HONORED WITH DISPLAY AT NAVY YARD
MUSEUM, WASHINGTON D.C.
Theodore Wood Marshall was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on October 26, 1917, and attended Rockhurst College where he played polo. His Navy service began in July 1938 as an aviation cadet and he received his Naval Aviator wings on November 19, 1939. He was then trained as a pilot of the Consolidated PBY-3 Catalina flying boat and assigned to Patrol Squadron 21 (VP-21) at Ford Island in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. On December 7, 1941, then Ensign Marshall was the squadron’s Assistant Flight Officer and found himself without a plane when the attack began as the only PBY-3 of VP-21 at Pearl Harbor was undergoing repairs as all the other PBY-3s had been deployed to Midway Island.
As the attack on Pearl Harbor commenced, ENS Marshall commandeered one of VP-21s trucks and during the height of the Japanese attacks, he drove between the officer’s quarters, the enlisted men’s barracks, and the squadron area, ferrying men to their battle stations. Bomb fragments and machine gun bullets riddled his vehicle. Once he completed his transportation duty, ENS Marshall spied an undamaged and unmanned Grumman F4F-3 Wildcat fighter and despite the fact that he had never flown this type aircraft, he climbed into the cockpit, managed to start the engine and began to taxi. While headed toward a nearby runway the plane was struck by strafing Japanese planes and so badly damaged it was unfit for flight. Unharmed and still wanting to get into the air, ENS Marshall next found a Douglas TBD-1 Devastator single engine bomber, climbed aboard and was able to get the plane airborne even though he had never before flown a TBD-1. By this time the Japanese airplanes were retiring from the area as ENS Marshall attempted to follow them. He was unsuccessful in his attempt to overtake the Japanese planes because of their superior speed and with dwindling fuel he was compelled to return to Oahu.
In the Navy Museum at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., there is a Pearl Harbor Attack display honoring ENS Marshall which contains his picture and the following brief description of him:
“Twenty-four old Ensign Theodore W. Marshall, USNR, was an assistant flight officer stationed on Ford Island. He commandeered a truck and transported men from all over the island to their stations. Then he tried to fly two separate airplanes, neither of which he had experience flying. After Japanese attacks destroyed the first plane while he was trying to taxi down the runway, he took off in the second and followed the retreating Japanese for over 150 miles. Unable to overtake the Japanese airplanes and with his fuel dwindling he returned to Pearl Harbor. For his heroism, he received the Silver Star. Marshall retired from the Navy in 1959.”
Theodore Wood Marshall continued flying during World War II and on September 29, 1944, he brought his damaged patrol plane and its 11-man crew back to their base after flying over 1,020 miles of open ocean. For this feat he was awarded the Air Medal. He remained on active duty until retiring from the Navy in 1959 with the rank of Commander and was advanced to Captain on the basis of his combat awards.
Submitted by CDR Roy A. Mosteller, USNR (Ret)
