He was a fat boy, shy, bookwormish, overfond of baker's buns. His father, a St. Louis lawyer, christened him Edward H. O'Hare. But the neighborhood dubbed him "Butch." Hard-muscled, no longer fat, he was still "Butch" when he took his diploma at Annapolis, then went on to Pensacola to train as a U.S. Navy flyer.
He was a lieutenant, a fighter pilot attached to the carrier Lexington, when the Japs came over on a February day in 1942. Alone against nine bombers roaring in for a kill, Butch O'Hare shot down five, damaged a...
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