Richard Eugene Fleming
Captain Richard E. “Dick” Fleming was a Marine Corps pilot who flew with VMSB-231
He was shot down at the battle of Midway on 5 June 1942.
Branch
Marine Corps Reserve
Service Number O-6395
Current Status
Remains not recovered.
Pursuit Category
Based on circumstances of loss, this individual is considered permanently non-recoverable.
History
Richard Fleming was born on 2 November 1917 – a cold day in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was the second son of a well-to-do family; pater familias Michael Fleming had a stellar career with the M. A. Hanna Coal & Dock Company, rising from clerk to vice president in just fifteen years. The executive salary bought a big house at 1732 Summit Street, and allowed Mrs. Octavia (Forgette) Fleming to hire a live-in maid. Their sons – Ward, Dick, and James – wanted for little, receiving prep school educations and going on to college. Dick attended Saint Thomas Military Academy and the University of Minnesota with the class of 1939.
In point of personality alone, Fleming would have deserved a chapter in a book of personalities.... He cut a figure that held the eye: tall and lean, six-feet-two, dark-haired and dark-eyed, flashingly intelligent of eye, affable of manner, debonair, smiling. His easy-going courtesy made him immensely popular.... A brilliant student in school, mentally avid, scholarly by temperament. His tastes ran toward things of intellect and art – in particular, oddly enough, Japanese art. One of his closest friends was a Japanese merchant of St. Paul, with whom he liked to confabulate on matters of Oriental philosophy and esthetics. From this Japanese friend he obtained treasures of a kind that he prized: rare oriental pipes. His hobby was the collection of pipes, of which he had a notable display.
Thanks to his military prep school education, Fleming was intrigued by a career in uniform – as long as it was on the ground. “His brother, Ward Fleming, was an aviation enthusiast, but Richard as a boy hardly thought about flying,” wrote Lowell Thomas. “He was without the usual winged fancy for airplanes so common in the young.”[1] An impulsive decision in 1938 changed his career trajectory. The Army Air Corps held intake examinations at the University of Minnesota in 1938; Fleming walked over with a buddy, and decided to try out on the spur of the moment. Two hundred young men applied: only nine were accepted. Dick Fleming was one of them.
Fleming graduated in 1939 with a bachelor of arts and an Army second lieutenant’s commission. Enamored at last with the idea of flight, he resigned from the Army and joined the Marine Corps on 15 December. On 25 January 1940, PFC Fleming was accepted as an aviation cadet and dispatched to Pensacola, Florida for training. He was not a natural pilot – “he showed up so badly that he thought he would flunk out” – but learned quickly. Eleven months later, Dick Fleming received his “wings of gold” and a new set of second lieutenant’s bars indicating his new rank in the Marine Corps Reserve.
The Corps sent Fleming and several of his classmates across the country to San Diego, where they joined the rear echelon of Marine Scouting Squadron Two (VMS-2) in January 1941. This was an important development for the young lieutenant – however, his excitement was tempered by sad news from home. After months of declining health, Michael Fleming passed away on 12 February 1941, at the age of sixty-one. Dick Fleming was granted a week of emergency leave to attend his father’s funeral and help attend to family affairs.
Lieutenant Fleming spent the next several months in San Diego, serving as the squadron’s assistant flight officer and shuttling planes from station to station. The rest of Marine Aircraft Wing Two was deployed to Ewa Field, Hawaii; Fleming may have dreamed of such an exotic post, and in the summer of 1941 he got to experience it firsthand. The rear echelon of Scouting Two shipped over to Ewa, and on 1 July 1941 were renamed Marine Scout Bomber Squadron 231 (VMSB-231). There was even more good news: Fleming would learn to fly the Vought SB2U Vindicator – one of the more advanced bombers available to Marine squadrons at the time, and very different from their old Curtiss SOC Seagull. [3]
Fleming spent the next six months practicing his craft at Ewa Field. He kept in regular touch with his mother until late in the year; in a missive dated 3 December 1941, he wrote that “this is the last time I’ll be able to write for probably sometime. I’m sorry I can’t give you any details; it’s that secret.”[4] That secret saved the lives of many of the men of VMSB-231. On 5 December, eighteen of their Vindicators took off from Ewa and, after a flight of nearly two hours, touched down on the deck of the USS Lexington. Two days later, Pearl Harbor was attacked, the field at Ewa bombed, and most of the American Pacific Fleet sent to the bottom of the harbor. By virtue of being at sea on exercises, the carriers and the planes aboard were spared.
