>>Valley Patriot>>
|
Valley
Patriot of the Month
Mike Beshara
Hero in Our Midst
by Tom Duggan
(08/03/07)
When Methuen
resident Mike Beshara tried to join the Navy in January
of 1942, he was initially told that he could not join the
service because of his age.
I was only 17 years old at the time, Beshara
recalled. After December 7, 1941 I really wanted to
enlist in the Navy, but my parents had passed away and my
uncle couldnt sign the papers for me to join
because he was not considered my legal guardian.
So, Beshara made an appeal to the Navy and, because his
uncle didnt drive, the Navy arranged to have a
judge come up to Superior Court in Lawrence to have his
uncle designated as his legal guardian.
By the time the red tape was cleared away it was April of
1942 and the young senior in high school dropped out to
serve his country. It would be 57 years later before
Beshara would graduate from high school. My Diploma
was issued to me at the Methuen High School in 1999, they
gave diplomas to a whole bunch of us who had gone into
the service and never finished high school.
Once accepted by the Navy, Beshara says he went to boot
camp training at Great Lakes Naval Training Station in
Illinois. After boot camp training, he was assigned to the Navy Pier in Chicago
where he was trained as an aircraft mechanic and
graduated aviation machinist mate 3rd class. From there
he was shipped to Hollywood, Florida for Air Crewman
training and then to Fort Lauderdale for flight training.
We did extensive training with machine guns and
learned trap and skeet shooting to get use to hitting a
moving target, Beshara said. Then I went to
Clinton Oklahoma. There, I joined what was called STAG
ONE, which stood for Special Task Air Group One.
Secret Drone Spy Program is Born
From there, Beshara was sent to Travis City, Michigan
where he trained with the first-ever secret spy drone
airplanes. This was a secret outfit with radio
controlled drones, Beshara says. By this time
it was 1943 and we didnt know it at the time, of
course, but we were working on the forerunner of the
guided missile system.
It was really
remarkable. We were working with a mostly plywood, twin
engine, unmanned airplane with a television camera built
into the nose of the plane. These drones carried 2000lb
bombs. The canopy on the cockpit was for training only,
but when the training was over and these drones were
ready for use in battle, they removed the cockpit
completely to make it less wind resistant. The landing
was also dropped after takeoff to reduce wind
resistance.
Beshara recalls how the drone planes were just like the
Japanese kamikaze planes except there were no pilots to
give up their lives.
Tokyo Rose called us the American
Kamikazes because they didnt know this was an
unmanned plane. The mother ship, which was a torpedo
bomber, could sit four or five miles off the target and
direct the drones in. They had a television screen in
there so they could see what the drone was seeing, and
direct the plane to the target without risking American
lives.
While the pilot flew the plane, there was a man
behind him flying the drone by radio control, a radio man
and a machine gun man in the turret. Thats
where Beshara flew with a 50 caliber machine gun in case
their plane was attacked.
Some of the drones were stationed on aircraft carriers,
but Beshara recalls being sent to the island of Benika in
the Russell Islands, northwest of Guadalcanal. We
had set up a small airfield on the island. Some of the
targets were anti-aircraft placements and storage caves
in Bougainville, but we couldnt bomb the caves
successfully because, when the planes would drop a bomb,
they would be too close to the ground and pull up a
little too late so the drones would blow up.
Beshara says the program was not all that successful
during World War II and, though the drones were designed
to prevent the loss of American and allied soldiers, one
very famous American soldier died working on the
drones.
Joe Kennedy, JFKs older brother, was killed
in Europe working on the drones. They were flying a B24
or B17. They had them all loaded with about 25,000 lbs of
explosives, but the munitions experts were all marines
and General George Marshall said that, as long as he had
anything to say about it, there would never be any marines in Europe. Marshall
didnt like the marines, so the marine munitions
expert couldnt go over there to make sure the
explosives were set up properly. Thats when they
asked for two volunteers. Joe Kennedy and a guy named
Whiley agreed to go. Beshara conjectured that,
While they were arming the explosives there was
short circuit somewhere and it exploded and killed them
both.
While we were overseas in Benika, our outfit was
suddenly decommissioned. Our commanding officer,
Commodore Oscar Smith was not a pilot and Admiral Tower,
sitting back in Washington D.C., was making the decision
that you cant have an aircraft unit without a pilot
as a commanding officer. So that was the end of the drone
program, Beshara said, at least until after
the war. But this was the forerunner of the guided
missile system and the drones being used today in Iraq
are just a smaller version of the drone program we
started in the South Pacific.
A Chance Encounter
After Besharas STAG ONE group was permanently
decommissioned in 1944, he wound up in the Philippines on
Clark Field. We were servicing bombers going
toOkinawa. At that point in time we couldnt say
where we were when we were on the island. We could put in
our letters home that we were in the Philippines, but we
couldnt tell them exactly where we were, we
couldnt designate an island.
My older brother Herbie was in the Army Signal
Corps and surprised me one day when he just showed up on
the Island of Sumar. He had been stationed in the South
Pacific and, when he found out I was in the Philippines,
he spoke to his commanding officer to try and find out
where I was. They had to courier the mail to the troops
and he let my brother come to find me. The day after I
met him, I received orders to come back to the states.
