Obituaries

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Medal of honor recipient passes

Nathan Green Gordon dies at 92; Medal of Honor recipient, Arkansas politician
As a Navy pilot in the Pacific in WWII he rescued 15 downed airmen under enemy fire. He later served 20 years as lieutenant governor of his home state.
From the Associated Press, From the Associated Press
September 10, 2008
Nathan Green Gordon, a Navy pilot who received the Medal of Honor for rescuing 15 downed airmen under enemy fire in the Pacific during World War II, has died. He was 92.

Gordon, who went on to become lieutenant governor of Arkansas, died Monday night at a hospital in Little Rock, Ark., while being treated for pneumonia and other ailments, his nephew Allen Gordon said.

Born in 1916 in Morrilton, Ark., Gordon graduated from the University of Arkansas law school in 1939 and began practicing law in his hometown. He learned to fly after enlisting in the Navy in 1941.

During the war, Gordon flew a Consolidated PBY Catalina flying boat, a large plane no faster than a high-powered automobile. On Feb. 15, 1944, he received orders to search for downed pilots after a raid on the Japanese position in Kavieng along the Bismarck Sea near Papua New Guinea.

Under fire in rough seas, Gordon piloted the unwieldy aircraft to make three landings to pick up nine men. On the way back, he saw a life raft 600 yards from the enemy shoreline. Gordon landed yet again, pulling six more airmen aboard while taking on heavy fire.

"His plane was seriously overweight by the time he finished," said Stephan McAteer, executive director of the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History in Little Rock. "He just did not want to leave anyone there because if they had been captured, they would have faced almost certain death."

Gordon flew his aircraft to Finschhafen, a port in northern New Guinea.

"I hadn't thought about what I was doing," Gordon told the Kansas City Star in 2005. "I did what I had to do. And I was lucky to get out of it."

In nominating him for the nation's highest military honor, his superiors cited Gordon for "exceptional daring, personal valor and incomparable airmanship under most perilous conditions."

Gordon also received the Distinguished Flying Cross for his service in the Pacific.

Family members said Gordon didn't speak much about his military service. However, until his final days, he would tell anyone who asked about the rescue mission in the Bismarck Sea that brought him national acclaim, his nephew said.

"He would always tear up," Allen Gordon said.

On his return to Arkansas, friends persuaded him to run for lieutenant governor. The Democrat entered office in 1947 and held the position for 20 years, serving under Gov. Orval Faubus during the 1957 Little Rock Central High School desegregation crisis.

"He pretty well kept his head down and didn't take part in it to any great extent," said Roy Reed, a former Arkansas Gazette reporter who covered the crisis and later wrote a book on Faubus.

Gordon left office in 1967, the same year as Faubus, and returned to practicing law.

He retired in 1992, and three years later his wife of 50 years died. They had no children.

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[URL="http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-gordon10-2008sep10,0,6319145.story"[/URL]

A hero passes.

Man, I love that story.

Obituary: Ian Fraser, VC | World news | The Guardian

He led a midget sub mission that sank a key Japanese warship

The largely indifferent story of the Royal Navy's role in the far east during the second world war is lit up like a beacon by the extraordinary exploits of Ian Fraser, who won the VC for leading a midget submarine attack that sank a Japanese heavy cruiser off Singapore harbour in the last days of the war.

Fraser, who has died aged 87, commanded XE3 as a lieutenant, supported by a sub-lieutenant, an engineer, and leading seaman James Magennis, frogman and diver, who also won the VC. The mission was part of Operation Zipper to recapture Singapore and Malaya. But within a week came the stroke that ended the war, the first atomic bomb at Hiroshima. The planned invasions of Malaya and Singapore, and of Japan itself, could therefore be called off, an irony Fraser appreciated as much as anyone else.

The Royal Navy, by December 1941 already heavily engaged in Atlantic convoys while suffering massive losses in the Mediterranean, was forced to open a third front after the devastating Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and the British, Dutch and French empires in south-east Asia. Two British warships, the Prince of Wales and the Repulse, were quickly dispatched by Japanese naval aircraft off Kuantan, eastern Malaya, on December 10, the first of a long string of defeats. They had been given no air cover.

The sinking of the cruiser Takao, however, stands out as one of the bravest individual attacks of the entire war. As part of the invasion preparations, six XE-type midget submarines, supported by conventional submarines, were deployed to disable Japanese warships around Singapore and the Malayan mainland. Among their main targets were the cruisers Takao and Myoko, against which XE3 and XE1 were launched on the evening of July 30 1945. Each was towed by a larger submarine to a point off the eastern end of the Singapore channel and then left to its own devices.

Had a thriller-writer invented the story of what happened next on board XE3, readers would have had difficulty in suspending their disbelief. The little craft had to pass through 40 miles of dangerous waters to reach its target. There were shallows, minefields, hydrophones (underwater sound detectors), anti-submarine defences and naval patrols to contend with. To overcome a lack of navigation aids, Fraser perched on the awash hull with binoculars for two hours.

