AIRFIELDS NAMED

Timaru Herald, Volume CLV, Issue 22789, 13 January 1944, Page 1

AIRFIELDS NAMED

Attack On Gilbert Islands

Three airfields on the recently captured atolls of the Gilbert Islands have been named in honour of American naval officers who were reported missing in action and of a marine officer who landed ahead of the first assault wave and was killed in action on Betio Island. A United States Navy Department release which has been received in Auckland says the landing grounds are Mullinnix Field on Buota Island, Tarawa, O’Hare Field on Abemama, and Hawkins Field on Betio.

Mullinnix Field is named after RearAdmiral H. M. Mullinnix, who was lost when the U.S.S. Liscome Bay was torpedoed by a submarine in the Gilbert Islands area on November 24 last. He had previously been in command of the U.S.S. Saratoga and had also seen service in this war in the Atlantic. O’Hare Field is named after Lieu-tenant-Commander E. H. O’Hare, who was reported missing in action on November 26. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honour, his country's highest award, for shooting down five enemy bombers on February 20, 1942, and he also distinguished himself later during the action off Wake Island in October last. Hawkins Field is in honour of FirstLieutenant W. D. Hawkins, who left the United States as a sergeant and was commissioned in the field while serving on Guadalcanal. During the battle for Betio Island he led his group in a number of special assaults on Japanese positions and personally destroyed six Japanese machine-gun nests.

Lieutenant Hawkins, who died of wounds, was the second marine to have had an airfield named after him. The other was Major L. R. Henderson, whose name was used for the famous airfield on Guadalcanal. During the battle of Midway Island, when he was commanding a dive-bomber squadron, he dived his blazing aircraft, after it had been hit by anti-aircraft, fire, full on to the deck of a Japanese aircraftcarrier. He perished in the explosion.