George Ross Interview - By William "BBall" Ball - Page 2 of 3
FW: Do you remember hearing about Hitler invading Poland, and what were your thoughts when you heard?
George: I was younger and I didn't think it was too nice.... I expected him to come over here at any time. So I was glad to be able to do what I could at the time.
FW: What were you doing when you first heard that Pearl Harbor had been attacked, and do you remember your initial thoughts or how it made you feel?
George: I remember my Dad listening to the radio, and President Roosevelt was giving his talk, about how "it would live in infamy" and stuff you know, and I guess I was kind of gung-ho at that early age to get involved.
FW: How did you find your first days of military service?
George: Well, I wasn't used to taking orders (chuckle)...so I mean, it was a lot different.
FW: Where did you enlist?
George: I enlisted in Milwaukee, joined the Navy and went to Great Lakes for my training (14 weeks). From there to Philadelphia, and we put the ship to sea (commissioned) in Philadelphia, and then went down to Trinidad for the shake-down.
FW: You sailed from Philly to Trinidad, so then did you sail through the Panama Canal to reach the Pacific?
George: Yes we did. We went through the Panama Canal, and I had quite an experience there.... the ship was so big that you could put one foot on the ship, and the other on the land...that's how close it was. I went off of the ship there. I met some Panamanians and I exchanged American money with them. I came back aboard ship and I had a whole fist-full of Panamanian money, and I said, "Boy look here, did I make a deal!" A guy said, "what did you pay for that?" and I said, "I don't know, ten dollars." He said, "You don't even have two dollars there!" (chuckle) I was learning fast!
FW: George, could you describe your job aboard the U.S.S. San Jacinto?
George: I was in the deck force and also a gunner...on the 40-millimeter...twin 40s back aft on the fantail.
FW: You were part of the gun crew. Explain a little about what the "gun crew" consisted of.
George: We had "pointers", who used to sit in the seat and we had people who would be out on the shield, to look for the enemy planes and identify them coming in, and when you would shoot the twin 40s you had to be careful, because if you were on the deck, the hot shells coming out of there, were so fast and so hot, that you would burn your legs. I happen to have one I'll show you in the basement, I had all the places we were engraved on there, and the name of the ship.
FW: Were you physically the "shooter", or did that rotate?
George: That rotated. Sometimes I would put the shells in, they came in clips of four, it was quite an experience with the different things that you did on there.
FW: When you were the gunner, and you actually shot an airplane down, who got to take the credit for that kill? Did you as the gunner, or the gun crew...who got to boast about it?
George: The ship got credit for it. We shot down 12 enemy planes...the ships crew.
FW: Were there competitions between gun crews?
George: There was. We had a detachment of Marines onboard. And they had their own 40s and 20s and stuff. One of them became pretty famous.... Art Donavan, he played football for the Baltimore Colts. And his father was the referee that refereed the heavyweight fights when Schmelling and Lewis were fighting. Art now owns a country club up in Baltimore.
FW: George, how and where did you first experience combat?
George: We started at the Marshall Islands...was our first, and then went through Marshalls, Siapan, Guam, Tinian, Yap, Peleliu...............Okinawa...........was the....
(Here, I must say that I stopped the tape machine...it's a very personal and powerful moment when a man grieves for comrades fallen so long ago in battle. BB)
FW: Realizing that unless you’ve been there, it may impossible to describe, but could you tell us what it was like?
George: On the ship we had what we called a "general headquarters"...I mean the alarm would go off, and when that alarm would go off...we had a lot of practice and stuff. I played a lot of poker, I loved cards... and first time I think I won about $700, and when that thing went off, I was more worried about going in the drink and losing the money, than I was about getting hurt! But, it was scary. When we did knock down our first plane, everybody on the ship, when we saw this thing hit the water and explode and stuff, we all would holler and clap and ...just to say, “well by god, we got one of them”...but it was scary.
FW: And you were on the deck crew, so I assume you saw regular accidents during the flight operations. How was that?
George: A lot of times, they would go through the barrier, it wouldn’t stop them, and they just had so long to get out of there.
FW: We’ll talk about Lt.(jg) George Bush in a minute. He flew the TBM Avenger, do you remember the other types of planes you had on the carrier?
George: We had the Corsair.
(side notes about Lt.(jg) Bush)
Reprinted from “Naval Aviation News” March-April 1985
...Nadeau added that Ltjg. Bush had a lot of friends among the enlisted men.
"Mr. Bush wasn't one of your run-of-the-mill officers," he said. "Being an enlisted man, I couldn't go into officers' quarters and as an officer he couldn't go into enlisted quarters. So we'd meet quite often up on the flight deck by the plane. We'd always be checking our aircraft out. He would look his plane over, and I would look over the armament. We were both very conscientious about the work that we were doing." Once up on the flight deck, Nadeau said the two of them used to talk about most anything, including the women both of them would later marry.
Bush, who received three Air Medals by the time he was discharged in 1945, said, "There is no question that having been involved in combat has affected my way of looking at problems. The overall experience was the most maturing in my life. Even now, I look back and think about the dramatic ways in which the three years in the Navy shaped my life -- the friendships, the common purpose, my first experience with seeing friends die ... "
"The Avenger was a great, stable airplane," he said. "It was the easiest plane to land aboard the carrier. It was reliable and sound."
Bush, who is credited with 126 carrier landings and 1,228 flight hours, remarked that he's done only a ''little bit of civilian flying" since leaving the Navy.
Nowadays. the former Naval Aviator said he is happy to have the pilots of Air Force Two fly him around the world as he fulfills his obligations as Vice President.
"They are A-1 pilots," Bush said. "But their wings aren't gold."
random irc quote: <_Coyote1> i like this quote .... "People are more violently opposed to fur than leather because it is easier to pick on rich old ladies than biker gangs"
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