Medal of Honor flight (F-1) and Lt. O'Hare (F-13) during the aerial photography flight of April 11, 1942. O'Hare's most famous flight occurred during the
Pacific War on February 20, 1942. He and his
wingman were the only U.S. Navy fighters available when a second wave of Japanese bombers were attacking his aircraft carrier
Lexington. O'Hare was on board the aircraft carrier
Lexington, which had been assigned the task of penetrating enemy-held waters north of
New Ireland. While still from the harbor at
Rabaul, at 10:15, the
Lexington picked up an unknown aircraft on radar from the ship. A six-plane combat patrol was launched, two fighters being directed to investigate the contact. These two planes, under command of LCDR.
John Thach, shot down a four-engined
Kawanishi H6K4 Type 97 ("Mavis") flying boat about out at 11:12. Later two other planes of the combat patrol were sent to another radar contact ahead, shooting down a second "Mavis" at 12:02. A third contact was made out, but reversed course and disappeared. At 15:42, a jagged vee signal drew the attention of the
Lexingtons radar operator. The contact then was lost but reappeared at 16:25 west. O'Hare, flying F4F Wildcat BuNo 4031 "White F-15", was one of several pilots launched to intercept nine Japanese
Mitsubishi G4M "Betty" bombers from the 4th
Kōkūtai's 2nd Chutai. O'Hare's squadmates shot down eight bombers (with the ninth falling to an SBD later), but he and his wingman,
Marion "Duff" Dufilho, were held back in the event of a second attack. At 16:49, the
Lexingtons radar picked up a second formation of "Bettys" from the 4th Kōkūtai's 1st Chutai, only out, on the disengaged side of the task force. With the majority of VF-3 still chasing the 2nd Chutai, only O'Hare and Dufilho were available to intercept. Flying eastward they arrived above the "Bettys" out at 17:00. Dufilho's guns jammed, leaving only O'Hare to protect the carrier. The enemy was in a V-of-Vs formation, flying very close together and using their rear-facing
20mm cannon for mutual protection. O'Hare's Wildcat was armed with four
50-caliber guns, with 450 rounds per gun, giving him about 10 three-second bursts. O'Hare's initial maneuver was a high-side diving attack from the formation's starboard side employing
deflection shooting. He managed to hit the outside "Betty"s right engine and wing fuel tanks; when the stricken craft of Petty Officer 2nd Class Ryosuke Kogiku (3rd Shotai) abruptly lurched to starboard, he switched to the next plane up the line, that of Petty Officer 1st Class Koji Maeda (3rd Shotai leader). O'Hare then targeted the plane of Petty Officer 1st Class Susumu Uchiyama (1st Shotai), This left the lead plane, commanded by Lieutenant Commander Takuzo Ito, exposed. O'Hare's concentrated fire caused the plane's port engine
nacelle to break free from its mountings and fall from the plane. The resulting explosion was so violent that the 1st Chutai pilots were convinced that an anti-aircraft burst had struck their commander's plane. With a gaping hole in its left wing, Ito's plane fell out of formation. Shortly afterwards, O'Hare made a fourth firing pass, likely against Maeda (who had now caught up), but ran out of ammunition. Frustrated, he pulled away to allow the ships to fire their anti-aircraft guns. The four surviving bombers dropped their ordnance, but all their
250 kg bombs missed. O'Hare believed he had shot down six bombers and damaged a seventh. Captain Sherman would later reduce this to five, as four of the reported nine bombers were still overhead when he pulled off. Thach, hurrying towards the scene with reinforcements after mopping up the 2nd
Chûtai, saw three enemy bombers falling in flames at the same time. In fact, O'Hare destroyed only three "Bettys": Uchiyama's, Mitani's, and Ito's. The last plane, however, was not yet finished. Ito's command pilot, Warrant Officer Chuzo Watanabe, regained enough control to level his damaged plane and attempted to crash it into
Lexington. He missed, and flew into the water near the carrier at 17:12. Another three "Bettys" were damaged by O'Hare's attacks. Of these, Maeda and Kogiku safely landed at Vunakanau airdrome at 19:50, while Mori became lost in a storm and eventually ditched at Simpson Harbor at 20:10. With his ammunition expended, O'Hare returned to his carrier, and was fired on accidentally but with no effect by a .50-caliber machine gun from the
Lexington. 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. According to Thach, O'Hare then approached the gun platform to calmly say to the embarrassed anti-aircraft gunner who had fired at him, "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." In the opinion of Admiral Brown and of Captain
