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    Never Call Me a Hero: A Legendary American Dive-Bomber Pilot Remembers the Battle of Midway
    Unavailable
    Never Call Me a Hero: A Legendary American Dive-Bomber Pilot Remembers the Battle of Midway
    Unavailable
    Never Call Me a Hero: A Legendary American Dive-Bomber Pilot Remembers the Battle of Midway
    Ebook459 pages5 hours

    Never Call Me a Hero: A Legendary American Dive-Bomber Pilot Remembers the Battle of Midway

    By N. Jack "Dusty" Kleiss, Timothy Orr and Laura Orr

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Hailed as "the single most effective pilot at Midway" (World War II magazine), Dusty Kleiss struck and sank three Japanese warships at the Battle of Midway, including two aircraft carriers, helping turn the tide of the Second World War. This is his extraordinary memoir. 

    NATIONAL BESTSELLER • "AN INSTANT CLASSIC" —Dallas Morning News

    On the morning of June 4, 1942, high above the tiny Pacific atoll of Midway, Lt. (j.g.) "Dusty" Kleiss burst out of the clouds and piloted his SBD Dauntless into a near-vertical dive aimed at the heart of Japan’s Imperial Navy, which six months earlier had ruthlessly struck Pearl Harbor. The greatest naval battle in history raged around him, its outcome hanging in the balance as the U.S. desperately searched for its first major victory of the Second World War. Then, in a matter of seconds, Dusty Kleiss’s daring 20,000-foot dive helped forever alter the war’s trajectory.

    Plummeting through the air at 240 knots amid blistering anti-aircraft fire, the twenty-six-year-old pilot from USS Enterprise’s elite Scouting Squadron Six fixed on an invaluable target—the aircraft carrier Kaga, one of Japan’s most important capital ships. He released three bombs at the last possible instant, then desperately pulled out of his gut-wrenching 9-g dive. As his plane leveled out just above the roiling Pacific Ocean, Dusty’s perfectly placed bombs struck the carrier’s deck, and Kaga erupted into an inferno from which it would never recover.

    Arriving safely back at Enterprise, Dusty was met with heartbreaking news: his best friend was missing and presumed dead along with two dozen of their fellow naval aviators. Unbowed, Dusty returned to the air that same afternoon and, remarkably, would fatally strike another enemy carrier, Hiryu. Two days later, his deadeye aim contributed to the destruction of a third Japanese warship, the cruiser Mikuma, thereby making Dusty the only pilot from either side to land hits on three different ships, all of which sank—losses that crippled the once-fearsome Japanese fleet.

    By battle’s end, the humble young sailor from Kansas had earned his place in history—and yet he stayed silent for decades, living quietly with his children and his wife, Jean, whom he married less than a month after Midway. Now his extraordinary and long-awaited memoir, Never Call Me a Hero, tells the Navy Cross recipient’s full story for the first time, offering an unprecedentedly intimate look at the "the decisive contest for control of the Pacific in World War II" (New York Times)—and one man’s essential role in helping secure its outcome.

    Dusty worked on this book for years with naval historians Timothy and Laura Orr, aiming to publish Never Call Me a Hero for Midway’s seventy-fifth anniversary in June 2017. Sadly, as the book neared completion in 2016, Dusty Kleiss passed away at age 100, one of the last surviving dive-bomber pilots to have fought at Midway. And yet the publication of Never Call Me a Hero is a cause for celebration: these pages are Dusty’s remarkable legacy, providing a riveting eyewitness account of the Battle of Midway, and an inspiring testimony to the brave men who fought, died, and shaped history during those four extraordinary days in June, seventy-five years ago.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMay 23, 2017
    ISBN9780062692368
    Author

    N. Jack "Dusty" Kleiss

    Norman Jack “Dusty” Kleiss (1916–2016) grew up in Coffeyville, Kansas, during the Great Depression, before attending the United States Naval Academy, from which he graduated in 1938. A carrier-based pilot of Scouting Squadron Six attached to USS Enterprise, he was awarded the Navy Cross and Distinguished Flying Cross. Captain Kleiss (USN, Ret.) was married to his wife, Jean, for more than sixty years before her passing in 2006.

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    Reviews for Never Call Me a Hero

    4.5/5

    14 ratings4 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Great story of a great man. He was a hero.
    • 5/5
      Excellent personal history of a man who did his job well at Midway. Cogent on site review and analysis of the many mistakes made by senior leaders that were overcome by individuals, frequently through heroic acts. First notation that I recall: which states Halsey's determination not to send the Devastators out with the very defective Mark 13 torpedo. His subsequent hospital stay put Admirals Fletcher and Spruance in charge. They overlooked or ignored Halsey's concerns and sent their torpedo squadron out with virtually no chance of causing any damage. Their courageous attacks drew the Japanese fighters to their low levels and enabled the SBDs to stage their successful bombing runs resulted in most of these bombers being destroyed.The tactical decisions to form coordinated attacks was forestalled by Hornet's late start. Many casualties were the result of pilots running out of gas, because of these delays, compounded by a too fast, fuel wasting approach.A serious and loud WELL DONE to the two co-creators, Timothy and Laura Orr, of this splendid memoir.
    • 5/5
      This is a Naval Aviator's view of events prior to and during Midway. This is a wonderful read - along with "Incredible Victory", also on SCRIBD. Good men ... Sailors.
    • 5/5
      5664. Never Call Me a Hero A Legendary American Dive-Bomber Pilot Remembers the Battle of Midway, by N. Jack "Dusty" Klein with Timothy and Laura Orr (read 16 Dec 2019) This a good book to read. It is by a crack pilot who dropped bombs on three Japanese ships during the battle of Midway. The author was born 7 March 1916 in Coffeyville, Kansas. He entered the Naval Academy in 1934. After graduating in 1938 he applied to be a Navy pilot. While awaiting flight training he served on the cruiser Vincennes, the destroyer Goff, and the destroyer Yarnell. Then in August 1940 he started flight training at Pensacola and after completing that successfully was assigned to the aircraft carrier Enterprise. In June 1942 he was in the battle of Midway and had great success therein. All of this is told of with considerable detail as is his career thereafter. He was 99 when he did this book but had a lot of material so did not have to rely only on his memory. He died 22 April 2016, age 100. The book is consistently interesting and when he was in the battle it is super-exciting. I stood in awe of the fact that he apparently enjoyed the very dangerous things he did and did so well.