FW435P-I
The 435th Kangaroo
Squadron
Townsville
Australia, Assigned to 19th BG
An Interview with
L/COL John Wallace Fields
by
Kenneth Wallace Fields
This document has been made part of the 19th BG Assn’s History
An Interview with
L/Col J Wallace
Fields
by
Kenneth Wallace
Fields
October 9 1982
Shamrock Texas
Flying Cadet John Wallace
Fields
Class of 41-C
Stockton, California
April 20, 1941
Questions: by Kenneth Wallace Fields
Answers: by L/Col John Wallace Fields
Q When did you first become interested in aviation?
A Well, I was always interested in aviation, I suppose, but I enjoyed my first flight when I was just a very young boy at Hooker, Oklahoma. I went to visit my grandfather, Ed. R. Wallace, who was the District Superintendent in the Methodist Church, stationed at Hooker. There was a barnstorming Ford Tri-motor taking passengers up, flying out of a wheat field near Hooker. My grandfather thought it would be a good idea for me to take a flight in this Tri-motor Ford. I did, and I never completely forgot that flight, nor have I yet. Incidentally, some of those planes are still flying in certain areas of the world, usually in the mountainous areas and undeveloped countries. As I went to college at Texas Technological College in 1935, I continued to be interested in flying, but never seriously, until my roommate, a young fellow named Clark Wicks, from Clovis, New Mexico, came back to our dormitory room, commenting on the fact that he had taken his Air Force physical, and how difficult it was. Clark and I had several classes together and we worked together in our dormitory, Wells Hall, waiting tables for our room and board. Anyway, it kind of got my attention and made me think, "Well, it couldn't be that tough; if he could pass it, it shouldn't be that difficult for me." Later on in that spring I enrolled in a course of civilian pilot training, sponsored by a governmental agency, in which they solicited students to become pilots and get a private pilot's license in light aircraft, namely Cub or Taylorcraft type.
Q What did you start out flying in that program?
A I flew a Taylorcraft. During that spring I was taking aerology and aviation training, before we started a new flight training class. Well, another friend of mine, J. C. Geary, had a late date one evening, and while talking with him before he went out on his date, we decided that we'd go the next day to meet the traveling board over at the Engineering Building and take the Air Corps physical.
Q This is the traveling examination board?
A Right. In those days it was known as the Army Air Corps Board. That was before the Air Force became a separate service. We lay out in the sun all that Saturday morning, waiting for the time to come for us to meet the board. This was on the campus at Texas Tech, in front of the old Engineering Building. J. C. Geary flunked his test, and I passed mine. There were five of us out of 109 who took the test and passed it. I still hadn't decided to go to the Army Air Corps, because I was supposed to go to medical school on the 14th of September. I graduated from Texas Tech in 1940 with a degree in chemistry and a zoology minor, with the thought in mind all through junior high school and high school that I would go to med school; however, the intrigue of the Air Force came along, and they kept writing us letters, wanting to know when we wanted to go to flying school, pointing out the advantages of seeing the world; staying in Texas and not having to leave the state to learn to fly, and all of those good things. During this time I was finishing up my civilian pilot's training. I spent the summer in Lubbock to complete my training course to get my private pilot's license. In the meantime, war in Europe looked imminent, and one of the boys from Shamrock, a young fellow named Charles Conner, had been drafted. I had visions of me barely getting into med school, and about the time I got there, well, they would draft me into the service in some branch, so I decided that I would go into the Army Air Corps or flying school.
Q This would have been 1940?
A Yes, 1940, and instead of being assigned to Randolph Field, which was the training center in Texas, my first assignment was to Santa Maria, California.
Q How did you actually sign up; how did you let the Army Air Corps know that you wanted to be a pilot?
A Well, I answered some of their questionnaires and said that I would like to go to flying school. At that time there was no pressure put on us other than that they were just trying to sell the Air Corps, and they kept pointing out over and over what a bright future it provided, and how much fun it would be to fly in the wild blue yonder and see the world with the Air Corps.
Q Did you have any idea of making a career of the Air Corps at the time?
A No, I didn't entertain that idea at all.
Q What did you feel about the possibility of approaching war?
A Oh, I didn’t give it a thought. I was young enough at the time that it was just going to be another adventure for me if it came along, so I didn't concern myself with it, I'm afraid; I should have, but I didn't.
Q Your first assignment was Santa Maria?
A Yes. Santa Maria is a small town north of Los Angeles. I reported there in the early part of September, around the 9th of September, when I left Lubbock by train for- Santa Maria. Santa Maria had a contract flying school called Hancock School of Aeronautics. This flying school was under contract with the Air Corps and was manned by civilian pilots, but utilized some military personnel for drill procedures, supply, check pilots, and some maintenance personnel. My particular instructor pilot in primary training, was a man named Graham. He had been a crop duster, and he had been hired by Hancock School of Aeronautics as an instructor pilot. I arrived in Santa Maria a day after the rest of my classmates, and they immediately put me out on the drill field with my classmates in my little Joe College suit, and not having had any drill or knowing any drill techniques, I was just like a fish out of water and stood out like a sore thumb. All through my flying career, and training, I never did catch up with the other members of my classmates in military drill. It was several days before they ever issued me any coveralls. We lived in open bay barracks, and the food was super. The semi-hazing drill routines were also pretty terrific. We had several West Point graduates, and they were going through flying school in grade, that grade being second lieutenant, and those people thought it was their duty to impress upon all the cadets the importance of their rank and the fact that they were very military and we were very civilian.
Q What did you start out flying at Santa Maria, Dad?
A I flew a Steerman PT-13. That was a single engine, fabric-covered, open cockpit biplane, and we flew with the goggles and helmet and scarf and all the things that you see in any airshow or any Air Corps presentation. The Steerman had about a 180 or maybe 220 horse engine. The silk scarf we were issued was made out of parachute silk.
Q How many hours did you put in flying Steermans?
A Well, I was at Santa Maria for three months approximately, and I'm not quite sure the number of hours but in the neighborhood of 60, 65 hours. After about 8 hours, we were allowed to solo if our proficiency was sufficient. After having completed the civilian pilot training course, it was a little bit easier for me to go through primary because of the earlier training in a Taylorcraft, in which I had about 60 hours of flying time. I soloed and learned to do aerobatics in a Steerman. The Steerman was an excellent aerobatic plane, and it was quite a bit of fun. The time I had spent in the Taylorcraft certainly gave me a lot more confidence and ease, and I enjoyed the aerobatics in the Steerman more than I would have otherwise. My instructor pilot, Graham, let us know that he was a top pilot; he showed us some techniques that we weren't supposed to do, but things you could do in an airplane. Then, our check pilot, who was a man named Townsend, gave us a check ride, and he and Major Dearing, who was our Air Commandant, had the final say on whether or not we stayed in the Cadet Corps or whether we got into the "washing machine" and eventually were separated and had the opportunity to go into navigator's school or bombardier’s school.
Q The Steerman was a pretty big airplane, wasn't it, compared to a little Taylorcraft?
A Well, it was big by horsepower. The Taylorcraft had a 60 horse engine in it. It was a little tandem aircraft, very light, and the Steerman looked tremendous to it by comparison. It sure looked big to me when you saw all those 4, 5, or 6 extra instruments that it had in it. In the PT-13, the instructor pilot flew in the front seat and the cadet flew in the back, and the instructor pilot had some instruments, namely, an air speed indicator, cylinder head temperature, RPM, and pitch control. In the back seat we had just a very few of these and did not have an air speed indicator. The way that we were taught to gauge our speed for landing was by listening to the wind that came whistling through the struts of the two wings, and the faster you went, well, the greater the vibration; the slower you went, the less vibration; therefore you knew you were slowing down and you could gauge your speed accordingly and adjust your speed for landing and take off.
Q When did you complete your training in Steermans?
A It was along in November or December, I guess, of 1940. Most of us made it through primary -- I say most of us, about 52% of my classmates primary school were graduated, which left us 48% casualty. Upon completion of primary we went to Moffett Air Force Base, which was an old navy dirigible base. They had a hanger there which could house dirigibles, and they used this hanger then for maintenance and storage of aircraft. During inclement weather we'd stay in there and cook, play ball or do calisthenics or march and drill or whatever they chose for us to do. Moffett was located near San Jose, California, and we had the privilege of going in to some social functions at San Jose College. We flew, at San Jose, Vultee BT-13s. The BT-13 was a single-engine, low-wing monoplane, with two seats and an all metal structure, and non-retractable landing gear. The BT-13 had a lot more instruments than we had had in a PT-13, and the PT-13 had many more instruments than I had been accustomed to in the old Taylorcraft which I flew originally.
Q Was this the aircraft that came to be called the Vultee Vibrator?
A It was so bad that they called it "the Vibrator." We were the first class to fly the BT-13. My class, that of 41-C, was the second class ever to go through flying school on the west coast. We spent approximately six weeks at Moffett Field, and the weather became so bad that they moved us from there down to Kearn County Airport, in Bakersfield, California. We flew off of a grass field, and we finished up our flight training in about six weeks, completing our basic training at Bakersfield. We never did go back to Moffett Field for graduation from basic.
During this time, all of the cadets that wanted to were able to buy a car. It had been the custom at San Antonio, at Randolph Field, and other flying bases, for cadets when they reached this point in their training, to be allowed the privilege of buying a car with a minimum amount of down payment. When I say "minimum amount," I'm talking in terms of $10.00 to $50.00, and then you would pay a small amount out of your cadet pay, which was $75.00 a month, until you were commissioned a second lieutenant. Then your payments would jump up to where you could go ahead and pay it off a little more quickly. During this time, I went into the Chevrolet dealership in Bakersfield, California. They had a car on the floor which really caught my eye. It was a maroon-colored, two-door Chevrolet with all the goodies that you could put on a car at that time, including fog lights and back-up lights, etc. I decided that I was going to make a career out of the Air Force, or do that tour anyway, and that I would have a steady income, so I bought this car. I paid $25.00 down on it and drove out in this new car on a cadet's pay of $75.00 a month. Many other cadets were not quite so frugal; they bought convertibles and Buicks, and various other types of cars, which extended their payments considerably.
On graduation from Moffett Field, we then went to Stockton Air Force Training Center, which was the west coast training center, where we had the opportunity of flying AT-6 Texans. The AT-6 was a single-engine monoplane, two seats, with retractable gear, and really was well equipped with instruments and landing lights and all the nice things that go with flying a nice airplane. This airplane would have been an ideal airplane for peacetime, just to go cross country and tooling around in for personal pleasure.
Q Was the BT-13 an aircraft that you had any difficulty with?
A Well, it was a fine aircraft to fly, but it was one that you couldn't be foolish with, and if you were, you could get into trouble. We lost several pilots during that time; as a matter of fact, they grounded the airplane right at the end of my class, and it was grounded for a couple of classes until they found some of the problems with it, some aerodynamic problems.
Q Did it have pretty bad spinning characteristics?
A Oh, it would spin like a dream. It just didn't want to come out of it.
Q Did you ever put one in a spin?
A Yes I did. Near the end of my time flying BT-13s, when I had all my check flights behind me and all my proficiency checks done, well, they just turned us loose and let us fly and do what we wanted to do. The only thing we had to do was put in the hours, so I thought I'd run an experiment, and I did. I put it into a good speed, diving speed, and pulled it up on its prop, kind of a straight up position and kicked it into vertical, climbing spin, and when it came out of that, it was really wound up. It fell off on one wing and spun for ten thousand feet before I ever got it out of it. I didn't try that anymore.
Q Where did you complete your training on AT-6's?
A We completed it at Mother Field, which was an old grass-covered World War I bombing range. We lived in tents at Mother. They had one two-story barracks building where instructor pilots lived, which also housed a mess hall and the parachute riggers, and other support personnel. When we completed our course there, we went back to Stockton Field from which we graduated with the usual exercises. We were, as I suggested earlier, the second class to graduate from the west coast training center.
During the rainy period in our training at Stockton Air Force Base in advanced, we had a discussion with our squadron flight commander, and they told us how they selected people for various types of aircraft operational units. This is the way they broke it down generally. First of all, a person who was very articulate, and demanded perfect discipline of himself, and followed instruction perfectly, well, they wanted them for instructors because they could carry those instructions from their flight leader on to their students, and invariably, they were a little better disciplined than some of the other people. He told us that the command type people, good pilots, who could think for themselves, who had quite a bit of mental depth and ability to think and fly, who were secure in their aircraft and followed instruction well, were suggested for heavy bombardment. The people who were not particularly strong in piloting, and were not the fighter pilot type, they put in observation. Those that just didn't care whether school kept or not, kind of the daredevil, care-free, kind of people, who don't care whether they live or die, they put in fighter planes. Quite fortunately for me, when I asked for heavy bombardment in the midwest, I was assigned to Fort Douglas, Utah, to the 7th Bomb Group in Salt Lake City, and I could not have received a better assignment for me. It fitted my request perfectly and I was delighted to have the opportunity to go to Salt Lake City. This put me about as close to my home in Shamrock, Texas as I could get, and still be in heavy bombardment.
After we graduated from flying school, which was April 25, 1941, we had thirty days leave, and I drove my car about 36 hours straight to get from Stockton back to Shamrock, along with Tex Simmons, a classmate of mine, whose home was in Pampa, Texas. We enjoyed this leave very much. Then we were called back, our leave was canceled, and we each reported to Salt Lake City; he to the 88th Squadron, which was a reconnaissance squadron of the 7th Bomb Group and I to the 22nd Bomb Squadron, which was a bombardment squadron of the 7th Bomb Group. The 22nd Bomb Squadron was part of the 7th Bomb Wing, which was comprised of the 22nd Squadron, the 11th Squadron, the 9th Squadron, and the 88th Reconnaissance Squadron. During this period while we were gathering into our various squadrons, we learned that the young officers were supposed to call on their commanding officer at the earliest opportunity and leave their card. This card was one which we had had specially printed. It carried our rank and our name, and it was supposed to put us into the local social registry, so that on the occasion of social functions, they would take these cards and use them to make up their guest lists for inviting the young officers to the various functions. Several of us decided that we would call on Major Kenneth Hobson, who was our squadron commander in the 22nd Squadron and we made an appointment through his adjutant to visit him at his home on a certain night. Five or six of us, including myself and J. T. May, George Munroe, Andy Price, and Robert Debord, went to see Major and Mrs. Hobson. The idea was to leave your card very quietly, and unnoticed if possible, on a little table at the entrance into their home. We were each crowding around as we departed to leave our little card, and when I placed my card on the table, it missed the table and just spun in and slithered all the way to the floor. It was a great embarrassment to me, and there was a great deal of glee, I think, on the part of Major Hobson. He couldn't help but get a chuckle out of it.
