Richard E. Fleming

Richard Eugene Fleming left Saint Paul for the Marine Corps Reserve and a scout-bomber cockpit. By early June 1942 he was a captain and flight officer with Marine Scout Bombing Squadron 241 on Midway, flying worn SB2U Vindicators against a Japanese carrier force that had already wrecked much of the island's air strength.

On June 4 his squadron commander went down on the first run. Fleming took the lead and kept the attack going. The Medal of Honor citation covers that day and the next: low approaches through fighter and antiaircraft fire, a damaged airplane held in the dive, and a final attack on June 5 against Japanese surface ships — among them the heavy cruiser Mikuma — that ended with his aircraft going into the sea. No remains were recovered from the water.

He is memorialized on the Tablets of the Missing at Honolulu Memorial. A cenotaph at Fort Snelling National Cemetery is remembrance, not a grave. This is a documented Midway aircrew loss — not a U.S. ship sinking relabeled as missing. An administrative finding of death is not a recovered body. The documentation is a Marine dive-bomber that did not come back and a Wall of the Missing that still carries his name.