The Wingmen, page 1
The WINGMEN
The Unlikely, Unusual,
Unbreakable Friendship Between
JOHN GLENN and
TED WILLIAMS
Adam Lazarus
CITADEL PRESS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
CITADEL PRESS BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2023 Adam Lazarus, LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
CITADEL PRESS and the Citadel logo are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
ISBN: 978-0-8065-4250-8
First Hardcover Edition: September 2023
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023936121
First electronic edition: September 2023
ISBN: 978-0-8065-4252-2 (ebook)
For Lieutenant Commander Leonard P. Siegelman,
USNR (1916−2001),
Technical Sergeant Arnold H. Lazarus,
USA (1921−2013),
Staff Sergeant Darrell H. “Buddy” Lazarus,
USA (1924−2017),
and all those who have served this country.
And for Hannah, who was my Slugger.
wingman noun
wing· man | wi-mn
a : a pilot who flies behind and outside the leader of a flying formation
b informal: a male friend or partner who accompanies and supports a man in some activity
—Merriam-Webster Dictionary
“Fighter formation flying takes its basis in the rule that the wingman under all circumstances sticks with his section leader. The large squadron formation may break down to flights, divisions, and sections in combat, but the section is never broken up. The wingman’s first and primary duty ahead of everything else is to stick with his section leader.”
—First Lieutenant J. H. Glenn, Jr.,
MARINE FIGHTING SQUADRON 218
SQUADRON DOCTRINE, CIRCA 1948
Author’s Note
“The word is particularly objectionable to Koreans. They don’t like it. So don’t acquire a bad habit that can do more harm than all our good intentions could ever accomplish. Treat the Korean as you would your neighbor back home and you will find that courtesy and respect for the other fellow has its compensations in Korea as it does in Kalamazoo.”
—Armed Forces Pocket Guide: Korea,
September 1, 1950
A few of the quotations in this book include deeply offensive words relative to the United States of America’s enemies during both World War II and the Korean War. I have chosen to utilize the complete quotations—some spoken directly to me during the course of interviews, others from published memoirs, newspaper accounts, or other archives—and not alter the terminology. Exact citations of these quotations are available, along with every quotation appearing in this book, beginning on page 241.
I fully denounce these types of racial slurs, but as an author and historian I believe it is important to preserve the language as it was stated. For whatever reasons—ignorance, fear, malice, or just an attempt to isolate and dehumanize their enemies—some soldiers, sailors, and pilots from this time period employed these words. As did many citizens back home in the United States. I do not condone their use or make excuses for the people who said them, but I also will not pretend such racism and hate speech did not exist.
To anyone offended by the very sight of these words, I apologize and hope you will understand my reasoning. And to all readers of this book, it is my hope that you will agree that while such language may have been accepted in 1953 it should not be in 2023.
—Adam Lazarus
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Author’s Note
Prologue
CHAPTER ONE - From Fenway to Fighter Jets
CHAPTER TWO - My Life’s Work
CHAPTER THREE - The Blow and Go Group
CHAPTER FOUR - Three Runs, Three Hits, Three Errors
CHAPTER FIVE - Hospitality
CHAPTER SIX - Bush and Old Magnet Ass
CHAPTER SEVEN - Liberty
CHAPTER EIGHT - Every Man a Tiger
CHAPTER NINE - Big Shot
CHAPTER TEN - Life Begins at 40
CHAPTER ELEVEN - The Slow Boring of Hard Boards
CHAPTER TWELVE - My Greatest Regret
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - No Cure for the Common Birthday
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - Losing a Great Friend
CHAPTER FIFTEEN - Fighter Pilot, Astronaut, US Senator
Epilogue
Appendix
Acknowledgments
Notes
Notes
Prologue
Robert Francis “Bob” Conley was a big man on campus at Muskingum College in 1940. The previous fall, as a five-foot, ten-inch, 171-pound right guard, the junior from East Lansing, Michigan, helped power the Fighting Muskies football team to their first Ohio Athletic Conference championship in eight years. Behind Conley and left tackle Dave Evans, the offense averaged 177 rushing yards on their way to an 8−1 record. At the end of a season that included a 55−0 drubbing of rival Heidelberg in the finale of their conference schedule, the East Liverpool Review declared the Muskies the “greatest team in 25 years.”
Not long after the football season concluded, Conley was voted president of the Stag Club, his fraternity at the New Concord, Ohio, school. So, between weekly fraternity meetings, his studies as an Economics major, the football season—he also kicked the team’s extra points—and seeing his sweetheart, sophomore Jane Reed, Conley was very busy during his senior year.
Still, the good-looking upperclassman with dark wavy hair made time to mentor younger classmates, including a fellow offensive lineman and recent Stag Club pledge, sophomore John Glenn. Glenn joined the fraternity as a freshman, but he wasn’t a gung-ho member. He felt that initiations “got a little out of line once in a while.” At the end of Hell Week the active members blindfolded the pledges, loaded them up in a car, then dropped them off in the middle of nowhere. On a rural campus, that made for a considerable test, but not for Glenn, who had grown up less than two miles down the road.
