Richard “Gunner” Davidson was born in 1941, nine months before the attack on Pearl Harbor and was raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. His father was a Gunners Mate in the Navy and inspired Davidson to join the Navy in 1959. When he arrived at his first duty station after bootcamp, it was ironically at Pearl Harbor. Through extensive training, he acquired his diving expertise in Para-SCUBA, Mixed Gas, and Hard Hat Diving, as well as becoming a Master Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) Technician. During his service, he served five six-month Temporary Active Duty Tours (TAD) in Vietnam.  

In 1969, Davidson removed two, 220lb fused bombs from the Dredge New Jersey that was on the Bassac River in South Vietnam. On one of his Active Duty Tours, he disposed of multiple Viet-Cong made floating mines, weighing up to 600lbs of explosives.  On another mine, he searched through explosives by hand to locate the blasting caps.

On one Viet Cong “Spider Hole” clearing operation, Davidson saved the life of a young sailor that was part of the Clearing Team as he had stepped on a cluster of armed hand grenades.  The sailor knew he couldn’t move, or the grenades would have exploded.  Davidson carefully replaced the pins in each grenade and saved the life of the sailor. 

Davidson’s final tour in Vietnam, January to July 1973, during “Operation End Sweep”, he was selected to lead one of the Explosive Ordinance Disposal Teams that would go ashore at Haiphong, North Vietnam. His EOD Teams taught classes to the North Vietnamese while Prisoners of War (POW) were being released.  This action was the result of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s, Paris Peace Accords with North Vietnam in 1972.  Davidson spent most of this tour on Admiral McCauley’s Staff and was at the negotiations table ashore with the North Vietnamese.

Davidson continued to serve as an EOD Diver stateside. In 1977, he and his Team recovered the fallen Pilot and Co-Pilot of a Naval Reserve A3 Aircraft from an emergency ditching at the in of the runway going into the Oakland/Alameda Estuary just short of the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge. A year later, Davidson and his Team were called to an area just west of San Francisco to escort a fishing vessel that had picked up a live torpedo warhead in its net.

In 1982, after 20 years of US Navy EOD service, Davidson shared: “I felt like I had completed my personal goal of getting rid of unexploded ordnance so they could not hurt or destroy anyone.  Americans live for the 4^th of July.  The other 364 days EOD Technicians are trying to prevent explosions.  Using advanced tools and technology this elite group performs mission that require bravery and skill.  It’s no cake walk, you have to be smart, tough, quick thinking and cool under pressure.”