The pilots would not have long to wait for operations orders. They returned to Ewa shortly after the attack, and on December 17 were ordered to proceed to Midway. Their 1,137 mile flight set a record for distance covered by a group of single-engine aircraft. Although antiquated, the Vindicators were welcomed by the garrison at Midway who had precious little in the way of air power.
As the bombers and Brewster Buffalo fighters of VMF-211 were organized into Marine Air Group 22 (MAG-22), the bomber force was split in two. Approximately half of VMSB-231 departed Midway to form the nucleus of a reorganized squadron, while the remainder – including Lieutenant Fleming – joined VMSB-241, commanded by Major Lofton R. Henderson.
On 25 May 1942, Fleming and five other lieutenant received promotions to captain. Every man in the squadron knew what was coming – they would likely be called on to fight a vastly superior Japanese force like the one that had attacked their comrades on Wake Island – and, as on Wake, they would give their all with little hope to survive. Understandably, this put many of the men in a pensive mood. “Suffice it to say that I’ve been prepared for this rendezvous for some time,” Fleming wrote to a friend named Peggy Crooks on 30 May 1942. “This is something that comes once for all of us; we can only bow before it.”[5] Fleming was outwardly confident, playing piano for his fellow pilots, boasting about finishing off Japanese carriers, and coolly catnapping during some of the most stressful on-and-off periods leading up to the attack they knew was coming.
Some of Fleming’s confidence may have stemmed from his new airplane: one of the newer SBD-2 Dauntless dive bombers the day after his promotion. Junior pilots got to fly the Vindicators; one of them, Second Lieutenant Thomas Moore, remembered a cockpit checkout conducted by Captain Fleming.
The planes we flew were ancient fabric covered SB2Us, and they had not improved with age. In fact, though they were designated as dive bombers, they could not be dived safely at too steep an angle. We were all more than just a little worried about the prospect of having to use them in a real attack.
Fleming was more than pleased to have a new plane at his disposal, especially as it placed him in Major Henderson’s command section. He was also serving as the squadron’s navigation officer, and spent considerable time in the air working out plots on his map board. The captain was also confident in his companion, Corporal Eugene T. Card, who manned the radio and rear-facing gun. Card was a former Scouting Two man, and Fleming trusted him to the point of allowing Card to fly the plane on occasion.[6]
Early in the morning of June 4, 1942, the aviators on Midway got the word to stand by and warm up their aircraft. As the fighters of VMF-211 roared off to intercept waves of incoming Japanese aircraft, the bombers climbed into the air and headed towards the spot where the Japanese fleet was believed to be lurking. They had barely cleared the island when puffs of antiaircraft fire and roiling smoke could be seen from Midway. Corporal Card noticed the smoke, and called Fleming on the intercom. “Well,” Fleming said after a pause, “this is it, all right.”[7]
As Major Henderson peeled off from the formation – he flew alongside, to reassure and shepherd some of his greener pilots – Fleming was left in charge of leading the first wave of the American attack. This required considerable navigational skill, and Fleming turned over control of the aircraft to Card while he worked on his map board. Their flight was level and uneventful, until Card noticed Second Lieutenant Daniel Iverson closing on their aircraft. Fleming looked up to see Iverson frantically gesturing down and to the right. He soon saw what they were after. “We’ve made contact,” he called to Card. “There’s a ship at 10 o’clock. Do you see it?” A few minutes later, he shouted “Here they come!” Card swung his seat around and ran out his guns as the first Japanese fighters came tearing through the formation.[8]
Henderson had barely started his attack run when his Dauntless, flowering smoke and flame, dropped out of control into the ocean – leaving Fleming in command of the flight. He sighted in on the carrier Hiryu and, though enemy gunfire dropped several more of his comrades, managed to release his bomb and pull out of his dive barely 400 feet above sea level.
Corporal Card heard something go “Wuf!” (It sounded, he later stressed, just the way a person would say “Wuf” in a normal voice.) Then he heard it again, and again. Big, black, soft-looking balls of smoke, began to appear. It meant that they were now within antiaircraft range as well.
