Vanished Hero: The Life, War and Mysterious Disappearance of America’s WWII Strafing King

by Stout, Jay

  “Elwyn and I sat in the same seat for a while and then the teacher, Emelia Lewis, sat us with older children so that they could help teach us.” Mom and Pop emphasized the importance of schoolwork and education. “Mrs. Lewis was a disciplinarian,” said Elizabeth. “And my dad used to say that if we got a licking at school and he heard about it, then we were going to get another licking when we got home. Dad believed in school. You went to school to learn and not to fool around. I think he whopped the boys with a razor strop once or twice.”

  There were rarely more than twenty students at any one time and both Elizabeth and Elwyn excelled through good instruction, familial support, and their own, innate intelligence. They also, as did all their siblings, became active participants in 4-H, which sought to better connect public school learning with rural lifestyles and skills. When they came of age, a bus took them to San Luis Obispo High School where Elwyn performed well ahead of his peers. In fact, he graduated with Elizabeth in 1931 when he was just sixteen.

  “And then he found girls,” said Doris. “He wasn’t around nearly as much after that, unless he had to be.” It is likely that there were plenty of girls only too willing to be found. Elwyn was good-looking; he had an even-featured face, straight, white teeth, a thick shock of brown hair and an athletic build. He was smart and charming and came from a respectable family that operated a fair-sized ranch. Photos from the period show a smiling young man who carried himself with grace and confidence.

  On the other hand, he was inexperienced, was not regularly employed, and owned nothing. And the early 1930s were the worst years of the Great Depression. Steady jobs were difficult to find and hold, especially for a boy still in his teens. Although Mom and Pop fed and clothed him and put a roof over his head, he and Ernie received little else. “I never did draw a salary,” said Ernie.

  Exacerbating the employment realities were Steinbeck’s Okies, displaced farmers from Oklahoma and elsewhere who flooded California in search of a better life. They hunkered down in squalid camps and followed the truck crop harvests, working as pickers and packers. In fact, famed photographer Dorothea Lange’s iconic photo, Migrant Mother, was captured only ten miles south of the ranch, near Nipomo. It showed a woman seemingly devoid of hope, a small child clinging to her shoulder. Certainly, the plight of these people affected Elwyn and the rest of the family.

  However, except for drops in dairy and beef prices, the Great Depression had no significant impact on the day-to-day lives of the family. “We just went on as we always had,” Doris said. “We had always been land rich and dollar poor.” In fact, Mom and Pop were frugal by nature, and the family’s income, before and after the crash, was typically spent on improvements or to buy more land to enlarge the ranch. Clothes and shoes were handed down, or altered, or mended rather than thrown out. “Mom had a friend in San Francisco who used to send down clothes she didn’t wear anymore,” said Elizabeth. “Some of our clothes came from her.”

  Likewise, equipment was repaired until it simply gave out. Consequently, the collapse of the nation’s economy and the government’s reactionary machinations in far-away Washington, D.C. made little difference to the Righettis. “We still had pink beans and applesauce,” said Doris. “You can do a lot with pink beans.”

  And ammunition. There was always plenty of ammunition for target practice, plinking pests and hunting. “Elwyn loved to hunt,” said Doris. “He loved to hunt about as much as anything else.” Indeed, whenever possible, Elwyn and Ernie disappeared into the scrub and oaks of the surrounding canyons to hunt whatever counted as food: rabbits, ducks, dove and quail, and especially deer. “Their hunting was always done legally and always in season,” Doris said. “Well, maybe not always.” The deer indigenous to the area were blacktails, closely related to mule deer. They seldom exceeded two hundred pounds, but were a welcome addition to the dinner table.

