Pilot Visits Airplane Flown By His Grandfather During WWII

A Naval Officer recently paid special respect to his grandfather's history of naval service by visiting the very same SBD-2 Dauntless his grandfather flew during WWII at the National Naval Aviation Museum.

Lt. Tyler Hurst remembers seeing the photographs on the wall of his grandfather's house during visits as a child. The images of the aircraft carriers charted the service of naval aviator Capt. Charles E. Roemer from his first flattop, Lexington (CV 2), from which he abandoned ship during the Battle of Coral Sea in 1942, to the aircraft carrier named for that landmark engagement, Coral Sea (CVA 43), which Roemer commanded during the early 1960s. These images and a family legacy inspired the boy from Bakersfield, California, to a career in the sea service.

Following graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy in 2004, Hurst entered the flight training program, receiving his wings of gold in 2006. After service as an instructor in the T-45 Goshawk, it was off to Naval Air Station (NAS) Lemoore, California, for transition to the F/A-18E Super Hornet. Assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 147, he completed deployments on board the carriers John C. Stennis (CVN 74) and Ronald Reagan (CVN 76), supporting Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation New Dawn.

As he prepared to embark on the next stage of his career at the U.S. Navy Test Pilot School, Hurst visited the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, FL, on June 21, 2013 to experience firsthand a tangible link to the service of his grandfather, who received his own wings of gold on July 14, 1938. Upon graduation Charles Roemer was assigned to Scouting Squadron (VS) 2 on board Lexington, where he joined one of his flight school classmates, Mark Whittier, who had received orders to Bombing Squadron (VB) 2. In December 1940, a new SBD-2 Dauntless arrived from the Douglas Aircraft Company in El Segundo, California, its bureau number (2106) appearing in Whittier's log book numerous times, including a March 10, 1942 combat mission against Japanese shipping at New Guinea for which he received the Navy Cross. With the airplane not assigned to his squadron, Roemer likely never flew it during his time on board Lexington, but he perhaps waved its pilots aboard while he served as a landing signal officer.

After Lexington's sinking in May 1942, Roemer's next set of orders was to the Great Lakes, where he was assigned as a landing signal officer on board the training aircraft carriers Wolverine (IX 64) and Sable (IX 81). In this capacity he had the opportunity to fly many of the aircraft that were assigned to the Carrier Qualification Training Unit at NAS Glenview, Illinois. On June 10, 1943, he recorded a .8 hour test hop in Bureau Number 2106, one of three flights he made that day, which included a carrier landing and launch on board Wolverine and a familiarization flight in an F4U-1 Corsair. On June 11 he was in the air again multiple times, a standard pattern in his log book during that time. In one entry he recorded making the 10,000th landing on board Wolverine.
 
That same day, Marine 2nd Lieutenant Donald A. Douglas, Jr., took off from NAS Glenview in Bureau Number 2106 to attempt to carrier qualify. During an approach to Sable, he took a wave off from the landing signal officer and as he banked left to clear the ship, the Dauntless' engine sputtered and then caught. Combined with the fact that Douglas was flying low and slow, it was enough to cause the plane to lose altitude and crash into the water. The young aviator was retrieved by a Coast Guard rescue boat, but the aircraft sank to the bottom.
 
More than half a century later, in 1994 Bureau Number 2106 emerged from the waters of Lake Michigan, part of a National Naval Aviation Museum program that recovered airplanes from the lake's waters where they crashed during carrier qualification. One of the first people museum staff members contacted after researching the airplane's history was retired Captain Mark Whittier, who closely followed its restoration and was on hand when his old Dauntless was placed on display. During the course of the restoration, Whittier told his old classmate about the airplane's discovery, and Capt. Roemer dutifully checked his log book for the bureau number. What he found prompted his grandson to visit the museum in April 2013.
 
With an old wartime flight log book in hand, Lt. Hurst spent some quality time with the historic Dauntless, which also flew at the Battle of Midway. He walked around it and climbed on the wing just like his grandfather did when he did a preflight inspection of the airplane and manned up back in World War II, making history coming alive for a few special moments.

(Dauntless images from file.)

FMI: www.navy.mil/local/navhist/