Torpedo 8's sacrifices recalled 60 years later
By Bill Kaczor
Associated Press
PENSACOLA, Fla. — Navy seaplane pilot S.O. "Pappy" Cole took a vote of his eight fellow crew members before trying to rescue a downed aviator floating alone in the Pacific Ocean after the Battle of Midway.
Associated Press
"He said 'I've never made an open-sea landing; we might not make it, but I'd like to try,' " recalled Jack Bohner, a radio operator aboard the PBY-5A Catalina.
Jack Bohner was a radio operator aboard the PBY-5A Catalina when he and his crew mates rescued Ensign George Gay, the sole survivor of Torpedo Squadron 8 during World War II's Battle of Midway.
The vote was unanimous, the landing a success and Ensign George Gay was rescued a day after the battle. That was 60 years ago.
Gay thus went down in history as the sole survivor of 30 pilots and gunners from Torpedo Squadron 8 who had taken off from the USS Hornet on June 4, 1942.
The squadron's 15 obsolescent TDB Devastators were shot down one by one without inflicting damage on Japanese ships, but they drew enemy fighters nearly down to sea level. That left the Japanese fleet unprotected from high-flying American SBD Dauntless dive bombers that sank four aircraft carriers.
Only one of three American carriers, the USS Yorktown, was sunk. Midway was the turning point of the war in the Pacific.
The next day, Bohner's crew spotted three or four men in the water and reported positions to rescue boats.
"We came back and this one fellow was still in the water," said Bohner, 80, of Pensacola.
After the vote and landing, the Catalina taxied over to Gay, wounded three times and adrift for 30 hours. Bohner climbed onto the Catalina's high wing and dropped a line to Gay.
The rescued pilot said little on the flight to Midway.
"He did make one promise that he was going to buy us all a bottle of whiskey, and I'm still waiting," said Bohner, who retired as a Navy commander after 30 years.
Gay, who was an airline pilot for 30 years, wrote the book "Sole Survivor" before his death in 1994 in Marietta, Ga., at age 77.
After his rescue, he was flown to Hawai'i where he brought the U.S. commander, Adm. Chester Nimitz, confirmation the Japanese carriers had been sunk.
"I said 'Admiral, you can forget them. I not only saw them go down, the impact when they were downed in the water was shaking my gut,' " he said in 1991.
Bohner last week donated the Catalina's log book to the National Museum of Naval Aviation. It includes an entry on Gay's rescue, which he later autographed, and will be part of an expanded Midway exhibit in the museum at Pensacola Naval Air Station.
Torpedo 8's sacrifice has become part of Navy lore and the courage of its members was recognized even by Japanese veterans of Midway.
"The Americans came and kept coming," torpedo plane pilot Takeshi Maeda said during a 1998 discussion at the museum. "They really had their stuff, their bravery."
