Here's a picture of me from that era:
Posted on 06/02/2015 6:22:02 PM PDT by lowbridge
For its "Living Ship Day", the USS Hornet Museum honored 89-year-old Morgan Hill resident William Goehner as a member of the Underwater Demolition Team, or UDT, in WWII. It's the unit that predated the Navy SEALs.
"My UDT team, we destroyed 80 percent of the German submarine fleet in the Baltic Sea, lost 19 out of 30 men," said Goehner. "I cried."
Goehner told the audience that his suicide missions earned him the Navy Cross, three Silver Stars, and four Purple Hearts.
"The worst one was in the North China Sea," he said. "Got stuck down below in the ship and it burned up and I woke up four hours later on a hospital ship."
He added that he was the youngest lieutenant commander ever to serve in the Navy, "I went through the Navy there and ended up to be a lieutenant commander at 19," he said. "Hollywood heard about it and made a movie about me, Richard Widmark played me."
Goehner claimed he was a consultant on the movie The Frogmen, and that he became so famous that even a renowned general sought him out.
"I met George Patton in Sicily," Goehner said. "He heard about me and wanted to meet me, so I actually talked to George Patton. He impressed the crowd so much, he signed autographs after."
"It's certainly an honor and a privilege to be in the presence of someone who had such a distinguished career," Navy veteran Glenn Powell said at the event.
Another attendee, veteran Navy pilot Mike Arrowsmith, commented, "That's a lot of medals and that's a lot of valor."
The problem is that none of it is true.
(Excerpt) Read more at abc7news.com ...
Hey, whoa, man.
I was on the swim team titanic of 1912....
I got a shirt in Sag Harbor, Long Island with that emblazoned on it...
Some people get upset when I wear it and I ask “Too soon?”
Ann’s good like that and many other talents...
There’s no POS like an old POS.
Had he kept his lies somewhat reasonable, he may not have been caught out. At 19, a battlefield promotion from seaman to ensign or jg would have been questionable but remotely (perhaps very remotely) possible. Jumping it up to LCDR was laughable on its face.
Here's a picture of me from that era:
My Uncle was UDT, never called himself a seal, and only his Wife would talk about what he did after he died from his injuries after years of suffering.
“Goehner told the audience that his suicide missions earned him the Navy Cross, three Silver Stars, and four Purple Hearts. “
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He had almost as many as John Kerry.
Your uncle may not have known, and probably would have continued to call himself UDT, even if he had, my guess is that few of the old UDT call themselves SEALs, but UDT was merged into the SEALs about 1983, with the UDT desiring to stay in, receiving additional training.
My uncle’s wife said he was proud of his service, didn’t care to be known. He knew he did his duty.
I recently read that the original UDT were Seabees.
A few years ago, I met a UDT guy. He was very aggressive in saying he was a frogman, not a SEAL. They guy I met told me about some interesting intelligence missions during the Taiwan crisis in the late 50s, but he wanted me to understand exactly what he did and didn’t do.
The only one that we know for sure that prefers to tell people that he was a SEAL, instead of preferring the name of the elite unit that he specifically served in, and where he earned his pay, is Jesse Ventura.
“War Stories and Fairy Tales”, no difference.....
My son did two tours of Iraq as a combat Medic. He does not talk about it very much.
This is sad. My own father told me some things about serving in WWII. But the stories my sister related that he told her are FAR different. Who knows where the truth lays?
I heard John F’N Kerry broke his leg on a two-wheeled combat vehicle on the beaches of Normandy, France...
He was air-vac’ed by C-17 to Walter Reed, where Obama himself laid another Purple Heart on his pillow.
What an F’N HERO!
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