Q What aircraft did you next fly after the AT-6 Texan training?
A Well, I don't recall what the next aircraft was, but being the youngest officers and youngest pilots on the base, we were assigned all kinds of little dirty details and very few flights. We had to fly with some of the older second lieutenants and a few first lieutenants that were not checked off in B-17s. However, we also had assigned to that bomb group some B-18s, which these second and first lieutenants were eager to fly. Every time they had the opportunity, well, they would take a cross-country and they would insist that one of us go along as a co-pilot, much to our chagrin. The B18 was a hot little twin-engine aircraft, and I mean hot physically; I don't mean it had all that much speed. It was very uncomfortable. The cockpit was very similar to a DC-3. I believe that none of us really liked this kind of flight, but we all had some of it anyway. In addition to that, we had an A-17, which is a single-engine attack ship. It was slow and nearly as maneuverable as an AT-6, and it had about the same power, which meant that it was under-powered. We had to do night flying in this airplane, and I remember particularly flying it to Rock Springs, Wyoming, and then up to Pocotella, Idaho, from Salt Lake City. It never was any fun to fly at night in that airplane, winding around through the mountains, and there were quite a few mountains.
Q How did they start you out on B-17's? As a co-pilot?
A As a co-pilot, and we flew with the experienced pilots, those that were very capable of flying the airplane and giving instructions to the younger pilots.
Q Do you happen to remember your first B-17 flight?
A No, I don't remember the first one, I'm afraid, but I can remember some of the first. I flew with a then First Lieutenant Al Mueller, and with my squadron commander, Major Kenneth B. Hobson, who was one of my favorite people. I also flew with Captain Bill Lewis, who was an ex-airline pilot who had been called back into the Air Corps on active duty.
Q How much time did you spend training in B-17s?
A I got there in April, of 1941, and almost immediately we started flying. In addition to that we began to hear rumors that we were going to the Philippines. In the summer of 1941, we realized that we didn't have sufficient navigators to man all the aircraft that were to be assigned to these squadrons, and in order to alleviate this shortage, the squadron navigator took a group of pilots, all second lieutenants like myself; J. T. May; George Munroe, and Andy Price, and set out to make navigators out of us. So I was thrust into a crash celestial navigation course at Yellowstone National Park, with a Lieutenant Doss, who was our squadron navigator. We spent about six weeks at Yellowstone National Park, learning the stars and the moon and doing the ground school work, and incidentally, fishing and lying around and taking pictures of the park. We then went back to Salt Lake City and began to fly actual celestial navigation flights in a B-17. Although I was never very strong in it, I did finally qualify in it. I was never pleased with it, and I was never very comfortable as a navigator.
Q So you were qualified as a celestial navigator?
A Well, they said I was qualified as a celestial navigator. There was room for doubt, since this was not an official navigation school, although we did fairly well when we went overseas. Some of us actually went over as navigators. Happily, just a few days before we left to go overseas to the Philippines, on the 4th of December, 1941, we got some cadet navigators, who had been through the formal navigational school but had never been in a B-17. They didn't know what B-17's were like and we certainly didn't know what cadet navigators were like. When we were assigned a cadet navigator to fly with us, we were to check on him, and he on us; we each were to check on the other, on our first flight to Hawaii. In any event, we were all checked out and our aircraft commanders thought we could take our planes from one point to another and return, fairly safely, anyway.
Q Did they actually classify you as an aerial observer as opposed to navigator ?
A Yes. I was issued personnel orders that showed me qualified as an aerial observer, and this required some gunnery training. You had to qualify in aerial gunnery and you had to qualify in navigation, but having missed the formal training of a navigator, we never did have awarded us the wings of a navigator. We had the wings of an observer in addition to our pilot's wings.
Q How much aerial gunnery training did you get?
A Very little, just enough to qualify, which involved one airplane, flying along-side you pulling a target sleeve. They put bullets dipped in paint in the machine guns, and they would fly alongside you and you would stick your gun out there and shoot at this target sleeve.
Q What position were you firing from?
A We'd fire from the side guns.
Q Waist guns?
A Waist guns in a B-17.
Q Was that a single, .50-caliber machine gun?
A Yes. As the bullet penetrated the sleeve, it would paint marks on there, so they could count up how many hits you had on it.
Q So you hit the sleeve enough times--
A If you hit it enough times, well, that qualified you to be an aerial gunner.
Q How many of those flights did you make?
A Oh, two or three.
Q What type of bombing experience did you have in training?
A Well, other than as co-pilot, I didn't have any, as the pilots that we flew with as co-pilots were flying the airplane all the time on the bombing practice runs. We practiced bombing at Wendover Field in Nevada, west of Salt Lake City.
Q Was there a dummy battleship or something of that nature on that range?
A Yes there was. I don't have any idea what it was made out of, as I never did see it from the ground. It was just an outline of a ship from the air.
Q What type of practice bombs would you drop?
A We dropped 100 lb. practice bombs. They were filled with sand and a little bit of black powder, so when they hit they would explode and you could see the black smoke from them. The sand would give them some weight and some stability.
Q Once you finished up your aerial gunnery, celestial navigation, and training as a co-pilot, where were you assigned?
A Well, in October, we began to see that were going to be shipped overseas. We shipped our luggage, all of our peace-time baggage, by ship along with our ground maintenance people. My baggage included my tuxedo, my golf clubs and baseball glove; all of the things that I was going to use in peace time on the code-named island of Plum--we didn't realize at that time where Plum was; it turned out that that was the code name for the island of Mindanao, where we were to be stationed on Del Monte Field.
Also, in October, just before we shipped out, some of our squadron had the opportunity to go to Kanab, Utah; that's a small place south of Salt Lake City, on a deer hunt. Our squadron set up a deer camp and sent a cook down. We set up tents, and used G.I. rifles for deer rifles. We around the copper cover off the point of them so that we had a dum-dum type thing that we were going to use to shoot deer with, using .30 caliber ammunition. Several of us went on this deer hunt, about thirty of us altogether. J. T. May was the only one of my good friends that I went with; he and I ran around together quite a bit and did nearly everything together at that time. We had hunting licenses that permitted us to kill a buck, and for $7.00 more we could get an additional permit allowing us to kill a doe. I walked about a half of a mile from camp the first day we were out there and I soon had a buck. I had it up in a tree and I was gutting it out, getting it cleared up, when I looked up and here came about six or seven more deer, including a doe, so I shot the doe. I gave the doe away promptly, and J. T. May helped me carry the buck back to camp. I believe I gave the deer to Lucius B. Pennick: he was the Canyon boy who was in my class at flying school; he put it in his locker room at Salt Lake City, and was glad to have it, although he was shipped overseas before he ever got a chance to eat it, I think.
Also, as we began to realize that were going overseas and weren't going to need our cars very much longer, I contacted my mother and dad and told them that I needed to send my car home. Price and Oneta Barrett, who are good friends of ours -- Price ran a Mobil Station for many, many years in Shamrock and worked with my dad and mother, and then later with me when I came back to Shamrock -- decided that they would come up on the bus and drive my car back home, which they did. I was certainly grateful to them for coming up for the car because I would not have been allowed to bring it home, as I didn't have leave and couldn't get a pass to come home and bring it myself, and would have had to have sold it at somewhat of a sacrifice at Salt Lake City. They were very nice. On December 4th we departed Salt Lake City by train on route to Sacramento Air Depot. Our ultimate destination was the island of Mindanao, which was going to be a permanent change of station for us. The outfit heading to Mindanao was the 7th Bomb Group, of which the 22nd Squadron was a part. Our purpose in going to Sacramento Air Depot was to pick up new B-17Es, the first ones that had come off of the production line from the plant in Seattle, Washington. These B-17Es had been transported to Sacramento Air Depot for some minor modifications. As soon as we got our planes, we were to report to Hamilton Field, and were to have left Hamilton Field on the night of December 6, 1941, which would have thrown us into Hickam Field in Hawaii on the morning of December 7th. In my case, I was navigating for Captain Bill Lewis, who was the squadron operations officer and deputy commander. Bill Lewis had asked me to select one of the new cadet navigators since I was assigned to his crew as a navigator, and in doing so, I found when I went to check them out that there was a Jack Carlson in the group, with whom I had gone to school at Texas Tech. Jack and I had lived in the same dormitory until he was removed because he wanted to play poker all night and got caught. He was an engineering student and I believed he had a good mind, and would make a good navigator, so I selected him for our crew. We checked on each other on the flight to Hawaii, then as we got to Hawaii, well, I decided that he was as good or better a navigator then I was, so he became our navigator and I got off of that detail. Prior to leaving Sacramento, we were picking our planes up one at a time, and there were various things wrong with them, minor things, so we didn't all get them the same day, and were not all prepared to depart for Hickam Field on the same day. In my case, our plane was not ready, and we got it a day after the other crews did. On the night of December 6th, we were doing what we called a shake-down flight, to fly about 10 hours and check the fuel consumption and all of the instruments, to see if they were properly calibrated and ready to fly to Hawaii. That's what we were doing on the night of the 6th and therefore we did not get into the Hickam Field fiasco on the morning of December 7th.
Q What kind of finish did these new B-17E's have?
A They were silver-skinned and unpainted.
Q Did they have the .50-caliber machine guns in place?
A They had .50-caliber waist guns on mounts. You turned them around manually and pointed them out the window. They also had a couple of twin 50-caliber machine guns mounted on the tail, where the tail gunner would lie down; he actually did lie down and manually operate those guns. In the nose the navigator and the bombardier had some little bulbs from which they could stick a 30-caliber -- they called it a flexible machine gun. You'd stick it out of this little bulb, and it would give it some rotation where they could maneuver it around manually and fire it. Later versions of the E-17 had a turret mounted in the belly, with two 50-caliber machine guns, and a good radius of action. It would go all the way around, and it would go up 180 degrees. Additionally, they later added another turret for the flight engineer that was mounted behind the pilot, with a radius of action of 360 degrees and a plane of 180 degrees.
Q Would the B-17E be the first to be equipped with tail guns?
A That's right.
Q Were there B-17's in service in the Far Eastern Air Force or the Hawaiian Air Force at that time?
A Yes, there were B-17's, but the first B-17 would have been the Model "A", and they never put any into combat or put them into a tactical unit. B-17Es were the first ones that really got into a tactical unit and then not very many of them, and then the C's and D's, and not too many of them either. The first aircraft that really were earmarked for a tactical unit at any strength or any development following the preliminary B-17 development were the E models.
Q What was on the ground at Clark Field and Hickam Field when the Japs hit it on December 7th; were those C's and D's?
A There were no E's [at Clark]. Those were C's and D's.
Q Do you recall specifically how you learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the Hawaiian air bases?
A Yes. We were awakened on the morning of December 7th, 1941, about 11 o'clock by the then-squadron commander, Major Kenneth D. Hobson. He told us that Hickam Field in Hawaii had been attacked; that we were to get our planes in the air and take them to Muroc Lake. Muroc is what is now known as Edwards Air Force Base, and is just a big salt flat lake bed where you could land in any direction at any time for miles and miles. It now has been developed as a test area for experimental aircraft and our Space Shuttles land there. Major Hobson woke me up and said "Pearl Harbor's been attacked. We've got to get our planes off and take them to Muroc Lake." We went down from our little barrack's beds to the other fellows' beds and woke them up, and we all immediately began to get our stuff packed and out to the airplanes, and got them off the ground as soon as we could.
Q What was your reaction to the news he had?
A Oh, I was surprised, and I had no depth of thought toward what this thing really meant. I was really, totally surprised and I couldn't help but think about the guys that were already in the midst of it at Hickam Field. I flew as co-pilot with Major Hobson, with a crew chief, to Muroc Field. We didn't have a navigator or any gunners. I was squadron armaments officer, and they immediately told us to take our bomb-bay tanks out and load the ship with bombs, because they were fearful that a Jap fleet was steaming in to the west coast; that they were going to move in on the west coast and take it. We dropped our bomb bay tanks and loaded up with bombs, and about the time we'd get loaded with bombs, they'd change their orders again, and we'd take the bombs out and put the bomb-bay tanks in. That went on for about seven days. During this time we were chasing imaginary fleets up and down the west coast, flying out of Muroc. We kept expecting at any moment to have orders to send us on to Hawaii, but we were delayed in leaving for Hawaii until December 16th. Once, during this time, we landed at San Jose, California, and I had an opportunity to pack and send home a shotgun which I had bought in Salt Lake City, and had planned to take overseas with me and keep at my permanent change station. This is the Model 12 Winchester pump shotgun that I presently use and that you have shot many, many times, which I had purchased at the air base in Salt Lake City.
During this time we would occasionally get airborne and go out searching for a Jap fleet, and imagine that we saw them, and then we'd realize that it wasn't a Jap fleet, and we'd come back in and unload our bombs and load our gas tanks again.
Q What was the atmosphere on the west coast, or were you flying out of Muroc that whole time?
A Flying out of Muroc most of the time. Finally, we went back to Sacramento for ammunition and various things and spare parts, and the people at the supply depot there just opened up the doors and said "take anything you want that you might need." So we loaded our planes down with spare parts, spark plugs, wrenches, tail wheels, pistols, clothing, everything that we thought we might need somewhere along this flight.
Q Did you ever sight any confirmed Japanese shipping off the west coast during your patrols?
A No.
Q Are you aware of later studies which show that there were up to eleven Jap submarines located all up and down the coast during that time?
