ORIGINAL: USSAmerica
ORIGINAL: Rusty1961
ORIGINAL: Hrafnagud
You forgot to add this bit from the Wikipedia article you took your quotes from:
"For 54 years there was no definitive answer as to whether he had been brought down by friendly fire or the Japanese bomber's nose gunner. In 1997 the publication of the primary source for this article, Fateful Rendezvous: The Life of Butch O'Hare, by Steve Ewing and John B. Lundstrom (see References below) shed new light. Ewing and Lundstrom very clearly state, more than once, that Japanese guns, and not Kernan's, killed Butch O'Hare.
In Chapter 16, "What Happened to Butch," the authors write, "Butch fell to his old familiar adversary, a Betty. Most likely he died from or was immediately disabled by, a lucky shot from the forward observer crouched in the rikko's [Betty's] forward glassed-in nose...the nose gunner's 7.7mm slugs very likely penetrated Butch's cockpit from above on the port side and ahead of the F6F's armor plate."[42] In the Index, Ewing and Lundstrom flatly state that Kernan is "wrongly accused of shooting down Butch."[43]
Why the confusion for so many years? Ewing and Lundstrom point out that the "most influential and oft-cited" account of O'Hare's last mission came in a 1962 history of the Enterprise by CDR Edward P. Stafford, which relied on action reports and recollections of former Enterprise crew, but did not contain interviews with any of the living participants. By contrast, Ewing and Lundstrom came to their conclusions on what happened to Butch after interviewing the still-living survivors of O'Hare's last mission: F6F pilot Skon, TBF radar officer Rand, and TBF gunner Kernan. Ewing and Lundstrom write, "Through Stafford and other accounts based largely on the action reports, Butch has wrongly become known as one of America's most famous "friendly fire" casualties."[44]
Not sure I can find any "proof" in that quote. It was at night, he was in a cross-fire and we have no wreckage or body.
"Statements" in those conditions are not "proof".
We're waiting (with baited breath [8|] ) for a single shred of "proof" from you that he was killed by friendly fire. Until then, you can bugger off with your "Make a statement and then demand others provide proof that you are wrong" modus operandi. [>:]
WTF are you talking about? Are you an ESL student? I made no claim, just speculated. Do you know the significance of a question mark? If you don't go back to your night school and engage in fellatio.
; Julia Child