“I didn’t have to peek to know exactly where we were going,” he remembered. “When we went across what bridge or whatever, I just knew by the sound where I was, and I think I almost beat them back to town after they had let us out.”
Football didn’t come as easily for Glenn. He was not in love with the game—he liked basketball more—and failed to earn a varsity letter his first two years at Muskingum. And unlike most of his teammates, he didn’t grow or increase his speed following high school. But he learned enough practicing next to the Muskies’ star right guard to remain on the team. Glenn would even later succeed Conley as the team’s place kicker.
“I enjoyed it,” Glenn said about his college football career, “but it wasn’t something that I was really that good at either.”
Bob Conley, however, was really good. He earned an Honorable Mention All-Conference selection in 1940.
As Conley’s playing days came to a close in November, he looked forward to starting a career in business following graduation in early June. But that spring, Conley, Jane, and a group of friends drove north to his home state of Michigan. During a visit to the naval air station in Gross Ile Conley fell in love with airplanes. Right after graduation he returned to Gross Ile, signed up for the naval aviation cadet program, and reported to the naval air station at Corpus Christi, Texas. The brand-new base had yet to receive a single aircraft for training. While new cadets sent to the naval air station in Pensacola, Florida flew right away, Conley spent five months at Corpus Christi picking up cigarette butts on the runway.
Eventually he was airborne. He took his first flight on December 1, 1941, six days before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Mostly flying a Boeing-Stearman N2S-2 biplane, Conley earned his wings the following spring as a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps Reserves. After marrying Jane back in her home state of Pennsylvania, Conley was posted to the naval air station in San Diego, California. By October he had received orders to the South Pacific. From a jeep carrier stationed off the island of New Caledonia, Conley’s catapult-launched observation floatplane sprung up in the air then made a perilous landing on a makeshift metal strip at Henderson Field on the island of Guadalcanal. A crew chief popped open the cockpit and shouted, “Welcome to the War!”
Conley served as operations officer for Marine Scout Bomber Squadron-142, a newly formed unit tasked with fending off Japanese naval efforts to retake the island. In rainy, misty, and darkening conditions on the evening of December 3, Conley piloted his SBD Dauntless above Japanese sea vessels, all the while avoiding anti-aircraft fire. He dropped a thousand-pound bomb on the starboard-side of a destroyer, which eventually sank.
Two weeks later, again in nasty weather and limited sunlight, Conley dropped ordnance that demolished an enemy gas dump at Rekata Bay, dealing a significant blow to Japanese vessels throughout the region. For his “daring, skill, and fearless devotion to duty,” Conley later received the Distinguished Flying Cross. By the end of the week, he had participated in another major raid, this time at Munda Point. During that mission he was separated from the squadron and suddenly found three Mitsubishi A6M long-range fighters (“Zeros”) firi ng at his tail.
“About then my gunner shot one and the Jap peeled off,” he wrote home. “Seconds later he sent another one down in flames. But the third Zero kept making runs as us. Finally, I dodged into some clouds and shook him off.”
Conley received a transfer to the First Marine Aircraft Wing (MAW) with Strike Command in February 1943. He also received considerable medical attention: three times he caught malaria, another constant threat to those fighting in the Pacific. Following a brief stopover in the United States—during which time he both trained new pilots at El Toro Marine Air Station in Santa Ana, California, and met his infant son, Robert Jr.—Conley rejoined the fighting as a member of Marine Aircraft Group-14 based in Okinawa. Throughout the summer of 1945 Conley’s squadron prepared to invade Japan, which refused to surrender despite Germany having done so several months earlier. Finally, once the United States had deployed nuclear bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Empire of Japan formally surrendered to the Allies, bringing peace to the Pacific theater. But not for long.
After the People’s Army in the northern part of Korea—backed by Communist leaders Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union and Mao Zedong of China—invaded the south, the United States entered that conflict on June 25, 1950.
“We are not at war,” President Harry S. Truman told the press four days later, while also confirming a reporter’s assessment that the United States was merely participating in a “United Nations police action.”
By late November 1951 more than 740,000 Americans had been asked to serve in a coalition of United Nations forces. At the same time, UN and Communist negotiators agreed to a thirty-day cease fire and set a December 27 deadline for an armistice agreement. But weeks of peace talks beneath snow-covered, olive-drab “truce tents” in Panmunjom broke down over several issues, including the exchange of prisoners of war and the north’s desire to continue building airfields throughout the cease fire.
Statistics released by the Department of Defense that month revealed more than 100,000 casualties to Americans during the eighteen months of war. The Marine Corps alone suffered 16,490, including 2,260 deaths.