To avoid the hydrophones, XE3 chose to sail through a minefield on the surface rather than stick to the swept channel. Then the craft had to crash-dive to avoid an enemy tanker with naval escort. On the final approach at periscope depth, Fraser had to dive again to avoid a launch, completing the advance by sightless guesswork and only realising he had found the Takao when he collided with it.

XE3 then positioned herself under the cruiser's hull in shallow water. Magennis left the craft through the escape hatch, which was so close to the enemy's hull that it could not be fully opened. He had to take off his breathing apparatus to get out, pulling it and several limpet mines after him. Marine growth on the hull and weak magnets made it difficult to attach the limpets.

The next move was to attach two larger bombs to the hull like saddlebags, one of which got jammed, so Magennis insisted on leaving the submarine again to release it with a spanner. Meanwhile, the tide was ebbing and the cruiser began to settle on her attacker. It took nearly an hour for XE3 to wriggle free, but she rejoined her mother sub and got clean away. The Takao succumbed to a series of explosions at 9.30pm on July 31 with a 60-foot hole in her hull, and settled on the bottom.

Fraser was born in Ealing, west London. He entered the merchant navy as a cadet and in 1938, joined the Blue Star line, also becoming a midshipman in the Royal Naval Reserve. When war broke out in 1939, he saw service on several destroyers before volunteering for the submarine arm. There he won the Distinguished Service Cross for gallantry aboard HMS Sahib in the Mediterranean in 1943. Around this time he married Melba Hughes, his childhood sweetheart.

The following year he volunteered again, for service on X-craft, officially described as highly dangerous. XE3 was his first command. He left the service in 1947 (retiring as a lieutenant-commander, RNR, in 1966) and went into the diving business, carrying out exploration work ahead of the North Sea oil and gas boom. He openly exploited his VC, to the chagrin of the navy which had decided to dispense with his services. His memoirs, Frogman VC, appeared in 1957.

His wife, four sons and one daughter survive him. Another daughter predeceased him.

Ian Edward Fraser, submariner, born December 18 1920; died September 1 2008

JOHN GREY FAIR

The death of John Grey Fair occurred at Stratford General Hospital on September 11, 2008. Born at Saint John, New Brunswick on March 27th, 1922, he was the youngest son of the late Andrew Grey Fair and Ida Campbell Harper. He served from 1940 to 1945 with the Royal Rifles of Canada and was captured by the Japanese at the Fall of Hong Kong and was imprisoned in various labour camps in China and Japan from 1941 to 1945. Settling at Stratford in 1948, he first worked for Canadian National Railways and later in the construction trades as an electrician before retiring in 1980. John was a lifetime member of the Royal Canadian Legion the Hong Kong Veterans Association, the Masonic Temple and the Ontario Electrical League. His wife was the late Martha Sarah MacKenzie who died earlier this year after a sixty-one year marriage. He is survived by two sons: Barry of London and Ron of Mississauga, one sister-in-law Dorothy MacKenzie of Ottawa and many nephews and nieces across Canada. He was predeceased by his parents; one brother: Cameron; two sisters: Catherine and Jean and two brothers-in-law: Allan Price and Roger Keays. Funeral arrangements are in the care of the W.G. Young Funeral Home, 430 Huron Street, Stratford where friends may call on Monday September 15, 2008 from 2-4 and 7-9 p.m. A private funeral service will be held on Tuesday September 16, 2008 followed with interment at Avondale Cemetery, Stratford. As expressions of sympathy, memorial donations may be made to the charity of one's choice through the funeral home.

Robert Bracken
I had read Roberts books when one day we were flying the Spit and the others for a Japanese magazine photo shoot and I noticed this really frail guy lurking in the parking lot so i went over to him and was going to explain he could come a little closer but show him the limits , it turns out it was Robert he was pretty shaky so I got the ATV and drove him right up to where the aircraft were sitting , he just soaked in the atmosphere of the aircraft and pilots . The man lived 5 blocks from my house and he invited me over to see his collection of photos
This guy had a picture of just about every Spit the RCAF ever flew and there pilots this guy was a fountain of knowledge on the Spits here is one example of an 2 Email 's he sent me


" One of the biggest perks of my books, is that I reunited at least 3 pilots with aircraft they flew. In one case, the RAF did not believe me - told them a Mk V AB 910, one of the best known , still flying Spitfires, was flown by a Canadian on D-Day operationally. They said I was all wet, so I responded with the fact that I had a copy of the logbook, the pilot, and the official record. I think they flew the pilot - George Lawson, to England, but I had to find my own way over"

and from another

"The story of KH-T, (403 Sqn, RCAF), being lifted by a crane after a crash landing, is in my first book. It was flown by Stu Tosh, and he landed in a minefield ! The aircraft seems to have been in the process of having its D-Day stripes reduced, as they are on one side of the fuselage, but not the other."

Good luck Robert I wish I known you lived so close earlier
Spitfire: The Canadians volumes I II by Robert Bracken