THE LIFE AND LOVES OF A UNITED STATES NAVAL AVIATOR

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Contents

Chapter 1. In Pursuit Of Those Wings Of Gold..............................1Chapter 2. Flying The Big Birds...........................................17Chapter 3. How I Got From Here To There...................................22Chapter 4. Riding The Wind................................................36Chapter 5. French Morroco.................................................46Chapter 6. Pre-Flight And The Blonde And The Brunette.....................57Chapter 7. From Brown Shoe To Black Shoe..................................64Chapter 8. The Tin Can Navy...............................................76Chapter 9. USS Stemble Underway...........................................87Chapter 10. Harry Meets Ellie.............................................96Chapter 11. Command At Sea................................................103Chapter 12. The Desk......................................................113Chapter 13. From Captain To Commodore.....................................121Chapter 14. From Commodore To Sahib.......................................134Chapter 15. You Like Martini Captain Sahib?...............................142Chapter 16. Life In Karachi...............................................154Chapter 17. Up The Khyber Pass And Other Adventures.......................168Chapter 18. From The Mink To The Sink.....................................188Chapter 19. Thirty Days Hath September....................................198Chapter 20. The King And Queen And Ellie And I............................210Chapter 21. Aloha.........................................................224

Chapter One

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-split clouds—and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung John G. Magee, Jr. RCAF

In the summer of 1942, while Warrant Officer Fujita of the Japanese Imperial Navy was on his way from Japan to fly his float plane from a submarine and attack the West Coast of the US, I was shooting hoops in my backyard basketball court and stopping from time to time to watch a silver plane shining in the sunlight, as it streaked across the sky over my San Fernando Valley home. It took me a while to locate it as it appeared well ahead of from where the sound was coming. It was a new twin engine, twin tailed P-38 on a test flight coming from the nearby Lockheed-Vega aircraft plant in Burbank, California where I worked on a plane that was destined for the US Navy. My nineteenth birthday was coming up in a couple of months, and I was contemplating joining the navy and had thought, why not learn to fly?

Many of my friends from high school were leaving to join the military. Sammy, my high school basketball-playing partner, received a commission in the army. Arleigh Twait, who got me labeled as a five-year-old arsonist by the careless handling of our corn silk cigarettes, went off to war as a tank driver. My boy-hood pals, the Russell twins had also joined. Both made it through WWII—Robert as a marine in many of the island battles of the Pacific and David as a navy corpsman. My brother Tom was a Fire Controlman on the USS North Carolina for most of the war in the Pacific. Even some of the girls were gone—some in the service and some to college. Many others from the Canoga Park High School classes of 1936 to 1944 went off to war. Most of us made it through the war ... some did not.

My brother John, who as an Aviation Machinist Mate stationed on Ford Island on December 7, 1941, and had survived the attack on Pearl Harbor, was visiting us on leave, urged me, with, "Why don't you join the Navy Aviation Cadet V5 program? The recruiting office is in downtown Los Angeles." I did apply and was surprised when I shortly received a notice to report before a selection board and to bring my Canoga Park High School records with me. The interview was short. The six officers on the board took a brief look at my academic grades and then queried me about my athletic abilities. When they found out that I was the reigning record holder for most points ever scored in a Los Angeles high school basketball game (fifty points scored against Verdugo Hills in my senior year), it was all over. I got a thumbs-up from all of them and was ordered to report for a physical. I suppose they thought anyone that could find the hoop in a basketball game for fifty points could learn to land a plane on an aircraft carrier.

I had been working on the assembly of the Vega Ventura, an airplane that the navy acquired eventually for anti-submarine patrol missions. I had given the management notice that I would be entering the service and subsequently, for the last couple of months of my work at Lockheed, I was transferred to the job of teaching "Rosie the Riveter" and her cohorts the fine art of driving and bucking rivets. I was anxious to move onward and upward, in both a literal and figurative sense.

On September 9, 1942, as I was awaiting orders to commence flight training, pilot Fujita launched his floatplane from the Japanese submarine I-15 and took off on his mission from a point off the coast of Oregon. The plan was to set the forests on fire and cause great destruction to towns and panic among the people. Fujita dropped two incendiary bombs about fifty miles inland, which fizzled, in the wet forest. Because of this invasion of our West Coast by a Japanese aircraft and other factors, the federal government required all civilian flying operations to move at least one hundred fifty miles inland

I didn't know at the time that Fujita's bombing of Oregon would have a direct affect on where I would be spending my next three months. The Civilian Pilot Training (CPT) program was originally based in Bakersfield close to my home, but, because it was within one hundred fifty miles of the coast, the flight school was required to move from Bakersfield, and those in charge selected Lone Pine, California. Lucky me! With that decision, the small town of Lone Pine became the Capital of Southern California Naval Civilian Pilot Training during World War II.

In November 1942, along with about thirty other cadets, I boarded one of the buses in Los Angeles and headed for Bakersfield Junior College where we were enrolled in the program. We were issued khakis, a fore-and-aft hat, and a pair of silver wings on a shield with the letters "V5" at the bottom. The buses traveled on to Lone Pine, California where tents were erected on the high school grounds for us next to E. Muir St. I was assigned to Tent 2, Group 3. It was somewhat ironic that I learned later that my mother and father, when they were first married, had also traveled to Lone Pine and lived in a tent while my father worked on the Los Angeles aqueduct construction. Nearby was Owens Dry Lake. My high school, Canoga Park, at one time was named Owensmouth in the somewhat dubious honor of the water that Los Angeles bought from the farmers of Owens Valley. I do not know the reason for the name change but I suspect politics about the Owens Valley river water may have had something to do with it.

The Lone Pine High School principal, William Bauer, provided space in the high school buildings for our ground school classes, and the athletic field was our parade ground. We lived in tents set up alongside. The airfield, about a mile away, had the...