Now a career Marine promoted to major in early 1948, Bob Conley awaited orders. Although promised eventual command of his own fighter squadron, Conley was first assigned to an exceedingly dull yet critical administrative role: assistant head of the Aviation Control Unit within the Personnel Department at Marine Corps Headquarters in Quantico, Virginia.
At the outset of the fighting in Korea, Congress approved the Selective Service Extension Act, authorizing the commander in chief to recall any military reservist regardless of desire to serve. One year later, Congress passed further legislation. The Universal Military Training and Services Act required that tours of duty be limited to a predetermined length. Each branch of the military set different parameters, but anyone whose tour of duty began prior to June 20, 1951, would serve between twelve and twenty-four months. Enlisted Marines served no more than sixteen months, officers no more than seventeen.
“The Marine Corps for the most part is releasing both officers and enlisted men before they serve the maximum time provided in the legislation,” the Associated Press reported. “Present plans call for release by June, 1952, of all Marine reservists who came on active duty before July, 1951.”
In response, the Department of Defense repeatedly increased their monthly recruitment goals. On December 8 the Pentagon announced intentions to bring in fifty-five thousand new bodies, including fourteen thousand for the Marine Corps. As that deadline rapidly approached, Major Conley’s department scrambled to find qualified, experienced pilots. And because enlisted Marines did not fly aircraft—some did serve aboard planes as radar operators—he needed officers.
Volunteer Reservists were the optimal candidates. These were considered “individuals that desired affiliation with the Marine Corps but whose personal activities did not permit them to participate in the demanding Organized Reserve program.” They possessed years of Marine Corps or Navy training, had in most cases served during World War II, and were an enormous pool from which to draw. Prior to the Korean War there were actually more Volunteer Reserve Marines (87,655) than career, or so-called regular Marines. And nearly a year into the war, 34,043 Volunteer Reservists—many of whom had not put on a uniform since the end of World War II—had still not been recalled to active duty.
“We called up a lot of them who really believed that they had been out of the service since they came home in 1945,” Conley remembered years later.
Beginning in the final weeks of 1951, Major Conley processed dozens, if not hundreds, of Volunteer Reserve cases per day. He eliminated some, assigned orders for others. And late into one evening, he reviewed the file of a recall candidate listed as “Williams, Theodore S.” The name sounded familiar, but with such a common last name, Conley didn’t give it much thought. “Williams, Theodore S.” met the criteria for reactivation. The Marine Corps Reserve captain was healthy, received high marks on fitness reports, and had previously served fourteen months as an instructor at the Navy’s premier aerial training center in Pensacola, Florida.
On January 7, 1952, Conley’s office airmailed a memo with the subject “Assignment to extended active duty involving flying” to the address on file: Fenway Park, Boston, Massachusetts.
Three nights later, while everyone at the Conley home was asleep, the phone rang. An angry Marine general was on the line.
“What are you doing?” the general shouted.
“General, I’m sleeping, it’s two o’clock in the morning,” Bob Conley answered.
“No, you called up Theodore [S.] Williams. Do you know who that is? That’s Ted Williams the baseball player. I’ve got the press all over me. What are you going to do about it?”
“Yes, I remember assigning a Theodore Williams. He’s a Marine pilot still on . . . Reserves. He is going to war.”
Conley hung up the phone and went back to sleep.
CHAPTER ONE
From Fenway to Fighter Jets
The 1951 Major League Baseball season proved yet another frustrating one for Ted Williams. Having collapsed down the stretch during the three previous American League pennant races, Williams’s Red Sox lost twelve of their final thirteen games to finish a distant third that year. And after Yankees ace Allie Reynolds no-hit Boston in late September, Williams sat out the club’s last four games with a bum ankle.
As had been the case during each of his ten seasons in a big-league uniform, Williams had enjoyed a spectacular year at the plate. During a Red Sox ten-game winning streak in late May, Williams hit .537, drove in twenty-two runs, and slammed fourteen extra-base hits. By season’s end, he led the ball club in nearly every offensive statistic, including home runs, runs batted in, and batting average. But he did not post the same eye-popping numbers the fans at Fenway Park had come to expect. Even his. 318 batting average, fourth in the American League, marked the lowest output during a full season of his career. Injuries coupled with age suggested to some that the thirty-three-year-old’s best days were behind him.
If true, fans and the Red Sox front office might no longer tolerate his occasional petulant outbursts. During an exhibition game that spring, Williams had reportedly spat at a crowd who cheered him striking out. The same Tampa Plant Field spectators had thoroughly booed him earlier in the game for not running out a ground ball back to the pitcher. He denied spitting but confirmed to the press “I don’t care whether they like me or not.”
“Breaking into a tantrum at this early date,” one sports columnist noted, “suggests that Ted is in mid-season form.”
Once the 1951 season ended, speculation swirled that the team had contemplated trading away the two-time Most Valuable Player in an effort to rebuild a franchise clearly trending in the wrong direction. The selfish, less-than-clutch image often presented by Boston sportswriters only added to the Hot Stove fodder that Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey should trade away Williams.
