David Rubel; Retired Navy Rear Admiral, Decorated Gunner

David Rubel, 74, a retired Navy rear admiral who as a young gunnery officer was awarded the Navy’s top medal for shooting down 19 kamikazes targeting a naval destroyer during World War II. Rubel, who in 1941 was assigned to the destroyer Gridley at Pearl Harbor, served on several destroyers during the war. While a gunnery officer on the Arron Ward off Okinawa in 1945, then-Lt. Rubel was credited with shooting down 19 kamikazes out of an attack force of 24. The remaining five bomb-laden suicide planes hit the ship. More than half the crew was killed or wounded in the attack on May 3, 1945. Rubel was awarded the Navy Cross for his defense of the ship. In 1946, he served at the first atomic bomb test near Bikini Atoll. Three decades later, Rubel was found to have leukemia, and he suspected that he contracted the disease through radiation exposure during the testing. In San Diego on Monday of leukemia.