John D. Bulkeley
United States Navy Medal of Honor recipient
Died when: 84 years 231 days (1015 months)Star Sign: Leo
John Duncan Bulkeley (19 August 1911 – 6 April 1996) was a vice admiral in the United States Navy and was one of its most decorated naval officers.
Bulkeley received the Medal of Honor for actions in the Pacific Theater during World War II.He was also the PT boat skipper who evacuated General Douglas MacArthur from Corregidor in the Philippines and commanded at the Battle of La Ciotat.
Buckley's version of PT-boat heroics in defending the Philippines from Japanese invasion in 1941-1942 was the subject of the novel "They Were Expendable" by William Lindsay White in 1942, which was turned into a big screen epic three years later by director John Ford, They Were Expendable, starring John Wayne and Robert Montgomery playing a somewhat fictionalized Buckeley role.
The United States Navy named an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer after him: USS Bulkeley (DDG-84), commissioned in 2001.
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