On June 12, 1924, future President George H. W. Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, entering a world that would soon test his physical courage on a global stage. Following the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Bush deferred his university education and enlisted in the United States Navy on his eighteenth birthday, rapidly advancing to become one of the youngest naval aviators in the entire fleet. He was assigned to fly the Grumman TBM Avenger, a heavy, single-engine torpedo bomber designed to strike enemy warships across the vast expanses of the Pacific theater.
Bush’s wartime service nearly cost him his life in September 1944, when his aircraft was struck by intense anti-aircraft fire during a bombing raid over the heavily fortified island of Chichi Jima. Despite his cockpit filling with thick smoke and his engine catching fire, he successfully completed his bombing run on a radio station before ordering his crew to bail out and parachuting into the ocean. Stranded alone in a small rubber life raft just miles from enemy shores, Bush was rescued by a surfacing American submarine, an intense survival experience that permanently shaped his stoic leadership style and deep sense of public duty.
