Belden Besse

Technical Sergeant Belden Besse was discharged on June 2nd, 1945. The Maine member of the Fortress crew, which has been recommended for various awards as a result of distinguished service, was Technical Sergeant Belden A. Besse of Clinton, who was eventually recommended for the Distinguished Flying Cross, Silver Star and the Airmen's Medal with the Oak Leaf Cluster.

Eagle-eyed Besse, who himself is credited with accomplishing the downfall of 13 Japanese planes as a "waist gunner," was always lavish in praise of his fellow crew members. "They all knew their business or I'd never got back,” he declared. 

Belden was a radio operator and gunner in his Fortress and had a very good vantage point in the gigantic bomber. He operated a waist gun (one of those trip-hammers located in the center of the aircraft). Unlike gunners in other sections of the craft, from his perch he could send bullets spraying in wide arcs and could view terrain below to see the effect of bombs.

He sustained a slight back injury when a bit of shrapnel struck him in the back during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and for which he was awarded the Purple Heart. He was also wounded twice following Pearl Harbor, earning two Purple Heart Clusters.

One injury, later entirely hidden away under a thick crop of wavy blond hair, was a “scratch” that took seven stitches to close after a Zero bullet zipped through Besse's aircraft, and grazed his scalp in Guadalcanal battling. His plane was shot down once and he drifted in an open raft in the Guadalcanal area for four or five days until he was rescued.

He got his first taste of individual victory during a series of four bombing missions in eight days in 1942, on August 1st, 3rd, 7th and 8th. On August 3rd, he downed a Zero on the first occasion of firing a Fortress gun in actual combat. That Zero was the first of the 13 to be shot down by Besse.

He married the former Francis Milner and they had four children; Ellen, Belden, Thomas and David. He died in Stockton, California on the 15th of November 1957 at 38 years of age. He is buried in Salt Lake City, Utah.