Frederick C. Sherman, commanding the
Lexington, Lieutenant O'Hare's actions may have saved the carrier from serious damage or even loss. By 19:00 all
Lexington planes had been recovered except for two F4F-3 Wildcats shot down while attacking enemy bombers; both were lost while making steady, no-deflection runs from astern of their targets. The pilot of one fighter was rescued, the other went down with his aircraft. The F4F Wildcat O'Hare flew was BuNo. 4031 as discovered in his aviator’s logbook, while its side number was found out to be F-15 based on Captain Burt Stanley's diary. After
Lexington returned to port, 4031 was transferred to VF-2 and flew from
Lexington at Coral Sea. It was one of the six VF-2 Wildcats to survive
Lexington‘s sinking, as it landed on
Yorktown. After Coral Sea, it served in VF-42 and later Marine Air Group 23 before being struck off charge in July 1944.
Accolades on March 26, 1942 On March 26, O'Hare was greeted at Pearl Harbor by a horde of reporters and radio announcers. During a radio broadcast in Honolulu, he enjoyed the opportunity to say hello to his wife Rita ("Here's a great big radio hug, the best I can do under the circumstances") and to his mother ("Love from me to you"). On April 8, he thanked the
Grumman Aircraft Corporation plant at
Bethpage (where the F4F Wildcat was made) for 1,150 cartons of
Lucky Strike cigarettes, a grand total of 230,000 smokes. Ecstatic Grumman workers had passed the hat to buy the cigarettes in appreciation of O'Hare's combat victories in one of their F4F Wildcats. A loyal
Camel smoker, O'Hare opened a carton, deciding that it was the least he could do for the good people back in Bethpage. In his letter to the Grumman employees he wrote, "You build them, we'll fly them and between us, we can't be beaten." It was a sentiment he would voice often in the following two months. O'Hare received further decorations later in 1943 for actions in battles near
Marcus Island in August and subsequent missions near
Wake Island in October.
Non-combat duty version of photo) O'Hare was not employed on combat duty from early 1942 until late 1943. Important events in this period included flying an F4F-3A Wildcat (BuNo 3986 "White F-13") as Lieutenant Commander 'Jimmy' Thach's wingman for publicity footage on April 11, 1942, the Medal of Honor presentation at the White House on April 21, and the welcome parade in O'Hare's hometown on Saturday, April 25, 1942. The welcome parade was held in St. Louis. At the starting point, O'Hare, wearing the blue-ribboned Medal of Honor around his neck, was guided to the back seat of a black open
Packard Phaeton, where he sat between his wife Rita and his mother Selma. The parade began at noon, led by a police motorcycle escort, then came the band from Jefferson Barracks, marching veterans, a truck packed with photographers, O'Hare's Phaeton (with a six-man Marine honor guard alongside) and other open cars. Bringing up the rear was the entire 350-member student body of Western Military Academy. St. Louis Mayor
William Dee Becker presented O'Hare with a gold navigator's four-dial watch engraved with the words "To Lt. Commander Edward H. O'Hare, USN, from a proud and grateful City of St. Louis, April 25, 1942". As O'Hare's mother and his sisters clipped newspaper stories and photos the following days, his place in history began to dawn on them. A newspaper headline read, "60,000 give O'Hare a hero's welcome here." The United States in 1942 badly needed a live hero, and Butch O'Hare was a young, handsome naval aviator, so he participated in several
war bond tours the following months. On June 19, 1942, O'Hare assumed command of VF-3, relieving Lieutenant Commander Thach. He was relocated to
Maui, Hawaii, to instruct other pilots in combat tactics. U.S. Navy policy was to use its best combat pilots to train newer pilots, in contrast to the Japanese practice of keeping their best pilots flying combat missions. Ensign
Edward L. "Whitey" Feightner, who served with O'Hare in July 1942, later said that one of the best pieces of information O'Hare passed on to him, was: O'Hare also related An
anecdote about O'Hare, serving as an instructor on Hawaii mid-1942: " insignia (1942) On March 2, 1943, O'Hare met Rita in
San Diego, California and hugged his one-month-old daughter, Kathleen, for the first time. His family resided in
Coronado at 549 Orange Avenue, near
North Island NAS. At the end of March 1943, O'Hare made Ensign
Alexander Vraciu, a young Naval Reservist just out of flight school, his wingman. On July 15, VF-3 swapped designations with VF-6 squadron.
