Smitty

Not all flyers are tall, husky glamor boys. Lieut. Stephen Smith, U.S.N., is a slight 42-year-older with a heavy mustache. He has a wife, a 14-year-old daughter, two small sons. "Smitty" also has a record which will be hard to beat.

Smitty, who learned to fly about the time a lot of World War II pilots were learning to walk, has flown more than 6,200 hours. In 169 landings on carriers he has brought his plane in without even flattening a tire. Worst wear & tear on any of his planes has come from enemy gunfire, which was not accidental.

Smitty has been bombing Japs since the beginning of the war and has flown torpedo bombers more hours than any other living man in the Navy. Last week he was still at it, flying off an Essex-class carrier near the Philippines. Like Ty Cobb in his later years, Smitty now automatically sets a record every time he goes to bat.

"Dear Mom. . . ." Stephen Burdette Smith had to lie about his age to get into the Navy back in 1919. He was just 16 when he went off to boot camp at Great Lakes. In 1927, at aviation school, he took his first uncertain solo hop. Fifteen years later Chief Machinist's Mate Smith flew off the Enterprise against Jap-held Kwajalein, and on June 3, 1942, worrying about a photograph he had meant to send to his wife, Smitty in an old TBD chugged into the Battle of Midway.

"We went in 50 feet off the water without fighter cover," he remembers. "The Japs were firing into the water ahead of us and firing antiaircraft bursts to direct their fighters to us. A Zero riddled my radio and my armor plate and my radioman's armor plate, then shot up one of my gas tanks. I didn't think we had a chance so I went on in and got up close to the Jap carrier before I let the torpedo go. I think I got a hit. Mostly I was saying, 'Mom, I'm afraid you'll never get that picture.'"

Honors and Fogies. Out of 40 outmoded TBDs which had taken off from U.S. carriers that day, only four came back. Smitty's battered bomber was one of them. Mom got her picture. Smitty got 1) a commission as ensign; 2) a Navy Cross and a citation which read in part: "His extreme disregard of personal safety contributed materially to the success of our forces."

When Smitty, aged 41, became a lieutenant, he set another kind of record. With his "fogies" (extra pay for years of service), allowances and flying pay, he was earning $730 a month, became probably the Navy's best-paid lieutenant.

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