D. Clarke Evans Photographer

Dean Caswell

Colonel, USMC
1943-1968

1stLt. Dean Caswell
USS Bunker Hill, 1945

I was in combat 110 times, I flew 56 different kinds of airplanes, and I am the last surviving Marine Ace from WWII

I was born in Banning, California and grew up in Texas. I was a Depression kid. In January, 1941 my cousin and I hitchhiked to Los Angeles. I had applied for entrance into a school of aeronautics to finish a degree. Over a bottle of bourbon, we joined the service because we had a draft notice in our pocket. That bottle of bourbon made me choose the Marine Corps. It was the first drink we’d had in our lives. I was in the Marine Corps for two weeks before Pearl Harbor at age 18. 

I got my wings in September, 1943 and boarded the aircraft carrier Bunker Hill. I got 110 landings and takeoffs and shot down 15 airplanes. The Bunker Hill was part of the task force to take Iwo Jima, Takarazuka, Okinawa and raze the major islands of Japan. They didn’t tell us anything about Iwo Jima before we got there. They said all we had to do was fly airplanes and kill Japanese. We thought there was going to be air support and we didn’t know there was going to be bad weather. We didn’t know a lot of things. We did what we had to do and we became pretty good pilots. We tried to put our ammunition into the mountain caves the Japanese had dug. I don’t know how successful we were. We killed a few pilots doing it. They ran into the mountain.  

 Our next job was Takarazuka, which was an island loaded with airplanes. We beat the place up. The island had one of the major anti-aircraft schools for the Japanese, and they were damned good. But Okinawa was the main objective. We had to clear the air out of Kyushu and Honshu. We helped destroy Tokyo. We saw a lot of action destroying the airfields and airplanes for those two big islands. I could shoot and was a damn good shot with the Corsair. I had to learn the shotgun when I was 13 and used the airplane about the same way. I did plenty of bomb and rocket dropping, but my biggest job was high-altitude intercept of Japanese fighters. That’s why I got so many airplanes.

 It was a bad war, especially because of the kamikaze, two of which hit the Bunker Hill on May 11, 1945 and destroyed just about anything on it. That was my worst day. It barely floated by the time we got through, and we lost 882 people. Most of my squadron was airborne. I was the duty officer for the squadron, so I was aboard when we were hit. My wingman and I were three decks below the hangar deck. We had unbreathable smoke in the ship, and that’s what killed most of the people. We put on our gas masks, which gave us five minutes. We climbed over stacks of dead bodies and finally got up to the hangar deck and started fighting fire. We were the only two who got out of the third deck. 

 They gave me the Silver Star for shooting down seven airplanes in one battle. I also have five Distinguished Flying Crosses and God knows how many air medals. I fought in WWII, two tours in Korea and one in Vietnam. I got promoted to brigadier general and turned it down flat. I didn’t want to go back to Vietnam. In 1951, I went to Korea and escorted B-29s at high altitude with a jet night fighter. The second tour I got back into the Corsair and supported troops at night under the flares. 

 I was in the Blue Angels in 1953 after Korea. I wasn’t with them very long. I went home to see Dad and Mom and got hit head-on by a drunk driver. It killed him, and knocked a hole in my head. Everything from my waist down was broken in many pieces. I had 20 operations. They wanted to take my leg off and I wouldn’t let them. I was in a cast for a year and a half.  

 My best day was when the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps pinned on my full colonel stripe. That was 1962 or 1963. I retired in 1968. I was in combat 110 times, I flew 56 different kinds of airplanes, and I am the last surviving Marine Ace from WWII. I wrote a book about my experiences–My Taking Flight. {02-18-19 • Austin, TX}