To that point in his life, George Bush had not faced many tough decisions. He had never defied his father. But Dad had made up his mind, and he did not waver. After his high school commencement, he looked his father in the eye and said, “I’m going in.” My grandfather shook his hand. He respected the decision, and from that point on he gave his complete support.
George H.W. Bush enlisted on June 12, 1942, his eighteenth birthday. Two months later, his father accompanied him to Penn Station in New York, where he would board a train to North Carolina to commence his training. As my father stood on the platform, the stern and imposing Prescott Bush wrapped his son in a hug. For the first time in his life, Dad saw his father cry.
WAR
EVERY PILOT REMEMBERS his first flight. For me, it was in a Cessna 172 at Moody Air Force Base in Valdosta, Georgia, in 1968. For my father, it was in an open-cockpit Stearman N2S-3 at Wold-Chamberlain Naval Air Base in Minneapolis in 1942. The cadets called the plane the “Yellow Peril,” because it was painted yellow and could prove perilous to fly. Its other nickname was the “Washing Machine,” a reference to the number of cadets who washed out of pilot training.
My dad described his first solo flight as “one of the biggest thrills” of his life. I know exactly what he meant. It’s an exhilarating feeling to sit in the cockpit, accelerate down the runway, and lift off into the air. The plane doesn’t care where you came from, where you went to school, or who your parents are. All that matters is whether you have the skill to fly—“the right stuff,” as Tom Wolfe called it. Ensign George Bush flew almost every day through the bitter Minnesota winter. He grew comfortable in the air and excelled at landing on snow and ice—a valuable skill, but not one that would prove useful in the South Pacific.
Pilots say that learning to fly makes you feel taller. In my father’s case that was certainly true. By the time his commanding officer pinned on his gold flight wings at Corpus Christi Naval Air Station in June 1943, he had grown two inches since his enlistment, topping out at six feet, two inches. He was not quite nineteen years old, making him the youngest pilot in the United States Navy.
After flight school, Dad had a brief period of leave before moving on to his next assignment. He spent it with his family in Maine, and his mother generously invited a special guest: Barbara Pierce, who was on summer break from Smith College. For two weeks in Maine, my parents were together constantly. By the end of the trip, they had decided to secretly get engaged.
The secret didn’t last long. In December 1943, shortly before a commissioning ceremony for the aircraft carrier USS San Jacinto, which would carry my father into battle, my parents decided to inform their families of their plans to marry. To their amazement, everybody knew the secret. Their love for each other was obvious. As my father wrote to my mother, “I love you, precious, with all my heart and to know that you love me means my life. How often I have thought about the immeasurable joy that will be ours some day. How lucky our children will be to have a mother like you.” (That is one of their only remaining wartime letters; the rest were lost during one of my parents’ many moves.) After the carrier commissioning ceremony, my grandmother slipped my father an engagement ring—a star sapphire that came from her sister, Nancy. Later that day, he presented it to Barbara. She still wears it today (although apparently she still has her suspicions that it might actually be blue glass).
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IN JANUARY 1944, after completing the intensive year and a half of training, Ensign Bush reported for duty aboard the USS San Jacinto. The San Jac was named for the battle in which General Sam Houston defeated the Mexican caudillo Santa Anna. In a glimpse of Dad’s life to come, the carrier flew both the Stars and Stripes and the Lone Star flag.
The young Navy pilot joined a group of fliers that would form squadron VT-51. Jack Guy came from rural Georgia and had left his job as a bank teller to join the Navy. Lou Grab grew up in Sacramento, California, where his father owned a gas station. Stan Butchart was a native of Spokane, Washington, who had always wanted to be a pilot. The squadron mates had little in common. At Andover, George Bush had learned that he could relate to fellow students from different parts of the country. In the military, he learned that he could relate to people from different walks of life.
My father had a knack for making people laugh. He came up with nicknames for everyone. (Sound familiar?) Stan Butchart was “Butch.” Jack Guy was “Jackoguy,” based on his middle initial. My father acquired a distinctive moniker of his own. During a training run near the Maryland coast, he was flying low over the beach when he saw a circus setting up below. Apparently the animals didn’t have much experience with naval aviation, because the roar of the plane sent one of the elephants into a stampede through town. From that point on, Dad’s buddies dubbed him “Ellie the Elephant.” He responded with an elephant-screech imitation that he honed throughout the war. I never heard him unleash the elephant call, although it might have come in handy when he was Chairman of the Republican National Committee.
The plane that alarmed the circus elephant was the TBF/TBM Avenger, a torpedo bomber. The Avenger was the Navy’s largest single-engine, carrier-based plane. It held one pilot, two crewmen, and four five-hundred-pound bombs. To accommodate the ton of ordnance, the plane had a bulging belly, earning it the affectionate nickname “Pregnant Turkey.”
The Avenger was a heavy aircraft that was challenging to fly. The toughest task was landing on the narrow, bobbing deck of an aircraft carrier. A proper landing demanded concentration, precision, and teamwork. A pilot had to approach at the correct angle, follow the flag signals of a landing officer, and then catch one of the carrier’s tail hooks to avoid skidding off the deck. When I was President, I was a passenger for a landing in an S-3B Viking jet aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. I had grown up with great respect for carrier pilots, but after that landing my respect doubled.
By the spring of 1944, the San Jac was bound for the Pacific. My father was in the cockpit of his Avenger for the first catapult shot off the new carrier. As he wrote to his mother, he was “mighty glad the machine worked.” By April 20, 1944, the carrier had traveled from Norfolk, Virginia, through the Panama Canal, and out to Pearl Harbor in the middle of the Pacific. The crew saw the charred remains of the USS Utah and Arizona, a fresh reminder of the reason they were at war—and of the enemy they were about to confront.
The months after Pearl Harbor had been grim, as the Japanese war machine expanded its reach throughout the Pacific. By the spring of 1942, only Australia and New Zealand remained as allied bulwarks. The tide began to turn in May of that year, when American and Australian naval forces stopped the Japanese advance at the Battle of Coral Sea. A month later, the United States won its first major victory at Midway. The Navy then began an island-hopping campaign to liberate Japanese-occupied territories one by one, with the ultimate objective of attacking Japan.
The San Jac’s first assignment was to strike Japanese installations on Wake Island. The mission was successful, but the reality of combat quickly hit home. On a patrol flight, Dad’s roommate and closest friend on the carrier, Jim Wykes, dropped off the radar screen. Search parties could not locate him. He and his two crewmen were listed as missing. Soon it was clear they were not coming back. My father ached for his friend. He understood that death was part of war, but this loss was personal.