Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire No love for George H.W. Bush..............

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Do you buy crack with your monthly government checks?

Lest We Forget:

George H.W. Bush
�On his 18th birthday he enlisted in the armed forces.
The youngest pilot in the Navy when he received his wings, he flew 58 combat missions during World War II.
On one mission over the Pacific as a torpedo bomber pilot he was shot down by Japanese antiaircraft fire and was rescued from the water by a U. S. submarine.
He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery in action.�
Copyright 2009 by the White House Historical Association.

�In the 1980 Republican presidential primaries, Bush ran as a moderate candidate with years of experience.
However, he was quickly overwhelmed by Ronald Reagan, the former governor of California.
Reagan asked Bush to be his vice president to help attract moderates and bring foreign policy experience to the ticket.
The Reagan-Bush ticket won handily in both 1980 and 1984.
As vice president, Bush continued to expand his foreign policy experience and traveled widely.

He also became good friends with President Reagan, although he never became a close political confidant.

Bush was somewhat awestruck by Reagan's political skills, and according to some observers, was mystified by the latter's hold on the public imagination.�
Copyright 2012 Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia

Or could it be that Bush saved his own butt while sacrificing the lives of his fellow crew members as was alleged by others in the squadron?

Many of his fellow aviators have said that Bush was actually a coward. But blue blooded insiders can write their own facts.

You can do the research and decide what to believe. I do know a war vet who is not reticent about calling Bush a coward. He has told me many times that he sacrificed the lives of his crew members to save his. Not my concept of a war hero. Audie Murphy is.

You're a [bleep] liar to boot.

Regan tabbed Bush to bring along Texas's Electoral College Vote.

Not only just a +1, but that's a great big 10-4!!!!!!

Sgt. Benevitiz was an authentic war hero. He left no one behind. I would have rather have had the privilege of meeting him than both Bushs and all neocons combined.

I doubt that any of them would want to meet you though. miles

Raisuli/Laguna demonstrates again what a low life scum sucking creature he is.

Just when you think he can't get any worse....he does.

GFY, Raisiuli....or better yet, just be gone.

Neither Bush did exactly as I wanted. That being said both are class acts. Their wife's are my idea of what a First Lady should be. A far cry from the mooch we have now. Hasbeen

Here's Bush talking about when he got shot down.

He might not know the answer, but others in his squadron do know the answer. And so do we.

Got a link or something?

The one I posted above. You might also want to try a Google search for articles. But I'd suggest you begin with the above linked article.

of course not, it's just made up horseshit like everything else that oozes out of him. yeah, right....he "knows a guy". or he's got one of his fringe web sites with some loon with a theory.

here's what the navy says:

http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq10-1.htm


Raisuli isn't fit to lick the man's boot sole. ankle biting loser.

Actually, he did supply a link. Interesting read.

"Chester Mierzejewski, an old war buddy of Bush, who said he was angered by the "false assertions" made by candidate Bush when describing the incident, gave a different account. After 44 years of silence, Mierzejewski, who also was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, told the New York Post that Bush had abandoned his crew to death when there was another choice. He said he was approximately 100 feet in front of Bush's plane as the turret gunner for Squadron Commander Douglas Melvin's plane, "so close he could see in the cockpit" of Bush's bomber. Mierzejewski's close wartime buddy was one of the two crew members in Bush's plane.

According to Mierzejewski, the squadron was in a tight formation bombing raid against a Japanese radio installation on an island reported to be heavily fortified. He saw "a puff of smoke" come from Bush's plane which quickly disappeared and was certain only one man parachuted from the plane and that it was Bush, the pilot. Mierzejewski said the Avenger torpedo bomber was engineered so that it could successfully crash land on water and that Bush doomed his own crew by bailing out and leaving the bomber out of control.

Other World War II veterans also expressed concern about Bush parachuting out of the aircraft. "He had a moral obligation to put that plane in the water in an emergency landing," Robert Flood, a former B-17 bombardier told the press. "He violated the primary rule for a captain of a multi-crew aircraft: The pilot never leaves the airplane with anybody in it

Although the heart of Bush's story about the incident remains the same, Mierzejewski is adamant Bush's account is not the truth and blames Bush for the abandonment and deaths of both men. "I think he could have saved those lives, if they were alive. I don't know that they were, but at least they had a chance if he had attempted a water landing," Mierzejewski said."


Taken from this article.

Lest We Forget:
58 combat missions, 126 carrier landings, and 1,228 flight hours during World War II.

George H.W. Bush is exactly right.
In the video he plainly states that he is no hero, that getting shot down is not heroic.

George H.W. Bush is exactly right.
No one has all the answers.
Certainly eyewitnesses do not have all the answers, they have only one outside view of what happened about any event. �they have no way to determine how much time anyone can stay sitting in a cockpit about to turn into a fireball.
They are like spectators at a bullfight�only the man in the arena knows.

Anyone who makes claim because they happen to find words that agree with them and offer them as proof is a prime definition of a troll.
There are plenty of words that do not agree with the troll.
Here is another account of that action,�that day:


By JO2 Timothy J Christmann
Naval Aviation News 67 (March-April 1985): 12-15
Forty-one years ago, a 20-year-old Naval Aviator named George Bush embarked on a mission which he would later describe as one of the most dramatic moments of his life -- an experience which gave him a "sobering understanding of war and peace."
"There's no question that it broadened my horizons," Vice President Bush said recently. "And there's no question that today it has a real impact on me as I give advice to the President."

