George H.W. Bush will be remembered as the last veteran of World War II to serve in the Oval Office. Sworn into the Navy on his 18th birthday on June 12, 1942, he would become their youngest pilot 10 months later. Bush died late Friday evening. He was 94.
To say that Bush cheated death in the Pacific Theater and from the cockpit is not a cliche. It is a fact backed up by official military statistics. Bush and his single-engine torpedo bomber — a Grumman TBF Avenger with the name of his sweetheart, Barbara, stenciled onto the fuselage — were forced from the sky twice.
He made a water landing in the Pacific Ocean on June 19, 1944 after dropping payloads on the Japanese occupied islands of Marcus and Wake Islands. A passing destroyer, the USS Clarence K Bronson, plucked him from the water and certain death. Six days later, Bush and his crew would bomb and strafe and sink a small Japanese cargo ship.
But he wasn’t always so lucky. Along with three other bombers on Sept. 2, 1944, Bush attacked a Japanese radio station on the island of Chichijima. He was hit, anti-aircraft shells ripping through his plane and setting his engine ablaze. Flying through the fire, Bush dropped his payload on the radio tower, forced open the plane’s canopy, and prepared to ditch.
“The wind struck him full force, essentially lifting him out the rest of the way and propelling him backward into the tail,” writes presidential historian Jon Meacham. “He gashed his head and bruised his eye on the tail as he flew through the sky and the burning plane hurtled toward the sea.”
For the second time in three months, Bush found himself in the waves of the Pacific Ocean. A little life raft would keep the future president afloat. Choking on the smoke in his lungs, the saltwater, and his own blood, Bush waited down in the water for four hours as U.S. fighters buzzed protectively overhead.
This time, Bush was rescued by a submarine, the U.S.S. Finback. “I saw this thing coming out of the water,” he would quip years later, “and I said to myself, ‘Jeez, I hope it’s one of ours.’”
The crews of the other bombers did not survive, and neither did his crewmembers. The parachute of the radio operator didn’t open. The bombardier was lost at sea.
“Why had I been spared, and what did God have in store for me? In my own view, there’s got to be some kind of destiny, and I was being spared for something on Earth,” Bush told historian James Bradley. “I think about those guys all the time.”
Assessing supernatural motivation is impossible. But we can certainly judge the results: Had Bush taken too steep an angle of descent during that water landing, had flak exploded in his cockpit instead of the engine compartment, or had his parachute failed to deploy, he would never have been president.
Bush helped usher in the Reagan Revolution, oversaw the fall of the USSR, and became the patriarch of one of the greatest political dynasties in American history. He lived a long life and died a hero.