  Elwyn grew to be an exceptional shot with both rifle and shotgun. He especially looked forward to the hunting trips that Pop arranged to northern California and Idaho for mule deer and elk. Pop and the boys packed a truck and trailer with camping gear, rifles, food and a pack horse, and then drove a day or more to favorite hunting areas. “Dad used a .25-35 Winchester, Model 94,” said Ernie, “and Elwyn had a .32 Winchester Special, Model 94.”6

  When Elwyn enrolled in the California Polytechnic College in San Luis Obispo in 1933, he likely did so as much out of boredom as for any other reason. Since graduating from high school he had done little more than work on the ranch; his early graduation had served him no real purpose. Although he still lived at home, college exposed him to something other than the sameness that had been his life to that point. Moreover, he met new people.

  “Oh, he loved school,” said Doris. “He made a lot of friends and became very involved in a lot of activities.” Doris did not exaggerate. The school’s annual, El Rodeo, showed that Elwyn, whose course of study was Meat Animals, was a member of the Future Farmers of America, the Boots and Spurs club and the manager of the El Rodeo itself. Moreover, he was made a member of Gamma Pi Delta, a fraternity that emphasized service and leadership. Aside from their stated charters, the highlight of service with these clubs was the social activities—dances, barbeques, beach parties and other events. In fact, he was made the king of Poly Royal, the annual festival that became the hallmark of the school’s social calendar. “He was so handsome,” said Doris.

  Elwyn’s course of study lasted two years and he scored good grades, graduating in 1935. But still, the nation was in the grips of the Great Depression and employment was difficult. He found work during the next couple of years driving trucks and working as a salesman for both Swift Creamery and Golden State Creamery. It did not satisfy his ambitions. “He came home one day after smashing his hand working on a truck,” said Doris. “He told me that there had to be a better way to make a living.”

  He also tried retail sales in town, and additionally went to work for a Buick dealer. There, the owner was unable to collect payments against a considerable list of customers. Elwyn established an arrangement whereby he kept half of any defunct debt he was able to collect. Exercising considerable charm and persuasiveness, he laid out realistic payment plans for the delinquent parties. These were people he knew, or knew of, and he enjoyed a good deal of success. Noting that success, and the methods that made it possible, the owner took Elwyn’s plan as his own and relegated him to the lot as a used car salesman.

  Tragedy masquerading as opportunity came to the central California coast when the Norwegian lumber freighter, Elg, ran aground at Oceano near San Luis Obispo on September 9, 1938. When the rising tide failed to lift the ship free, the captain ordered its cargo jettisoned. That cargo was nearly half-a-million linear feet of finely milled Canadian lumber.

  During the next few days, as tugs worked to free the ship, and as the lumber was dumped into the ocean, the surrounding area was swept by a gold rush mentality. Virtually every able-bodied man went down to the cold, choppy water to claim what he could under the law of salvage. The San Luis Obispo Daily Telegram recorded the scene: “Trucks, trailers and tractors arrived from points as far away as Paso Robles and Santa Maria to carry away loads of lumber varying from a few hundreds of board feet to thousands of board feet. Stories circulated regarding men being hired by contractors at $1 and even $1.50 an hour to salvage the lumber as it washed ashore.”7

  A line of trucks stretched nearly a mile, waiting to gain access to the beach. Opportunism and greed were everywhere. One man set his daughter up in the back of his truck to sell hotdogs to famished salvagers. Disputes over ownership of the errant rafts of boards were common and shoving matches and fistfights broke out. “Weary watchers who had stood by piles of lumber along more than a mile of beach through Sunday night, waiting for trucks to arrive had difficulties galore. A man, red-eyed from sleeplessness, said he had left his wife to watch his salvaged lumber while he left to find food and on his return his wife weepingly reported that strangers with a truck had
pushed her aside and taken the lumber.” The sheriff and his deputies were able to do little more than try to control the chaos.

  The salvaging was dangerous and many of the men had no business being in the frigid, wave-wracked currents. During a period of several days, seven men drowned. Others lost fingers and suffered cuts and broken bones. Many men were rescued from certain death. The Daily Telegram noted one of these: “Hero stories also marked Monday. Elwyn Righetti, 22 [23], Edna Road, San Luis Obispo, was rescued early Monday and revived with artificial respiration. He was reported in good condition Monday evening.”

