Check out this original Kodachrome, taken some 80 years ago today, of LT(JG) George T. Glacken and his gunner, Aviation Radioman Second Class Leo W. Boulanger, in their Douglas SBD-5 Dauntless dive bomber, White 35, of VB-16 from the Essex-class aircraft carrier USS Lexington (CV-16) off of Palau, 30 March 1944.
(LIFE Magazine Archives – JR Eyerman Photographer)
You can make out the details of the bomb hashes, and Boulanger’s twin AN/M2s, capable of a blistering 1,200 rounds per minute as long as the belts hold out.
You can see the squadron’s distinctive eagle insignia on the side of White 35.
Bombing Sixteen would earn the Presidential Unit Citation “Received for action from the U.S.S. Lexington (CV-16) at Tarawa (September 18th, 1943), Wake (October 5-6th, 1943), Palau, Hollandia and Truk (March 18th – April 30th, 1944), Marianas (June 11th – July 5th, 1944), and Gilbert Islands (November 19th, – December 5th, 1945).”
Glacken is listed as a Navy Cross holder. Born in 1916 in Lorain, Ohio, he passed in 1990. Meanwhile, Boulanger would earn the DFC.
And, of course, the “Grey Ghost” that they flew from is preserved as a museum ship at Corpus Christie, Texas.