Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 22, 1994 TAG: 9403220049
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
He was home in Southwest Roanoke County "minding his own business" when a military records examiner called to tell him that the medal he had earned nearly 50 years ago had "some way, some how" fallen through the cracks, retired Major Frank McFadden said.
It was McFadden's fourth cross, but it was actually his first for his tenure as a Marine Corps pilot. He was a young second lieutenant in the South Pacific during World War II when he earned it.
His friend Carl Sherertz of Roanoke presented the medal to McFadden at a recent Roanoke dinner meeting of the Military Order of the World Wars, a military officers' organization.
Speaking afterward, McFadden had to choke back tears. "You can't help but think about all the good men you know that didn't make it," he said. "I think about them a lot."
McFadden, 73, was born and raised in Roanoke. He graduated from Jefferson High School in 1938 and was enrolled in the Corps of Cadets at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg before joining the Navy in 1942.
While he was at Virginia Tech, McFadden - much to his parents' dismay - joined the aviation pilot training program. "As you can imagine, that gave me an advantage when I went into the Navy," he said.
By the time he was sent to Pensacola, Fla. for flight training, he already had his private pilot's license.
Although he trained as a fighter pilot, McFadden was sent to El Toro, Calif., where he was told they were putting him into dive bombers. He fought the idea but got six weeks of dive-bomber training anyway.
After 19 days on a troop ship, he landed in the Solomon Islands as a replacement in a dive-bomber squadron nicknamed the Black Panthers.
He discovered the survival rate for dive-bomber pilots was not all that good. One in every three would be killed. One in every three would be seriously wounded. McFadden replaced a pilot who had been killed.
The day of his first bombing mission, his commanding officer came in during breakfast. "His comment to me was `Well, man, you better eat a good breakfast; it may be your last one.' "
His plane was the SBD Douglas Dauntless, which had come into production just before the start of the war. It was a single-engine plane equipped to carry two people, a pilot and rear-seat gunner, and 1,000 pounds in bombs.
The plane had pinpoint accuracy if flown just right. And to do that you didn't just fly straight down, McFadden said. "Actually, you'd try to get on your back a little bit."
On a normal bombing run, McFadden said, he would start his dive at an altitude of about 14,000 feet. Flying at 240 knots per hour, he would release his bombs 1,500 feet above the target, making a 90 degree pullout. If the plane was any lower than 1,000 feet above the bomb when it exploded, flying debris might strike it.
"We would dive bomb everything," he said. The pilots would go after shipping, as well as land targets. The best way to sink a ship, he said, was to put a bomb right through its deck.
For someone with his experience, the technology of the smart guided bombs that the whole world watched on television during the Desert Storm action against Iraq is hard to comprehend, McFadden said.
The half-dozen men who were assigned to keep each plane flying were "1,000 percent" dedicated to what they were doing, he said.
By McFadden's own account, he flew 113 combat missions. The Marine Corps says he flew 84. The Corps wouldn't count missions that were scrubbed because of weather over the target, even though the pilots would search out other enemy targets to drop their bombs on as they flew back to base.
The belated Distinguished Flying Cross was awarded not for any one act on his part, but for his service over a period of time, McFadden said. Mainly it was awarded for action over the Japanese naval base at Rabaul.
From the Solomons, McFadden's squadron was moved into the battle to retake the Philippines. There McFadden earned another medal, the Purple Heart, for a wound he received in action. It, too, was only awarded recently at a ceremony at the Roanoke Marine Reserve Center.
During a bombing mission Feb. 8, 1945, over Nicholas Field at Manila, his plane was hit in the tail by enemy fire, and a piece of shrapnel caught him in the back of the neck. The planes provided little protection from shrapnel - just a piece of bulletproof glass between the windshield and gun sight and a piece of armored plate behind the seat.
McFadden had been rotated back to the United States for a 30-day leave when the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan. He had been expecting to take part in a bloody invasion of Japan when he returned to duty. "When I heard the war was over, it didn't break my heart," he said.
After the war, he returned to Tech and later went to work for the Norfolk and Western Railway. He was manager of planning when he retired June 1, 1982, before the railroad's merger with Norfolk Southern Corp.
He continued flying and taught his son and one of his two daughters to fly. He was called back to active duty during the Korean War, but had to give up his pilot's license six years ago after a heart bypass operation.
At the dinner where he got his last cross, McFadden told his fellow veterans that he would always remember what the admiral at Pensacola told him the day he received his bars and wings as a naval aviator.
The admiral told him his job was to break things and to punish the Japanese. "I did my best," he said.
But like many veterans who as young men saw the worst fighting and looked death in the face, McFadden does not recommend war as a way of settling differences.
"I wish there was some way every time that we people who represent the civilized race on the face of this earth . . . every time we have a problem, we could sit down and try to resolve the matter without trying to kill each other."
by CNB