11. USS Finback rescued a future President of the United States
On September 1, 1944, the submarine USS Finback rescued three downed aviators, a torpedo bomber crew, from the Pacific waters near Iwo Jima. The following day, operating with an escort of two F6F Hellcats, Finback responded to radio messages of a downed pilot north of the island. It took Finback over two hours to reach the site of the reported downed airman, maneuvering on the surface under the protection of the Hellcats. Hoping to locate all of the three men of the crew from the downed torpedo bomber, Finback’s sailors found only the pilot. He identified himself as Lt (j.g.) George Herbert Walker Bush, and reported he had not seen the parachutes of his crew.
Finback searched the area, assisted by Hellcats above, for two hours before it was dispatched to rescue another downed pilot, reported offshore in the range of Japanese guns on Haha Jima. Finback, forced to submerge to avoid Japanese fire, passed near enough to the pilot in a life raft that he could seize the exposed periscope. He held the periscope while the submarine towed the raft away from the island, finally surfacing after Finback had placed five miles between itself and the Japanese guns. The five rescued airmen remained in Finback until September 29, when the submarine arrived at Midway Island. They witnessed Finback sinking two Japanese ships, and endured the retaliatory depth charging with the submarine’s crew.