Medal of Honor Recipient Butch O’Hare’s

Leather Flight Wing and Name Tag

#4059

This leather name tag and wing belonged to Butch O’Hare, who earned his MOH by shooting down five Japanese bombers during an attack on the USS Lexington. They are a very unusual pattern wings. The wing and name tag are a one of a kind and were from his latest promotion and the spare set he kept in his log book. When Butch was reported missing a Navy photographer grabbed his log book containing the wings. O'Hare never returned so he kept them. The photographer then donated them to the Tailhook Association wing collection which numbered over 300 wings and had almost every Naval aviator of note among them. The Tailhook Association was run by an ex Navy photographer, who in turn donated the whole collection to the San Diego Aerospace Museum. Their director at the time, an ex Blue Angel gave them to Pensacola. The log book was then donated to Pensacola by the gentleman who published the Tailhook magazine. He had kept O'Hare's wings out of all of them and sold them to a collector after he sold the Tailhook Magazine. The log book has a brown rectangular area where the wing lay. Included in the sale, and in this grouping, was the original Navy photo of Butch. The patch is original, but could be post war 40's. Also included is an original Butch O'Hare WWII recruiting poster. O’Hare is the man Chicago’s O’Hare airport is named after.