Medal of Honor Tuesday: Navy Capt. Richard M. McCool Jr.

In December 1944, after receiving further amphibious training, McCool assumed command of USS LCS 122, a landing craft support ship that employed about 65 crew members. Shortly after the crew settled in, LCS 122 set sail for the Pacific Theater of war.

By the spring of 1945, the Battle of Okinawa had gotten underway and Allied troops were busy trying to get a foothold on the island. U.S. supply and support ships were in abundance at the island’s harbor, but that made them sitting ducks for Japanese suicide bombers, known as kamikazes.

To thwart kamikaze attempts, the U.S. set up 15 radar picket stations around the island. McCool said each station included at least three destroyers that used their radar to detect upcoming attacks and four LCS ships that would guard the destroyers by shooting down enemy planes.

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On June 10, 1945, LCS 122 was on picket duty north of Okinawa when a hostile air raid began. The USS William D. Porter, a destroyer at the station, was severely damaged by a kamikaze attack. Then-Lt. McCool ordered his men to evacuate the survivors from the sinking ship (below).

The USS William D. Porter sinks after a kamikaze suicide aircraft crashed and exploded underneath it off the coast of Okinawa, June 10, 1945. USS LCS 122 stands by to evacuate the surviving crew. U.S. Navy photo

The next evening, LCS 122 was attacked by two kamikazes. McCool immediately launched the full power of his gun batteries, which quickly shot one aircraft down.

“The first one dove at us and passed over my bow,” McCool remembered. “I was afraid that the people in the No. 1 40-mm gun mount might have been hit by the wheels or something, it was so low. But it crashed into the water just on our port bow.”

The second aircraft came flying in right behind the first. The LCS’s gun batteries did some damage, but the aircraft still crashed into McCool’s battle station in the ship’s conning tower.

“It came in and hit about 8-10 feet below where I was standing,” McCool remembered, saying they were lucky that the aircraft’s bomb didn’t explode on impact. “Instead, it or something from the plane went through the radio shack and out the side of the ship on the other side and exploded, apparently just as it was entering the water.”

The crash immediately engulfed the area in flames and knocked McCool unconscious. He said when he came to, he was the only person in the conning tower.

“I shimmied over the port side of the conning tower and dropped onto the deck from there,” he said.

McCool was seriously wounded by shrapnel and suffered painful burns on his right side. According to his Medal of Honor citation, he rallied his concussion-shocked crew and began vigorous measures to fight the fire raging on the deck below him. McCool said the flames were 15 to 20 feet from a room that stored the ship’s rockets, so he was very concerned about the ship exploding.

“I can remember telling the chief engineer to take a crew of people and go around to the starboard side and forward, and I would have somebody else go around the other way and try to at least keep the fire from spreading,” he said in his Library of Congress interview. “And the truth of the matter is I don’t really remember much of what went on after that.”

His Medal of Honor citation said he rescued several men trapped in a blazing compartment and even carried one of them to safety, despite the excruciating pain of his own wounds — including his right lung collapsing. But McCool said he has no memory of that.

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McCool was finally able to get his own help after aid arrived to LCS 122. Eleven men were killed and 29 were wounded in the incident, newspapers at the time reported. But thanks to McCool’s leadership, many others were rescued, and his ship survived to see further service.

McCool was evacuated from the area and was sent to medical facilities in Guam, Pearl Harbor and California for treatment.

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McCool spent nearly a year in hospitals, including several months at one in his hometown of Norman, Oklahoma. He was there when he learned he’d be getting the Medal of Honor. Shortly thereafter, in September 1945, he married his girlfriend, Carole Elaine Larecy, who he’d met on leave prior to his deployment. They went on to have three children, two boys and a girl.

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McCool received the Medal of Honor from President Harry S. Truman during a White House ceremony on Dec. 18, 1945. (Below)