Chapter:
Part one of a biography of George H.W. Bush, the 41st president.
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Transcript: Chapter 01
Narrator: September 2, 1944, was what Navy pilots called CAVU -- ceiling and visibility unlimited. It would be Ensign George H. W. Bush's 50th mission in his three-man Avenger bomber. He was commissioned in 1943 at age 19, the youngest pilot in the U.S. Navy. Bush had seen action in June over the Mariana Islands in one of the biggest air battles of the Pacific War. The target September 2 was a Japanese radio tower on the tiny island of Chichi Jima. Bush dove into black puffs of anti-aircraft fire. "Suddenly, I felt the plane jolt," he remembered, "and the smoke started pouring in." He finished his bombing run, banked out to sea so the crew could get out, and then bailed out himself.
George H. W. Bush: Looked up and the parachute had been ripped up. Landed in the water. Swam over, got into my little life raft.
Narrator: The submarine U.S.S. Finback, on patrol for downed pilots, rescued him.
George H. W. Bush: I remember seeing that submarine surface. And I remember pulling along side and I remember a bunch of bearded guys standing there.
Narrator: For the next month, George Bush joined the Finback's crew. Aboard he agonized about the fate of his gunner Ted White and radioman John Delaney. One went down with the plane. The other's chute never opened. "It still plagues me if I gave those guys enough time to get out," the former flyboy said with quiet emotion almost 60 years later. "I think about those guys all the time."
Timothy Naftali, biographer: He was an emotive, an emotional leader, much more emotional than people thought. He cried quite readily. One thing that made George Bush a less appealing candidate was that he refused to show his emotions. That's not what a man did -- a man of his generation and of his upbringing. And so the public saw a slightly awkward man who didn't seem quite ready to share his true self with them. When you got to know him, the human side, the emotional side was there. It came out.
Narrator: "I'll never forget the beauty of the Pacific," Bush would write about the watches he stood at night. He had time to think about "how much family meant to me."
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