A Yes, I'm aware of that, and I'm aware that some of them did shell Santa Barbara, but we didn't see them.
Q Tell me about your flight to Hawaii.
A Well, when we were having our briefing and preparing for our take-off for Hickam Field from Hamilton Field on December 16th, we were told by the airline pilots there that we would have good weather and favorable winds, and that we should arrive at Hickam Field in Hawaii within about 15 hours. We flew and flew with a heavily loaded plane, and 14 hours came and went; 14-1/2 hours, and no land in sight. Fifteen hours came with no land in sight, and finally, after 16 hours and 10 minutes, we arrived at Hickam Field. Both Jack Carlson and I had been taking celestial shots and realized that we were not making as good time as we thought we were supposed to. This did alarm us somewhat, because neither of us had ever flown into Hawaii before, and we thought that there was a chance that we could have missed the chain of islands, but we were consistent with our shots and checks that we made on each other, and felt like we were staying within the ball park on our position. We were of course concerned about our fuel consumption, as a B-17 with bomb-bay tanks loaded had 2,400 gallons of fuel and it was also approximately 2,400 nautical miles from Hamilton Field in California to Hickam Field in Hawaii, which meant that we had to go a mile per gallon. A B-17 would use within the neighborhood of 150 to 180 gallons of fuel an hour, depending on the load and depending on what speed you're flying, and your altitude, so 16 hours and 10 minutes after take-off, we landed at Hickam Field and, probably, had 100 gallons or less of fuel when we landed there.
Q What kind of shape was Hickam in when you landed?
A Well, as for Hickam it self the runways had been cleared off, but many of the buildings had been bombed and there were still burned aircraft visible along the side of the runways. Of course, Hickam is adjacent to Pearl Harbor, and the entrance to Pearl Harbor was right by the officer's club at Hickam, and the officer's quarters. There was still smoke from burning vessels in Pearl Harbor and an oil slick all over the water. It was really a mess. Ships, those that weren't burning, had been damaged, and the Arizona, of course, was sunk. There were many of them that were damaged, including those which had been dry-docked and bombed. The dry-docks were also damaged, the ships in them being wrecked while they were at their mooring in dry-dock.
Q What kind of aircraft did you see that had been destroyed?
A Oh, there were B-17's, and P-40's; they had some old pursuits, like P-26's, out dated fighters. The barracks buildings had been strafed and bombed, and the kitchen had been blown up. It was just a mess.
Q Were you ever in the Schofield Barracks near there?
A No, Schofield was an Army barracks, and I never was on the base, so I don't know anything about what happened at Schofield.
Q What was the atmosphere in Hawaii when you landed, among the military?
A They felt pretty low. There was a 20 millimeter aircraft gun emplacement just outside the officer's barracks at Hickam where I stayed, and they told me that it was five days after the Pearl Harbor attack before they got any ammunition for their gun, so they felt pretty low. They were just not equipped for an attack on Pearl Harbor or Hickam Field.
Q Was there an atmosphere or feeling that the Japs might attack again at any time?
A Yes, there was, and there was a strong feeling against the Japs, the local Japs, because a good many residents of Honolulu and the Hawaiian Islands were not naturalized -- I mean not Americanized Japs. They were doubtful of their loyalties to the United States. Everything was in a state of confusion, and it was very obvious that had the Japanese been prepared for it, they could have steamed into the Hawaiian Islands and taken Pearl Harbor, Hickam Field, and the other installations the day of the attack because everybody was so unaware of what was going to happen and so unprepared.
Q What did you do after you landed; did they train you further, or did they send you directly out on reconnaissance missions?
A Well, when we landed at Hickam Field, we were met by a crew of personnel from the Hawaiian Air Command, and they came on board our ship with a flit gun to spray us for any insects that we might have brought over from the mainland, to protect against fruit flies or something of that nature that would have been detrimental to the agriculture of the Islands. In addition to this spraying of the airplane, they took over all the equipment that we had, our airplane, our hack watches for the navigators, all navigational equipment, a case of .45 automatic pistols, additional clothing, underwear, shoes; everything that we thought we might have a need for and that we had originally planned to take on into Australia and the Philippines when we left Sacramento Air Depot. After having stripped all our equipment we had off our airplanes, the Hawaiian Department countermanded our orders, which had been to go to the island of Mindanao; confiscated our airplanes; impounded our equipment, and put us to work flying patrol missions out of Hawaii. During these search missions we would fly out 800 miles and then fly 90 degrees to that for 100 miles, and then back 800 miles to Hickam Field in search of fleets and submarines. Occasionally some of our planes did see strange unidentified ships, or what were believed to be submarines; some of these sightings were later determined to have been whales, so all of the hysteria that went with it was not confined to Hickam and Pearl Harbor, but it rubbed off on some of our Air Corps crews as well.
On Christmas Day, 1941, it was my good fortune to fly as co-pilot with Major Hobson, who was the 22nd Squadron Commander. We flew a pie-shaped patrol mission. On the flight we enjoyed a nice Christmas dinner which the mess had thoughtfully prepared.
Q Did this pre-emption by the Hawaiian Department happen to all of the 22nd Squadron people that you're aware of, or did some of them actually make it on to Del Monte in the Philippines?
A Oh, it happened to all of them. During this period, Major Hobson had repeatedly asked that the Hawaiian Department turn his crews loose so that they could go ahead to Plum, which we knew by then to be the island of Mindanao, and Del Monte Field, but they refused to let us go. Finally, and largely through his insistence, they decided that they would let three crews go; Major Hobson, J. R. Dubose, and Jack Hughes. They departed for the island of Mindanao, but they never got there, although they did make it to Java, where they met the 19th Bomb Group, which had evacuated from the Philippines. They came out with the 19th from Java and the Philippines to regroup in Australia. We were supposed to follow them to the island of Mindanao within a couple of days, and as a matter of fact, they assigned aircraft and sent us down to the operations section where we were alerted to leave. We had our weather briefing, and we were then supposed to have flown from Hickam Field to Christmas Island, Canton Island, Fiji Island, New Caldonia, and on to Townsville, Australia, but, after having gotten us down there and preparing us to leave, they canceled our orders. We went back to our barracks, unpacked our bags, and went back to flying patrol missions. After Major Hobson left for the Philippines, they transferred me to the crew piloted by Harry Spieth. Harry Spieth was a super pilot, a great individual and a fine man.
Q When did you first meet Harry Spieth?
A Well, I knew him in Salt Lake City in the 22nd Squadron, but he had another co-pilot, an older pilot a couple of classes ahead of me named Arnold Johnson. When he got to Hawaii, he decided he wanted to make a change, so he put Arnold Johnson to doing something else, and picked me up as his co-pilot. During our time at Wheeler Field, he gave me enough landings and flying time on a B-17 and he checked me off as a first pilot. Although I was still flying as his co-pilot, I had met his qualifications, and he was one of the squadron check pilots, so I became rated as a B-17 pilot.
Q What do you recall about your first mission flying co-pilot with Spieth?
A Well, nothing more than that he was very considerate of all of his crew, and he was an excellent pilot. He gave me, as a young pilot, every opportunity to learn flight techniques.
Q How much older was he than you?
A He was probably six, seven years older than I was.
Q How long did you stay at Wheeler Field?
A Approximately six weeks. When we transferred to Wheeler Field, we were assigned quarters in the officer's barracks on the field, all of which had been either strafed heavily or else had some light bomb damage from December 7th. Wheeler Field was north of Pearl Harbor and north of Hickam Field by forty miles, and was really a fighter strip. We stayed on alert a day and we would fly a day, then we were off a day and back on alert a day; fly a day and so on.
It was pretty easy for us to commute back and forth, on our days off, to Honolulu, and we had the opportunity of joining the Outrigger Canoe Club.
The Outrigger Canoe Club was not confined to canoes at all, but was a beach on Waikiki, where they had a steakhouse, volleyball court, and various other kinds of entertainment, which was pretty interesting to those of us from the mainland who had never seen this type of thing. During this time I had a chance to meet Duke Kahanamoku, who was then the Sheriff of Hawaii, Honolulu County. Duke Kahanamoku was a Hawaiian and had been an Olympic swimmer. In his older years he was certainly a very outstanding physical specimen, with long gray hair, a beautiful tan, very athletic. It was easy to see why he had been so outstanding in the Olympics as a swimmer.
From Wheeler Field, we ran frequent patrol or reconnaissance missions. These missions were similar to the ones that I described earlier with Major Hobson on Christmas Day, where we would fly out 800 miles and then down 100 miles and then back 800 miles to the mainland. All during this time, Harry Spieth was giving me every opportunity to learn about the B-17, and letting me fly it as much as he could. I was among the first of the younger pilots to get checked off on the B-17, and this was thanks to Harry Spieth and his interest in me as a young pilot. He was an excellent pilot and I certainly owe a debt to him for the ability that I had in the B-17.
Q Did you ever see the U. S. Navy on operations while you were doing search missions out of Hickam?
A Oh, occasionally we'd see a few ships, but not very many.
Q Did you ever see the aircraft carriers that were at sea when the Japs attacked on December 7th?
A No. Finally, after six weeks of this type of thing, flying patrol missions and so on, they told us that we were definitely going to leave for Australia on a given night. They called us down for a weather briefing and we did leave for Australia.
The first leg of our trip was to Christmas Island. Christmas Island was a very tropical island and the strips that we landed on were just cut out of the coconut trees. It was here that I saw my first green coconut and Learned that in place of a laxative it would do very nicely. Drinking the coconut milk was a new experience for a lot of us, and we all experienced the same fate, too.
The people on Christmas Island were extremely nice to us; most of them were Seabee-type people. They were civilians, but they were doing contract work and engineering work.
We left Christmas Island on the 12th and flew to Canton Island. Canton Island is a small coral atoll in the Pacific, which at that time had only one tree, and one landing strip. This landing strip had numerous goony birds on it--I don't mean the Goony Bird aircraft; I mean the goony birds that could not fly; they ran and flapped their wings but could not become airborne. They would have to shoo the goony birds off the landing strip until the airplanes got in, and then they would let them back on again. There had been a Pan American base on Canton that they'd used as an airline stop. It was closed down and abandoned, and the personnel on Canton Island had everything underground. They had dug tunnels in the coral. The dining halls were underground, the sleeping quarters were underground, and they didn't have facilities for transient personnel, so you had to get in there and get serviced and get out, and that's what we did. It was an eight-hour flight from Christmas Island to Canton, and we didn't spend the night there. We traveled on. The one tree on Canton Island had a look-out tower built around it so they could take advantage of the height of the tree looking for anybody that might be coming in unexpectedly.
Q You were still flying as the 22nd Squadron?
A Well, we were flying as remnants of about four squadrons. We had some crews out of the 88th Squadron, some out of the 9th and 11th, and we had one pick-up crew that came from nobody-knows where. We had about five or six crews out of the 22nd Squadron, and we were commanded by then-Major Dick Carmichael at the time.
Q How many aircraft actually made the flight from Hawaii?
A Twelve. That was all that the Hawaiian Department turned loose.
Q Where did you go from Canton Island?
A Well, from Canton, we went to Fiji. That's the home of the bushy-haired natives. We stayed on alert at Fiji for several days. The natives were very friendly and outgoing, and were governed at this time by the New Zealanders. We had a nice experience with the natives, in that they had not seen Americans before, and would come under our airplanes and we would give them candy and cigarettes. They thought that was pretty nice, quite a contrast from the strict discipline that they experienced from the New Zealanders. in addition to this, they would steal pineapples from the pineapple plantations across the fields and bring them and put them under the wings of our airplanes, and back off with a big show of shiny, white teeth, and smile as if to tell us "here it is, this is what we've done for you, eat it and enjoy. "
I remember that they were digging a ditch across the field to lay some kind of electrical line, and the overseer was a New Zealander. He had a New Zealander digger-type hat, and a long whip. He never did hit these natives with it, but he would crack it to get their attention. I guess they were fearful that he might hit them, so they paid pretty close attention to him. However, when we would walk from our airplanes across the field to the officer's club, these natives would see us, and the first one out of the ditch -- there would be a long ditch full of these people maybe for a couple of hundred or three hundred yards, people digging the same ditch; the first one that saw us would jump out of the ditch and holler "Boola," and then it had a domino effect all along the length of this ditch; the natives would climb out of the ditch and smile and wave and holler "Boola," much to the chagrin of the New Zealand overseer.
We spent a weekend on Fiji Island, waiting for the Free French to chase the Vichy French in New Caledonia up into the hills, and whenever they had them removed from the airstrip, Well, they called us by radio and said they had control. We went on to New Caledonia and landed at the field of Plindegaig. I mentioned the Free French had the Vichy French chased up into the hills; they took turns about running each other off the airstrip and taking command of it. It happened to be our turn, so we got in and refueled--didn't even have time to eat a meal or anything; then we had to get off the field because we were not particularly safe there.
After leaving New Caledonia, we flew on into Townsville, Australia, and arrived there around 8 o'clock in the evening. We were very well received by the Australians because they thought that their great saviours had arrived when we tooled in there in these first B-17Es that they had ever seen. Truthfully, they were afraid that the Japs were going to move in and take Australia, and it was a possibility for several months. We were assigned quarters in the Australian enlisted men's barracks, and issued a little bit of bedding which was to be used on steel cots where, in place of a mattress, they had placed a laced-wool blanket-type thing that was laced with rope to hold it in the steel frame. It didn't have much spring to it at all. It wasn't quite as comfortable as the beds back home, but they felt pretty good. Our quarters were at Garbutt Field and I was assigned to Barracks 108. The Barracks itself was built on stilts, up off of the ground so that air could circulate and dry out underneath the building.
