World War II Navy Ace Recalls Harrowing Mission

WASHINGTON, Dec. 13, 2010 — When the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Har­bor occurred, Amer­i­ca sought ret­ri­bu­tion and final­ly took up arms. It was­n’t until almost three years lat­er that the coun­try would receive its final clo­sure.
In Octo­ber 1944, Navy Cross recip­i­ent and fight­er ace William E. “Bill” Davis par­tic­i­pat­ed in a bomb­ing run on the Japan­ese air­craft car­ri­er Zuikaku, the last remain­ing air­craft car­ri­er afloat that had tak­en part in the sur­prise attack on Pearl Har­bor. Davis recalled the har­row­ing expe­ri­ence dur­ing a Dec. 8 “DOD Live” blog­gers round­table.

“There were two clouds form­ing, one at 10,000 feet and one at about 4,000 feet, of con­tin­u­ous­ly explod­ing shells, and I knew there was no chance to fly through that and come out the oth­er end,” he said. “But I still did­n’t care. I was going to get my hit. I went down, went through both clouds with­out tak­ing a sin­gle hit, which is hard to imag­ine, and went fair­ly low. … I pulled the release and pulled out, and of course, blacked out.” 

Moments lat­er, Davis said, he came to. “Blood came back to my brain, or what was left of it, and I could see again, and I was actu­al­ly clip­ping the spray from the waves,” he recalled. “Anoth­er five feet would have done it. But I had not been hit.” 

Despite that mirac­u­lous escape, the pilot was not out of harm’s way yet. 

“I was kind of mar­veling that I was still alive,” he said. “But I looked up and saw that I was fly­ing into the side of a Japan­ese ship, the Oyo­do. Before I hit the ship, I rolled the plane on its side, and went through between the No. 2 gun tur­ret and the bridge. And I could see the Japan­ese crew in on the bridge man­ning the wheel, … all in dress whites. I have a feel­ing that that was because they expect­ed to die that day.” 

Hav­ing sur­vived the run unscathed and earn­ing the Navy Cross, Davis set­tled down with his fam­i­ly in Cal­i­for­nia. Dri­ves to the Sier­ra Moun­tains for annu­al ski trips inspired him to tell his sto­ry in book form. 

“At that time, it was before FM radio and so forth,” he said. “You could­n’t get any­thing the oth­er side of the Sier­ra. So we were dri­ving up and one of my daugh­ters said, ‘Dad­dy, tell us war sto­ries.’ And I had­n’t thought of telling them, … and it became a rou­tine. When we went ski­ing, I told sto­ries going up and back. And final­ly, I had to tell more and more.” 

While look­ing back at all his expe­ri­ences may have been a bit chal­leng­ing, Davis said, he had a lit­tle help from diaries he kept dur­ing the war. “I did­n’t know we weren’t allowed to keep diaries,” he said. “Some­how that direc­tive missed me. So I had some­thing to work from and a map of all of our move­ments through­out the Pacific.” 

The result­ing book, “Sink­ing the Ris­ing Sun,” doc­u­ments Davis’ ser­vice in the Navy, his expe­ri­ences in World War II, and even his first time in an air­plane. “At the time I vol­un­teered for the Naval Air Corps, I’d nev­er been in an air­plane,” he admitted. 

The book has received favor­able reviews, and the 89-year-old for­mer pilot is con­sid­er­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to pro­mote his memoir. 

“I haven’t made it to a big­time, on-cam­era inter­view with any of the talk shows, which I would love to do,” he said. 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

Face­book and/or on Twit­ter

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →