TheList 5352

The List 5352     TGB

Good Friday Morning June 5, 2020

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Today in Naval History

June 5

1794 The first officers of the U.S. Navy under the new United States Constitution are appointed: John Barry, Samuel Nicholson, Silas Talbot, Joshua Barney, Richard Dale, and Thomas Truxtun. They are also asked to supervise the construction of new ships.

1917 USS Jupiter (AC 3), which transports the First Naval Aeronautical Detachment, arrives at Pauillac, France prior to World War I. The men are commanded by Lt. Kenneth Whiting. Offloading is completed by June 10. USS Jupiter (AC 1) is later converted into the Navys first aircraft carrier USS Langley (CV 1).

1944 USS Puffer (SS 268) attacks a Japanese convoy in the Sulu Sea and sinks underway replenishment vessel Ashizuri and oiler Takasaki while also damaging tanker No.2 Hishi Maru, north-east of Borneo. Also on this date, USS Shark (SS 314) sinks Japanese transport Tamahime Maru and army transport Takaoka Maru west of the Mariana Islands.

1945 A typhoon hits while Task Group 38.1 and Task Group 30.8 are off the coast of Okinawa. Task Group 38.1 passes through the eye of the storm at 7 a.m. that morning. Hurricane force winds of 70 knots (80.5 miles per hour), with gusts up to 100 knots (115 per hour) damage almost every ship in the task groups.

2013 USNS Millinocket (JHSV 3) is launched in Mobile, Ala. The Joint High Speed Vessel is a non-combatant transport operated by Military Sealift Command.

 

Thanks to CHINFO

Executive Summary:

•             Today's national headlines include coverage of the President's participation in the 75th anniversary of D-Day in London and the Trump administration approved two nuclear deals to Saudi Arabia after Khashoggi killing.

•             During a ceremony commemorating the 77th anniversary of the Battle of Midway aboard USS Chung-Hoon, the 50-star Union Jack was hoisted for the first time since 2002 reports Stars and Stripes.  "Your role in the United States Navy is vital. The job you are doing right now will contribute to the overall success or failure in the challenges facing our generation. That's the reminder of the Union Jack and the lesson that the Battle of Midway teaches us," said Capt. Joseph Naman.

•             A Russian Su-35 fighter made an "irresponsible" intercept of a Navy P-8A over the Mediterranean Sea reports USNI News. The intercept was "determined to be unsafe due to the SU-35 conducting a high speed pass directly in front of the mission aircraft, which put our pilots and crew at risk," said a statement by the 6th Fleet.

•             Jane's Navy International reports that the Ship Self Defense System Integrated Combat System for USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) completed its final developmental test.

 

 

Today in History June 5

1099		Members of the First Crusade witness an eclipse of the moon and interpret it as a sign they will recapture Jerusalem.
1568		Ferdinand, the Duke of Alba, crushes the Calvinist insurrection in Ghent.
1595		Henry IV's army defeats the Spanish at the Battle of Fontaine-Francaise.
1637		American settlers in New England massacre a Pequot Indian village.
1783		Joseph and Jacques Montgolfier make the first public balloon flight.
1794		The U.S. Congress prohibits citizens from serving in any foreign armed forces.
1827		Athens falls to Ottoman forces.
1851		Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes the first installment of Uncle Tom's Cabin in The National Era.
1856		U.S. Army troops in the Four creeks region of California, head back to quarters, officially ending the Tule River War. Fighting, however, will continue for a few more years.
1863		The Confederate raider CSS Alabama captures the Talisman in the Mid-Atlantic.
1872		The Republican National Convention, the first major political party convention to include blacks, commences.
1880		Wild woman of the west Myra Maybelle Shirley marries Sam Starr even though records show she was already married to Bruce Younger.
1900		British troops under Lord Roberts seize Pretoria from the Boers.
1940		The German army begins its offensive in Southern France.
1944		The first B-29 bombing raid strikes the Japanese rail line in Bangkok, Thailand.
1947		Secretary of State George C. Marshall outlines "The Marshall Plan," a program intended to assist European nations, including former enemies, to rebuild their economies.
1956		Premier Nikita Khrushchev denounces Josef Stalin to the Soviet Communist Party Congress.
1967		The Six-Day War between Israel and Egypt, Syria and Jordan begins.
1968		Sirhan Sirhan shoots Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy after Kennedy's victory in the pivotal California primary election.
1973		Doris A. Davis becomes the first African-American woman to govern a city in a major metropolitan area when she is elected mayor of Compton, California.
2004		Former U.S. President Ronald Reagan dies at age 93. Reagan was the 40th president of the United States.

 

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https://spectator.org/luck-and-guts-the-heroes-of-midway/

 

Luck and Guts: The Heroes of Midway 

If not for men like Wade McClusky, the Battle of Midway could have been another Japanese victory. 

by GEOFFREY NORMAN

June 4, 2019, 12:18 AM 

Wade McClusky (Wikimedia Commons)

 

 

The Battle of Midway began 77 years ago, today. This anniversary (if that, indeed, is the right word) will be noted but not so lavishly as the one in two days time, in remembrance of D-Day. These were both great and decisive American victories and should be remembered and honored as long as there is a United States of America. Not so much, however, because they saved the nation. The U.S. would almost certainly have survived defeat at Midway and a repulse in Normandy. The "what-if" scenarios around either case — or both, for that matter — make for interesting speculation. But while the world may have looked a lot different if the Japanese had won at Midway and the Germans had pushed Eisenhower's troops back into the sea in France, there were still two broad oceans protecting the American homeland where the nation could employ its enormous industrial capacity to rearm and reorganize before getting back into the fight.

And, then, there was the bomb. A repulse in France might have meant, more than anything else, that Berlin would have been the first city leveled by a nuclear device.

Still, the victories at Midway and in Normandy were decisive and heroic. Also exceedingly "American" in character. It is impossible to read about them, these generations later, without recognizing that and feeling proud. If, that is, you are a patriot which, sadly, is not true of everyone living in the United States these days.

Still …

Consider Midway, first, and leave D-Day for later, by two days on the calendar:

The U.S. Navy had apparently been decisively crushed by the Japanese surprise attack at Pearl Harbor. Almost every battleship in the fleet had been sunk or catastrophically damaged.

But this defeat had also illuminated a truth and a path to victory. The U.S. battleships had been sunk by bombs and torpedoes dropped from airplanes flown off aircraft carriers. These were now the capital ships of navies. Battleships would, from now on, serve as escorts for the carriers. If at all.

Six months after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. had only three carriers available to counter a Japanese attack on Midway. It might have been just two except for the American way with tools and capacity to improvise. The carrier Yorktown had been badly damaged in the battle of the Coral Sea and was expected to require several months in dry dock before it would be ready to conduct flight operations again.

Admiral Chester Nimitz, who was in command of what was left of the U.S. Navy in the Pacific, told the people in his repair yards, "I want that ship ready to go to sea in 48 hours." American welders and machinists swarmed over the broken Yorktown, like a pit crew at Daytona. They worked around the clock, sometimes pulling so much electrical power that the lights in Honolulu flickered and went dim. And they got it done.

The Yorktown left Pearl Harbor in time — just barely — to join the battle. Its last.

The two other carriers — Hornet and Enterprise — were already on station, waiting to ambush four Japanese carriers. The Americans knew they were coming, having broken the Japanese codes enough that they could read some radio traffic.

It was a distinct advantage but one that might not have been sufficient to overcome the Japanese superiority in numbers, experience, and, above all, equipment. Their planes were better than those flown by the U.S. Navy.

The American torpedo planes were relics. They were slow, not especially maneuverable, and they could not take much punishment. Other than that …

Still, they launched and they attacked. One squadron of fifteen planes from each of the carriers. Torpedo squadron eight, off the Hornet, found the Japanese fleet when the squadron commander, John Waldren, trusted his instincts over the information he'd been given in briefings on the location of the Japanese fleet. It was borderline insubordination — in a very American sort of way — and Waldren might have been court martialed for it.

If he had survived.

He received, instead, a posthumous Navy Cross for leading his squadron to the Japanese fleet and pressing the attack. The squadron scored no hits and all of its fifteen planes were shot down. One pilot survived. None of the gunners.

Neither of the other torpedo squadrons scored a hit. Of the 45 of the torpedo planes launched from the three American carriers, four survived the battle.

And yet … they had attacked from very low altitude in order to launch their torpedos. The covering Japanese Zeros — which might have been the finest fighter planes in the world at the time — had come down low to engage and slaughter the American torpedo planes.

Leaving the upper sky unguarded and the Japanese carriers vulnerable to American dive bombers.

But it was an opportunity that might have been lost. The dive bomber squadron from the Hornet never found the Japanese fleet. And the squadrons from the Enterprise might not have except for the initiative and decision making of another junior officer.

Lieutenant Commander Wade McClusky had been searching for the Japanese fleet in the area where, according to his briefing, it should have been. But when he looked down from some 20,000 feet, the only thing he saw was empty ocean. He conducted a search, according to doctrine, and succeed only in burning more fuel. To the point where it would soon be either a) head back to the Enterprise or b) ditch.

Meanwhile, the Japanese could launch their own attack, against the three American carriers which might even have been recovering planes at the time and woefully vulnerable. The battle of Midway would, then, have been another Japanese victory. The U.S. would likely have been forced to abandon Hawaii.

It would be months, even years, before it could be retaken. More months and years before the ring of islands defending Japan could be breached. Still more before Japan, itself, could be invaded and conquered.

A lot depended on what one fairly junior naval aviator decided to do with the time and fuel he had left. Wade McClusky had to make a decision. What course would take him to the Japanese fleet? It was all on him.

He made a call and you could say he played a hunch. An informed hunch but still, if it had come up wrong …

He had spotted a single Japanese ship on the wide surface of the Pacific. It was a destroyer and judging by the distinct white wake, it was making speed.

Note from Skip

That Japanese destroyer Arashi  had been trying to sink the Nautilus who had sent the message letting the US fleet know where the Japanese fleet was located.

To where and for what? McCluskey thought.

To wherever the Japanese fleet was, in order to rejoin it, he reasoned.

Using the V of the ship's wake as though it were the point of a compass needle, McCluskey changed course. A few minutes later he and the dive bombers he led were in the wide, unguarded skies over the Japanese fleet.

The dive bomber squadron from the Yorktown arrived at almost exactly this time. The Americans attacked and the Japanese lost three fleet carriers and the initiative in the Pacific in a span of five minutes. There is nothing else like it in the history of warfare.

In the next hours of the battle, the remaining Japanese carrier was sunk as was the Yorktown.

Admiral Raymond Spruance handled his fleet both boldly and steadily. He was aggressive when he needed to be and prudent when he had to be. The workers in the yard who had made it possible for the Yorktown to take part in the fight played a big role in the victory. As, certainly, did the code breakers. And then, there were those bold decisions, made in the moment, by Waldren and McClusky, recalling the way that Chamberlain saved the situation at Little Round Top.

America seems to find people like them when they are most desperately needed.

And, one thinks, it isn't by accident..

 

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AMERICAN AEROSPACE EVENTS for June 5

FIRSTS, LASTS, AND SIGNIFICANT ACCOMPLISHMENTS FOR June 5

THANKS TO HAROLD "PHIL" MYERS CHIEF HISTORIAN AIR FORCE INTELLIGENCE, SURVEILLANCE, AND RECONNAISSANCE AGENCY

 

5 June

1909: John Berry and Paul McCullough won the first National Balloon Race. They flew 377.9 miles from Indianapolis, Ind., to Fort Payne, Ala., in 25 hours 35 minutes. (24)

1917: In World War I, the First Aeronautic Detachment, the first US military unit sent to Europe, reached Pauillac, France. Lt Kenneth Whiting (USN) commanded the unit with its 7 officers and 122 enlisted men. (5) (18)

1920: The FY1921 Appropriations Bill limited the Air Service to operations from land bases. (24)

1944: Operation OVERLORD. Through 6 June, the IX Troop Carrier Command used 1,400 C-47s, C-53s, and gliders carrying artillery weapons, to drop 13,000 Allied paratroopers on Normandy, France. (18) (21) MEDAL OF HONOR. While leading a B-24 group against enemy coastal positions close to Wimereaux, France, Lt Col Leon R. Vance's bomber sustained repeated hits from antiaircraft fire. These hits perilously crippled the bomber, killed the pilot, and wounded other crewmen, including Vance. Despite an injury and three lost engines, Vance still led the formation over the target and bombed it successfully. Returning to England, he gradually lost altitude. As Vance neared the English Coast, he ordered the crew to bail out. One man, however, was badly injured; so Vance ditched his B-24 in the channel. After landing on water, the plane started to sink with Vance pinned inside. An explosion occurred and threw Vance clear of the wreckage. After resting, he started to search for the other crewman. A search and rescue craft found Vance 50 minutes later. Sadly, while still recuperating from his wounds, Vance boarded a C-54 returning to the states. His aircraft went down somewhere in the North Atlantic with all souls on board lost. For his heroism in the B-24, Vance received the Medal of Honor. (4) Twentieth Air Force launched the first B-29 combat mission from India against the Bangkok railroad yards. (21)

1946: The US AAF changed the ADC mission for ANG units to training only rather than a high state of operational readiness. (32)

1948: The YB-49 Flying Wing (No.2) crashed northwest of Muroc AFB. Capt Glenn Edwards, the copilot, died in the crash; a year-and-a-half later the base became Edwards AFB.

1950: Republic's F-84F made its first test flight at Edwards AFB.

1970: SECAF Robert C. Seamans, Jr., announced that North American Rockwell and General Electric would build the B-1's airframe and engines, respectively. (1) (12)

1976: In a missile verification test, a Grumman A-6 launched a General Dynamics Tomahawk GLCM at the White Sands Missile Range for its first fully guided flight that lasted for 61 minutes over 446 nautical miles.

1981: The KC-10 completed qualification testing at Edwards AFB. (3)

1987: The USAF picked the Boeing 747-200 to become the next Air Force One.

 

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Thanks to Ed and his Remembered Sky

4 JUNE 1942 Midway

 

Good posts RG. Here are a couple of links from Rememberedsky:

 

You can take this as gospel or not, but over several dozens of Alphas in an 11 month cruise, I don't think I ever did not think and wonder about Pat Patterson in his Dauntless and all those guys doing the same thing – looking out over the partially cloud covered Pacific Ocean – on the 4th of June, 1942 as they launched from Enterprise, Hornet and Yorktown on their way to the most significant naval battle of World War II.

 

The 4th of June – Remembered Sky Day   http://rememberedsky.com/?p=1353

 

What kind of war was it? – "How do I know, I saw the whole thing backwards!" June 4-7, 1942 at Midway

http://rememberedsky.com/?p=942://

 

Radioman/gunner Pat Patterson from  Bombing Six /Enterprise post landing on Yorktown

 

 

 LCDR Pat Patterson in 1970 as Ops for the Targets Dept at the Naval Missile Center, Pt. Mugu, Dude could really fly. Silver Star in Korean War for flying a droned F-6 Hellcat loaded with explosives into a bridge in North Korea from his F-8 Bearcat. One launch, one bridge, one trap, come home, one Silver Star.

 

 

Our boss at Mugu Ens later Admiral Lew Hopkins - Bombing Six, Navy Cross for Midway flight. Always swore he attacked the Akagi (island on left side of flight deck as opposed to Kaga with normal island structure on right)

 

Fly Navy the BEST Always Have
Ed

 

From: rghead@san.rr.com [mailto:rghead@san.rr.com]
Subject: Interesting Facts on Midway

 

Guys,

There are some interesting facts about the Battle of Midway that are not well known.

The Douglas TBD Devastator was the second all-metal, low-wing monoplane produced for the Navy's attack mission. It was ordered in 1934 and first flew in 1935. It completed carrier qualification out of NAS North Island with landings aboard the USS Lexington. When landing at North Island the folded the wings while taxiing, and the town guys almost called the crash crew!

The Devastator was the best torpedo bomber of the time. It participated in the earlier Battle of the Coral Sea where the problem of torpedoes not exploding was observed. The same problem occurred at Midway and with numerous submarine attacks in 1942. Midway was the last battle of the Devastator, as it was retired immediately thereafter and never saw combat again. Today, there are no surviving models of the Devastator. When the movie makers of Midway the movie needed one, they had to build a replica. That replica, the only one is existence, is now on the Midway museum carrier at San Diego's Broadway pier.

The Douglas SBD Dauntless cruised at 173 mph with a top speed of 250 with a ceiling of 27,000 feet. The split flaps limited the aircraft to about 240 mph in the dive, giving it amazing stability. It weighed only 6,000 pounds, and could carry 1600 pounds of bombs. The centerline station carried a 1,000 lb bomb on a trapeze that rotated downward to let the bomb clear the propeller. Which, I guess, if you are in an 80-degree dive, is necessary.

The US flight crews were amazingly young. Navy squadrons are small 8-16 aircraft, so they only have a dozen or so pilots. 29 of the dive bomber pilots in the battle's three squadrons were ENSIGNS.

The critical part of the Battle of Midway was only six minutes long, from 1020 to 1026, as the dive bombers delivered their attack.

The Carrier Air Group (CAG) CDR Wade McClusky, took the group 15 minutes beyond their Point of No Return (BINGO) still looking for the Japanese fleet, and "almost everybody knew we did not have enough fuel to get back." [Story of Ensign Lou Hopkins, who was the 11th plane in the dive on the Akagi.] Hopkins reported, "I got down on the water as close as I could and Anderson, the gunner says, 'Let's get the hell out of here,' I said, 'What do you think I'm trying to do?' I was joined up by two other planes flown by ensigns, Ensign Green and Ensign Ramsey. We got about 40 miles out from the eEnterprise, and Ensign Green runs out of fuel, and so he has to ditch. There is nothing I can do about it, but take note of the location. We get to within sight of the carrier and Ensign Ramsey runs out of fuel and so he has to ditch, and I make note of that location. When I get back to the carrier, I found that I am one of [only] five planes [of 34] that made it back to the carrier." [Interview with RADM Lewis R. Hopkins, (USN, Ret.), Center for Pacific War Studies, Admiral Nimitz Historic Site-National Museum of the Pacific War, Fredericksburg, Texas, January 28, 2004, pp. 10-11.]

Good hunting,

rg

 

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THANKS TO MICRO

COVID-19 Random Thoughts

New monthly budget: 

Gas $0 

Entertainment $0 

Clothes $0  

Groceries $2,799.

Breaking News:  Wearing a mask inside your home is now highly recommended.  Not so much to stop COVID-19, but to stop eating.

Low maintenance women are having their moment right now.  We don't have nails to fill and paint, roots to dye, eyelashes to re-mink, and are thrilled not to have to get dressed every day.  I have been training for this moment my entire life!

When this quarantine is over, let's not tell some people.

I stepped on my scale this morning.  It said: "Please practice social distancing. Only one person at a time on scale."

Not to brag, but I haven't been late to anything in over 8 weeks.

It may take a village to raise a child but I swear it's going to take a whole vineyard to home school one.

They can open things up next month, I'm staying in until July to see what happens to you all first.

Day 37:  The garbage man doing bottle pick-up placed an AA flyer on my recycling bin.

The spread of Covid-19 is based on two things:

            1. How dense the population is.

            2. How dense the population is.

Appropriate analogy: "The curve is flattening so we can start lifting restrictions now" = "The parachute has slowed our rate of descent, so we can take it off now".

People keep asking: "Is coronavirus REALLY all that serious?"  Listen y'all, the churches and casinos are closed.  When heaven and hell agree on the same thing it's probably pretty serious.

Home school Day 1:  I'm trying to figure out how I can get this kid transferred out of my class.

For the second part of this quarantine do we have to stay with the same family or will they relocate us?  Asking for myself.

The dumbest thing I bought this year was a 2020 planner ...

 

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This day in American Military History

June 5

 

1864 – Union forces under General David Hunter rout a Confederate force led by General William "Grumble" Jones, giving the North their first real success in the 1864 Shenandoah campaign. As part of his attempt to knock out the Confederates in Virginia, Union General Ulysses S. Grant sent Franz Sigel to neutralize Rebel forces in the Shenandoah Valley in western Virginia. But Sigel did little to assist Grant, instead presiding over a Union defeat at New Market on May 15. Hunter, who replaced Sigel, quickly moved toward the rail center at Staunton with some 11,000 soldiers and another 5,000 cavalry troopers. Resisting him were about 5,600 troops under the command of Jones and John D. Imboden, cobbled together from various Confederate units scattered about western Virginia. As the Union force marched south to Staunton, Imboden moved his part of the army to block the Yankees. They met north of Piedmont, where Hunter attacked on the morning of June 5 and forced Imboden to retreat. After being reinforced by Jones at Piedmont, the Confederates spread out to stop the Federals but left a small gap in their lines that later proved fatal. The Union troops pressed through the gap, and Jones was killed while leading an attempt to drive the Yankees back. The Confederate line was broken, and the Southerners retreated. Six hundred soldiers were killed or wounded, and another 1,000 were captured; the Yankees lost 800. Rebel opposition evaporated, and Hunter entered Staunton the next day. The victory cleared the way for Union occupation of the upper Shenandoah Valley.