  That Elwyn was at the center of the frenzy surprised none of his family or friends. “But my parents had a talk with him,” said Doris. “I wasn’t allowed to hear, but I know they had something to say.” As it developed, Elwyn recovered from his near-drowning with no lasting ill effects. And the lumber that was salvaged during that period was used in the construction of many local houses and businesses, some of which still stand.

  It was also during 1938 that Elwyn, like many young men, was bitten by the flying bug. Lindbergh’s crossing of the Atlantic a decade earlier in 1927—when Elwyn was twelve—fired the public’s imagination as nothing had before. Tickertape parades were almost commonplace, and newspapers and radios trumpeted every new achievement as intrepid aviators went higher, faster and farther. In so doing they made the world a smaller place.

  But many of them did so at the cost of their lives. Amelia Earhart went missing only the year prior, in 1937, and Wiley Post, the first person to fly solo around the globe, was killed in 1935. Nevertheless, the advances that were pioneered by these luminaries and the thousands of scientists and engineers who made their achievements possible, culminated in an aviation industry that was more accessible than ever. No longer was it the exclusive domain of heavily financed daredevils, or military men flying government machines. In fact, anyone with the desire and talent, and a reasonable amount of cash, could learn to fly. That accessibility, together with preparations for the coming war, marked the waning days of the golden age of aviation.

  Still, flying was expensive. At that time and place, flying lessons averaged 7 dollars per hour.8 This was during a decade when laborers averaged 50 cents per hour. Still, Elwyn scrimped, saved, bartered and charmed, and was certified as a private pilot by the summer of 1939. During that time he logged 170 flying hours—a considerable achievement considering his age, the cost, and the fact that most flights averaged under an hour.

  He flew primarily from the San Luis Obispo county airport, and at Hancock Field in nearby Santa Maria, at the controls of whatever was available. His logbook noted flights in Aeronca, Great Lakes, Taylorcraft, Rearwin, Piper and Porterfield aircraft—among others. They made up the colorful panoply of small aircraft that increasingly put-putted across the nation’s skies. They would be joined, in only a few short years, by hundreds of thousands of war machines that would make them look like the flying toys they were.

  “He loved flying more than anything,” said Doris. “Even more than he loved hunting.” Still, once the novelty wore thin, Elwyn realized that the sort of recreational flying he was doing offered no real career prospects. The budding airline industry was where a pilot could earn a real living, but gaining the experience required to qualify for such a job took time and money. And the competition was stiff; there were literally thousands of young men like him who had a dream, a few hundred flight hours, and little else.

  The United States Army Air Corps, or USAAC, offered another option. For much of its existence after World War I it had been a very small organization of just a thousand pilots or so. It typically trained only a few new pilots each year and had its choice of the most qualified—and sometimes, well-connected—young men in the nation. Graduates from West Point were given first priority, but a four-year college degree, at a minimum, was a must. And education aside, successful candidates were as nearly physically perfect as possible. Even then, many of the newly trained men who survived the high-attrition training were sent to reserve or National Guard units.

  Such a life was attractive to Elwyn. A commission as a second lieutenant would provide him with a paycheck well beyond what he could earn peddling used cars, or hauling dairy products. A commission would also put him at the controls of some of the world’s most sophisticated aircraft. That experience could help him punch the tickets necessary to fly as an airline pilot—as far from squeezing cow teats as he could wish. Still, the Air Corps requirement for a four-year college degree meant that Elwyn was at least two years from being qualified. And two more years of school would have to come at the cost of money he didn’t have.

  However, political frictions and armed clashes in Europe and Asia compelled the USAAC to develop expansion plans. In order to enlarge the pool of qualified men, it dropped its requirement for a four-year college degree. Instead, young men with two years of college would be accepted for flight training, presuming they could pass a challenging battery of academic and physical tests.

  Elwyn could and did.

