Nuclear Testing

With a few more dicey episodes along the way, we completed the flight loads program early in 1955, then our “004” was selected by the Air Force to be the test effects B-52 in one of the nuclear weapons test series being conducted at Bikini and Eniwetok atolls.  It would be “Operation Redwing” in 1956.

The airplane would be flown by an Air Force crew and maintained by mechanics from Wright Field, both trained by Boeing in Seattle.  Boeing contracted to furnish the test planning, position calculation (as close to the thermos-nuclear blasts as possible without destroying the airplane), data recording and transcription, and the final test reports.

By that time, I have been promoted to first-line supervision and was offered the position of Flight Test Operations Supervisor on the Operation Redwing team that would go to Eniwetok for the duration of the test program (four months).  We had to provide personal histories going all the way back to birth with no gaps.  During the weeks that the investigation took, my mother got letters from relatives in the Missouri Ozark that questioned, “Is Conrad in some sort of trouble?  FBI agents were here asking all sorts of questions about him and the family!”  I could tell no one, even my wife, where I was going or what I would be doing.  I could only say that it was for a high security clearance for an important job.

[Considering the tenor of the times, it is not surprising that my father’s family and neighbors wondered about what was going on with him.  Wikipedia lists the years of the Red Scare as being from 1947 to 1957.  I would say that it lasted longer than that, or maybe it was just that I was afraid longer than that.  My father’s security clearance assured that we have a private phoneline.]

Con's coffee mug from both Eniwetok operations

The stories of those nuclear weapons tests in Operation Redwing and, two years later in Operation Hardtack when I went back again with another B-52, could be a complete book.  For this summary let it suffice to simply record that our participation was a complete success and we obtained data on every test shot in which we participated.  There were about two dozen ranging in size from the Hiroshima atomic bomb to thermo-nuclear (hydrogen) bombs with yields in the multi-megaton range.

That four-month isolation on Eniwetok atoll was the first of many long absences from my little family and the new house we had bought in the Lake Hills area of Bellevue.  Shirley was not very self-sufficient.  She resented my absences although she was proud that I had considerable amounts of overtime that I was paid.  That and my increasing salary allowed for purchase of a second car, new furniture, and a color TV.

We had many happy times when I was home, but the long absences and the world travel in which I became involved in the 1960s had an adverse effect on little Stephanie also.  Year later when something came up about events in her school life and developing years that I had miss she cried out in an anguished voice, “But Daddy, you were never there!”  That memory remains painful.

I feel in my later years that perhaps one problem in my ill-advised first marriage and my performance as a father may have been that I was selfish in pursuing the adventurous career in which I was so supremely happy.  I seldom “took my work home with me”, but I was eager to get to work every day for thirty years.  I was never happier than when—travel authorization, passport, and airline tickets in hand—I left SeaTac Airport for some foreign lands.

[I have a collection of letters, postcards, and dolls that are testament to how much my father was gone from my childhood.]

I went back to Eniwetok again in 1958 for Operation Hardtack.  This time we instrumented a B-52B, 6591, that we christened “Tommy’s Tigator” (the pilot was Major Tom Sumner, USAF).  We painted a snarling green-striped tiger on the nose of “591”.  (When there is time for more detail and anecdotes from these operations I will tell you what a “tigator” is.) [I was enough enamored of the Tigator when I saw my father paint it on Major Sumner’s helmet that I had my father paint one on my lunch box. I was a standout at Phantom Lake Elementary.] 

For Operation Hartack I went to Eniwetok as overall Flight Test Supervisor at first, then took over as Boeing base manager when my boss, Jim Webber was called back to Seattle for another program.  We participated in and witnessed another eighteen or twenty nuclear explosions and once more turned in a perfect record in obtaining our data.  On one test our precisely controlled position at Time Zero was so close that the shock wave caved in the bomb bay doors and blew off the ECM radome on the bell of the airplane.  That was close enough!  On another some high clouds reflected enough heat from the immense fireball that the paint was burned off one side of the airplane.  We got great structural and temperature data and the B-52 came off with an excellent record that it could deliver the largest thermos-nuclear weapons and survive.

During one Operation Hartack test, we on the ground witnessed the detonation of a five-megaton weapon only twenty-two miles away across the Eniwetok lagoon.  It was indescribable—rather like peering into an open door of Hell and I came away an advocate of banning all nuclear weapons in the world.

