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15th Jul 2021

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Howard Kenyon USN

Posted on 7 July, 2014 by in ,

Howard enlisted in the Navy in June of 1942.  He felt like if he enlisted instead of waiting for his draft notice he would have a little bit of an option of which branch of the service he would go into.  Howard served in combat from the fall of 1942 until the end of the war.  He was assigned to VP11 in New Guinea aboard what was known as the PBY (he called it the flying dumbo).  He did a certain time on “Search and Destroy also Search and Rescue.  He helped three very close friends go into his outfit  VP11 and all three were killed.  Howard still suffers guilt over that even 70 yrs later.  Howard’s plane blew itself out of the air in a freak accident.  They spotted a Japanese submarine which they decided to sink but their bomb that they dropped was set to explode under the submarine but exploded at the water’s surface and blew his plane out of the air.  Howard was in the ocean for about four days before being rescued and hopping other Navy vessels to get back to his outfit.  Howard was on about 60 combat missions. after the mission and for three days after each mission they would get the next three days would be completely off the combat rotation for three days because of complete exhaustion.

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