by Miner, Ron
“Aw, Shit!”
If this perfect pattern had been just 1,000 feet east of where it had exploded, that island certainly would have been in a shambles. Not a bomb touched anything.
Over the plane’s intercom, Smelley spoke first. “Hell, I can do better than that with these thirty calibers!” Within seconds the airwaves were jammed with everyone in the crew wanting a piece of this. Willie made the call and decided to try a strafing run on the airfield, the assumption being that the enemy must all be underground, hiding from the bombers, and would never be expecting a lonely PBY. They dove in at 180 knots with guns blazing and left four planes and a number of fuel tanks afire without so much as a single return shot from below. As they slowly made their assessment from the safety of a cloud, they concluded, “Why not have another go?” In they came again, blasting away from the blisters and now someone had joined in with the twin thirty calibers in the rear hatch. It then became painfully obvious that the enemy wasn’t hiding underground anymore and as the PBY gained speed, “All Hell broke loose!”
They finished their daylight run and “skedaddled,” with several of the crewmen arguing with Smelley over who had gotten the hit on the ammo building that was popping and smoking behind them. The bombers had long since left the area with no apparent casualties to be picked up, so Willie joined in with John and Mac and headed back to Peleliu.
Once on the ground, they looked over the plane and saw it had sustained some damage to the fuselage and had several more holes in the wings. Regardless, there was a great sense of satisfaction that the crew had been up to the task and performed well together and they headed back to camp to unwind.
They even called test alerts for our Dumbos, more like a contest, really, to see who could get airborne first from a cold engine start.
It was at this point that Willie, now out of his flight suit and lounging in his tent, was summoned to the skipper’s office. There before him stood a row of Navy officials and “five sour-pussed” army officers, including a one-star general. They had informed the skipper that a PBY on duty at Yap had interfered with their Primary Bomb Run and that, as Willie put it, “... they wanted the responsible individual to be sent off to Leavenworth to cover up their mistake of missing the whole damn island! Yes, at rigid attention, on a coral island 8,000 miles from home after flying over ten hours that day, dressed in shorts, t-shirt, and sandals, no officer insignia, we took the ass-eating of our lives!”
But there was a happy ending to his story. A short time later, Willie and his copilot were again called into the skipper’s office and arrived thinking, “What now!” The Army brass were gone, but the skipper still looked stern and military. “Tell me what happened.”
Willie, still at rigid attention, told the story as truthfully as he could. “At ease.” At this point, the skipper broke into a wistful smile and pulled a bottle of whiskey out of a drawer and set it up on his field desk. “Let’s all have a drink and relax. And dammit, Willie, I wish I had been there with you. We might have made a third run over Yap.”
Election day arrived and so had my absentee ballot. I had returned it promptly and wondered if it arrived before the election took place. The sentiment around here seemed almost evenly split, and although the president won handily, it had to be a rough time to be the leader of this country.
As November wore on, we continued to move things and people (sometimes wounded, sometimes brass) around, do sub searches, drop supplies, and provide coverage for planes or ships when needed. Then there was always some practicing of water landings and check out time in other planes to keep us sharp and occupied. They even called test alerts for our Dumbos, more like a contest, really, to see who could get airborne first from a cold engine start. When a crew was on “standby” they normally hung around the operations tent and would then jump into action when an “alert” was sounded. The idea of the “test” was to determine readiness of each crew. This particular day one of my crewmen happened to overhear a conversation that a test alert was being called for our crew and mistakenly thought it had already been called. Eight of us raced out onto the strip, scrambled aboard, fired up the engines, and started taxiing while I contacted the tower for clearance to takeoff. Before I could speak, the voice on the radio said, “Be advised, a Dumbo alert has just been called.” The plane was already moving toward the runway and we looked at each other in disbelief, hit full throttle, and were airborne in ten-seconds flat! The crew of the “Frisco Gal” stands proudly behind what we are quite sure is a record that will live forever.
Bob Pinckney (lower left) and Elliot Schreider (3rd from left, front) - Skip Marsh’s crew
The crews had banked some serious hours over the last several months and were in need of a break. Fatigue is a sneaky thing, mistakes were becoming more common and tempers shorter. After taxiing for twelve hours and eighty miles following an emergency landing due to an engine problem, Bob Pinckney found an unfamiliar harbor and a traffic jam of vessels to maneuver through as he tried to get to a tie-up point. He was beat. He and his radioman were each standing on their seats and out of the overhead hatches signaling back and forth with a lantern, while peering around and at each other in the darkness. Bob, intending to wave him off, quickly thrust his hand out ... and into the idling prop’s blades. It gave him quite a whack and he very nearly lost two of his fingers.
Pete and Willie were the best of friends and nearly came to blows over some silly thing. Pete was a big guy. Willie, was an oil derrick worker, only about 5 feet, 10 inches, but an impressive, solid, and very muscular fellow. It ended when Willie grabbed Pete and simply picked him up and held him there.