We enjoyed the comfort of these barracks, which were so much better than what most of the bases were in Australia, and certainly better than what New Guinea had to offer. It was a good, nice walk from our barracks over to our mess tent. We had a mess sergeant named Don Fitz, who was pretty much of a tippler, and after having drawn from the Australian quartermaster some mutton and having got such a response from us when he brought it to our mess to eat, he decided that there must be a better way. He started taking a bottle of whiskey with him whenever he would go down to the Australian quartermaster. He would take his KP's with instructions as to what they were to do to pick up various things that we did like, like boxes of candy and ground beef, instead of mutton. After he learned that we were not going to eat that mutton, he never did bring any more into our mess hall, but it did cost him several fifths of whiskey to entertain the Australian quartermaster's personnel while his KP's were making off with their ground beef that we enjoyed. On the way to the mess hall, we would pass right by the Australian officer's mess, which was really their officer's club, and we had the opportunity there to become acquainted with Australian beer. The beer that we enjoyed there was named Cairns Ale, because it was made in the town of Cairns, about 300 miles up the coast from Townsville. This came in large quart-size bottles, and they served it pretty warm. It was 17% alcohol, and after 2 or 3 bottles of this Cairns Ale, the Australian ground beef tasted like T-Bone steaks. During our stay at Garbutt Field, we had occasion to disperse our aircraft many times to get them off the coastline where the Japs could greet them so easily. These dispersal spots were Charter's Towers, and Cloncurry. Charter's Towers was only about 50 miles from Townsville, and Cloncurry was about 300 miles from Townsville. The Japs couldn't find Cloncurry; we could barely find it, and we were friendly. They used Cloncurry to disperse aircraft from the coastline, which was the most dangerous part of the country, because the Japs could steam in with carriers. At both Charter's Towers and Cloncurry, we had nothing to entertain ourselves with the exception of going to the local movie, although at Cloncurry we had the chance to hunt some kangaroo. I'll say this, we hunted them; we saw them, but I never had the good fortune to kill one. I couldn't hit them, they bounced up and down so.
During the time that we would disperse at Cloncurry a number of us got dengue fever, and at one time there were parts of ten crews in the hospital at once. The hospital was called a station hospital. The little community of Cloncurry was no larger than 300 people, and this hospital had one doctor assigned to it. He was only in the hospital one or two days out of every two weeks. He spent most of his time flying around in the area of Queensland from one station, or ranch, to another, treating people that would come on a certain day knowing that the doctor would be at a certain ranch. They would come from miles around. If they were too badly off, he would have them flown into the hospital at Cloncurry.
We enjoyed the comfort that the hospital staff gave us, although it was primitive and the lot of us had a big, open ward, but at least they were doing their best to get us on our feet.
Q Jumping ahead forty years, can you tell me something about your return to Townsville in 1981?
A Yes. In 1981, Cecile (my wife) and I had the opportunity to return to Australia. It was the second time for us and we went primarily to lay a wreath at Melbourne during their Anzac Day celebration at the Shrine of Remembrance. We then flew an Australian airliner into Townsville.
Q Did you have a chance to observe the oldstrip from the air?
A Oh I had an excellent opportunity. I told one of the stewardesses that I would like to go up and visit with the captain a minute on the flight from Brisbane to Townsville, and that I had been stationed in Townsville during the war. She came back immediately and said "the Captain would be glad for you to come visit with him, and we'll let you know when we're ready for you." In a few minutes, I went forward. There were two young Australian pilots, a pilot and a co-pilot, or captain and first officer, as you choose, and they had many questions to ask about the things that went on in Townsville. They said "Why don't you sit through the landing with us?". The funniest part about it was, as I left my seat among roughly 20 people that were going to Townsville with our party, I said "I'm going to go land this airplane." And they had joked about it. We were in a DC-9. When the pilot asked if I would like to sit through the landing, I said "Yeah, I sure would." He put the jump seat down for me, and we landed at the same strip that I had flown out of 40 years ago. It looked just the same; they hadn't done much to it, if anything. When we landed and I started to make my way back to my seat, 2 or 3 of these people said "Well, did you really land this plane?" They were so naive as to believe that I would get up out of that seat and go land that airplane.
This was really quite a thrill for me, because it had been 40 years, approximately, since I'd been there. To go back and land on the same place, and see how the town had grown, was quite exciting. It was a town of about 12,000 people when I was there in 1942, and now it was about 75,000.
Q Did you make it out to the airbase quarters ?
A Yes, I did. Cecile and I called a taxi and we drove out to Garbutt Field. We went to the gate and told the guard on duty who I was and what I was there for, and that I would like to see the base. He said "I'll have to tell the Sergeant." So he went to tell the sergeant, and the sergeant came and checked us out and he said "Well, I'll have to get a-hold of my officer." So he called his officer and we were kind of like a bird in a badminton game. Finally though, we ended up with the Commanding Officer. We visited with him on the phone for a few seconds. He said "Let me talk to the Sergeant of the Guard." He told us that he was tied up and couldn't personally take us on tour, but would see that we were cared for. He told the Sergeant of the Guard to get us a staff car and a driver and show us everything on the base. I had taken with me some pictures of the barracks in which I lived during the war, Barracks 108. I told the driver that I had stayed in Barracks 108 and asked if it was still there. He said "Yes, it sure is, and I live in Barracks 109 myself." He took us to Barracks 108, which is a women's barracks now, so I didn't get to go in and look at it, but it looked the same from the outside. It hadn't changed a bit.
Q Did you make a photograph of the way it looks now?
A We made a picture of it, and it compared favorably with the picture I had made 40 years ago. We then went back by the officer's mess, and I compared a picture of it from 40 years ago to the present time. The only thing that they had done to it was to put a four blade prop in front of the stairways. It's an upstairs building and had stairways coming up from two sides with a central landing upstairs. The driver even picked out the shrubs that were there 40 years ago and pointed out how they had grown.
Inside the barracks in 1942 we had had a little chest-type thing where you could hang clothes up, and, I think, one drawer per person, and two double-deck bunks made of steel frame with these heavy blankets with eyelets in them like a tarp has today. We drew mosquito netting from the Australian quartermaster and put it up; the mosquitoes would nearly carry you off. Additionally, there were kangaroo rats which would come down and check us out at night. All these barracks were open with no ceilings or anything in them, just a roof over them, because they didn't need a ceiling for warmth. The only thing they were trying to do was give you shade and keep the air circulating, so that the building wouldn't rot down. These kangaroo rats would come in out of the swampy area and climb up into the rafters. They would be likely to jump down on your mosquito netting at any time. You would think a possum had attacked you.
Q How big were these kangaroo rats?
A They were about the size of a possum. They had real red lips, and when you would shine a flashlight on them, searching for what had attacked you, well, their lips were so red and shiny in the night.
Q Back to February 19th, 1942. When did you fly your first mission out of Townsville?
A On the 21st of February we were dispersed to Conclurry. It was a 2-1/2 hour flight from Townsville to Conclurry. On the 22nd we left Conclurry for Townsville, ready for our mission.
Q Where was this mission to and what date was it on?
A The mission was to Rabaul on February 23rd, 1942. Harry Spieth was flying, and we had a three crew element. We ran into weather and couldn't get through the weather, so we had to return after about nine hours. There were six ships other than our three that were scheduled to go, and we lost two of them on a taxi accident.
Q Who were the pilots of those two ships?
A Deacon Bawls and Frank Bostrom. They had had a taxi accident: locked wings on the taxiway and knocked both aircraft out.
Q Other than those two aircraft, you lost one other; wasn't that Fred Eaton's B-17?
A Yes, Fred Eaton made two runs over the target, and by that time the formation had left him, as they were supposed to do. He was attacked by Zero fighter planes, used a lot of fuel and had some damage to his aircraft. He had to make a crash landing in the jungle in New Guinea. The crew was not injured and the plane was not too terribly damaged. They made their way out of the jungle and were found by the Resident Magistrate, who was an Australian. The Resident Magistrates were the judge, jury, and administrators over certain areas of New Guinea for the government of Australia. He took them over and shuffled them around for six weeks, before they were sent a flying boat to pick them up. They lived with the natives and on the native fare and in their accommodations. They ran up into the hills when the Japs would come ashore. Six weeks later they made it back to our squadron.
Q And that was the first heavy bombardment mission that originated out of Australia?
A That's correct.
Q What was the group? Was it by that time constituted as the 435th?
A We were the 14th Squadron at that time, because that was before the 19th Bombardment Group had come out of the Philippines and reorganized. The 19th had already been kicked around and lost most of their airplanes at Clark Field in the Philippines, and those that could get out of there came out without their planes, and were reorganizing on paper in Melbourne. We were the only airplanes there were, the only B-17s there were in the Theater, so we were known then as the 14th Squadron. As they reorganized they called us the 435th Squadron.
Q In the Fall, 1976 issue of Air Classics
Quarterly Review there is a story called "Odyssey of B-17E"
Number 2446. It contains the story of Fred Eaton's aircraft and mentions nine ships participating in that mission, five in the first flight, and four in the second flight, with Major Carmichael leading the flight. Would that be about as you recollect it?
A That's correct. Dick Carmichael was a graduate of the University of Texas, He had been a fighter pilot in the Hawaiian Air Department, and had gotten into heavy bombardment. Carmichael was the deputy commander of the 11th Squadron and Major Flock was the commanding officer. Back in the States he and Flock had been in a boating accident in Lake Yellowstone and Flock drowned, while Carmichael held onto the boat for hours and hours before he was rescued. Anyway, he became the commanding officer of that squadron and he was a remnant from that squadron coupled with the remnants of the 22nd Squadron. That's what made up the 14th, and then later the 435th Armed Reconnaissance Squadron.
Q The article mentions also as pilots on that flight Lieutenant Harry Brandon and Captain R.T.Swenson; do you remember them?
A Yes, I sure do. R. T. Swenson would be Swede Swenson.
Q The article also mentioned a Captain William Lewis leading the flight with Fred Watson and Harry Spieth as wingmen.
A That's right.
Q And you were Harry Spieth's co-pilot on February 23rd, which was the first long-range bombing mission out of Australia?
A Yes. As far as the Air Classics story, when I think about it, that's not quite right. Bill Lewis led the 2nd Echelon. Dick Carmichael led the first Echelon and that was the echelon in which Fred Eaton was flying.
Q Air Classics says that about 90 miles out of Townsville you ran into a heavy front; the flights got separated, and Eaton and Lewis continued on together: would that be right?
A Yes, although I think Lewis was in another flight. That was the weather that caused Spieth to return with his crew.
Q Who was Eaton's co-pilot on that flight?
A Hotfoot Harlow--Henry Harlow. We called him Hotfoots
Q Who was his navigator?
A George Munroe. George was one of the pilots that had undergone the same navigational training in Yellowstone Park that I had been subjected to, but he didn't have the benefit of a cadet navigator; therefore, he had to continue on as a navigator and he later became my co-pilot.
Q After that first bombing attack on the 23rd of February, 1942, what was your next combat mission?
A Well, the next combat mission was scheduled for February 28th, but they called it off and sent us to Conclurry for dispersal, where about six crews of us came down with dengue fever as I described earlier.
Q That would have been in the early part of March 1942?
A Yes, it was.
Q What was your next combat mission after you recovered from dengue fever?
A We left on March 11th from Conclurry for Townsville, and on the 12th we left for Port Moresby, New Guinea for a mission. When we flew out of Port Moresby, which was about a 2-1/2 hour flight from Townsville, we lived in grass huts that the natives had built, and flew off of a field that was metal stripping placed on swampy ground. We had a grass hut mess hall, and had to do our own aircraft servicing. We serviced the aircraft from barrels of gas that were dumped off the ships and floated onto the shore by natives, and we had a little gasoline pump that we used to pump gas out of the barrel into the airplane. We could use the fuel transfer pump from the aircraft, itself, but we didn't like to do this because we might need that fuel transfer pump in flight and we didn't want to wear it out, because some of these flights involved 2,400 gallons of gas; that's what the plane would hold, and if you can envision pumping, out of 55 gallon drums, 2,400 gallons of gas into an airplane, it's a pretty good little chore.
Our general operations format was this: we would fly a mission or two or three out of Port Morseby, or occasionally out of Horn Island, or some missions out of Townsville, and then we would come back and go to the bottom of the list, and our turn would come up again later. In truth, it didn't always work out this way, though in principal it was supposed to. We found out early on that if you were married and had a family, well, the tougher the mission the more reasons they had for raising the younger unmarried people up on the list. You would simply move up the list faster if you were single than you did if you were married. I can understand this now, but I didn't understand it at the time, although we didn't care; those of us who were single didn't have anything that we had to hurry home to, so we made the most out of the situation and used the thrill of the mission as part of our entertainment.
Q When was your next mission, Dad?
A On March 13th, 1942. It was a patrol mission, and we dropped bombs. I don't recall whether we dropped them on Lae or Salamaua, but we didn't go to Rabaul.
Q That was your second combat mission?
A That was the second mission on March 13th.
Q Who were you flying with then?
A I was co-pilot for Harry Spieth.
Q When was your third combat mission?
A On March 18th, we flew a mission to Rabaul, at 31,000 feet.
Q Was that the mission where you and Harry Spieth hit a large Jap cruiser in the harbor and blew the end off of it?
A Yes it was.
Q What do you remember specifically about that mission Dad?
A I remember that good 31,000 feet altitude.
Q Was that the first time you had been to Rabaul?
A Yes, that was the first time we had been over Rabaul, and we did not encounter any fighter aircraft. We didn't learn until the next day how much damage we had inflicted on this cruiser, but we found out on March 19th that we had hit it pretty severely. It was a high altitude attack, about as high as a B-17 would go. There were only three aircraft on that flight.
Q Do you remember who else flew with you?
A No I don't.
Q Have you ever been able to determine the name of that cruiser?
A No, I have not.
Q How accurate was their anti-aircraft fire?
A Well, you thought they were accurate, because you didn't know where the anti-aircraft was until it exploded and you saw the smoke, and when you saw that smoke, the fire, the danger was over. They made it look like it was pretty close always. Just to see those black puffs of smoke made it look pretty close.
Q When was your next mission, Dad?
A Well, the next mission was on the 22nd of March. Morrie Horgan led that flight; in fact, I went with him as his co-pilot. Something must have happened to Harry Spieth that prevented his flying that mission. We went to Lae.
Q Lae was where a Japanese airbase was located?
A Yes it was. It was a stronghold on the Northeastern side of the mountains of New Guinea.
