Hey, Nixon didn't land on Omaha Beach either. N

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Active military duty (1941–1942)

LCDR Johnson, March 1942

Johnson was appointed a Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve on June 21, 1940. While serving as a U.S. Representative, he was called to active duty three days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

His orders were to report to the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations in Washington, D.C. for instruction and training.[34] Following his training, he asked Undersecretary of the Navy James Forrestal for a combat assignment.[35] He was sent instead to inspect shipyard facilities in Texas and on the West Coast.

In the spring of 1942, President Roosevelt decided he needed better information on conditions in the Southwest Pacific, and to send a highly trusted political ally to get it. From a suggestion by Forrestal, Roosevelt assigned Johnson to a three-man survey team of the Southwest Pacific.[36]

Johnson reported to General Douglas MacArthur in Australia. Johnson and two U.S. Army officers went to the 22nd Bomb Group base, which was assigned the high risk mission of bombing the Japanese airbase at Lae in New Guinea. Johnson's roommate was an army second lieutenant who was a B-17 bomber pilot.

On June 9, 1942, Johnson volunteered as an observer for an air strike mission on New Guinea by eleven B-26 bombers that included his roommate in another plane. While on the mission, his roommate and his crew's B-26 bomber was shot down with none of the eight men surviving the crash into the water.

Reports vary on what happened to the B-26 bomber carrying Johnson during that mission. Johnson's biographer Robert Caro accepts Johnson's account and supports it with testimony from the aircrew concerned: the aircraft was attacked, disabling one engine and it turned back before reaching its objective, though remaining under heavy fire. Others claim that it turned back because of generator trouble before reaching the objective and before encountering enemy aircraft and never came under fire.

This is supported by official flight records.[37][38] Other airplanes that continued to the target came under fire near the target at about the same time that Johnson's plane was recorded as having landed back at the original airbase. MacArthur recommended Johnson for the Silver Star for gallantry in action: the only member of the crew to receive a decoration.[38] After it was approved by the Army, he personally presented the medal to Johnson, with the following citation:[37]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_B._Johnson

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