Return to combat Equipped with the highly successful follow-on to the Wildcat, the new
Grumman F6F-3 Hellcat, two-thirds of VF-6 (twenty-four F6F-3s) under O'Hare's command embarked on August 22, 1943, on the light carrier . The arrival of the F6Fs with their powerful
Pratt & Whitney R-2800 radial engines in late 1943, combined with the deployment of the new carriers and the carriers, immediately gave the U.S. Pacific Fleet air supremacy wherever the Fast Carrier Force operated. The Hellcat's first combat mission occurred on August 31, 1943, in a strike against
Marcus Island. The F6F did well against Japanese fighters and proved that with the right tactics and teamwork the Japanese Zero need not be considered a superior enemy. VF-6's combat debut on the
Independence also went reasonably well. For his actions in battles near Marcus Island on August 31, O'Hare was awarded the
Distinguished Flying Cross. For his actions in subsequent missions near Wake Island on October 5, O'Hare was awarded a Gold Star in lieu of a second Distinguished Flying Cross. On October 10, 1943, O'Hare flew with VF-6 again in the airstrikes against Wake Island. On this mission, the future ace Lt.(jg) Alex Vraciu was his wingman – both Butch and Vraciu shot down one enemy plane that day. When they came across an enemy formation Butch took the outside aeroplane and Vraciu took the inside plane. Butch went below the clouds to get a Japanese
Mitsubishi Zero and Vraciu lost him, so Vraciu kept an eye on a second Zero that went to Wake Island and landed. Vraciu
strafed the Zero on the ground, then saw a "Betty" bomber and shot it down. Upon returning to the carrier, O'Hare asked Vraciu where he went and Vraciu knew then that he should have definitely stayed with his leader. Alex Vraciu later said after the war, "O'Hare taught many of the squadron members little things that would later save their lives. One example was to swivel your neck before starting a strafing run to make sure enemy fighters were not on your tail." Vraciu also learned from O'Hare the "high side pass" used for attacking the G4M "Betty" bombers. The high side technique was used to avoid the lethal 20 mm fire of the "Betty"s tail gunner. The Wake Island raid would be the last occasion Butch would lead VF-6 in battle. According to orders dated September 17, 1943, October found O'Hare as
Commander Air Group (CAG) commanding Air Group Six, embarked on USS
Enterprise. Functioning as CAG, O'Hare was given command of the entire
Enterprise air group: Grumman F6F Hellcat fighters,
Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bombers,
Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bombers and 100 pilots. Now overseeing three squadrons, O'Hare still insisted that everyone call him "Butch". O'Hare's VF-6 squadron would "still stay broken up" among three
light aircraft carriers, the squadron had made itself just too useful filling out the light carrier air groups, and AirPac had no well-trained replacements on hand. As a result, Fighting Squadron Two (VF-2) boarded the USS
Enterprise from November 1943 and became Butch's new Fighting Squadron. While he readied his new air group, he suffered what he intended as only a temporary separation from his beloved VF-6 "Felix the Cat" Squadron. The news, that the commanding officer had to leave them, hit the men of VF-6 hard. O'Hare first flew a TBM-1 Avenger as CAG-6 command aircraft with bombardier Del Delchamps, AOM1/c and radioman Hal Coleman as crew members. With its good radio facilities, docile handling, and long-range, the Grumman Avenger made an ideal command aircraft for Air Group Commanders (CAGs), but Butch considered the Grumman torpedo bomber as a 'lame turkey' compared to the Grumman F6F Hellcat fighter. Later