Q Do you remember anything particular about that mission?
A Well, I noted in my diary that we destroyed 17 aircraft on the ground. We were then dispersed at Charter's Towers. On March 24th I had gone to a theater to see a movie. We were called out of the theater to come back to Townsville, and the rumor was that we were going to the Philippines. We got back to Townsville on the 25th of March, and sure, enough, we had orders to go to the Philippines on an evacuation flight. We left Townsville on March 26th for the field of Del Monte on the island of Mindanao.
Q At that time the island of Mindanao was more or less in Japanese hands?
A It was in Japanese hands with the exception of the Del Monte airstrip: they had captured three sides of the island of Mindanao around the airstrip.
Q This was the old Del Monte pineapple plantation on Mindanao?
A It was a field at Del Monte, named by virtue of its location, which was adjacent to the Del Monte pineapple plantation.
Q Am I correct in thinking that there were two or three flights into Del Monte for the purpose of evacuating General MacArthur and later Manuel Quezon, President of the Philippines?
A There were three individual aircraft on the flight that I was on, and the purpose of that particular group of planes was to bring out Manuel Quezon, President of the Philippines, and Generals Valdez and Romulo, and some of MacArthur's staff. MacArthur had been evacuated out by Frank P. Bostrum approximately a week previously.
Q Can you tell me what you remember about that mission?
A Well, it was long and it was tiring. We took off from Batchelor Field at Darwin, in the middle of the afternoon. We were scheduled to land during the hours of darkness at Del Monte, which we did. They had no lights on the runway, with the exception of smudge pots which they lit for us to line up on, on the grass field in the direction that we were supposed to land. These were old highway markers that looked like a bomb, a black smudge pot that burned diesel fuel. We landed beside them, and the smudge pots as we landed were lined up on the pilot's side of the aircraft.
Q There was just one row of them?
A Yes, just one row, and they extinguished them just as soon as we landed, because of the proximity of the Japanese.
Q You landed in otherwise complete darkness?
A We landed in darkness.
Q What did you do after you got there?
A Well, we serviced our plane and ate. We ate wonderful pineapple and plenty of beef, but they didn't have any bread. They then began to assign to us people that were scheduled to go back with us. The people that had priority were General MacArthur's staff, of which there were not very many; President Quezon's family and nurse, and his chief of staff, who was General Romulo, and one of his advisors, a General Valdez. A small staff went with the Philppine generals, and the next priority were aircraft mechanics. We filled our planes up with people that were placed in these priorities and for whom we had parachutes.
Q Do you remember who actually flew on your particular aircraft?
A I don't remember any individuals, except for General Carlos Romulo and General Valdez. We had 17 persons besides our nine man crew.
Q What was the atmosphere at Del Monte Field?
A Well, it was pretty disconsolate. They thought they were just about gone, and they were. People were crying, wanting to be smuggled aboard, and we told them we couldn't take them; that we didn't have parachutes for them. They would say, "Well, don't worry about a parachute; I don't need one; I won't use one." Anything to get on that plane and get off that island. We flew 32 hours out of 36 on that flight. We flew back to Darwin, or Batchelor Field, gassed up, and then went on to Alice Springs. Alice Springs is a town that would be almost geographically in the middle of Australia. On the way in to Alice Springs, Dubose ran out of gas. He had President Quezon's nurse on his ship. Luckily, he was able to land safely out in the middle of the country. We searched for him for five hours before we ever located him. The other plane in our flight located him, and they landed beside him and pumped some fuel over into his plane. Both of them then came on into Alice Springs.
Q There were three planes on that flight then, Dubose flew one, Harry Spieth and you flew another, and a man named Faulkner flew the third?
A Yes.
Q What group were you flying as at that time?
A The 435th Armed Reconnaissance Squadron. We had been melded into 19th Group, and at that time we became the 435th.
Q You finished up the Philippine rescue flight back in Melbourne, Australia?
A That's right We landed at Melbourne. We took our people on down there and let them out. We had had engine trouble and we had blown two cylinders, so they told us to stay there and change all 4 engines before we went back to Townsville. We spent 26 days there getting those engines changed out.
Q Back to the flight itself, looking at the notation you made in your diary, what was your actual flight time?
A We flew 32 hours out of 36. At one point Harry took a nap. We had some air mattresses that you could pump up, and they thought that some of these people might be ready to be hospitalized and might need a little more comfort. These things weren't very comfortable, but he took one of them out on the catwalk in the bomb bay and took about a three hour nap while we were coming back.
Q How did the rest of your passengers make it?
A They were very tired, I am sure, but they were glad to get out of there, so they didn't complain.
Q How long did Del Monte field hold out after you got out of there, Dad?
A Approximately 10 days. There was only one successful flight, after our flight, that went in and picked up a few people. Then Al Meatier went in with a B-24, or LB-30, and the field had fallen, so he had to turn around and come back. He ran out of fuel and landed on a beach. A submarine came in and picked him up off the beach later.
Q Were you acquainted with Harl Pease?
A Yes I was.
Q Wasn't there a story that Pease was originally sent to pick up MacArthur, and that MacArthur didn't like his airplane and sent him back out of there?
A Oh, I heard that story, but I don't know how much credence it has.
Q Pease was later killed over Rabaul?
A. Yes, in fact, he received the Medal of Honor for the bombing run he was killed on. Frank Bostrum was in that same flight over Rabaul, and I believe Neuschaffin was the pilot of the third plane in their flight. Anyway, as it happened, Frank Bostrum was the pilot who flew MacArthur out. MacArthur didn't particularly go for the Air Force. When MacArthur got to Darwin, he had sent word ahead that he wanted an airliner to meet him, so he transferred from a B-17 to an airliner and went to Alice Springs. From Alice Springs he got on a train and went on to Melbourne. It took him 4 days to get there, when we could have had him there in 8 hours.
Q Did you ever see MacArthur?
A Yes, I saw him, but only from a distance, at Townsville.
Q You and Harry Spieth were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for the Philippine rescue trip that you made ?
A Yes that's right.
Q Where was it awarded to you?
A It was awarded to me at Townsville. General Kenney presented this medal, along with the other people that had medals coming, and he awarded them all at one time.
We spent 26 days in Melbourne, as I said, getting our engines changed out. During the time we were there I stepped off of a bus from the airport, and ran into a fellow that I had graduated with from Shamrock High School. His name was Raymond Chance, and his nickname was "Pig" Chance. I had the opportunity to visit with him for a little bit. Later I met another fellow that I had graduated from high school with named James Atchison, and I got to see him a couple of times. We finally got our airplane out on April 23rd, and then we then went to Sydney and picked up some P-40s. The P-40s followed us in to Charleville, where we landed and spent the night. We went on into Townsville on April 24th. On April 25th we had a combat meeting and they put us on our way the next day for a mission to Kissa Island.
Q Was that in the New Guinea area?
A Yes. The Japs had an airstrip on that island, and we bombed the airstrip. I was flying co-pilot with Harry Spieth on that mission.
Q When was your next mission?
A. The next mission was on May 6th. We were on alert May 5th, and on the 6th we flew our actual mission. This was during the Coral Sea Battle.
Q Did you know that there was a big naval battle shaping up at that time?
A Yes we did. We could tell from the number of surface vessels that were coming into the area and congregating there.
Q Our vessels, or the Japanese?
A Theirs.
Q What was the duty of the 435th during the Coral Sea Battle?
A We operated out of Townsville most of the time.
Q Did you ever make contact with the Japanese fleet?
A Yes we did.
Q What do you recall about that, and what dates did you fly during the Coral Sea Battle?
A We flew missions on the 6th, 7th, 8th and 11th of May.
Q On May 6th, you were looking for the Jap fleet; did you find them?
A We found the fleet. We found some of everything, including aircraft carriers.
Q Were you flying with Harry Spieth that day?
A Yes I was. We sighted an aircraft carrier of the Japanese fleet and made a run on it. We were in the same flight as Hotfoot Harlow, and Harlow bombed a heavy cruiser. Wilbur Beasley was flying with us also. We had heavy antiaircraft fire, but not too many fighter planes, because they were all carrier based. Their fighters were too busy with the Navy and the low level stuff.
On one of our missions, there was a bit of confusion. The Navy had told us that everything north of a certain parallel would be enemy, and everything south of a certain parallel would be friendly. We were north of this certain parallel, and there was a squadron of B-26 s on the mission with us also. We were coming in at about 18,000 feet and could see some planes flying below and diving at low level. We thought that those were the B-26s, so we lined up on the battleship that they were bombing and dropped our bombs on it. It turned out that it was the Australian flagship Australia, and the planes that we saw diving were Jap bombers.
Q You didn't hit the Australia?
A We didn't hit the Australia, luckily, and they didn't hit us, because they were shooting at us; they were wanting us to get out of the area. Just as a sidelight; when we were in Sydney, Australia, recently, we went into a little shop in the Hyatt Regency Hotel where we were staying, and visited with the proprietor. It turns out that he had been a sailor on the Australia, so we had an interesting little discussion about it, and each was happy -- I that he didn't shoot us down, and he that our bombs didn't hit the Australia. We had a pretty good laugh about it.
Q You flew at least one other mission during the Coral Sea Battle, didn't you?
A I think the last one I flew on was on the 11th. On the 8th, we were bombing a convoy of cargo ships; nothing unusual about it; the same usual fight that went with all of them. On the 11th, we flew a reconnaissance mission and saw 12 Jap ships, one of them towing a burning ship.
Q Would that have been an aircraft carrier they were towing, or could you tell?
A I don't recall.
Q When was your next combat mission?
A On May 13th we flew a 10-hour reconnaissance mission, and sighted the Japanese fleet again. We saw 7 Jap ships.
Q During the time that you were operating out of Townsville, were you taking bombing and strafing from the Japs at Townsville itself?
A Not at Townsville, except occasionally. They very rarely came up to bomb us, and then usually at night. I don't think we were ever strafed at Townsville.
Q You were also operating a lot of time out of Port Moresby in New Guinea?
A Yes, most of the time we operated out Port Moresby.
Q It that where you took the bulk of Japanese attacks as far as bombing and strafing?
A Yes it was.
Q Do you recall anything particular about those attacks?
A Well, yes. They'd send 18 to 26 bombers over, but they were lousy bombers. They couldn't hit anything. The most frightening thing was when they sent fighter planes over to strafe. The fighter planes were really frightening, because you didn't know where that next bullet was coming from, and they'd just spray the whole housing area and the airstrip. We lived just off the airstrip in grass huts.
Q Did you have slit trenches?
A You bet.
Q That you could find in a hurry?
A We did, and we used them.
Q Did you get any good looks at low-level Zero strafers, or is there any such thing as a good look at a low-level Zero strafer?
A Yes. They would come down within a hundred yards of us and fly right by us or right over us. They'd fly at a 100 feet or so at times.
Q You didn't have much fighter protection for the air field?
A We didn't have any fighter protection.
Q When was your next combat mission?
A Well, the next mission was on May 29th, and I took over Harry Spieth's crew. We went back to Port Moresby with one B-17 and a couple of crews, and I flew a couple of missions up there. Then one of the other pilots got shot up a little bit, and he couldn't get back into Moresby, so he went to Horn island and landed there. That left me and my crew stranded at Port Moresby. I rode downtown into Port Moresby on June 1st, and 18 Jap bombers came over and tried to destroy the docks, but they didn't get any hits on it. A B-17 was sent for me and my crew the next day, and we left Moresby.
Q What did you do while you were in Port Moresby itself; did you have an air raid shelter there, when the bombers were coming over?
A No, we didn't have an air raid shelter. We had slit trenches, that just protected you from something that was not a direct hit, that might be a machine gun bullet or a bomb.
Q So you were lying-over in Moresby without an aircraft, trying to get back to Townsville, when this big bombing raid came in?
A Yes. On June 2nd I flew a mission with Harry Spieth's old crew. As I said earlier, he had checked me off as first pilot at Wheeler Field in Hawaii, and until such time as he relinquished his crew, I flew as his co-pilot, just getting more experience all the time. In the later part of May, Harry Spieth became the maintenance officer for the 435th. It was a ground job, maintenance and material. He had charge of all the maintenance on all the aircraft and the supplies for them, and cannibalism and whatever was necessary to keep the airplanes flying.
Q When was your next combat mission?
A I flew a mission on June 2nd to Salamaua, and Lae, and Dampier Straits and Rabaul. I made a note that we were encountered by 6 Zeros and had rotten weather. That was what we looked for when there was a Zero; rotten weather, so we could hide from them.
Q When was your next combat mission?
A Well, we had landed at Horn Island, and I was supposed to lead some P-40s from Horn Island back to Port Moresby, but they canceled that out for the next day, and I was back in Townsville on the 3rd. I didn't do anything then until June 8th, when I went to Horn Island. That was where Lucius G. Penick, a good friend of mine, had been killed in a B-17 crash with McPherson, with a load of Australians on board. They had spun-in in their B-17, and it killed all of them.
Q Had you flown with McPherson before?
A Yes, I had flown with him back in Salt Lake City. When I heard of that accident, I had a pretty good idea of what had happened, because McPherson was a person that just took everything out of an airplane that it had in it. Penick was a classmate of mine, and I know that McPherson didn't let him fly very much; he wasn't as fortunate as I had been with Harry Spieth. The word was out that Penick was flying the airplane and was going to land it, and they overshot the runway and made a very steep turn and dug a wing in the ground. That sounded to me like something that McPherson would pull because he was pretty caustic; he probably just took the airplane over and made a sharp turn and dug a wing in the ground on his go-around. Anyway, nobody will ever know, because they were all killed.
Q When was your next mission, Dad?
A The next mission was on June 9th. We had a 3 plane formation, which I was leading. My flight engineer was sick, so we had to do a little shuffling around. I had let one of my side gunners, named Pinoseon, talk me into letting him run the top 50 caliber turret. He let the guns run away, and he shot my tail off.
Q Can you give me a little more detail about that?
