The Naval Academy Class of 1940 [slideshow]

As shocking as the Pearl Harbor attack had been for the Naval Academy Class of 1940, the sudden arrival of peace was nearly as disorienting. Most of the Forties, as they were known, were still only 27 years old, and the great adventure of their lives was now behind them. The war had dominated virtually all of their adult lives, from Hitler’s reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936 to Japan’s surrender in 1945. For nine years, they had been directed by circumstance, authority, and a shared feeling of responsibility. They had served in different theaters, in different jobs, on different ships—or planes, or battalions. Yet all of them had been forged, tempered, and tested. Every man in the class knew someone who had been killed in the war, and the sacrifice of their classmates was etched into their hearts.

They had learned to live in the moment; now they had to think of the future. For the next two decades and longer, they served in a wide variety of assignments throughout the world. For some of them, there was another war, in Korea. For a few, there was even a third war, in Vietnam. Throughout it all, they stayed in touch with one another, attended class reunions when they could, and caught the occasional Navy football game. Eventually, they retired. Some took up a new profession; several became teachers. But none of them ever forgot their trial by fire in the Second World War, nor did they forget one another. They were always Forties.

John E. Lacouture

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John E. Lacouture, the well-born, handsome, and supremely self-confident native of Boston and Hyannisport, cut a wide swath wherever he went. He competed with the Kennedys in sailing races, danced with Eleanor Roosevelt in the White House, and survived the sinking of the USS Blue in Ironbottom Sound. Once he earned his gold wings in 1942, he found his niche in the Navy’s aviation community. He loved to fly so much that by the time he retired in 1970, he had flown nearly 6,000 hours in 173 different types of airplane. When not flying, he earned a degree in Aeronautical Engineering at Princeton and served as the U.S. representative to the Strategic Air Command in Europe. In retirement, Lacouture worked for seven years for Ling-Temco-Vought , an aerospace conglomerate, before going to Cambridge University in England to earn an M.Lit. degree. As he said at the Academy: “I always was pretty good at slinging the bull.” After returning to the United States, he wrote the occasional essay, including one in 2001 for the Naval Institute Proceedings suggestively entitled, “You can Be Good and Be Colorful.” He died on August 16, 2010, at the age of 92.

_{Feature image credit: Graduation day at Annapolis, Class of 1940. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, photograph by Harris & Ewing, [reproduction number, e.g., LC-USZ62-12345]. Public domain.}