American Valor Quarterly Issue 11 - Fall 2014 | Page 21

is a very clean war. You
don’t see some guy’s head
getting shot off standing
next to you or a bullet
going through his heart
because you are alone,
though I had a gunner
with me in my SBD dive
bomber. That was the
plane that stopped four
aircraft carriers at Midway
in June, 1942 and changed
the war in the Pacific.
It was a great plane for
accuracy, although it
wasn’t fast.

JERRY WITH HIS TEAMMATE
AND BASEBALL’S BIGGEST
STAR, JOE DIMAGGIO, IN
HIS LAST GAME WITH THE
YANKEES BEFORE BEING
CALLED BACK TO ACTIVE DUTY
WITH THE MARINES IN 1952.

That probably was the highlight of
my life. It was the proudest I ever was
when I became a second lieutenant in
the Marine Corps, wearing my navy
wings of gold.
I became a second lieutenant. While
I was in flight school, Joe Foss was a
first rate naval aviator ace and he was
a Marine. He came during preflight
and talked to us for about an hour. I
thought I wanted to be Joe Foss, Jr.
And when I got to Corpus Christi, Tex.,
I met the first man to land a Douglas
SBD Dauntless [dive bomber] on
Guadalcanal. Col. Lloyd Mangran was
in charge of the Marine recruits, and
he yelled at me, “Why do you want to
be a Marine?!” Well, I don’t know what
I said, but he finally signed off, and
I became a Marine second lieutenant
instead of a naval ensign.
When it comes to aviation, flying
FALL 2014

It was a different plane
in Korea, but basically,
in WWII the SBD dive
bomber was the first
squadron to be used
directly for closer air
support over the front lines. You had
to be pretty good with that bomb
otherwise you would take your own
people out, and we generally were
good with it. You could dive well.
The Corsair, a fighter plane in WWII,
became a bomber in Korea. It carried
3500 lbs of bomb. The B17s could
only carry 4600 lbs of bomb on long
missio