The rear cockpit of the SBD was equipped with emergency flight controls, as well as a seat that could be pivoted to face forward or backward. For most of the intervening ten months, he flew behind Ensign William “Doug” Carter of Bombing Squadron Eight (VB-8). Moore was with the Hornet in Norfolk the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and he was still with her in October 1942, in the South Pacific, when she was sunk at the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands. He greeted me at the door and invited me into his dining room, where he had photographs and old news clippings spread out on the table. I went to Moore’s handsome home in Berkeley, California, to record his recollections of the historic battle. When they did fly, they took the same risks as the pilots and gave their lives in the same numbers.
When not on the flight rosters, they were returned to the aircraft repair shacks on the hangar decks, where they stood deck watches and were put to belting ammunition, hauling ordnance, and pushing planes. Remarkably, in most cases they received no formal flight or gunnery training before being placed in the cockpit.
All radioman-gunners of that era were enlisted men, although a large proportion (Moore among them) eventually went on to become officers. They manned the rear cockpits of carrier dive bombers and torpedo planes, alternately handling the radio gear and. More commonly, he and his kind were called radioman-gunners, radio-gunners, rear-gunners, back-seat men, or rear-seaters. At the Battle of Midway in June 1942, he flew off the aircraft carrier Hornet (CV-8) in the rear seat of an SBD Dauntless dive bomber.Īviation radioman second class was his rating. Right out of boot camp he was sent to radio school on North Island, San Diego. He was first tagged as Slim at East Denver High School in Denver, Colorado, where he graduated with the class of ’39. He uses a cane to get around, and by his own admission he’s “getting a little long in the tooth”-but he stands six feet two inches tall and doesn’t carry a pound of extra weight. Oral “Slim” Moore is still worthy of his nickname.
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