A Well, there is an electrical solenoid that is supposed to stop the guns from firing in the upper turret. They're supposed to be synchronized so that as the guns go by the vertical stabilizer they won't fire. To keep your guns from freezing up, you fire them in the air every so often to keep them warmed up, and we were doing this in our formation. Pinoseon's top turret guns didn't fire, and he put them in the stowed position from which they were not supposed to fire at all. He reached up and slapped his guns, and even though they were in the stowed position, pointed directly at the vertical stabilizer, they ran away. A runaway gun means they're just firing out of control, and that's what happened. It shot the vertical stabilizer in two. Now the vertical stabilizer is pretty thick in the front part of it, and there was enough left on the side wall to hold the vertical stabilizer, but the rudder was shot in two.
Q You had no rudder control?
A No rudder control.
Q Did you use ailerons?
A We used ailerons. It wasn't anything serious at all. It was all right.
Q Did you go ahead and complete the mission with your rudder shot in two?
A No, we didn't. We went to sea and dumped our bombs and went back into Port Moresby. General Scanlan and General Royce were there on an inspection tour, and they saw us come in. They thought the Japs had shot us up, so they came leering out there to see how many Japs there were, and where they were, and everything, and we told them that our guns had run away; that we shot our own tail off. Well, they were pretty much disgusted; they turned around and got in their jeep and drove away. They weren't very happy.
Q When was your next mission, Dad?
A Well, on June 15th we had a 3-ship formation going to Lae. That involved Tea Faulkner and Fred Eaton and myself. We were each loaded with fourteen-300 pound bombs. We left out on the 15th and went to Horn Island. On the 16th at 6:30 a.m. we took off from Horn Island and bombed Lae at high noon, landing at Moresby at 12:35. We had bad weather, and had to do an instrument let-down at Townsville. We split our shifts going back into Townsville and came back individually from Moresby.
Q When was your next combat mission?
A On June 20th we took off at 7:45 for Lae. I led a 3-ship formation over the target. We had two Jap pursuit planes attack us, but they didn't persist, and they didn't do any damage to us. We dropped our bombs on the airstrip at Lae, but the visibility was not such that we could tell what kind of damage we did. It would have just been damage to the airport.
The next mission, I believe, was June 27th, when we flew to Kavienu.
Q That was a Japanese airbase?
A Yes. Kavienu is an island with an airstrip on it. We had about a 12-hour flight to Kavienu, and that was the time that General Brett and General Richardson came out to check on us. They were up there inspecting Port Moresby, and they came out to meet us and welcome us back. I noted in my diary that Gereral Marshall had sent them up there, and that they were supposed to be up there to cheer us up a little. On June 29th, I took off from Port Moresby to Kavienu to Gloucester Straights. We had rotten weather and the plane iced up. On this flight, we saw Fred Eaton's plane, which had crash landed on our first bombing mission which I earlier described, in the jungle. We had a short flight, only 6 hours and 44 minutes.
Q The aircraft you mentioned is number 2446 that we talked about earlier?
A Yes.
Q When was your next flight?
A Well, I went on leave for a week, and in the meantime I got checked off on an LB-30. An LB-30 was a B-24 that didn't have any turbo-superchargers. The disadvantage of not having turbo-superchargers was that it only had an operating ceiling of about 11 to 12 thousand feet, and it was not very maneuverable at that altitude. On July 9th, I flew a mission to Tulagi and Guadalcanal in an LB-30. I didn't care too much for the LB-30 for the reasons that I just named. On July 10th, I flew another mission to Guadalcanal, mapping now, prior to the Marines moving in on it, and we got an engine shot out. Zero float planes caught us at low altitude, and we flew back 1,000 nautical miles to Moresby, an 11-hour flight, with a bomb bay tank half in and half protruding out, which we couldn't salvo. We had dropped our bombs on shipping in Guadalcanal from the other bomb bay.
Q Was that the first time you had run into Zero float planes?
A Yes it was.
Q What do you recall about your getting your engine shot Out?
A The float planes shot it out. It was the first time we had ever gotten a picture of Jap float planes. We had a gunner, a side gunner named McBride, who was also a photographer. He took pictures of this and got the first pictures of two float planes. These pictures were later used in the Air Force aircraft identification manual. He took one picture of a plane that had just completed a pass, a rear-on pass, and was pulling up and leaving the attack, and the other plane which was making a head-on pass. The other photograph was of a float plane making an approach from the rear.
Q Both aircraft are shown in the same frame of the photograph?
A Yes.
Q Which engine did you lose?
A I lost number 4 engine.
Q Was that the only damage that your aircraft suffered on those passes?
A Yes.
Q Was anyone in your aircraft wounded on any of your missions?
A Well, not with anything except shrapnel, and nothing serious. We didn't have anyone killed or any serious injuries other than shrapnel from enemy antiaircraft.
Q Do you recall many missions in which you returned with holes in your aircraft from either antiaircraft fire or fighters?
A Yes. On quite a few missions, nearly every mission we went on, we would come back with some new damage, but you never knew about a lot of it. You can get it and never be aware of it when no personnel were involved in it.
I spent my next leave at Rockhampton enjoying Tom and Mary Mungall, friends of mine whom I have since revisited with your mother. On July 24th, I was back on active duty, and we had a mission to
Port Moresby for a 4 day reconnaissance. The planes involved were my crew and Lieutenant Cook's crew. We landed at Port Moresby at 4:30 that afternoon, and the next day I took off for Tulagi in the Solomon Islands on a reconnaissarce mission. We had some anti-aircraft fire along the way. It was a 10 hour and 30 minute flight, rotten weather, instrument weather.
On July 26th I was on alert all day, and the Japs chased some of our B-25s right up to the edge of our field at Moresby and shot down two of them right on the field, as they were trying to get into it to land.
On the 27th I had another reconnaissance mission to the Malaita Islands and some of the Solomon group. I had an 11 hour and 55 minute flight there, and 130 gallons of gas left when we landed.
On the 30th we went back to Townsville with two crews, as we had some blown cylinders on number 3 engine. We landed on three engines. On the 6th we left for Moresby again, and I took a crippled airplane back into Townsville.
Q Was that one you picked up that somebody else had flown in?
A. I picked it up, yes.
Q Was the one Tulagi mission that you mentioned earlier your only mission to Guadalcanal?
A No it wasn't. We had several missions to Guadalcanal.
On August 10th, I took off at 6:30 in the LB-30 searching for shipping. I found three Jap ships, one cargo ship and two destroyers, and they put up heavy antiaircraft fire. After 10 hours and 5 minutes we landed at Port Moresby. These ships we found in the Solomon area, and they were part of the Guadalcanal operation, the Guadalcanal buildup.
On August 12th we went to Kavienu, checking for shipping, and encountered two enemy ships en route to Rabaul, That was a 9 hour and 40 minute flight. After that, we were off again taking some crews on vacation. I had some dental appointments, and got tired of vacationing at Mackay, so I went back with the pickup crew. On the 23rd of August I went to Moresby overnight and then ran a mission to Kavienu and Lae on the 24th, with rotten weather. It was my 23rd mission, 8 hours and 20 minutes in duration. I commented in my diary that Moresby seemed to be picking up in importance, getting so much action, so much shipping in the area.
On August 25th, I took off at 2: 00 and shadowed a Jap convoy in the Milne Bay area all night. Milne Bay was located on the southeastern tip of New Guinea, and the Japs intended to invade Milne Bay itself. We had a small detachment of Air Force and a small detachment of engineering personnel at Milne Bay. They were building an airstrip and trying set it up so we could move a unit into Milne Bay.
Q Was this the first contact you had that made you aware that the Jap fleet was invading Milne Bay?
A No, we were aware of this. We had been shadowing them for several days. On August 26th we flew a mission to Milne Bay where our mission was to follow the battle. There was a bombing group that was supposed to run a bomb mission there and we were supposed to check and see what the results of the bombing mission were.
Q On August 26th?
A Yes.
Q There is a book called The Flying Buccaneers, by Steve Birdsall, which contains a reference to planes taking off to attack on August 26th from the 19th Bomb Group, lead by Major Felix: Hardison, commander of the 93rd Squadron. You weren't actually a part of this attack group, were you?
A No. I was sent to see what damage the bomb group did.
Q Now exactly when did you do your first Milne Bay reconnaissance, Dad?
A Well, the first Milne Bay reconnaissance I flew was on the 24th. I flew also on the 25th and 26th, three straight days. I came in from a mission on the 24th, and they sent me right back out at two o'clock in the morning on the 25th. Tex Simmons was supposed to have flown that mission, but he had a damaged airplane, and left to go back to Townsville, so they doubled our crew up on the 25th. We'd come in about midnight on the 24th, and we went right on out at two o'clock on the morning of the 25th.
Q So you flew two straight missions of approximately how long each?
A Ten hours. We flew three, because we flew also the 26th.
Q You flew day and night on the 24th and 25th?
A Right.
Q Then the 19th Bomb Group made their attack on the 26th?
A Right.
Q You went out again the 26th?
A Yes. I was out on the 26th to report, to evaluate, the damage they had done to the Jap fleet.
Q Did you find the fleet?
A Found the fleet.
Q What kind of weather was it?
A Lousy.
Q How did you locate the fleet?
A Well in the nighttime we'd find it whenever they'd shoot at us. You could see the flash of their guns, and in the daytime, we'd get a glimpse of them occasionally through the clouds; when there were breaks in the clouds. I have a comment in my diary on the 27th; "I took off for Townsville -- from Moresby after three missions in three days. Too much flying."
Q Apparently, on the 26th Captain Clyde Webb's plane was shot down. Were you acquainted with him?
A No.
Q You did know Felix Hardison?
A Yes, I did, although I didn't really know him till we came back from overseas. I knew of him while we were overseas, but I didn't meet him personally and didn't have any dealing with him until we came back from the Pacific Theater.
Q When was your next combat mission?
A Well, we left on the 1st of September, Cook and I, with two crews and one plane, and I flew a mission on the 2nd to Lae, Salamaua, and Buna.
Q Was that a reconnaissance mission?
A That was a reconnaissance mission. I then flew a mission on the 4th to Lae, Madang, Salamaua, Buna, and Cape Nelson. It was a straight reconnaissance mission. I went back to Townsville on the 5th. I'd finished up. I'd flown, I think, three missions, and I had some time off. I was working on my motorscooter, which I'd pieced together using the tailwheel of a P-40, a gasoline engine, and some bicycle sprockets. I hunted up a guy that could weld, and he welded part of a maintenance frame together, and I had a motorscooter, which I pushed to get started.
Q When was your next mission, Dad?
A Well, I left Townsville on September 13th for Moresby, and led a flight of A-20s up there.
Q You were flying a B-17?
A I was flying a B-17. On the 14th, I was supposed to run a recon mission to Fai.si to evaluate what a bombing mission had done over there. It was my twenty-eighth mission, and I found twenty-three Jap ships in the harbor and fighter interception, but they didn't get to us. On the 16th I flew another mission to Vitiaz Straits, Stephen Straits, Kavienu, Salamaua, and then back to Moresby, saw two crews hit north of Buna, and we had pursuit, fighters attempted intercepts. We got cloud cover before they got to us.
Q You're talking about attempted intercepts; did you ever have occasion to tempt the Zeros or get down and let your gunners get a shot at them while they were struggling for altitude?
A Yes, I did.
Q What was the principle behind that?
A Well, we were running reconnaissance missions over Guadalcanal, and I had a brand new co-pilot named Stanley Casey. Some Zero floats attempted to get up to us, and they were having trouble doing it, because we were at twenty-six thousand feet. So we just went down a little bit lower to give them a little closer chance to get to us and encourage them to try it, because our gunners wanted a shot at them. They didn't get to us, but it kind of excited Stanley Casey. He didn't think that was very much fun.
Q Do you recall any specific planes being shot down by your gunners?
A Well, we always had a chance at planes, and we'd have probables, and we'd have claims of having planes shot down. We had several planes that we got credit for, but you were never sure of them, because we didn't have any observers on the ground to see them come in, so yes, we shot some planes down, but we don't know exactly how many.
Q Do you remember any of them in particular or were you too busy flying the aircraft?
A No, I don't remember them particularly. I just remember that when we'd get in. the crews would say, "Well, I got one," and somebody would call over on the intercom, "Well, Jack shot one down and got one," and so on, but we never tried to follow them down and see if they were down and burning or anything. We claimed credit for some, and we were given credit for some, but how many I'm just not sure.
Q When was your next combat mission, Dad?
A Well, we began flying people from Brisbane, some infantry, up to Port Moresby. Jack Martin, a Shamrock boy, came through Townsville, and he came by my room and said he was on his way to Port Moresby. He had with him nothing but a musette bag; He didn't have a knife; he didn't have any quinine, so I fixed him up with a hunting knife, a bottle of quinine, and a fifth of Scotch, and sent him off to war. That was on the 21st of September, 1943.
Q Was that a bona-fide troop lift?
A This was a troop lift of the 32rd Infantry Regiment, and we were pretty desperate to use B-17s to fly troops with.
Q Was that a result of Kenney's claim to MacArthur that he could airlift a certain number of people in a very short period of time, which MacArthur didn't believe?
A That's what prompted it. We'd haul up as many as eighteen or twenty people at a time with their packs from this infantry regiment and drop them off at Moresby. They were going there to get into the Owen Stanley Mountains to protect Port Moresby against the Japs. The Japs were coming across Owen Stanley Range.
Q Was that on the Kokoda Trail?
A Yes, to try and lobe the air strip at Port Moresby. I went to Moresby on the 23rd, and I ran my thirtieth combat mission on September 26th to Buna, Salamaua and Lae. I dropped seven three-hundred pound bombs on Buna from ten thousand feet and received heavy anti-aircraft fire from Buna. Buna was a strip that we had built and were ready to occupy, and the Japs moved in just a day or two before we were going to occupy it and took it away from us, so we were mad about that.
Q The Japs took Buna and Gona?
