First Blood – Medal of Honor Recipient “Zeke” Swett’s fight for survival

Dick Hansen gets full frontal with the camera ship in his rare F4F-3 Wildcat—one of the few flying examples. This warbird flew off the USS Wolverine and ditched in Lake Michigan in May, 1944 where it lay on the lakebed for almost a half century. It was recovered in 1991 and later restored to airworthy condition by Dick and Jim Porter. This plane is now owned by Rod Lewis of Lewis Air Legends of San Antonio, Texas. (Photo by John Dibbs/Facebook.com/ theplanepicturecompany)

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IN NOVEMBER 1942, I had been assigned to VMF-221, not as an original member of the squadron but as a replacement pilot for all the men who had gone through holy hell at Midway. The group had lost a tremendous amount of pilots and planes on the tiny Pacific island, as they stood and fought the Japanese onslaught. After my advanced fighter training in Hawaii, I was sent to a place in the south Pacific...

PARDON THE INTERRUPTION

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