Rear Admiral Arthur W. Radford honored a request from O'Hare to take a fighter as command aircraft instead of the Avenger, so O'Hare in a fateful decision happily drew Grumman F6F-3 Hellcat Bureau Number 66168 from the fleet pool to become his principal CAG plane, numbered "00". From 20 – November 23, 1943, the U.S. forces landed in the
Gilberts (
Tarawa and
Makin), and the
Enterprise joined in providing close air support to the Marines landing on Makin Island. Equipped with the Grumman F6F Hellcat, the U.S. Navy fighter pilots could protect the fleet from attacking Japanese aircraft.
Final mission and death Faced with U.S. daylight
air superiority, the Japanese quickly developed tactics to send torpedo-armed "Betty" bombers on night missions from their bases in the
Marianas against the U.S. aircraft carriers. In late November they launched these low-altitude strikes almost nightly to attack
Enterprise and other American ships, so Rear Admiral Arthur W. Radford, O'Hare and
Commander Tom Hamilton, CV-6 air officer, were deeply involved in developing ad hoc counter-tactics, the first carrier-based night fighter operations of the U.S. Navy. O'Hare's plan required the carrier's Fighter Director Officer (FDO) to spot incoming enemy formations at a distance and send a "Bat Team" section consisting of a Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bomber and two Grumman F6F Hellcat fighters toward the Japanese intruders. Although improvements in new types of aviation
radar were soon forthcoming from the engineers at MIT and the electronic industry, the available primitive radars in 1943 were very bulky, attributed to the fact that they contained
vacuum tube technology. Radars were carried only on the roomy TBF Avengers, but not on the smaller and faster Hellcats, so the radar-equipped TBF Avenger would lead the Hellcats into position behind the incoming bombers, close enough for the F6F pilots to spot visually the blue exhaust flames of the Japanese bombers. Finally, the Hellcats would close in and shoot down the torpedo-carrying bombers. One of the four "Bat Team" fighter pilots to conduct these experimental night fighter operations to intercept and destroy enemy bombers attacking Allied landing forces was then-LT
Roy Marlin Voris, who after the war founded and commanded the Navy's flight demonstration squadron, the
Blue Angels. On the night of November 26, 1943, the
Enterprise introduced the experiment in the co-operative control of Avengers and Hellcats for night fighting, when the three-plane team from the ship broke up a large group of land-based bombers attacking Task Group TG 50.2. O'Hare volunteered to lead this mission to conduct the first-ever Navy nighttime fighter attack from an aircraft carrier to intercept a large force of enemy torpedo bombers. When the call came to man the fighters, Butch O'Hare was eating. He grabbed up part of his supper in his fist and started running for the ready room. He was dressed in loose marine coveralls. The night fighter unit consisting of 1 VT and 2 VF was catapulted between 17:58 and 18:01. The pilots for this flight were Butch O'Hare and Ensign Warren Andrew "Andy" Skon of VF-2 in F6Fs and the Squadron Commander of VT-6, LCDR John L. Phillips in a TBF-1C. The crew of the TBF torpedo plane consisted of LTJG Hazen B. Rand, a radar specialist and Alvin Kernan, A. B., AOM1/c. The "Black Panthers", as the night fighters were dubbed, took off before dusk and flew out into the incoming mass of Japanese planes. Confusion and complications endangered the success of the mission. The Hellcats first had trouble finding the Avenger, the FDO had difficulty guiding any of them on the targets. O'Hare and Ensign W. Skon in their F6F Hellcats finally got into position behind the Avenger. Butch O'Hare had been well aware of the deadly danger of
