September 2 in U.S. military history
1944: An Avenger torpedo bomber – flown Lt. (junior grade) George H.W. Bush – is shot down by intense anti-aircraft fire after the planes attack Japanese positions on the island of Chichijima. The future president is the only crewmember of his stricken plane to survive, and is picked up by the submarine USS Finback after spending four hours floating in a liferaft.
1945: Japan surrenders to the United States on the deck of the battleship USS Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay. World War II is finally over.
Meanwhile in French Indochina, American military officers join Ho Chi Minh and General Vo Nguyen Giap for a celebration in Hanoi as Vietnam declares independence from French rule. American aircraft fly overhead while a Vietnamese band plays the “Star-Spangled Banner” to commemorate the event. However, with President Franklin Roosevelt’s passing and Joseph Stalin’s “Iron Curtain” descending across Eastern Europe, the Harry S. Truman administration withdraws their backing of Asian nationalism in favor of the French in order to maintain an allied front of Western nations against the spreading threat of Communism. In 20 years, America will meet General Giap again – as enemies in a grueling war.
1958: An Air Force C-130 takes off from Incirlik Air Base in Turkey for a signals intelligence-gathering mission along the border with Soviet Armenia. The crew inadvertently stray off course and are intercepted by four MiG-17 fighters, which take turns shooting the unarmed reconnaissance plane. The C-130 crashes, killing all 17 aboard. When confronted, the Soviet Union says they found a wrecked plane and repatriates the remains of the plane’s six crewmembers, but says nothing of the 11 Security Service airmen that were also aboard.