A moment’s relief when they hit the cloud bank – then worse than ever when they broke out the other side. At 2,000 feet they nosed down and began their final run. Now there was nothing between them and the enemy, twisting and turning below….
Captain Fleming cut loose with a burst of his own, saw a whole gun crew topple over. Facing aft from his rear-seat position, Corporal Card could see very little, but he could hear more than enough. To the “wufs” of the antiaircraft fire there was now added the steady crackle of small-arms fire. The SBD lurched – “Somebody threw a bucket of bolts in the prop.” Small holes appeared all over the cockpit and a thousand needles pricked his right ankle.
Captain Fleming was running into still more trouble. Pulling out from his drop, another “bucket of nails” hit the prop. Something hard kicked Corporal Card’s left leg to one side, and more holes appeared all over the cockpit. Then as the plane leveled off, Card caught his only good look at the carrier – a “writhing monster” bristling with fast-firing guns, all pointing straight up, a steady jet of flame pouring from each…. The plane was hit; he was hit; he couldn’t see how they’d ever get out of this alive; the only hope was they’d take a few Japanese with them.[9]
Fleming threw his plane into a series of twists and turns, hugging the waterline until finally they were out of range and the Zeros gave up their chase. Despite the holes in their aircraft and a shot-out tire, the captain managed to execute a three-point landing. “Boys, there is one ride I am glad is over,” he called out to the Marines who rushed to his aircraft. Richard Fleming reached over to shake Gene Card’s hand as the wounded gunner was carried off on a stretcher; it was the last time the two would meet.
For a long while we survivors waited together on the field, listening for the sound of more engines in the sky. Now and again we thought we heard another, but it was only a mirage of sound.... As we walkd toward the command post to make our report, Dick Fleming shook his head. "Eight out of sixteen," he stated to no one in particular.
Though all the airmen were glad to be back on the ground, they were not given much time to rest or recover from the shock of their first combat. Major Benjamin W. Norris, who succeeded Lofton Henderson in command, reorganized his surviving pilots and gunners into two smaller sections of Dauntlesses and Vindicators. Only a dozen planes were still airworthy; Fleming’s Dauntless was too dangerous to fly, but Norris wanted his most experienced pilots in cockpits. Fleming bumped 2Lt. George Lumpkin from SB2U-3 #2088 (squadron number 2). He knew this specific plane well: it was the Vindicator he had flown to Midway when he first arrived.[10] With Gene Card out of commission, Fleming would fly with Lumpkin’s regular gunner, PFC George A. Toms.
The night strike departed 1900 hours – after dark at Norris’ insistence; he had seen the effects of Japanese fighter power on the bombers earlier in the day – and searched high and low for signs of the Japanese fleet. They found nothing, and were compelled to fly back through bad weather on a moonless night. The plane flown by Major Norris went down at sea; Captain Fleming assumed command of the remaining Vindicator pilots, while Captain Marshall Tyler took charge of the Dauntlesses. The exhausted crews tried to snatch a few hours of rest: many, including Fleming, had slept only four hours out of thirty-six.
June 5 brought no respite to the beleaguered pilots and gunners – Fleming, like the others, managed only four hours of rack time before being awakened by a new report. Recon planes reported two Japanese battleships withdrawing from Midway; one was badly damaged and trailing oil. The Marines manned their planes, probably grumbling about the previous night’s report of damaged ships which had resulted in frustration and the loss of Major Norris. However, they were airborne by 0700, with Richard Fleming leading five struggling Vindicators which, under any other circumstances, would have been deemed unfit to fly.
After 45 minutes in the air, a sharp-eyed pilot spotted an oil slick – and it was heading in the direction reported by the scout planes. The Americans followed the slick until spotting the enemy at 0805. The two ships were not battleships, but heavy cruisers – Mogami and Mikuma. The two cruisers had been badly damaged the day before; not by American action, but by colliding with each other. Both made tempting, slow-moving targets to the diving Americans, but both were still able to put up a serious anti-aircraft defense – especially against slow, beaten aircraft flown by tired and strained men.
Mikuma and her escort put up an extremely rapid, accurate screen of flak – and singled out Fleming’s plane as the leader. Vindicator #2 began trailing smoke, and then erupted in flame as Fleming and Toms continued to dive.