 

1944 – Allied airborne troops embark for Normandy just before midnight. The convoys carrying the Allied Expeditionary Force are nearing France.
1944 – The BBC broadcasts a second message, intended for the French Resistance, warning of the imminent invasion. Again, the significance of the message is noted by German authorities but the 7th Army in Normandy is not alerted.
1944 – Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote a note to be issued in case the D-Day invasion turned out to be a failure: "Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold, and I have withdrawn the troops." The note was [apparently misdated] dated July 5.
1944 – More than 1,000 British bombers drop 5,000 tons of bombs on German gun batteries placed at the Normandy assault area, while 3,000 Allied ships cross the English Channel in preparation for the invasion of Normandy-D-Day. The day of the invasion of occupied France had been postponed repeatedly since May, mostly because of bad weather and the enormous tactical obstacles involved. Finally, despite less than ideal weather conditions-or perhaps because of them-General Eisenhower decided on June 5 to set the next day as D-Day, the launch of the largest amphibious operation in history. Ike knew that the Germans would be expecting postponements beyond the sixth, precisely because weather conditions were still poor. Among those Germans confident that an Allied invasion could not be pulled off on the sixth was Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, who was still debating tactics with Field Marshal Karl Rundstedt. Runstedt was convinced that the Allies would come in at the narrowest point of the Channel, between Calais and Dieppe; Rommel, following Hitler's intuition, believed it would be Normandy. Rommel's greatest fear was that German air inferiority would prevent an adequate defense on the ground; it was his plan to meet the Allies on the coast-before the Allies had a chance to come ashore. Rommel began constructing underwater obstacles and minefields, and set off for Germany to demand from Hitler personally more panzer divisions in the area. Bad weather and an order to conserve fuel grounded much of the German air force on June 5; consequently, its reconnaissance flights were spotty. That night, more than 1,000 British bombers unleashed a massive assault on German gun batteries on the coast. At the same time, an Allied armada headed for the Normandy beaches in Operation Neptune, an attempt to capture the port at Cherbourg. But that was not all. In order to deceive the Germans, phony operations were run; dummy parachutists and radar-jamming devices were dropped into strategically key areas so as to make German radar screens believe there was an Allied convoy already on the move. One dummy parachute drop succeeded in drawing an entire German infantry regiment away from its position just six miles from the actual Normandy landing beaches. All this effort was to scatter the German defenses and make way for Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Normandy.

 

1945 – On Okinawa, Japanese forces on the Oroku peninsula strongly resist the US 6th Marine Division which nonetheless captures most of the airfield. In the south the forces of the US 24th Corps near the last Japanese defensive line, running from Yuza in the west to Guschichan on the east coast and based on the three hills, Yaeju, Yuza and Mezado. At sea, a sudden typhoon damages 4 battleships, 8 aircraft carriers, 7 cruisers, 14 destroyers, 2 tankers, and and ammunition transport ship, of the US 3rd Fleet. A Japanese Kamikaze attack cripples the battleship USS Mississippi and the heavy cruiser USS Louisville.

 

1989 – Chinese soldiers slaughtered pro-democracy students at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China. In one of the most remembered images of China's crushed pro-democracy movement, a lone man stood defiantly in front of a line of tanks in Beijing until friends pulled him out of the way. In 2001 "The Tiananmen Papers," a book based on classified documents smuggled out of China, was published. Zhang Liang was the pseudonym of the compiler.

