HISTORY
Searching for
the lost ships
with Paul Allen
Photo: U.S. Navy National Museum of Naval Aviation
USS
Lexington
Part 2
Text: Miro Barič
A shot down Betty bomber photographed from Lexington’s deck on February 20, 1942.
Let’s travel back in time though, to Chicago
in 1920s and 30s when the city was ruled
by the notorious gangster Al Capone. His
close associate was a lawyer, Edward Joseph O’Hare nicknamed Easy Eddie. In 1930
he decided to defect to the side of law and
became a federal agents’ informer. He led
them to Capone’s bookkeeping records and
help cracked their code. He also reminded them that in the beginning of his trial
Capone bribed the jury. Consequently, a
judge replaced the jury and in 1931 Capone
was sentenced to jail. In November 1939,
a week before Capone was released from
prison, Easy Eddie was assassinated. While he was driving his Lincoln Zephyr two
men fired their shotguns at him from the
passing car. O’Hare died on the spot and
his uncontrolled car hit a pole. The killers
disappeared in the traffic and were never
tracked down. They were supposedly Ca-
6
INFO Eduard
pone’s hitmen. O’Hare senior paid for gangster’s jail time with his own life then. It is
said he wanted to avoid prison, that he did
not want to stand in the way of his son to
enter the Naval Academy or that he wanted to restore his tarnished reputation and
set a good example to his son. Allegedly he
brought his son up to recognize good and
evil and wanted him to become a better
man that he was.
Henry “Butch” O’Hare was born on March
13, 1914. After his parents divorced in 1927,
he lived with his mother Selma and sisters Patricia and Marilyn in St. Louis while
his father relocated to Chicago. In 1933 he
started his studies at the Naval Academy
in Annapolis from which he graduated in
1937. Next two years he served on the battleship USS New Mexico. Then he was sent
to Pensacola for a pilot training which he
completed on May 2, 1940. He was assigned
to VF-3 fighter unit aboard Lexington’s sister ship, USS Saratoga (CV-3). First, he
flew Grumman F3F and after that Brewster F2A Buffalo. VF-3 executive officer, Lt.
Photo: Naval History and Heritage Command
Previously our story about the aircraft carrier USS Lexington
(CV-2) ended at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
She avoided it because on December 5, 1941, set sail for Midway
Island to deliver 18 Vought SB2U Vindicator dive bombers belonging to the US Marines unit VMSB-231. Thanks to it she could
enter the WWII battles intact from the beginning.
Medal of Honor
That son was “Butch” O’Hare who was
awarded Medal of Honor for his action on
February 20, 1942, as a very first US Navy
fighter pilot during WWII. On that day he
took off USS Lexington deck as a part of
a larger group of Wildcats. The fate however put him alone against a group of Japanese bombers. His father taught him to
face the evil regardless the odds. Edward
Butch O’Hare in the cockpit of a Wildcat captured in
one of the propaganda photograph series taken in
April 1942 on Hawaii. Note the censored unit insignia.
December 2022