Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 20, 1992 TAG: 9202200161
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: F.N. D'ALESSIO ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: CHICAGO LENGTH: Medium
NAMESAKE O'HARE NOT TOO BUSY TO HONOR HERO
O'Hare is an often-cursed name among airline passengers whose flights are delayed at the nation's busiest airport.But few of the 60 million people who pass through O'Hare each year know the story of the World War II hero it honors - or the young man's family link to Chicago's gangland past.
"Our memory span is short," Chicago Alderman Edward Burke said. "As a people, we don't seem to remember why things are named as they are."
O'Hare is named for Navy Lt. Edward H. "Butch" O'Hare, who single-handedly downed six Japanese bombers 50 years ago today in one of the war's most celebrated feats.
A ceremony is planned at the airport today to mark the occasion.
On Feb. 20, 1942, the 27-year-old O'Hare was the only fighter pilot in the air when nine Japanese twin-engine bombers suddenly approached the USS Lexington off the Gilbert Islands in the Pacific.
"Somebody yelled, `Nine of them, and he's up there alone!' " recalled Lexington radioman Joseph C. Brazda. "After that, nobody said a word. They were all just watching and hoping and praying."
As the Lexington's other pilots scrambled and the rest of the crew watched, O'Hare flew his Grumman F4 "Wildcat" above the bombers, then dived toward one of them. In seconds, the bomber was in flames and plunging toward the sea.
Brazda said O'Hare evaded the Japanese tailgunners, regained altitude and swooped down again to take out another bomber.
"After that, O'Hare just kept doing it," Brazda said. "It was unbelievable. He would dive, we'd lose sight of him for a matter of seconds, a . . . bomber would wobble and crash in flames, and then there would be O'Hare up above them again."
O'Hare shot down five of the bombers and crippled a sixth. The Lexington's other fighters managed to shoot down two more of the fleeing bombers.
His achievement, less than three months after Pearl Harbor, slaked a deep public thirst for heroism.
O'Hare was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and promoted to lieutenant commander on April 21, 1942, by President Franklin Roosevelt, who called his performance, "One of the most daring, if not the most daring single action in the history of combat aviation."
Later, O'Hare said he didn't quite know what he was doing at the time.
"You don't have time to consider the odds against you, you're too busy throwing bullets," he said. "You don't think about throwing those bullets to keep alive - you just want to keep shooting."
O'Hare disappeared Nov. 26, 1943, while breaking up an attack by Japanese torpedo planes near New Britain, an island in the South Pacific. Ships searched an area of 2,500 square miles for several days without finding a trace of the hero or his plane.
After the war, Col. Robert R. McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, led the campaign to have the city's newest airport renamed for O'Hare. The facility was originally called Old Orchard Field (hence the ORD on its baggage tags), but was then known as Douglas Field.
The field was renamed Sept. 18, 1949, with a simulated bombing raid and a skywriter spelling out the name "O'Hare" above the runways.
The name had appeared in local headlines nearly 10 years earlier - on Nov. 8, 1939 - when the flier's father, attorney Edward J. O'Hare, was shotgunned to death while riding in his limousine.
No one was ever charged in the slaying, despite an investigation that yielded tantalizing information about the victim.
The elder O'Hare, detectives learned, had been convicted in 1923 of stealing government-bonded liquor from a warehouse in his native St. Louis and later had run a dog-racing track for Al Capone.
O'Hare died shortly after Capone finished serving a prison sentence for tax evasion. One theory said he was killed on Capone's orders, while another held that O'Hare and Capone still were close, and rival gangsters killed O'Hare to warn "Scarface" not to return to Chicago.
After Capone's death in 1947, another theory surfaced: Men who helped prosecute the mob chief said O'Hare had been one of their informants.
For a 1971 biography of Capone, New York writer John Kobler interviewed Frank J. Wilson, who led the investigation. Wilson said O'Hare supplied invaluable information for the prosecution.
O'Hare's price for cooperation was a simple one, Wilson said. His son wanted to be a Navy flier, so O'Hare wanted him appointed to Annapolis.
He got his wish.