A Well, I don't know about Gona, but Buna they did, I know for sure. On September 22nd I ran a mission to Rabaul and the north coast -- by the way of the north coast of New Britain, rotten weather, couldn't see Rabaul at fourteen thousand feet. Fourteen thousand feet was about as low as you'd want to go when you couldn't see it. We were in weather all the time, so we didn't get too low. On the 3rd I had a note that I was possibly going to Milne Bay, and there began to be rumors about us going home. Although we wanted to get out of Townsville, we weren't too anxious to go to Milne Bay. On October 4th Simmons' crew and my crew went to Moresby, and on the 5th I flew my thirty-second mission, a recon mission to Faisi.
My mission was to take pictures of a naval battle that was going on at Faisi. The weather was so bad that the Navy didn't attack, but there were twenty-nine boats in the harbor, and I went in under the weather at two thousand feet.
On the 6th I flew a mission to Buna, Salamaua, Lae, Vitiaz, Dampier Straits, and Gasmata, just a flat reconnaissance mission. I went back to Townsville on the 7th. On the 16th, General Kenney came to Townsville, and made a presentation of various awards that people had earned up to that time. He presented to me and pinned on a D.F.C. for the evacuation trip to the Philippines.
Q You received a second D.F.C., or an Oakleaf Cluster to the Distinguished Flying Cross, did you not?
A Yes, I did.
Q And that was made, not for any specific action, but in recognition of a total of over two hundred hours of combat missions over enemy territory?
A Yes.
Q Was that medal presented during a general formation of the entire 19th Bomb Group?
A Not the 19th Bomb Group, but the 435th Squadron. The 19th Bomb Group was not stationed on the same base with us.
On October the 31st, we took off for Moresby, and I ran a recon mission to the Nisson Islands and Faisi; rotten weather, icing, twenty-three boats in Faisi and Tonelei Harbor, a nine-hour flight. On the 2nd of November I ran a search mission and shadow of a convoy going to Buna; an eight-hour and twenty minute flight. It was nearly all on instruments, and it was a tiring flight.
Q Were you still flying with the old Spieth crew at that time.
A Yes. On the 3rd of November, I had a reconnaissance mission to Banks Island, and noted that there was nothing to it except that the weather was rotten; it was a 9-hour flight. After having flown many missions, 51, to be exact, out of Australia and New Guinea and Port Moresby, we heard recurrent rumors that we were going home. These rumors really came at a good time because at about this time we were also hearing rumors of being transferred to Milne Bay. Milne Bay was really kind of the last outpost for us, and we certainly weren't looking forward to going there. Whenever the rumor came that we were going home instead, well, it pleased us, of course.
As we rotated home, we came up on a rotation list, by virtue of the number of "points" we had, and every mission that we flew added so many points toward our rotation. The 19th Bomb Group, although they had been kicked around pretty severely in the Philippines, had reorganized in Australia, and although they ran quite a few missions, they never did catch up with the missions that the 435th had run. We in the 435th always felt like the 19th Bomb Group reaped the glory and the 435th did the work, after they came into Australia. In any event, the crews that had been shot up pretty bad and had a little tougher time seemed to be given some preference, and they came home ahead of us before they ever got on schedule on number of missions, but at least with the 51 missions that I had, I was pretty high on the list to rotate home.
When we started home, we came back on an air transport plane. They were flying LB-30s as cargo transports and personnel transports, and we left from Brisbane, Australia. Our first stop was in Fiji, and we had to stay in Fiji several days because they had run out of their supply of aviation fuel on Canton Island while looking for Eddie Rickenbacker's B-17. Incidentally, the pilot of Eddie Rickenbacker's B-17 was Bill Cherry, a Shamrock, Texas boy like myself, who graduated from Shamrock High School in 1933 and had gone on to the Air Corps. He wound up as Rickenbacker's pilot on this ill-fated flight during which they went down and drifted on the ocean in rafts for 26 days. We had to delay our trip from Fiji for about a week until they got in some more fuel at Canton, so that we could refuel on Canton Island en route to the Hawaiian Islands. Nevertheless, it was a pretty short trip home. We spent only one night in Hawaii, and we landed in the U.S. at Hamilton Field, on the Bay just North of San Francisco. As soon as we got home, most of the fellows called immediately to let their folks know that they were home, and of course, it brought great pleasure to their families and even greater pleasure to those of us who were returning home.
Q Dad, during your combat tour, were you flying a number of different B-17s, or did you have one particular aircraft that you used?
A We flew whatever was available. We rarely had the same airplane assigned to us more than once in succession.
Q You never had a plane that you could adopt as your own and put nose art on and all that sort of thing?
A No.
Q Did you fly with your same combat crew back to Hamilton Field?
A Yes, I did, except for the co-pilot Stanley Casey hadn't been over there too long, so he was not allowed to come back when we did.
Q What did you do after arriving at Hamilton Field?
A My next station, after having arrived at Hamilton Field and being then unaware of where we were supposed to go, or why we were home even, was Pocotello, Idaho. If you can envision getting out of the tropics in khakis and short-sleeved shirts, and getting into a snow-covered place like Pocotello, Idaho on the 27th of November, well you can imagine the situation in which we found ourselves. We lived in barracks heated by coal stoves, and there was about a foot of snow on the ground. The only tracks that we made were from our barracks over to the officer's club, where we had discovered a record of the Bing Crosby song I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas. For those of us who had been gone for about a year, this was a most wonderful song, as you can imagine, and I still think its a pretty piece. We spent all of our nickels and wore these records out playing the nickelodeons over and over again. We hadn't been in Pocotello too long before we were told we could take off, beginning the first of December, for Christmas leave. Some of us wanted to stay on leave until the first of the year, so we asked someone else to sign us out and we kind of went AWOL for a couple of days, leaving Pocotello a bit early and coming on home for Christmas; having been signed out so that we could extend our vacation time until after New Year's Day. This was a great homecoming, and I enjoyed it along with the other fellows who went home after about a year. We came home to a quite a war atmosphere in our little town of Shamrock. People were bawling; families had been split up; people had been drafted. A few people had been killed in the war already, and the war effort that our little town had put forth was really impressive. All the people who had sons or daughters in the service had their flags flying and a star in the window; tires were rationed; gasoline was rationed; and sugar was rationed in this way; you'd go into a restaurant and they would have a little flag standing up in the sugar bowl. If you took more than one spoonful, that little flag would fall over, and you were supposed to conserve for the war effort.
Immediately after our vacation time was over, we started back to Pocotello, Idaho. In Pueblo, Colorado, we met some of the returned crews and personnel that had already been to Pocotello and had received their orders to report to Pyote, Texas. So, no sooner had we gotten back to Pocotello, Idaho, than we got orders to go right back the next day on the same train, back through Amarillo and Fort Worth, and then we angled back toward El Paso to Pyote, which is a little town in West Texas; it was a real outpost. When eve got to Pyote, all of the 19th Group was coming home, and that's where they were reporting to. The base wasn't complete at the time we arrived; they didn't even have their officer's mess completed.
Q What did it feel like to be back in the States?
A It felt great, couldn't have been better. We missed the combat, but it was a pleasant kind of absence. We enjoyed it.
Q Was the second Distinguished Flying Cross that was awarded to you presented at Pyote?
A Yes.
Q Were there also some unit citations awarded to the 19th Bomb Group at Pyote?
A Yes. The 435th Armed Reconnaissance Squadron had seven unit citations.
Q How long did you stay at Pyote?
A We stayed there approximately five weeks, during which time nobody knew what was going to happen to us, where we were going, or what we were supposed to do. During that time we just indulged in flying local planes around, waiting to learn where they were going to send us.
During an earlier visit home, I had told Roy Wright, an old and good friend of mine, that I was going to fly back to Shamrock from Pyote, and he said, "Well, let me know when you do. " I said, Well, I'll let the wheels of our B-17 down when I come down Main Street and you'll know that's me." I went back to Pyote, and it wasn't too many days after that that I had a chance to fly to Shamrock, and sure enough, I let the wheels down before I came down Main Street. When I came by the water tower, I was looking up at it. I flew over the Magnolia Petroleum Warehouse that my mom and dad operated, and Mom Fields was down at the warehouse waving a newspaper at me. I came by low enough so that it blew the newspaper out of her hands. Almost immediately, I got a letter from her saying "If that was you, don't admit it, because the people are irate about somebody flying over town so low and buzzing the town." She said that certain people were really up in arms and they were complaining to the Air Force and the air base in Amarillo about it. So I had to kind of lie low and not say anything about it until later on. This did prompt quite an interesting little ad that a Shamrock attorney, Marion Reynolds, put in the paper outlining his feeling about young people coming home. He concluded his do by saying that if that was their way of saying hello that, as far as he was concerned, the people flying low over Shamrock could knock the top off the penthouse where he lived, on top of the Reynolds Hotel; that those people who were complaining could just go straight to hell!
It wasn't too long after this that we received orders transferring us to Salina, Kansas. In the meantime I had bought a new car which I had picked at Greenleaf-Moore in Oklahoma City, and I drove to Salina from Pyote right through Shamrock. When I got to the gate at Salina, the air police had orders for us to go on to Topeka, Kansas, I really never did spend the night at Salina, but merely picked up my orders transferring me on to Topeka.
When I got to Topeka, I met a lieutenant colonel named Ernie Ford. Ernie Ford was organizing a cadre for a processing unit originally supposed to go to Great Bend, Kansas, but the air base was not ready there, so we had the option of going to Lincoln, Nebraska, on a temporary basis. Since he had his cadre of personnel already organized, he elected to take us on to Lincoln because he felt like we would go sour sitting around Topeka waiting, to get the word to get into action. So we transferred on to Lincoln, which at that time was a Training Command base. This was a 20,000-man base and Lincoln itself was a town of about 80,000 population. They had a good base and we enjoyed it thoroughly. During this time we had the opportunity of flying a number of aircraft the Training Command had for mechanics to work on. These included a P-47, several of the Navy bombers, dive bombers, some P-39s and P-38s. I only flew the P-47. I didn't fly any of these others that I named, although during my complete tour, I probably flew over thirty different aircraft. This was really a wide experience and a great one for me because not too many people have the opportunity of flying that many different military aircraft.
Q What were the duties of the processing unit?
A The processing unit was to take new combat crews, fresh out of flying school, and give them instrument checks, proficiency checks, and assign them to aircraft and give them whatever equipment they needed. We would also process the aircraft for whatever theater they were ordering the crews into at that time. This was all based on supply and demand, so if they went to Africa they went in summer clothing. If they went to the European theater, or the United Kingdom, they went with winter clothing, and the object of this processing unit was to expedite the shipment of crews and aircraft to whatever theater they were called for. We would test the combat crews who came to us from their training stations, and if they didn't make it, we would send them back for additional training. We soon convinced the Training Command this wasn't the way to handle this, and that they should test them before they ever came to us, and then we wouldn't have to send any of them back. Finally they did implement this procedure, so we quit testing the crews themselves, but we did test the aircraft. We had a lot of fun flying. We'd test these planes and go up anywhere from 25 minutes to an hour checking them out. We'd feather, in sequence, all four engines, and would have a chance to buzz cornfields and the like. We would occasionally come into contact with cornstalks in our air in-takes. I never did have any accidents, and I can say that I have never had an accident at any time during my flying career that involved damage to aircraft or any other thing, other than being shot up a little bit with shrapnel or by machine guns in a combat zone. When we really began operating out of Lincoln, we were doing so well and enjoying the facilities, and doing the job they assigned us to do so well, they just left us there. We stayed there until the war was nearly over.
Lincoln was a good town and I enjoyed that tour thoroughly. During that time, I met some people who had a lot of influence on my life, including a young fellow named Bob Storz, who had just come back from the Ploesti oilfield raid. He was an Omaha, Nebraska boy, and his father, Art Storz, owned a brewery called Storz Brewery. This young fellow was one of my check pilots. My actual job in Lincoln was Director of Operations and Training, and I had charge of all the aircraft movement, all the aircraft flying, and all the combat crews that were being processed. At one time we had a 105 B-17s scheduled to depart Lincoln Air Force Base in one night, and we got 105 B-17s off without exception that night. My base commander, Colonel Frank Wright, was overjoyed at this, and he called me down to let me listen to the applause that he got from General Royce down at the 21st Air Division in Topeka. During this tour in Lincoln, we had the opportunity to go with the Storz people to a hunting lodge they had, called Ducklore Lodge at Lisco, Nebraska. This was really a great experience for me. I had always liked to hunt, but this was a place where I really got my teeth into hunting, particularly ducks and geese, and pheasant also. We could fly up to Alliance, Nebraska, or to Scott's Bluff, Nebraska, and have some of the people who lived out at the Lodge pick us up in a station wagon. We would hunt ducks or geese for three to ten days at a time, depending upon how much leave we had, or how busy we were at Lincoln, and we'd fly them back in a B-17 and take them to the officer's club, and they would have a big game dinner. This was really fun, and we met some very interesting people, including Governor Bricker from Ohio, Governor Smith from Wyoming, and a lot of high-ranking military people. Also Robert Taylor, Wallace Beery, and James Craig were some movie people who were there at various times. During the time that I was stationed at Lincoln, Mr. Storz gave me a Chesapeake Bay Retriever called “Tuffy”. He was out of Ducklore breeding and the dog that sired him was called Ducklore Mugs. I had a chance to fly Tuffy, in a B-17, to Chiledress, Texas, near Shamrock. My folks came down and picked us up for the weekend. We made several trips into Childress. I had a personnel officer who worked with me named Gene smith, who is presently a retired banker in Childress. We could either fly into Childress or Pampa, but we usually came into Childress because Gene Smith liked to come with us.
Q What was your official title at Lincoln?
A I was director of Operations and Training.
Q What rank did you hold at the time?
A At that time I was a Major.
Q When did you receive your Captaincy, by the way? Where were you overseas when promoted from lieutenant to captain?
A No, I got my captaincy at Pyote, I believe, as soon as we got home.
Q Did you finish the war at Lincoln?
