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You Can Blame the Submarine Service
One of my dad’s golfing buddies did not care too much for President George H. W. Bush. He started ranting about George H. W. Bush one afternoon, and my dad ended that part of the conversation by simply saying; “You can blame the Submarine Service.”
Submarines in the Pacific were tasked with “Lifeguard Duty” for aviators during WWII. The first video is of the rescue of the future president, George H. W. Bush. The second video is archive footage of submarine rescues of B-29 crews.
Rest in peace, President George H.W. Bush.
Published in History
Wow. I never knew of his rescue until today.
I’m sure his experience as a naval aviator, and that rescue, influenced who he became, but did he ever use that rescue experience as part of his public persona?
To my knowledge he did not use it in any way. I’m sure it could have been a political boon but some candidates have too high character to stoop so low.
I’ve never quite understood the concept of WWII submarines waiting around to save downed Allied aviators.
First off, the western Pacific was huge, planes often flew hundreds of miles for an attack, and the amount of territory any single sub could realistically cover (given their speed and range) was very limited. So in order to know where to expect downed aviators, they would need some type of communication with the attack planners – but wouldn’t those communications give away the sub’s position?
Second, if Allied planes were expected to be shot down, that must mean Japanese forces were nearby. Wouldn’t those same forces pose a mortal danger to any submarine lingering for hours on rescue patrol (especially since the subs could only stay completely submerged for a limited duration)?
I always figured Bush’s rescue was more of a lucky encounter with a friendly sub than some planned safety net, but if not I’d love for one of our history buffs to provide some detail.
Bush was shot down over Chichi Jima, neighboring island to Iwo Jima, so the subs knew where to be.
You can get a very detailed account of the air battle and the very strange doings of the besieged Japanese in the book Flyboys. Harrowing stuff. Bush was lucky to be alive.
It also makes sense, whenever possible, to preserve the lives of servicemen. In addition to them having families, they were an important asset in the war.
Naval pilots take time and money to train.
I saw a video about Bush’s rescue. They were close to the Japanese, and some of the planes in Bush’s team were shooting the Japanese boat, which was heading toward Bush.
In a memoir video with Jenna Bush Hagar, he made no qualms about declaring that particular war event was terrifying.
We are better for that sub rescuing him, and any other of our fighters who went down in duty.
The newer Balao class submarines had a range of 11,000 nautical miles, and could remain at sea for 75 days. They were prepositioned for lifeguard duty. They could be on patrol and then would be rerouted when airstrikes were going to be conducted against Japanese targets. Run on the surface at night to recharge batteries, remain submerged during the day until you had to rescue aviators.
At the time of the George H.W. Bush rescue most major maritime targets had been eliminated, although submarines still had to contend with heavily armed patrol boats.
The attack planners were able to preposition rescue assets based on what the attack approaches and departures were expected to be. In addition, other aircraft would be able to give fairly accurate information on any aircraft that went down.
This is an insanely big deal. I didn’t appreciate it until recently.
It was shown only one time that I remember: at the 1988 Republican National Convention.
Just lovely. Well worth the time to watch. Thank you Doug.
It was featured in a commercial during the campaign.
If you read VDH’s book on the World Wars, the loss of trained aviators is significant reason why both the Japanese and the Germans lost air superiority very quickly once the all the season pilots were extinguished.
You can whack out planes quickly on an assembly, but trained pilots? That take months just to teach them how to fly, then to be able to do combat and win… That takes longer.
Plus it takes fuel, lots and lots of fuel. Denying Germany and Japan petroleum put a serious crimp in their training the new pilots. the new pilots had to learn in combat, which is an excellent way to get killed.
According to Bush biographer Jon Meacham, three things happened on June 12, 1942.
What a man!
Radio communication with submarines is a huge and fascinating subject. It’s fraught with challenges even today. But they did it. I’ll leave the task of explaining it to somebody else. I’ll only point out that receiving a signal doesn’t leave much of a trace. There were risks to transmitting, but there were ways to minimize the risk, and after all, it was war.
I read that a U.S. Naval aviator in that theater had a life expectancy of 6 weeks after he was deployed. Seems about right. The enemy has to shoot you down or you will sink them. What heroes these men were!