Papers of Captain John Timothee Trezvant-O'Neill (USN) aka "Tex"
1916 to 1979
Born: Dallas Texas
Graduated United States Naval Academy 1939 (5 years due to a football injury)
Significant Events and/or Sea Stories:
My mother (Drury Dodge Anderson, daughter of a WWI four stacker officer, Berkeley grad.) was my father's second wife. She was, at the time of their meeting (1946-49?), doing work for the OSS regarding the communist elements in China. She was a strong woman and her opinion was always her own. Known acquaintances were the Chennaults (husband and 2nd wife) and "Wild Bill" Donovan.
All the following stories were believed by my mother as being true. I would also like to mention that my father did not tell stories willingly. He would tell lighthearted humorous sea stories when pressured socially, but anything of import was tough to get to.
Tex flew float planes off the back of the USS Helena during the Battle for the Solomon Islands, including Guadalcanal. Apparently in the midst of heroism he was noted for numerous flights which entailed landing in groups of Marines in the water due to mishap and then taxiing them to the beach under fire. Apparently he did this to the limits of human endurance. It is unclear which medal, if any, were related to this effort. I will not that a similar performance, later in the war, earned one man a Navy Cross.
During this time he was instructed to take prisoners. Landing in an area (of water) with Japanese he coerced compliance by "popping a few skulls with the 50 caliber". An enemy officer attempted to board his plane and was killed with his .38 pilot's pistol. A code book was obtained intact from this officer. He was told later (I think by Adm. Sherman on whose staff he later served as Flag Lieutenant) that it helped to break the codes to get Yamamoto shot down.
Tex's flight logs for the Battle of Guadalcanal time period can be found here Log
(Someday I may correlate the flight logs to the known timeline of the naval engagement.)
The Helena was sunk and Tex apparently went on to serve aboard the Honolulu, St. Louis, and Nashville (all casualties) as CO of VCS-9. In mid to late 1943 Tex went back to the states for night fighter training and returned to his final combat duty of WWII as the XO of VBF 85 on the USS Shangri-La.
The diary speaks for itself.
In the last days of the war Adm. Metzger (check spelling) directly communicated to my father a high level of urgency regarding some of the air strikes on Japan. While not told at the time he later reflected that he thought it was heavy water production.
There is little documentation as to my fathers tour of duty on the USS Philippine Sea (CV-47) during the Korean War. However the book and movie "The Bridges at Toko-Ri" contain many elements of my fathers life. A prime example is the Operation Pinwheel event (aka operation pinhead), which is the use of the fighter aircraft propulsion to dock the carrier.
My mom said the movie put a very kind spin on what really happened as my dad was "completely livid" whenever it was discussed during the time after the war.
Tex's final command was unique, he commanded VFAW-3, a NAVY squadron that reported directly to NORAD. The airplane was the Douglass F4-D Skyray known for high rate of climb. VFAW-3 took the 1959 intra-service gunnery shoot (aka "Top Gun") under Tex's command. A newspaper article describing it's operation can be found here. A picture of Tex and one here.
An amusing anecdote regarding the press, which my father despised (WW II Japanese torpedo depth settings), some reporter from an LA newspaper got a Cessna or something, flew down to TJ or Encinada, then flew back north with a few sacks of flour to scatter around LA. This reporter wrote a fear mongering item in the news about how our southern border could be penetrated by commies at will or some such rot. Sadly my old man was not able to rebut this, despite having pictures of the Cessna going over the border, both north and south, taken from a plane that could turn a Cessna into confetti.
One of my earliest memories is of an airshow at North Island on some guy's shoulders (being 4) and a few people going "here come's your dad, here comes your dad" and this horrendously loud plane goes by, very low, very close (we had good seats), and upside down. Then the voices "there goes your dad, there goes your dad" and a loud boom as it went supersonic.
I like airshows ^^
I recently discover a short biography in the "Libraette", a company called Librascope's internal newsletter (Jan. 1960) It helped to flesh out some of the details. It can be viewed here on page 3 to the right. Many thanks to the folks at Librascope for preserving and publishing this treat for my family.
The original site for this with working links can be found here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.oneillselectronicmuseum.com/tex_index.html