friendly fire in this situation – he radioed to the Avenger pilot of his section, "Hey, Phil, turn those running lights on. I want to be sure it's a yellow devil I'm drilling." O'Hare was last seen at the 5 o'clock position of the TBF. About that time, the turret gunner of the TBF, Alvin Kernan (AOM1/c) noticed a Japanese G4M "Betty" bomber above and almost directly behind O'Hare's 6 o'clock position. Kernan opened fire with the TBF's .50 cal. machine gun in the dorsal turret and a Japanese gunner fired back. O'Hare's F6F Hellcat apparently was caught in a crossfire. Seconds later O'Hare's F6F slid out of formation to port, pushing slightly ahead at about and then vanished in the dark. The Avenger pilot, Lieutenant Commander Phillips, called repeatedly to O'Hare, but received no reply. Ensign Skon responded: "Mr Phillips, this is Skon. I saw Mr O'Hare's lights go out and, at the same instant, he seemed to veer off and slant down into darkness." Phillips later asserted, as the Hellcat dropped out of view, it seemed to release something that fell almost vertically at a speed too slow for anything but a parachute. Then something "whitish-gray" appeared below, perhaps the splash of the aircraft plunging into the sea. Lieutenant Commander Phillips reported the position () to the ship. After dawn, a three-plane search was made, but no trace of O'Hare or his aircraft were found. On November 29, a
PBY Catalina flying boat also conducted a search with no positive result, and O'Hare was reported missing in action. In 1997, ''Fateful Rendezvous: The Life of Butch O'Hare'', by Steve Ewing and John B. Lundstrom, the authors claim that Japanese guns, and not Kernan's, killed O'Hare, stating that "Butch fell to his old familiar adversary, a Betty. Most likely he died from or was immediately disabled by, a lucky shot from the forward observer crouched in the ''rikko's'' [Betty's] forward glassed-in nose ... the nose gunner's 7.7 mm slugs very likely penetrated Butch's cockpit from above on the port side and ahead of the F6F's armor plate." Ewing and Lundstrom state that Kernan is "wrongly accused of shooting down Butch." Ewing and Lundstrom point out that the "most influential and oft-cited" account of O'Hare's last mission came in a 1962 history of the
Enterprise by CDR Edward P. Stafford, which relied on action reports and recollections of former
Enterprise crew, but did not contain interviews with any of the living participants. By contrast, Ewing and Lundstrom interviewed the still-living survivors of O'Hare's last mission: F6F pilot Skon, TBF radar officer Rand, and TBF gunner Kernan. Ewing and Lundstrom write, "Through Stafford and other accounts based largely on the action reports, Butch has wrongly become known as one of America's most famous 'friendly fire' casualties." On December 9, the official word arrived that O'Hare was missing in action. His mother Selma left for San Diego to be with his wife Rita and his daughter Kathleen. LCDR Bob Jackson wrote to Rita O'Hare from the
Enterprise to describe the extensive but unsuccessful search for her husband. In the letter, LCDR Jackson quoted RADM Arthur W. Radford saying of Butch O'Hare that he "never saw one individual so universally liked." The hardest thing O'Hare's former wingman Alex Vraciu had to do was to talk to O'Hare's wife Rita after returning stateside. On December 20, 1943, a
Solemn Pontifical Mass of
Requiem was offered for Butch O'Hare at the
St. Louis Cathedral. As O'Hare went missing on November 26, 1943, and was declared dead a year later, his widow Rita received her husband's
posthumous decorations, a
Purple Heart and the
Navy Cross on November 26, 1944. ==Honors and awards==