The break came in Suva on the island of Fiji, two days of R&R in an island paradise. Suva was a small town, not quite the size of Crawfordsville, Ind., and had more of what you might describe as a “civilized” feel, at least from a typical American perspective. Most of us were surprised to find the town had a rather modern hotel called the Grand Pacific, and it was there we put up for the night. It was in stark contrast to the thatch roof huts so common along the beaches. It also was far different from our experience at Nadi, then staying nearer the airstrip over on the opposite side of the island on our initial voyage to Guadalcanal almost two years ago. For a pound a day, about $3.75, you relaxed in a comfortable room and enjoyed three marvelous meals.
The natives here were of fairly harsh appearance, more like Melanesians than Polynesians. They had their hair stiffened and swept up Afro fashion and, again, it was whitened with some type of wash. On their faces, they used generous amounts of a red dye, and they all chewed betel-nut, a habit a little like chewing tobacco, which ostensibly gave the chewer some kind of a “high.” They collected the seeds from the Areca palms grown on the island. One of the young men took a liking to me and wanted to return to the United States with us to be my “personal servant.”
Outside the hotel, Jack met us at the door. “Have you seen this? There is enough food to feed a carrier!” Each menu showed a whole host of delicacies, course after course and seven, eight, who knows how many options. It was an endless feast. They had us feeling like wealthy American tourists instead of military folks.
In the morning, Jack and I rented bicycles and pedaled all over town and out to Lauthala Bay airdrome where we landed.
“Jack, let’s take the shore road back to the hotel. There is supposed to be a botanical garden along the way.”
By afternoon, we had hooked up with an old Indian guide and ventured into the hills and a Fiji native village. We spent several enjoyable hours sitting on the floors of village huts and conversing with the families and getting to know them. The Indians were originally from various parts of mainland India and were first brought to Fiji as laborers for sugar and other agricultural industries here. They were also known for their gorgeous silver work and jewelry. The Fiji islanders were truly natives, born and raised in villages and a proud people. Their native handiwork and crafts included beautiful baskets and weavings. Naturally, there
was a little trading. I decided to paint a scene from the village depicting the Islanders near the beach, the surf breaking in the distance, with indigenous pandanus trees standing like Spanish bayonets in the foreground. It would be a perfect birthday gift for my sister, Marian.
Even after nearly two tours of Pacific flying, this island’s waters were an astonishing emerald blue, seemingly exceeding the delightful hues of other coastal bays and lagoons throughout the myriads of south sea islands. This place was just what we needed.
Two days later, “Frisco Gal” was winging her way toward Espiritu and Buttons Base once more, and her crew would spend the remainder of November bouncing between there and Guadalcanal.
I heard my brother Mac’s unit mentioned on the radio and I now knew where he was. According to the weather reports, Mac and the boys up on Leyte were enduring torrential rains, suffering from monsoon storms and wind (typhoons happen here) and I was thinking how he’d appreciate some dry clothes about now. Tents won’t stay put in those conditions, the ground softening so much the tent stakes pull loose and the wind does the rest. You can try acting as a human stake the rest of the night, which didn’t always work, and soon your stuff on the inside was outside getting wet anyway. It was all too familiar and I felt for him up there.
As Christmas approached, VPB-54 itself loaded up and flew lock, stock, and barrel up to Leyte. The airstrip had recently been secured, but it was crowded with planes parked wing-tip to wing-tip, so we landed in the bay and tied up to numerous buoys anchored around a small seaplane tender, the USS Orca.
Certainly a big part of being a Navy pilot involves working with the fleet, but none of us had been based aboard a ship before. Being assigned to flying boats, we would know no carrier duty and felt a bit shortchanged, and all our efforts at transfer to attack aircraft had not panned out. So at long last, we had a ship and felt a lot saltier. Oddly enough, our flight crews had become the envy of the shipboard brass, simply because our gold wings and collar bars had picked up plenty of bluish corrosion out there in the jungle and it made us look as if we’d been at sea for a good while. Being based at sea even gave us the chance to pick up some Navy skills that we hadn’t been exposed to yet. In my case, I had an opportunity to spend some time with the signal men who operated the semaphore flags and lamps, chatting about their craft.
* * *
* Palau is the largest of this Island group, although the most intense fighting took place on Peleliu, a roundish, smaller island about forty miles southwest of Palau near the end of the group.
*The F4U Corsair had a distinctive bent wing profile intended for Aircraft carries. Early difficulties with engineering of the plane were resolved and it went on to become one of the premier fighters of WWII.
*“Mae West” was a nickname for an airmen’s life jacket.
*“Dumbo” is a term applied when the PBYs served as escorts for other attack aircraft providing some rescue capability for them.
Leaflet dropped on camp
How’s the fishing?
