St. Louis, Missouri "Nero" "Butch" "Ed" After five years of life in a military school, Ed set his course toward the noblest of callings. How many? A few small airborne radar sets had been issued to the fleet a year before, but they were not yet in general use. It’s a constant reminder of who Butch O’Hare was and the sacrifice he made. The Saratoga left for Pearl Harbor the next day. When lost, you could also find your way back to a ship with one of these, instead of flying into the empty ocean until you ran out of gas. “What happened?” a reporter asked. I thought I saw O’Hare reappear for the briefest glimpse, and then he was gone. In 1936, the US Navy published a requirement for a carrier-basedfighter, While the Navy first selected the Brewster F2A Buffalo, itauthorized Leroy Grumman's Bethpage, Long Island companyto build oneprototype, the XF4F-2, as an alternative. His was the dominant gang in the city, and an entrepreneur new in town, as EJ was, had to choose a gang, just as today he would have to choose a business insurer. Wilson's job was to convict Capone of tax evasion. But for now he just wanted to fly it to St. Louis to visit his mother. Date of death: November 26, 1943. Butch's squadron and the Lexington became part of a task force commanded by Vice Adm. Wilson Brown, who had clear orders: Leave Pearl Harbor, cross the equator into the South Pacific and attack the Japanese. Rita pointed out that she didn't love him, she had just met him and, besides, she was quite a bit younger than he was. Then, at two hundred yards, the pilot confirmed, “I have them in sight. In this time of peril and non-stop bad news, Lt. Edward “Butch” O’Hare, USN, stood out as a beacon of hope for the Navy and the United States when he became the first US Naval Aviator to become an aerial “ace” by shooting down at least 5 enemy planes. Full throttle, he roared into the enemy formation. The Japanese firing was disorganized but not entirely harmless. Our task force was sent to the Gilbert Islands, where the Marines were in a bloody fight at Tarawa. LT O'Hare and his wingman were the only U.S. Navy fighters available in the air when a second wave of Japanese bombers were attacking his aircraft carrier Lexington.. Butch O'Hare was on board the aircraft carrier USS Lexington, which had been assigned the task of penetrating enemy-held waters north of New Ireland. I called Phillips on the intercom. Driving home for lunch with Rita, he heard of the Pearl Harbor attack on the car radio. A few moments later came that stirring command, “Pilots, man your planes,” and the two fighter pilots, Phillips, Rand and I made our way up to the flight deck and into our planes. He blew up all at once. For one brief moment Butch O’Hare’s face was sharply illuminated by his canopy light, goggles up, yellow Mae West life jacket, khaki shirt, and helmet. In their excitement the Japanese gunners were firing into their own planes in the opposite line. In 1939, a week before Capone was released from Alcatraz, O'Hare was shot to death while driving. They could only be seen from low and aft by a plane approaching for a landing, so they didn’t reveal the ship very much for very long to a submarine or the Bettys still flying about. Two parallel rows of six Bettys each. Butch said he didn't want a medal, insisting, "The other officers in the squadron would have done the same thing.". He had shot down five Japanese bombers in less than four minutes. On Nov. 26, 1943 O’Hare took up one of the Hellcats along with the radar-equipped Avenger and a second Hellcat to patrol the dark skies over the Enterprise. Butch was to the gunner's left, Skon to the right. The 1,790 acres of flatland was well suited for a huge airplane factory the government needed for the production of military aircraft, specifically Douglas C-54s, during World War II.The field was near … The Japanese commander at Rabaul had 18 land-based Mitsubishi bombers, nicknamed "Bettys" by the Americans because of their voluptuous shape. 18251, citing Honolulu Memorial, Honolulu, Honolulu County, Hawaii, USA ; Maintained by Find A Grave . The barely secured landing field at Tarawa had been requested to receive us if we could not get back to the carrier. Shortly afterward, the Avenger's rear-facing gunner, Kernan, saw the two Hellcats slide in behind him from above. He contacted the IRS and offered to rat out his boss. His hero story started after he was airborne with the rest of his squadron. It was 1942, and US forces had officially entered World War II following the attack on Pearl Harbor. The records provided by EJ helped prove, in federal court, that Capone's income came from more than secondhand furniture. To the east, Butch and Skon in their Hellcats fired at several fleeting Bettys but hit nothing. Looking to my right, I saw a long black cigar shape climb up from below and aft of Skon and swing into formation above us on our starboard side, behind and slightly above O’Hare. O’Hare was a hero of the early war, having shot down five Japanese planes in one day and probably saving the carrier Lexington at the Battle of the Coral Sea. According to the biography, one of the pilots, Lt. Sy E. Mendenhall, originally wasn't too pleased about being assigned to the Maui backwater, but he had heard about Butch—that he was a hero and "a peach of a guy personally." From the 1937 Lucky Bag: EDWARD HENRY O'HARE. Then, on the night of the twenty-sixth, the new night-fighting scheme was put into action again using two fighters and a torpedo plane. Butch's four machine guns worked fine, but Duff's four jammed. The story of Butch O’Hare does not end with his death. The FDO sent Butch and Skon on a search for low-flying Bettys. He donned his gold naval-aviator wings in May 1940 and went on to train with an air squadron, learning aerial combat, night carrier landings and gunnery. He went off muttering about reporting me to the officers, but I suppose the public relations officer got hold of him and in the end he wrote a number of stories for magazines like The Saturday Evening Post, describing O’Hare going down amid a blaze of enemy gunfire while saving the entire fleet, with bouquets to everyone else involved, including me. It was decided to do something about them, and Adm. Arthur Radford, commanding the task force on the carrier Enterprise, in consultation with Butch O’Hare and our squadron commander, Lt. Butch wrote his sister Marilyn for Thanksgiving 1942, "I've put on 20 pounds ... just living too well I guess.". Support with a donation>>. “Butch” O’Hare was the first Naval Ace of WW II. From Wikipedia: From Naval History and Heritage Command: His wife was listed asnext of kin. After airborne, Butch O’Hare looked at his fuel gauge and realized that someone had forgotten to fill up his tank. Butch and Eddie O’Hare: The War Hero Whose Father Was a Partner With Gangster Al Capone– Truth! At 2 p.m. February 20, 17 Bettys took off to attack Brown's task force in two waves. The Hellcats had modern landing gear; pilots would no longer have to retract the gear as they had in the old Wildcats by hand-cranking a mechanism made of sprockets and bicycle chains. It was Butch's father, Edgar Joseph "EJ" O'Hare—also a St. Louis native—who lived in Chicago for a time.

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