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Show Naval Pilot Tells of Action in Islands Lieutenant Theron Barker, son of Mr. and Mrs. Jesse B. Barker of Newton, is receiving a hero's reception during his 30-day leave from duty as navy dive bomber pilot in the Solomons campaign. Former student at Utah State Agricultural college, Lieutenant Barker has been guest speaker at numerous meetings since his arrival. ar-rival. Speaking Thursday afternoon before marine ind naval radio trainees at U S A C, Lieutenant Barker described how he located his carrier and landed during a south Pacific rainstorm to illustrate illus-trate the importance of the secret radio equipment being used by the navy. He emphasized the fact that lives will depend upon the skill the trainees acquire in maintaining, installing and repairing re-pairing radio equipment. Lieutenant Barker made an unscheduled un-scheduled landing on Guadalcanal after his carrier was forced to flee from Jap attack while he was on a scout flight. He spent 34 days there, flying with a steadily stead-ily diminishing band of pilots. "I returned a few times with holes in the plane," he told the trainees, 'but I was never injured, in-jured, except for the scars on my knees where they kept knocking knock-ing together." Speaking Wednesday evening at a Newton Lions club banquet in the Newton school, Lieutenant Barker emphasized that the Japanese Jap-anese cannot be defeated without costly and continuous sacrifices at home and on the fighting fronts. At a meeting Thursday noon of the Logan Rotary club he described de-scribed how he had been' assigned to the carrier Lexington but said the carrier was lost before he reached it. Lieutenant Barker talked to the USAC students at an assembly held today. |