 

 

Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

 

WILSON, BENJAMIN F.
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant (then M/Sgt.), U.S. Army Company I, 31st Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Hwach'on-Myon, Korea, 5 June 1951. Entered service at: Vashon, Wash. Birth: Vashon, Wash. G.O. No.: 69, 23 September 1954. Citation: 1st Lt. Wilson distinguished himself by conspicuous gallantry and indomitable courage above and beyond the call of duty in action against the enemy. Company I was committed to attack and secure commanding terrain stubbornly defended by a numerically superior hostile force emplaced in well-fortified positions. When the spearheading element was pinned down by withering hostile fire, he dashed forward and, firing his rifle and throwing grenades, neutralized the position denying the advance and killed 4 enemy soldiers manning submachineguns. After the assault platoon moved up, occupied the position, and a base of fire was established, he led a bayonet attack which reduced the objective and killed approximately 27 hostile soldiers. While friendly forces were consolidating the newly won gain, the enemy launched a counterattack and 1st Lt. Wilson, realizing the imminent threat of being overrun, made a determined lone-man charge, killing 7 and wounding 2 of the enemy, and routing the remainder in disorder. After the position was organized, he led an assault carrying to approximately 15 yards of the final objective, when enemy fire halted the advance. He ordered the platoon to withdraw and, although painfully wounded in this action, remained to provide covering fire. During an ensuing counterattack, the commanding officer and 1st Platoon leader became casualties. Unhesitatingly, 1st Lt. Wilson charged the enemy ranks and fought valiantly, killing 3 enemy soldiers with his rifle before it was wrested from his hands, and annihilating 4 others with his entrenching tool. His courageous delaying action enabled his comrades to reorganize and effect an orderly withdrawal. While directing evacuation of the wounded, he suffered a second wound, but elected to remain on the position until assured that all of the men had reached safety. 1st Lt. Wilson's sustained valor and intrepid actions reflect utmost credit upon himself and uphold the honored traditions of the military service.

 

CAVAIANI, JON R.
Rank and organization: Staff Sergeant, U.S. Army, Vietnam Training Advisory Group, Republic of Vietnam. Place and date: Republic of Vietnam, 4 and 5 June 1971. Entered service at: Fresno, Calif. Born: 2 August 1943, Royston, England. Citation: S/Sgt. Cavaiani distinguished himself by conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty in action in the Republic of Vietnam on 4 and 5 June 1971 while serving as a platoon leader to a security platoon providing security for an isolated radio relay site located within enemy-held territory. On the morning of 4 June 1971, the entire camp came under an intense barrage of enemy small arms, automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenade and mortar fire from a superior size enemy force. S/Sgt. Cavaiani acted with complete disregard for his personal safety as he repeatedly exposed himself to heavy enemy fire in order to move about the camp's perimeter directing the platoon's fire and rallying the platoon in a desperate fight for survival. S/Sgt. Cavaiani also returned heavy suppressive fire upon the assaulting enemy force during this period with a variety of weapons. When the entire platoon was to be evacuated, S/Sgt. Cavaiani unhesitatingly volunteered to remain on the ground and direct the helicopters into the landing zone. S/Sgt. Cavaiani was able to direct the first 3 helicopters in evacuating a major portion of the platoon. Due to intense increase in enemy fire, S/Sgt. Cavaiani was forced to remain at the camp overnight where he calmly directed the remaining platoon members in strengthening their defenses. On the morning of S June, a heavy ground fog restricted visibility. The superior size enemy force launched a major ground attack in an attempt to completely annihilate the remaining small force. The enemy force advanced in 2 ranks, first firing a heavy volume of small arms automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenade fire while the second rank continuously threw a steady barrage of hand grenades at the beleaguered force. S/Sgt. Cavaiani returned a heavy barrage of small arms and hand grenade fire on the assaulting enemy force but was unable to slow them down. He ordered the remaining platoon members to attempt to escape while he provided them with cover fire. With 1 last courageous exertion, S/Sgt. Cavaiani recovered a machine gun, stood up, completely exposing himself to the heavy enemy fire directed at him, and began firing the machine gun in a sweeping motion along the 2 ranks of advancing enemy soldiers. Through S/Sgt. Cavaiani's valiant efforts with complete disregard for his safety, the majority of the remaining platoon members were able to escape. While inflicting severe losses on the advancing enemy force, S/Sgt. Cavaiani was wounded numerous times. S/Sgt. Cavaiani's conspicuous gallantry, extraordinary heroism and intrepidity at the risk of his life, above and beyond the call of duty, were in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself and the U.S. Army.