RSSCOLONEL ED HAS DIED
Carolyn Hileman - The Voice | June 30, 2009
He wanted to be a Marine fighter pilot. The US was building up their
military force, but they were not at war yet and the Navy required all its
potential Navy and Marine pilots to have two years of college. So Ed started
classes at Boston College.
When Pearl Harbor was attacked the Army and the Navy both dropped the
college requirement and Ed applied to the Marines. His primary flight
training was in Dallas and then he went to Pensacola, Florida. He was
carrier qualified, which means he knew how to perform a controlled crash of
his single engine fighter, onto the rolling deck of a Navy floating runway.
It took Ed almost two years to get through all the Navy flight training.
His problem was he was a very good pilot and the Marines needed flight
instructors.
He had a great command presence and public speaking ability, which landed
him in the classroom, training new baby Marine pilots. His orders to the
Pacific fleet and the chance to fly combat missions off a carrier came in
the spring of 1945, on the same day the Atomic bomb was dropped on
Hiroshima.
Of course his orders where changed. He never went to sea and he was out of
the Marines in 1946. Ed stayed in the USMC as a reserve officer. He became
a successful personality in the new TV medium, after the war. His Marine
command presence helped. He was recalled to active duty during the Korean
War. He never got to fly his fighter aircraft, but he saw his share of raw
combat.
He flew the Cessna O-1E Bird Dog, which is a single engine slow-moving
unarmed plane. He functioned as an artillery spotter for the Marine
batteries on the ground and as a forward controller for the Navy & Marine
fighter / bombers who flew in on fast moving jet engines, bombed the area
and were gone in seconds.
Captain Ed was still circling the enemy looking for more targets, all the
time taking North Korean and Chinese ground fire. He stayed with the
Marines as a reserve officer and retired in 1966 as a Colonel. The world
knows Ed as Ed McMahon of the Johnny Carson, Tonight Show.
One night I was watching the show when the subject of Colonel McMahon
earning a number of Navy Air Medals came up. Carson, a former Navy officer,
understood the significance of these medals, but McMahon shrugged it off,
saying that if you flew enough combat missions they just sort of gave them
to you. McMahon flew 85 combat missions over North Korea; he earned every
one of those Air Medals.
The casualty rate, for flying forward air controllers in Korea sometimes
exceeded 50% of a squadron’s manpower. McMahon was lucky to have gotten
home from that war. Once a Marine, always a Marine. When the public was
spitting (taking their personal safety into their own hands) at Marines on
the streets of Southern California during Vietnam, Colonel McMahon was
taking Marines off the streets and into his posh Beverley Hills home.
I spoke to a retired Marine aircrew member the day Colonel McMahon died and
he personally remembered seeing McMahon at numerous Marine Air Bases in
California in the 1960s.
He was known for going to the Navy hospitals and visiting the wounded
Marines and Sailors from this country’s conflicts, even in the last years of
his life. Colonel McMahon presented awards and decorations to fellow
Marines and attended many a Marine ceremony and the annual Marine Corps
Birthday Ball.
He stayed true to his Corps as a board member of the Marine Corps
Scholarship Fund and as the honorary chairman of the National Marine Corps
Aviation Museum. After retiring from the Marine Reserve, one night on the
Johnny Carson show, members of the California Air National Guard came on
stage.
Colonel McMahon was commissioned a Brigadier General in the Air Guard in
front of millions of Americans who watched it happen live. You will not see
anything like that on TV anymore. The three core values of a United States
Marine are; honor, courage and commitment.
This is what a Marine is taught from the first day of training and this is
what that Marine believes. That was Colonel Edward P. McMahon Jr. USMCR
Retired. Before he was a national figure he was a true combat hero and a
patriot the nation needed then and this country needs now. Your war is
over. Thank you Colonel McMahon. Semper Fi sir.
Contributor's website: http://thevoice.name
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