It was September 2, 1944. Lieutenant Junior Grade George Bush was a pilot with Torpedo Squadron Fifty-One (VT-51 ) aboard the aircraft carrier USS San Jacinto (CVL-30), a light carrier which was deployed in the North Pacific

Just two years earlier, on June 12, 1942, Bush had graduated from high school and joined the Navy as a seaman, second class. But, in less than a year, he completed flight training at NAS Corpus Christi, Texas, was commissioned an ensign, and went on to fly TBM Avengers with VT-51. For a time, he was the youngest pilot in Naval Aviation.

On that sunny morning of September, Bush woke aboard San Jacinto prepared to fly one of the 58 attack missions he would fly during the war. However, this particular mission would end a little differently than his other 57.

The target was a Japanese radio station on ChiChi Jima, located about 600 miles southwest of Japan in the Bonin Islands. For a time, the enemy on that tiny island had been intercepting U.S. military radio transmissions and warning Japan and occupied enemy islands of impending American air strikes. It had to be destroyed

Before 0900, Bush and two aircrewmen (his regular radioman, Radioman Second Class John Delaney, and substitute gunner Lieutenant Junior Grade William White) strapped themselves inside an Avenger and catapulted off San Jacinto. Three other bomb-laden VT-51 aircraft, as well as a number of VF-51's F6F Hellcats, joined the mission.

"I was replaced by Ltjg. White at the last minute," said Leo W. Nadeau, then an ordnanceman second class who flew as Bush's gunner on all but two of his attack missions. "As intelligence officer, White wanted to go along to observe the island."
Nadeau, who was 20 at the time, added that the day before, Bush, Delaney and he had flown into ChiChi Jima and destroyed an enemy gun emplacement.

"The antiaircraft (AA) fire on that island was the worst we had seen," he said. "I don't think the AA fire in the Philippines was as bad as that."

"ChiChi was a real feisty place to fly into," Stanley Butchart, a former VT-51 pilot and friend of Bush, agreed. "As I remember, it had gun emplacements hidden in the mountain areas. In order to get down to the radio facility, you had to fly past the AA batteries, which was risky business."

As expected, projectiles belched from the enemy's AA batteries as soon as Bush and his squadron mates were over the island. Tiny black puffs of smoke thickened around his plane as he approached the target and dove steeply -- so steeply that Bush felt like he was standing on his head. But before he reached the radio facility the plane was hit.

Ltjg. Bush, who felt the plane "lift" from the hit, continued his dive toward the target and dropped his payload. The four 500-pound bombs exploded, causing damaging hits. For his courage and disregard for his own safety in pressing home his attack, he was later awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross.

Bush maneuvered the Avenger over the ocean with the hope it would make the journey back to San Jacinto. But the plane began to blaze and clouds of smoke soon enveloped the cockpit. Choking and gasping for air, Bush and one of his aircrewmen wriggled out of the plane and leaped from about 1,500 feet. His other crewman, dead or seriously injured from the blast, went down with the Avenger.

Bush parachuted safely into the water, dangerously close to the shore. Unfortunately, the aircrewman fell helplessly to his death because his parachute failed to open properly.

No one ever knew which one bailed out with Mr. Bush," said Nadeau, now a building contractor in Ramona, Calif. "I would assume it was Delaney, because as the radioman, he would go out first to leave room for the gunner to climb down out of the turret and put his chute on.

"There wasn't room in the turret for the gunner to wear a parachute. As a gunner, my parachute hung on the bulkhead of the plane near Delaney. We set up an escape procedure where he was supposed to hand me my chute and jump, and then I was to follow him. The procedure took a couple of seconds."

Nadeau added that he "didn't know what to think" when he heard the plan was shot down.

"I felt bad that Delaney and Mr. White had died," he said. "I just had the feeling that had I been there, Delaney and I might have both made it out alive -- that is, unless one of us got hit by AA. Delaney and I had practiced our escape procedure constantly. He might have stayed to help White get out of the turret and delayed too long. it's one of those things that never leaves your mind. Why didn't I go that day?"

Vice-President Bush said that he chose to finish the bombing run rather than bail out early because as a Naval Aviator, he was disciplined to do that.
"We were trained to complete our runs no matter what the obstacle," he remarked.

Once in the water, Bush unleashed his inflatable yellow lifeboat, crawled in, and paddled quickly out to sea. The Japanese sent out a boat to capture him. Luckily, Lieutenant Doug West, a fellow VT-51 Avenger pilot, strafed the boat.
"He stopped it," said Bush.

Circling fighter planes transmitted Bush's plight and position to the U.S. submarine Finback (SS-230), patrolling 15 to 20 miles from the island
"This was 1944 and there were very few enemy targets left," said retired Capt. Robert R.Williams Jr., 73, who was Finback's commanding officer then. "So, the main reason for our being on patrol was to act as lifeguard and pick up aviators."

According to Lieutenant Commander Dean Spratlin, Finback's executive officer at the time, the submarine had an area of 200 to 300 square miles to cover, which included Iwo Jima, ChiChi Jima and HaHa Jima in the Bonin Islands.

A few hours after transmitting Bush's position, Williams, then a commander, sighted him on the periscope about seven miles away from ChiChi. He ordered the submarine to the surface.
"I saw this thing coming out of the water and I said to myself, 'Jeez, I hope it's one of ours,'" Bush remarked.

Spratlin, who is now in the real estate business in Atlanta, Ga., said he and Williams weren't worried about surfacing in daylight so close to an enemy island because they had several U.S. fighters flying cover.

"We had a big sub (312 feet long), so we rigged out the bowplanes which gave us a platform where we could step down and pull him aboard," added Spratlin.

While several of Finback's crewmen were helping Bush aboard, Ensign Bill Edwards, the sub's first lieutenant and photographic officer, filmed the rescue. The 8mm film later was sent to Bush while he was a congressman from Texas and was shown recently as part of a biographical sketch during the Republican National Convention.