fbpx

AZ2 Frank Bodden

From January to August of 1968 I served with the air wing on the USS Ticonderoga, CVA-14, with VFP-63. Our pilots flew the F-8 Crusader, a fighter jet that instead of being armed, had camera bays on each side of the fuselage and the nose cone. Our pilots flew unarmed,...

LT Nathan G Gordon

Nathan G. Gordon, a Navy pilot who received the Medal of Honor for rescuing aviators in World War II, and who later became Arkansas’ longest-serving lieutenant governor, died Sept. 8, 2008 at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences hospital in Little Rock. He...

CAPT Thomas J. Hudner, Jr.

Thomas Hudner had no particular interest in airplanes when he graduated from the Naval Academy in 1946. He wanted only to serve aboard a ship. But in 1948, after he had been at sea for several months and had worked as a communications officer at Pearl Harbor for a...

MM3 Doris Miller

Doris Miller is credited with shooting down several Japanese planes with a machine gun from the deck of the U.S.S. West Virginia during the attack on Pearl Harbor. When news of his actions reached the public, the African-American community saw him as their symbol of...

YN3 Melissa Rose Barnes

Melissa Rose Barnes was the family clown, no doubt about it. When her sister, Jennifer, was sick with lupus, for instance, she dressed up in disco clothes and jumped around the house doing John Travolta imitations — just like a kid, except that she was 25 at the...

CAPT John McCain

When John McCain made his first bid for public office in 1982, running for a House seat in Arizona, critics blasted him as a carpetbagger, pointing out that he’d only lived in the state for 18 months. “Listen, pal, I spent 22 years in the Navy,” the exasperated...