Our attack was initiated at 4,000 feet out of the sun. AA was fired at us at approximately two second intervals. Smoke was coming out of Captain Fleming's engine throughout his dive, and on the pull-out his plane burst into flames.
We made glide-bombing attack with Captain Fleming's section attacking from stern and on my left. Captain Fleming's plane burst into flames about half-way down in glide.
Captain Fleming was leading the attack and he was hit by AA fire and went down in flames. He stayed in his dive even though he was in flames and dropped his bomb at 500 feet. He got a near miss on the stern of the ship.
VMSB-241 squadron scored no hits on Mikuma. The strike was their last of the battle for Midway; the utterly exhausted survivors would finally have a chance to rest and process the events of the preceding two days. News reports covering the aviators’ bravery soon reached papers in the United States – particularly Captain Fleming’s final dive. A myth arose that Fleming’s bomb struck a Japanese “battleship” and that he deliberately crashed into the vessel; this rumor still persists, though most reliable sources (including the statements of Fleming’s fellow pilots) offer conflicting stories.[11]
Fleming was awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor – the first to go to a Marine flyer in World War II. Newspapers across the country carried his photograph and story, and a new destroyer escort (DE-32, USS Fleming) was named in his honor.
“Such was the end of the brilliant, implusive Fleming,” wrote Lowell Thomas, “whose desperate tactics in dive bombing were coldly deliberate.”[12]
Richard Fleming has cenotaphs at the Honolulu Memorial Tablets of the Missing and Fort Snelling National Cemetery.
[1] Lowell Thomas, These Men Shall Never Die (Philadelphia: The John C. Winston Company, 1943), 172.
[2] Associated Press, “President Presents Finest Medal In All the World to Hero’s Mother,” The Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY) 25 November 1942.
[3] VMSB-231 was the second Marine Corps squadron to fly these bombers, which had been in Navy service since 1937.
[4] Robert J. Cressman and J. Michael Wenger, Infamous Day: Marines at Pearl Harbor (Washington, DC: Marine Corps Historical Center, 1992), 2.
[5] Robert J. Cressman, Steve Ewing, Barrett Tillman, Mark Horan, Clark Reynolds and Stan Cohen, “A Glorious Page In Our History”: The Battle of Midway, 4-6 June 1942 (Missoula: Pictoral Histories Publishing Company, 1990), 47.
[6] The Dauntless had dual controls; if the gunner swiveled his seat to face forward, he could assume limited control over the airplane. While some pilots were reluctant to let their gunners take charge, Fleming insisted on the practice – which paid off in combat, as Card did much of the flying at Midway. The impact was not lost on Card, who later remarked “Imagine me flying point out Jap hunting!” Cressman et. al., “A Glorious Page,” 74.
[7] Ibid., 65.
[8] Ibid., 74.
[9] Walter Lord, Incredible Victory: The Battle of Midway.
[10] Cressman et. al., “A Glorious Page,” 144.
[11] For a good synopsis of the deliberate dive debate, see Russ Padden “Richard E. Fleming Kamikaze Myth.”
[12] Thomas, 173.
Decorations
Purple Heart
For wounds resulting in his death in action, 5 June 1942.
Next Of Kin Address
Home address of mother, Mrs. Octavia Fleming.
At the time of Richard’s death, Octavia was staying at the Commodore Hotel
Location Of Loss
Fleming was shot down at sea after departing from Midway Island.
I just brought a lot of various miscellaneous items and looking through them I found a letter from Midway Island dated April 27th 1942. It is marked Lt. R.E. Fleming USMC Midway Island. The letter is to Miss Mary Willard, presumably his girlfriend or a family friend. I am wondering what should I do with it? Is it fair to sell, are there living relatives? I know he has a brother, he was talked about in the letter. Any thoughts and ideas would be appreciated. I wish to be fair to this person who died a brave death to help his country.
As the 80th anniversary from this battle passed this year, we should’ve had a momentous celebration to honor military personnel like Cpt. Fleming who gave his life for this country. Being awarded the first Medal of Honor says it all but it isn’t enough. We throw around the word “hero” all the time. Richard Eugene Fleming was a true American hero, and a directly responsible for the freedoms and way of life we are able to enjoy in our great nation.
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