DICK MCGILL
Age: 85
Born: March 14, 1925
Hometown: Conesville, Iowa
Residence: La Quinta, PGA West
Military branch: U.S. Navy
Years served: July 1, 1943 - April 22, 1946
Rank: Aviation radioman third class
Family: Two children, Paul McGill and Marcia McGill of Indio; two grandchildren; two great-grandchildren.
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U.S. Navy veteran Dick McGill, a gunner assigned to an SBD dive bombing squadron, was assigned to one Navy air station after another before finally crossing the Pacific for overseas duty.
The excessively trained gunner never got to fire a shot in combat. The war ended shortly after he shipped out.
McGill, a farm boy raised near Conesville, Iowa — population 300 — lived a “Little House on the Prairie” lifestyle before enlisting in July of 1943.
“Our farm was adjacent to a one-room country school house with a bell to announce the beginning of class and the end of recess,” McGill said.
He spent first through eighth grade at the little school house.
When he attended high school, the entire student body consisted of about 40 kids. There were just nine students in his graduating class of 1942.
The crops were good, but times were tough during the Depression.
While neighbors were driving tractors, his father was still farming with horses.
McGill, the oldest of three children, worked the farm from the time he was very young.
“My father didn't hesitate to solicit our help as soon as we were able,” he said. “At the ripe old age of 6, I was milking four cows, morning and evening.”
It was during his youth that McGill became fascinated with flying. His dad “scraped up a couple of bucks,” and arranged a 15-minute flight in a Stinson Gullwing aircraft.
“The pilot let me sit up front with him. I will never forget that ride. It opened up a whole new world for me. I loved it then and still do today.”
After the Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, McGill, a high school senior, was hell-bent on joining the war effort — but his dad wouldn't hear of it.
He tried again after graduation, but he was only 17 and had to get parental permission.
He decided to enlist in the Marine Corps, picked up the requisite paperwork from the recruiter, and presented the forms to his father.
“My father said, ‘Let me take a look at those papers you want me to sign,'” McGill said. “He promptly tore them in two.”
Biding his time until he turned 18, he left the farm to attend Muscatine Junior College, living with an aunt and uncle who offered the young man a place to stay and a job to help pay his way.
While attending junior college, he made friends with Harold Davis. McGill talked Davis into joining the Navy Air Corps. Davis was accepted, but McGill was told the program was filled up at the time.
McGill was eventually sent to boot camp in Great Lakes, Ill. On a bulletin board at the base, a notice was posted announcing that aerial gunners were needed, and those who qualified would be sent to Tennessee for radio and radar instruction.
He soon found himself on a train headed for Memphis.
“I am now a happy camper,” he said, adding that although he wasn't destined to be a pilot, he'd soon be up in a plane.
After graduating from radio-radar school, McGill was sent to Jacksonville, Fla. for pre-flight training, where the men had to qualify by skeet shooting with a shotgun.
“My dad's duck hunting training really paid off here,” McGill said. “I qualified in short order.”
McGill and his buddy, Joe Micare, were the only two Navy gunners to be assigned to an all-Marine dive bombing squadron at Cecil Field, Jacksonville, Fla., McGill said.
The men received directions for their first training session — dive bombing on a specific target from about 10,000 feet.
He said the gunners were instructed to keep their intercom mike open, confirm to the pilot that the dive brakes were in place for the dive, and call out the altitude to the pilot, because, “He's going to be busy staying on his target,” McGill explained.
McGill would look back over his shoulder at the instruments and call the altitude out to the pilot as the plane hurtled down toward the ocean.
“I loved it,” he said.
When training was completed, the squadrons were broken up because the pilots were needed as instructors.
The friends were transferred to North Island, San Diego, to await further orders.
About a month later, McGill was assigned to VC 14, a torpedo bombing squadron. He was sent to a naval air station in Oxnard, where his gunnery duties consisted of a operating a single .30-caliber machine gun from the tail of the airplane and communicating on the radio.
McGill's squadron practiced anti-submarine warfare and skip and dive bombing operation at bases around the country, including Twentynine Palms Naval Air Station.
After more moving and training, McGill was finally aboard an aircraft carrier headed to Barbers Point, near Oahu.
Dumped on the island with nothing to do for 12 days, the squadron was finally assigned to a new carrier.
“We were on our way to Guam to get ready for the final push against Japan,” he said.
During the trip, the atomic bomb was dropped, the war was over, and the ship returned to Barber's Point.
Back in the States, McGill was assigned to Air Transportation Service until his discharge.
Flying around the country aboard a C-47 transport plane, “I was like a glorified stewardess,” he said, laughing. “All I had to do was check the cargo and manifest report, see that everyone aboard had a box lunch, and turn on the generator switch for the pilot.”
After his discharge, McGill took immediate advantage of the GI Bill and took flying lessons, becoming a commercial pilot.
He did a little instructing and flew some charters, but a different career took flight.
“I've been in the real estate business for 54 years,” he said.
He still has his pilot's license and he continues to indulge his lifelong love of flying.