A No. Near the end of the war, crews had begun to come back home from the European theater, and we could see that the war's end was in sight. They then transferred the base in Lincoln, Nebraska, to the Second Air Force, and they were going to transfer me with it, but the people in the 21st Air Division asked that I be transferred to Topeka. Six months before the war was over, I began serving in the same capacity at Topeka, as Director of Operations and Training. There we had B-29s, B-24s, B-17s, and B-32s. I had a interesting little thing happen when I was test-flying a B-29 at Topeka. One day I was waiting on a co-pilot, with engines running, and a young fellow came roaring up to the airplane motioned for him to come on in, got him in the airplane, taxied out on the runway and started down the runway for take-off, when he told me that he was not a B-29 co-pilot, but he was just reporting in to me for duty. His name was Wade South and he lives in Ardmore, Oklahoma. Occasionally he comes through Shamrock, and I have a chance to visit with him. We laugh about this whenever we recollect that he was trying to report in to me for duty and I thought he was a co-pilot being sent to me by the operations office. We were half-way down the runway before I realized that he had never been in a B-29 before.
When the war was over, I had a sufficient number of points to get out early, and I came home in October 1945. I had enough accrued leave that I remained on leave through December of 1945. During this time, at the end of my leave, called terminal leave, I went on inactive duty. At the end of my inactive duty, I was issued a service record reflecting 51 combat missions and including my proficiency rating and various other items of information. The title of this document is an Officer Efficiency Rating, or OEP. I am proud to say that I never received a rating lower than superior.
Q Can you name for me all of the aircraft that you flew during the second World War?
A Yes, I flew the PT-13; BT-13; AT-6A and C; PT-17;A-17; B-17B, C, E, F, and G; B-18; LB-30; B-24B, J, H, and G; P-47; HE-24; RA-25; C-47; C-45; B-29; B-25; B-32; P-13; AT-11, and B-27.
The PT-13 was a primary trainer. It was a biplane. A BT-13 was a little bigger aircraft used for basic training. The AT-6A and C are just different modified versions of the AT-6, and that was for advanced training. The B-17B was the earlier model of the B-17. The B-17C is a little later model of the B-17. The B-17E was an improved version and the B-17F a little more improved and the G a later version. The B-18 was a twin-engine bomber. It was started later than the B-17 but completed ahead of the B-17 because of complications in funding the B-17. The PT-17 and A-17 were single-engine planes and trainers. The LB-30 was a B-24 Liberator Bomber that had no turbo-supercharger s. The B-24J, H, and G were just later models of the B-24. The P-47 was of course a fighter plane. The HE-24 was a twin-engine, light, little commuter plane. The RA-25 was a converted B-25, and the C-47 was the old DC-3 or "Gooney-Bird". The C-45 was the same as the AT-7 or the AT-24. It was just a little twin-engine commuter plane, but with different modifications on it. The B-29 was a four-engine bomber that was the outgrowth of the Boeing bomber, the Boeing B-17, but bigger and better. The B-25 was a very fast twin-engine bomber. The B-32 was a four-engine bomber that we bought 100 of. They were manufactured in Fort Worth, and I flew every one that went overseas, that went through the staging-processing base. It had reversible props on it and was a pretty good plane. It was Consolidated's answer to the B-29 and sort of a backup in case the E-29 had failed for one reason or another. F-13 and AT-11 were other versions of the AT-24, and the ST-27 or the C-45. The F-13 was a photo-version of the AT-24. The B-27 is on my Form 5, but I'm not sure what that airplane was.
During the war, I made a number of good friends that really had a great impression upon me. Probably the first was a young fellow that I was in flying school with from Texarkana, Texas, named James Oakland Gross. I don't know where Gross is now, but during our period in flying school, we had a great camaraderie and a great friendship, and I really admired him. I'd like to know where he is now. He was one of those people that was selected as an instructor pilot, and I'm sure he was a super instructor pilot. Another friend along the way was J. T. May. J. T. and I hit it off very well when we were transferred to Salt Lake City in the 7th Bomb Wing. We hunted and fished together, and went out to Salt Lake City and listened to Guy Lombardo and Glen Miller play, out at Salt Air. This friendship has prevailed throughout the years, through the war, and he and his wife have been to see us in Shamrock. We plan to get to Greensboro, Alabama, to visit with him sometime soon. Another good friend, from Ogden, Utah, was Hoot Gibson. Hoot was a happy little Mormon and a good little pilot, and has been, at last report I had, made Operations Manager of the Ogden Airport.
George Munroe was one of the few co-pilots that had to continue navigating past Hawaii. As I related earlier, George was a crew member on Fred Eaton's first miss-on when they ran out of gas because they made a second run over Rabaul Harbor, got shot up by Zeros, and event down in the jungle. No one was injured, but they all contracted malaria. They did get out of the jungle six weeks later, and George became my co-pilot when Harry Spieth turned his crew over to me. Ken Hobson was a Major when I first knew him, and he later went on to become a Lt. General. He autographed a book for me of which I am very proud, entitled Flying Fortress.
Bill Lewis was an ex-airline pilot who was called back on active duty with the Air Force, and he was Deputy Squadron Commander at Salt Lake City. It was on his crew that I flew as navigator to Hawaii. He later became the Squadron Commander of the 435th. Bunky Snider was one of the navigators on one of the other crews, Brandon's crew. Brandon's crew was one that landed in the middle of the attack at Hickam Field. Bunky and his crewmates jumped out the airplane before the wheels had quit turning and got in a drainage ditch. All this time they were being strafed by the Japs, and their plane was shot up and destroyed on the ground just as they landed at Hickam Field.
Jack Carlson was a classmate of mine at Texas Tech, and lived in the same dormitory. He was selected to be Bill Lewis' navigator, and was one of the navigators that I rode with to Hawaii. We checked on each other on that navigational flight. I see Jack occasionally in Brownwood. He's in an auto parts store there and has a very financially sound business.
Leo Geary I met after we reported to Lincoln, Nebraska, to the processing unit. Leo is a retired Brigadier General and lives in Denver. He and his wife, Pee Wee, come by and check on us every few years, and we see them occasionally when we are at the stock show in Denver.
Pat Patterson is an attorney in Oklahoma City. Pat married a girl from Lincoln, Nebraska, and I knew her family well. Incidentally, I bought your mother's engagement ring from her father. Another person who had a great influence on me in my military was Colonel Ernie Ford. Ernie was one of those kind of people that demanded respect. He was not a hard task-master, but when there was work to be done, he believed in getting it done. He believed not in riding you and telling you over and over how to do something, but in letting you do it, and if you made a mistake, he didn't hesitate to let you know, and show you how to correct it. I hope that I have learned something of his philosophy, and I have always tried that in the way of handling men, because you've got to have their respect, and you don't gain it by constantly haranguing them and harassing them all the time.
Bob Storz was another good friend. The first time I recall seeing Bob, I was in my operations office in Lincoln, Nebraska, and I saw somebody buzzing two rows of B-17s which were parked wing to wing, in a Navy dive-bomber. I asked the control tower who it was, and they said it was Bob Storz. I asked them to have him report to me immediately when he came down. He did, and I grounded him for 30 days. He later became one of my best friends and one of my best check pilots at Lincoln, Nebraska, and one whom we still keep in contact with and with whom we have hunted many, many times. His father, Art. Sr., was a very, very dear friend and certainly a friend of the Air Force. Art Storz did many, many things to help the Air Force Association, and is one of their founders. Although he is dead now, his memory still lives on with many hunters, particularly those who are members of Ducks Unlimited. He was instrumental in the organization of Ducks Unlimited.
There are many, many others that time will not allow me to go into detail about, but people that I remember almost daily. They were, and are, dear friends, and I wouldn't take anything for the experiences that I had and the people that I've known.
Q Dad, how would you sum up your experiences in the Army-Air Corps during WW II?
A Well, it was a fun experience, if war can be fun. I had fun at it. I made the most of every opportunity that presented itself to me. I have some of the dearest friends and the greatest memories of the war, and although I would not recommend war for anybody, if you are caught up in it, make the best of it, enjoy what there is to enjoy, and be remorseful about those things that demand remorse.
Q Dad, thank you for what you did then, and thank you for sharing your recollections with me today.
A Thank you, Ken.
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Transcript of "Description of Events Beginning December 18,
1941"
This book contains descriptions and events beginning December 18, 1941 upon the arrival of John Wallace Fields on the Island of Oahu, Territory of Hawaii. These descriptions do not fall in any definite sequence necessarily.
Wallace Fields
504 N. Madden
Shamrock, Texas
Hawaii
My first sight of Hawaii was one of relief. We had been flying all night and the first sight of land came about 10:00 P.M. on December 18, 1941. The islands lay almost east and west, over 2,000 miles west of the boundaries of the U.S. We landed at Hickam Field, a few miles out of Honolulu, located on Island of Oahu.
Hickam Field was a shambles of burned buildings and destroyed airplanes. Several hangars and large barracks were destroyed by the Jap bombers during their attack of December 7, 1941. After landing we were taken to our quarters which overlooked the channel leading into Pearl Harbor. The post at Hickam was a beautiful base even after the war started, tall palm trees, tropical ferns, flowers and green grasses lined the streets and shaded the homes of the personnel living on the post.
On a visit to Pearl Harbor, I was shocked to see the number of capsized and burned boats in the harbor and in the dry-docks. I saw the battleships Utah, California, Arizona, West Virginia and the Oklahoma as well as several destroyers, either burned or in some other way totally disabled. The Jap damage did not stop on boats alone but other damage was negligible in damage in comparison. The harbor was still covered with oil and in some of the ships I learned that many bodies were still unrecovered.
Honolulu is the largest and most important city or the island. Its population is, I guess, about 100,000 people. This population is truly a cross-section of the human race. Hawaiian, Chinese, Jap, Indian, Negro, German, Dutch, Greek, Italian and our American. The shops and stores were as a whole, dirty, unorganized and smelly, but this was not true of all the shops. Some had meats hanging open to the air, flees and dirty hands which inspected, sold and bought it. Others had modern up to date refrigerators and cold storage plants. The clothing store’s were about the same in comparison, with some modern shops exhibiting their wares in a very continental manner. Many curio shops were available while others missed the sucker tourist trade and were unable to survive. Frequently you could see the native costume of the Japs, Chinese, etc. on the streets of the city. Some of the shops had all their clerks gaily bedecked with their characteristic goods, easily distinguishable in most cases.
The chief industries of these Hawaiian Islands are pineapple, sugar cane raising and on some islands fairly large quantities of beef are grown. The great Navy yards employ many civilians as do the great pineapple and sugar making plants. In addition many natives live on the surrounding islands, raising most of their food, fishing, etc. to obtain their meats.
Recreation in Hawaii was, I believe, at a high peak before the war. The people like to have fun and to do so seem not to spare expense, time or energy. The hot climate makes the beach an important place and on any day you can find many people gathered on the beaches for swimming, surfing, boating and just relaxing on the snow white beach sands. A very modern and enjoyable beach was that of Waikiki Beach. Here there is a. swell beach club, "Outrigger Canoe Club," and also of spending a night in the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. This hotel is the most beautiful place I have ever seen. Huge palms, grass, flowers, etc. in front and the back bordering on the famous Waikiki beach. The Waikiki theater was one of the nicest I have ever seen, beautiful fountains outside and the inside so decorated as to lend a garden like effect which was very life-like. You could imagine you could hear the leaves and birds singing almost.
The wildlife was not very plentiful. Small doves, sparrows, wild pig, very small deer, and mongoose. No snakes due to the mongoose which is a large rodent and eats snakes. There were several parks and zoos in which all these animals and other more scarce animals were to be seen. Monkeys were also plentiful in parts of the island. These were usually very small chimpanzees I believe.
The people were as a whole very friendly and the true Hawaiian had a magnetic personality making if difficult not to admire their style of life and carefree disposition.
During my stay in Hawaii I was attached with my squadron to the 50th Bomb Sqdn. and to the 26th Bomb Sqdn. at Hickam and Wheeler Fields respectively. During this time we ran patrol missions in B-17Es, usually 800 nautical miles out and back every 3rd day. Those other days we were usually free to do whatever we wanted to. I was flying co-pilot during this time with Lt. Harry E. Spieth.
We departed from Hawaii on February 11, 1942 from Christmas Island in B-17E.
Lt. Spieth, Pilot
Myself, Co-Pilot
Lt. Hornbeck, Navigator
Sgt. Stashuk, Engineer
Sgt. Donald, Radio
Sgt. Morton, Bombardier
Sgt. Rogers, Gunner, (AE)
Rt. Golden, Gunner (AR)
Lt. Debord (Passenger-El Paso, Texas)
8: 10 Hr. Flight
We arrived on Christmas Island on the afternoon of February 11, 1942. Landed on a newly prepared runway made of crushed coral, rolled and parked by a group of engineers from Hawaii. The island was practically covered with wild coconut trees which bore an abundant supply of coconuts. Some of the workers brought us green coconuts, opened them and we drank the milk. Personally it wasn't too good but I had to try it anyway. It serves as a sort of laxative and is considered quite a good drink by some.
The camp where we stayed was cleverly concealed in the center of the island, making use of the foliage of the trees etc. to obscure the buildings and tents. the food was very good considering that it all was shipped in. The flies were thick and made the meals much less appetizing, but we were hungry so we ate heartily.
We were assigned tents to sleep in for the night with cots, sheets and a blanket. During the night it rained. as it does there every night. There are a large number of wild cats on the island, really house cats gone wild, monkeys, rats and various birds the most important being the "Paradise" bird, famous for its beautiful tail feather. The natives have all been imported from other islands and there are very few native women on the island. The men working on the island were hungry for news from Hawaii, U.S. etc. and we were besieged with questions since we were the second flight of ships to even land on this island. Some of these workmen had been there for a year and were sorta balmy or touched in the head I believe. There were a few Japs who were constantly watched for any treacherous movements. There were no defenses at all on the field itself. The harbor was garrisoned by a hand full of men with rifles and machine guns. A Jap ship could have moved in and taken over with no resistance I believe. However they were expecting troops and material in at any day then. We departed from X-mas Island on February 12, 1942 for Canton Island. I do not know the exact size of X-mas but roughly 35 miles in diameter. Britain owned the island for years and had several soap companies on the islands to make use of the wild coconuts and their oils.
We arrived at Canton Island on February 12, 1942 after an 8:05 Hr. flight.
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