Dan Daly
Dan Daly joined the Marine Corps in 1899 to see action in the Spanish-American War, but he did not see combat in that war. Two years later, Private Daly found himself in Peking in the midst of the Boxer Rebellion. All night he held his position on the Tartar Wall of the besieged city, repelling wave after wave of rebels. When it was over, not only had he seen the action he craved, but he had also earned the nation’s highest combat honor: the Medal of Honor.
His story might have ended there, but Daly again saw combat, this time at Vera Cruz. Then in 1915, he was sent to Haiti to help quell a rebellion there. When he and 34 other Marines of the 15th Company left Fort Liberte to conduct a six-day reconnaissance patrol, 400 fanatical Haitian rebels attacked them at a river. As the other Marines managed to get ashore and establish a position on the riverbank, Daly swam among the horses that had been shot in the ambush, searching for the Marines’ only machine gun. He was subjected to intense enemy fire as he removed the weapon from a dead horse and strapped it to his back. Swimming back to his comrades’ position, he gave them the firepower they needed to drive off the attackers. For this act of valor, he received his second Medal of Honor.
When the United States entered World War I, Daly again went into action, this time as first sergeant of the 73rd Machine Gun Company. In this conflict, he earned still more decorations by putting out a fire on an ammunition train, leading attacks against numerically superior forces, and single-handedly wiping out several enemy machine-gun nests. At Belleau Wood, Daly led an attack on a German position that was cutting his unit to pieces, charging forward into the danger, urging his men to “Come on you sons of bitches; do you want to live forever?” At war’s end, he had earned a Navy Cross, the Distinguished Service Cross, the French Croix de Guerre and Médaille Militaire, as well as two purple hearts.
The only other U.S. Marine to have earned two Medals of Honor—General Smedley Butler—described Dan Daly as the “fightin’est Marine I ever knew.”
VA-55
Attack Squadron 55 (VA-55) was established on 7 October 1983 at Naval Air Station, Oceana, Virginia, as a unit of the newly established Carrier Air Wing 13 (CVW-13), part of the general defense buildup of the Reagan administration. The “Warhorses” carried on the traditions of an earlier VA-55 that was disestablished in 1975.
VA-55 was equipped with A-6E Intruder attack aircraft and KA-6D aerial tanker versions. After workups, the Warhorses deployed to the Mediterranean on board the USS Coral Sea (CV-43) in October 1985. The squadron would see combat on its first cruise, called into action on 25 March 1986 in the Gulf of Sidra in response to hostile fire from Libyan forces against Navy units. A VA-55 A-6E attacked and damaged a Libyan Navy Nanuchka II-class missile corvette with Rockeye cluster munitions. The ship was later finished off by a Harpoon missile launched by a VA-85 A-6E.
Less than a month later, on 14-15 April, after a Libyan-sponsored terrorist bombing in Berlin that killed a U.S. soldier, the Coral Sea launched six VA-55 A-6Es against Benina Airfield in Benghazi, Libya. The Warhorses destroyed parked aircraft and damaged many buildings and other facilities at Benina.
VA-55 deployed twice more—without KA-6Ds—to the Mediterranean in 1987-88 and finally in 1989. The Warhorses operated off Lebanon in August and September 1989 during extensive terrorist activity, and flew missions to cover the evacuation of the U.S. embassy in Beirut.
Although VA-55 was slated for shutdown in the post-Cold War drawdown, the Warhorses provided A-6Es and crews to augment VA-75 as the USS John F. Kennedy (CV-67) steamed in August 1990 for the Middle East to support Desert Shield.
VA-55 was disestablished at Naval Air Station Oceana on 1 January 1991, as many former Warhorses readied for war in Desert Storm.