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-

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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