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MoH sailor who rescued 15 airmen dies

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Nathan Green Gordon, a former Arkansas lieutenant governor whose under-fire rescue of 15 downed airmen in World War II earned him the Medal of Honor, has died. He was 92.

Gordon died Monday night at the University of Arkansas for Medical Science hospital in Little Rock while being treated for pneumonia and other ailments, nephew Allen Gordon said. Though becoming forgetful with age, Gordon continued to charm and debate the news with those who spoke with him, his nephew said.

Family members said Gordon didn’t speak much about his service as a Navy pilot during World War II, fighting across the Pacific Theater in a Consolidated PBY Catalina flying boat, a large plane no faster than a high-powered automobile. However, until his final days, he would tell anyone who asked about the rescue mission in the Bismarck Sea that brought him national acclaim, his nephew said.

“He would always tear up,” Allen Gordon said.

Born in Morrilton, Gordon graduated from the University of Arkansas law school in 1939 and began his practice in his home town. He signed up for the Navy in 1941, in part because he knew he’d be drafted and didn’t want to “be marching around” like he did in military school as a child.

On Feb. 15, 1944, he received orders to search for downed pilots after a raid on the Japanese position in Kavieng near the mainland of Papua New Guinea.

Under fire in rough seas, Gordon piloted an unwieldy aircraft nicknamed the “Arkansas Traveler” to make three separate landings to pick up nine men, as rivets burst out from the landings. On the way back, he received a report about a life raft only 600 yards from the enemy shoreline. Gordon landed yet again, pulling six more airmen aboard while taking on heavy fire.

“His plane was seriously overweight by the time he finished,” said Stephan McAteer, executive director of the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History in Little Rock. “He just did not want to leave anyone there because if they had been captured, they would have faced almost certain death.”

But the danger didn’t come only from the Japanese.

“The breakers could throw you 35 or 40 feet in the air,” Gordon told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in a 2002 interview. “You had to keep the nose up till you reached takeoff speed of 55 knots, or the aircraft would flip and everybody likely would be killed.”

Gordon managed to pilot his aircraft back to the mainland.

“Some of those boys needed medical treatment,” Gordon said in 2002. “There were some bad fractures, but I think everybody got over it all right. When I went back during the flight to check, our crew was feeding them. They said it was the best food they’d had in a long time.”

However, Gordon never thought he’d be nominated for the nation’s highest military honor. His superiors cited him for “exceptional daring, personal valor and incomparable airmanship under most perilous conditions.”

On his return to Arkansas, friends persuaded him to run for lieutenant governor. The Democrat entered office in 1947 and held the position for 20 years, serving under Gov. Orval Faubus during the 1957 Little Rock Central High School desegregation crisis.

“He pretty well kept his head down and didn’t take part in it to any great extent,” said Roy Reed, a former Arkansas Gazette reporter who covered the crisis and later wrote a book on Faubus. Later in life, Gordon declined to talk about the crisis, telling an interviewer “that was a long time ago.”

Reed said Gordon was well liked, largely sticking to his role of gaveling the state Senate into session and filling in for the governor when he was out of state. State history books list Gordon as the person believed to have served as acting governor more than anyone else in state history.

“He never wanted a full-time political position,” Allen Gordon said. “People always asked, ‘Have you ever thought about running for governor or some other office?’ He never had any aspiration in that regard.”

Gordon left office in 1967, the same year as Faubus, and returned to practicing law in Morrilton.

Gov. Mike Beebe, who first joined the state Senate 15 years after Gordon left the chamber, said the former lieutenant governor revived interest in politics among young Democrats.

“Well, he’s a hero. Talk about the greatest generation,” Beebe said. “Nathan Gordon was one of those in Arkansas that typified that — Medal of Honor winner, war hero, public servant.”

U.S. Rep. Vic Snyder, D-Ark., issued a statement calling Gordon a “delightful man, smart lawyer, patriotic American and a helluva pilot.”

“We will miss him,” said Snyder, a Marine veteran of the Vietnam War.

A clipping from the Chicago Daily Tribune four days ago after Gordon’s rescue mission sits next to his medal, on display at the MacArthur Museum.

The article offered a simple endorsement for Gordon to receive the medal: “If there’s a fighting man alive who has done more to earn it, we have yet to hear of him.”

Funeral services had not been scheduled as of Tuesday afternoon.