Lucky Bag Yearbook

From the 1972 Lucky Bag:

DAN ALAN DAVIS

Like many an adventurous soul, Dan joined the Navy back in the summer of ‘68 to see the world. He’d tried the college scene for a year after high school, but the dull routine of riots, protests, and demonstrations just had no appeal for him. So, he came to USNA for the challenging and exciting rigors of reveille bells and watch squad formations. Dan soon found a second home in the Economics Department, passing many happy nights with dreams of supply curves and marginal utilities. Youngster year he enrolled in the June Week giveaway-a-sword program and began a collection (first kid on the block with a real sword). Second Class year he took command of the Masqueraders’ propaganda machine and found himself responsible for those “humorous” Brigade flyers which occasionally adorned the messhall tables. And speaking of flyers, that’s exactly what he hopes to become after graduation.

Loss

Dan was lost on March 10, 1980 when the S-3 Viking jet he was aboard crashed into the ocean off San Clemente Island, California.

He and the rest of the crew were members of Air Anti-Submarine Squadron (VS) 41¹. The exact aircraft is pictured here.

Other Information

From the Times-Advocate (Escondido, California) on March 11, 1980:

….The U.S. Coast Guard picked the four-man crew out of the water after the emergency crash of their S-3 Viking jet four miles off San Clemente Island.

The two-engine, anti-submarine warfare plane from North Island Naval Air Station Miramar was being used in touch-and-go landings when it was ditched last night, a Navy spokesman said. Within 10 minutes, a Coast Guard helicopter crew picked the men up….

The aircraft attached to Anti-submarine Squadron 41 at NAS North Island was on a routine training flight when it crashed 60 miles west of San Diego. An investigation has been ordered.

From the May 1980 issue of Shipmate:

Lt. Dan Alan Davis USN died on 11 March 1980 in San Diego, California, after having been fatally injured in an aircraft accident during a routine training mission off the coast. Memorial services were held at the North Island Naval Air Station Base Chapel in San Diego on 13 March and at the Naval Chapel, Patuxent River, Maryland, on 14 March. Interment was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on 19 March.

Appointed to the Naval Academy from the State of Pennsylvania, he had attended Indiana College in Pennsylvania prior to receiving his appointment, and he was president of the Masqueraders during his first class year. Upon graduation with the Class of 1972 he was ordered to flight training in Pensacola and designated naval aviator. He later was a flight instructor at the Kingsville, Texas, Air Station for three years, and he also earned a master’s degree in business administration at Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri.

Prior to reporting to duty in California he was director of the drug and alcohol rehabilitation program at the Naval Air Center in Patuxent, then was assigned to Air Anti-Submarine Squadron FORTY-ONE at North Island, with which unit he was serving at the time of his death.

He is survived by his widow Jean, of Annapolis MD; a son and a daughter; his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Harry Davis, Lewisburg PA, and a brother.

He is buried in Pennsylvania.

References