Doris Miller awarded the Navy Cross medalOn Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the Navy announced that its next $12.5 billion Ford class aircraft carrier, CVN-81, will be named after Doris Miller, an enlisted sailor who received the Navy Cross for his valor during the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, when he manned a machine gun on the USS West Virginia to fire back at attacking Japanese planes.
Despite having no training in operating the big guns, he bravely jumped into action. Miller later recounted: “It wasn’t hard. I just pulled the trigger and she worked fine. I had watched the others with these guns. I guess I fired her for about fifteen minutes. I think I got one of those Japanese planes. They were diving pretty close to us.” Later versions of the story had Miller shooting down four Japanese planes, but the truth is he probably didn’t hit any. During the time he was firing the gun only one Japanese plane was shot down.
Miller, a mess attendant in a racially segregated rating aboard the battleship USS West Virginia, will be the first African-American to have a carrier named after him.