All air crewmen were being
reassigned to the states to train for the invasion of
Japan in June 1945.
Mike says he was shipped back to the U.S. and was given a
30 day leave of absence. I was home for 4th of
July, in 1945. Beshara remembered how he visited
the center at Salisbury Beach wearing his flight jacket,
because it was just so cold for me after spending
all that time in the South Pacific. People thought I was
crazy because, to them, it was a hot summer day, but,
compared to the South Pacific, it was like winter
to me.
After his leave of absence , Mike Beshara was sent to the
University of Oklahoma for further training Of
course, Beshara added, in August they dropped
the atomic bomb on Japan. Beshara was discharged
honorably in January of 1946.
Thats when, Beshara said laughing,
I was a member of the 52/20 club. It was our funny
name for unemployment. It was $20 a week for fifty-two
weeks or until we found a job. Beshara did find
work in the Wood Heel factory on Osgood Street in
Methuen, which is now home to luxury apartments.
Continuing His Service to America Here at Home
Mike Besharas dedication to service and country did
not end when he was discharged from the Navy in 1946. He
joined the American Legion and the VFW, and was active in
local politics and community service in the city of
Methuen.
Beshara served 4 years on the Methuen School Committee
and served as chairman of the committee when proposition
2 ½ took effect. After four years of beating my
head against the wall and getting nothing done, I decided
not to run for another term. Mike volunteered as a
member of the Methuen Cable Advisory Committee and served
on the board for 18 years. He spent several years as
chairman of the board. Beshara was also chairman of the
Methuen Soil Removal Board for a number of years as well
as chairman of the School Renovation Committee where he
was responsible for the renovation of three schools: the
Marsh, Tenny and Timony schools.
Before that, we did some extensive work on the
Oakland school, we put in new windows, new floors and
brand new boilers. We renovated the Ashford School and
put in windows in the Central School. After we renovated
the three schools they closed Oakland and Ashford. The
Ashford was sold and turned into apartments and the
Oakland school is a mosque now.
Beshara also volunteers his time on a cable television
program run by Methuen City Councilor Kathleen Corey
Rahme titled Call to Serve. The television
program highlights the heroic service of military men and
women from Methuen. I remember when Kathleen was
getting ready to tape her first show and she asked me to
sit down and do an interview for practice, and I said
yes. We sat down and did the interview and immediately
afterwards the other volunteers in the studio said that
it was great, so Kathleen said, Lets just use
this interview as our first Call to Serve
show, so my story was the first in the series that
was aired.
Beshara said all the veterans who have been honored on
Call to Serve were asked to sign a waiver
release for the library of congress in Washington D.C. so
that the public could view the tapes for years to come.
Mike Beshara is so typical of the men and women who are
willing go off to war, putting their lives on the line
for our freedoms here at home. He doesnt consider
himself a hero despite the fact that he sat in the
machine gun turret of a fighter plane and was the most at
risk of losing his life when they encountered enemy plane
gunfire.
Like so many of those who answer the call to serve, Mike
Beshara didnt stop serving his country when his
military service was over. He continued to fight for a
better community and a better America through his
community activism and the way he has lived his life
right here in the city of Methuen.
We thank you Mike Beshara for your military service, for
your undying loyalty to your country and your community,
and we are honored to call you our Valley Patriot of the
Month. You are truly a hero in our midst and the people
of Methuen should recognize forever the sacrifices you
have made to make life better for the rest of us who have
reaped the benefits of your service and sacrifice.
To nominate a veteran to be honored as a Valley
Patriot of the Month, please email us at valleypatriot@aol.com,
or call us at (978) 557-5413
*Send your questions comments to ValleyPatriot@aol.com
The August 2007 Edition
of the Valley Patriot
The Valley Patriot is a Monthly
Publication.
All Contents (C) 2007, Valley Patriot, Inc.
We publish 15,000 newspapers and distribute in Andover,
North Andover,
Methuen, Haverhill, Chelmsford, Georgetown, Groveland,
Boxford, Amesbury, Newburyport
Lawrence, Dracut, Tewksbury, Merrimack, Newburyport,
Westford, Acton, and Lowell.
Hampton & Salisbury Beach, (summers
only)
|
Valley Patriot Archive
Valley Patriot Story
ARCHIVES
Prior Lead
Stories
Prior
Valley Patriot Editorials
Prior Columns by ...
Tom Duggan
Dr. Chuck
Ormsby
Paula
Porten
Ralph
Wilbur
Hanna
Ted Tripp
Valley
Patriot of the Month
Griselsilva.com
Patrick
Blanchette
D.J.
Beauregard
Jim
Cassidy
D.J. Deeb
Marcos
Devers
Bob
Desmarais
Regina
Faticanti
Jim
Fiorentini
Bill Kelly
Wilfredo
Laboy
Peter
Larocque
Vilma Lora
Ed Maguire
Billy
Manzi
Paul
Murano
Mark
Palermo
Hartley
Pleshaw
Debbie
Quinn
Raise Em
Right
Dr. Peary
Kathleen
Corey Rahme
Barney
Reilly
Angel
Rivera
Jim Rurak
Grisel
Silva
Mike
Sullivan
Sandra
Stotsky
Mike
Sweeney
Ken Willette
Scott Wood
Jim
Xenakis
|