Every day or so I would be assigned a rescue mission somewhere in the midst of all these islands. It was exciting work. Signals were arranged in advance with friendly coast watchers, we would arrive at a specific location, appraise the situation to determine how to best handle a water pickup, and hopefully accomplish the rescue. Not an exact science. If a landing was attempted when the swells were too rough, there would be no subsequent takeoff, one way or the other. Bad conditions could put nine or ten, perhaps more men in harm’s way, so it could not be an emotional decision. You had to read the sea. The frequency and size of the whitecaps told the direction and intensity of the wind accurately enough. Up to a point, the stronger the wind, the easier the landing. The swell could be treacherous, ten to twenty feet high and like a brick wall in your path. So we would try to land along the top of it. But there were other issues. This might be a crosswind! Don’t drag a wing tip float and break it off! Is there a secondary swell from a different direction to contend with? It was touchy business.
One morning, a B-25 crew was making a run to Los Negros when their plane caught fire down in the bomb bay. The crew bravely fought back against the fire, knowing that any of the bombs on the heavily armed bomber could go off, and it would only take one. The navigator, unable to control it with a fire extinguisher, was backed into a corner and lingered there facing away as his backside became seriously burned. At this point, the pilot had no choice but to ditch, and when we found the crew floating in their life jackets, the skin on their fingers was hanging and they were in shock. Our pharmacist did an amazing job of first aid on them in flight, although he decided against working extensively on their faces, leaving that to the doctors back at base. The pilots didn’t suffer from burns and, although banged up, came through it in good shape. We were later happy to learn that the entire crew had made a decent recovery.
Since most of our work was in enemy territory, we skulked along following the irregular shore lines. Radar was still in its infancy, but our plane, like many PBYs, had a movable antenna on each side. With one set abeam, we could maintain a three mile interval off shore. One crew member secured — probably through “midnight requisition” — a second set of antenna and he mounted them facing aft. During a night mission, he was playing with this new toy and advised me that an aircraft was following us.
“I think it’s squawking a friendly signal, but I can’t make it out, sir.”
I asked him to check it out on our own IFF (identification, friend or foe signal). He did so and reported our transmitter had been off and that we had apparently tripped a circuit breaker. We quickly reset the breaker, regaining our signal indicating we were a U.S. aircraft, and the unknown plane, after several long minutes, broke away. We could have easily been shot down by our own plane that night had it not been for our rudimentary radar.
The Catalina was a slow and methodical but very durable airplane. When we flew without escorts, we would take them up in almost any weather and cancellations were rare. The joke was, “Aerology predicts practically impossible weather, all aircraft are grounded, but that will not affect you guys. You are flying PBYs.” Or sometimes, “Roger Tower, our weather en route: headwinds at all altitudes forty to sixty-five knots, frequent heavy thunder, and lightning squalls, severe freezing conditions, ceiling zero, flying conditions average ...” This might translate into a very exciting ride depending on the squalls and whether they were avoidable — a severe downdraft could drop us hundreds of feet faster than a PBY could fly, leaving crewmen scattered about the fuselage or even temporarily pinned against the plane’s upper cabin frame. There were times that you wondered how the old Dumbos held together. Sometimes, it was the takeoffs or landings that tested the mettle of the metal. Large swells or waves could stretch the planes’ skin to its limit, popping rivets and letting in the sea. Golf tees and pencils were standard issue onboard, making a fine patch for rivet or small bullet holes.
Frequently, PBYs would have fighter cover, generally a formation of F-51s (Mustangs) or F6Fs (Hellcats) zigzagging around high above them so as not to outrun our lumbering Catalinas. Our range was much longer, so oftentimes before we could even complete a rescue they would need to bid us good luck and good hunting and head for home. With only light armaments, our big planes were generally sitting ducks the rest of the way.
I had spent another New Year’s Day in the tropics, more specifically, the islands near the Philippines. By Jan. 4, we were about sixty miles east of Manila, searching for a downed B-25 crew reported somewhere in the area. The skies were cloudless and clear, and we made our way up the west coast toward the islands of Biliran and Maripipi. Our fighter cover, “Beware Red,” consisted of two P-38s (Lightnings),* and they maintained a watchful eye as all of us made our way north between a pair of Japanese held islands guarding the San Bernardino Strait. I now swung to port around Rapu Rapu and into the Lagonoy Gulf and could see ahead the 8,000-foot cone of a volcano just south of San Miguel Bay. It reminded me of Fuji
yama and, at the time, seemed quite as much a part of Japan. Just south of the Polillo Island group, our first relief fighters, “BewareWhite,” took over for “Beware Red.”
Jomalig, the outermost of the group, was held by the enemy and it seemed unlikely any survivors would be there. Polillo, the largest island, had a number of Jap positions and it seemed equally likely that any survivors in the hands of the natives there would have been escorted elsewhere by now. The most logical island was Patnanungan in between the other two. A squall had nearly covered this piece of land, and since fighters are notably skittish of reduced visibility, we concentrated on the small islands, rocks and reefs, and even native canoes first. Two B-25s arrived into our airspace to assist but, unfortunately, only managed to send us off on several wild goose chases investigating native people whose excitement had induced them to frantically wave whatever they could get their hands on, usually a white flag.