  “MY FLYING HAS BEEN PRETTY GOOD LATELY”

  The family was as keen for Elwyn to stay as he was to leave. He was their oldest son, and Mom and Pop hoped that he would remain at home and help with the ranch; at least part of it would eventually pass to him. Nevertheless, Elwyn couldn’t resist the opportunity to fly. “He didn’t want to have anything to do with the ranch,” brother Ernie said.1

  His parents worried. They worried that he might stumble and fail to realize his dream. On the other hand, they worried that he might make the Air Corps a career and never return home. And, of course, they worried that he might be hurt or killed. In the end, they didn’t press him to stay on the ranch; they had always told their children they were free to choose their own way in life.

  “Mr. Prescott told me today that if I continue to go as I have been, I’ll be at the top of my class when I get out of here,” Righetti wrote in early December 1939. “He’s really pleased with my progress, and so am I.”

  Bob Prescott was an instructor at the Ryan School of Aeronautics in San Diego, California, where Righetti was working his way through the primary phase of flight training. Ryan’s operation, self-proclaimed as “America’s most modern school of aviation,” had been in service since 1932, and was one of nine that the United States Army Air Corps, or USAAC, had contracted to provide initial flight training to the unprecedented numbers of cadets it was busy recruiting.2 At that point the service counted fewer than three thousand pilots in its ranks. It was a number that was desperately short of what Major General Henry “Hap” Arnold—the tireless and visionary head of the Air Corps—knew the nation needed.

  By late 1939 the Germans and Soviets had been consolidating their conquest of Poland for more than two months, and Arnold was in a race to create a world-class air force capable of prevailing in the event the United States was pulled into the new world war. Well-trained pilots were critical to such an organization and the USAAC was not yet equipped to produce them. “Right now, we needed to train 100,000 pilots and the most we were turning out were about 750 a year,” he said.3

  “I invited some of the best civilian flying school people in the country to my office,” Arnold said. “I made them a proposal.” He asked the flying schools to house, feed and train cadets in the primary phase of training. And he asked them to do it on their own dime until he could get Congress to appropriate the necessary funds. “We would furnish them the planes and the small supervisory personnel necessary; they would be paid so much a head for graduated students and a smaller flat sum for each washout.” It was an audacious request but the power of Arnold’s personality prevailed. Moreover, the promise of business on a scale that the schools’ owners never imagined possible was compelling. “Late that afternoon they came in to see me again, and told me there was no doubt about it—they could do it!”4 For their trouble, the schools were to be paid $1,170 for each student they successfully trained.5

  When Arnold initially made t
he deal with the flying schools during 1939, they were told to expect to produce a total of 2,400 primary phase graduates per year. By the end of that year, the quota was raised more than twelve-fold to thirty thousand.6 It would grow even more.

  Righetti and his thirty-six classmates at Ryan were among the very first of the nearly half-million young men who eventually started pilot training during the wartime period. Although much of the rest of the world was at war, the fighting was still far away and the pace of the training, although demanding, was not as frenetic as it would eventually become. Consequently, Righetti found time to enjoy himself outside of training. “I went riding back in the hills Sunday with Mr. Prescott and had a keen time. I really get along swell with him and his wife, Ruth [Grace] Prescott, who’s a nationally known aviatrix—she won a transcontinental race [Chatterton Air Derby] in 1935, and she really likes me.”

  Notwithstanding these sorts of diversions, Righetti worked hard and it showed. “Boy, I’ve been so darn busy lately that I just couldn’t write—and that’s a fact,” he wrote in mid-December. “I’ve managed to catch up a little tonite so I feel that I do owe you a letter. My flying has been pretty good lately. I got the best grade in the class last Friday when I flew my first stage. I’ve got about 15 or 16 hours now and really think I’m doing a pretty good job.”

  Righetti flew the PT-13 Kaydet at the Ryan school. Originally designed by Stearman, and most often known by that name, its manufacture was continued by Boeing when it bought Stearman in 1938. It was a single-engine, two-place biplane that ultimately became an iconic trainer—in different variants—for both the Air Corps and the Navy. Simple and rugged, it was easy to maintain and capable of absorbing the different sorts of abuse that neophyte fliers were so imaginative in delivering. More than ten thousand in a number of variants were eventually produced.