[It was around this time that I became convinced that I was not going to live to adulthood.  Because of his experience on Eniwetok, my father thought it was good for the family to be prepared for a possible nuclear war.  He did not build a bomb shelter, but he was concerned about the fact that he considered Boeing and Seattle to be a USSR target.  My mother was instructed to keep a quarter of a tank of gas in the car at all times.  If there was a warning of a possible nuclear strike, I was to walked to the crosswalk at the bottom of the school yard.  She would then drive the two of us to my grandparents’ beach house in Seaview, WA where he believed the off-shore wind would blow fallout away from the coast.  Once when we were visiting my mother’s sister and her family in Vancouver, WA we children were sent to bed because the parents were going to watch a TV program on thermo-nuclear war.  A typical youngster told that I could NOT watch something on TV, that was exactly what I wanted to do.  I crept to the bedroom door where I could see the television and watched a program that led me to believe that the grown-ups were probably going to have a war that would kill us all, if not in an initial blast, then with fallout.  Shortly after that experience my mother drove me by the construction site for Sammamish High School and gaily said, “There’s where you will go to high school.”  Right, I thought.  There’s something that will never happen.  Imagine my surprise when I got to my junior year of high school that it seemed that I was going to have to be an adult afterall.]

Testing the B-52

Seattle Flight Test

1953 – 1960

In May of 1953, when the B-47 flight loads program had been successfully completed, both Brein Wygle and I were called back to Seattle to conduct the same program on the huge new eight-jet B-52 bomber.  The No. 2 B-52A, 52-004, was instrumented with more than 350 strain gages and became “my” airplane.

In the 1950s, flight testing was not the precise computerized science that it is today.  We had no computers or flight simulators.  We worked with slide rules and mechanical calculators.  The only way to find out if something worked and to determine airplane performance was to take an experimental airplane out, fly it, and record the data for later analysis.

It was inevitable that we would encounter problems.  Most of them we could handle but once in a while there would be a fatal crash.  From the B-29 to the 707. We paid at least one flight crew for each new model.  During my ten years in Flight Test, we buried seventeen of our pilot and engineer friends.

Why did we do it?  We were young and we loved airplanes and the sky.  We had faith in Boeing designers and aerodynamics engineers and we had supreme faith in our abilities to handle emergencies.  We wanted to help push aviation technology to the limit.

Boeing Test Pilot Brien Wygle

It could be dangerous, of course, and we all occasionally had hair-raising experiences.  As Brien Wygle used to say, “Flying for a living is hours of pure boredom interrupted occasionally by a few seconds of start terror!”

The closest call that Brien and I had was during the B-52 flight loads program.  The B-52 had never taken off at more than 380,000 pounds gross weight and our test plan called for data at gross weights up to 410,000 lbs.

When we were to take off at high weights, Brian and I had a procedure to see if we could make it off the 10,000-foot runway at Boeing Field.  We each calculated the takeoff roll separately then compared results.  If we calculated less than 8,500 feet ground roll we went, more and we did not go.

On the day of our high weight takeoff we were required to take off to the south so that we did not climb out over the heavily populated Georgetown area of Seattle.  To the south there was only the sprawling Associated Grocers warehouse at the end of the runway.  We had a tailwind but the tower gave us only a 5-knot breeze.

It was close.  I calculated just over 8,500 feet.  As project pilot, Brian had the last word.  His decision was to average our results and go.  It would have been a good decision except that the gremlins were at work.  We found out later that we had two problems.  One was that the tailwind increased to about ten knots with we taxied out and the other was that there was an error in the handbook elevator trim settings at that untried weight so we had one degree too much nose-down elevator trim.

During the takeoff roll we sense that all was not well.  The airplane did not want to fly after the refusal point of 5,500 feet.  We went by the calculated unstick at 8,500 feet with weight still on the oleos and the big Associated Grocers warehouse was coming at us fast.

Brien heaved back on the control column so hard that the oscillography trace recording control force went off the scale at 235 pounds.  He also clamped his thumb down on the nose-up trim switch.  (He told me later that it was the second time in 15,000 hours of flying that he had braced himself for a disastrous crash.)

Finally, just 400 feet short of the end of the paved runway, the big bellowing B-52 got airborne and started to climb.  Through the little side window at my station in the navigator’s compartment I saw the edge of the warehouse roof flash by so close that I wondered how the landing gear cleared it.  I glimpsed people scattering at a dead run from the warehouse loading dock.  Had we hit the building the warehouse and us would have been incinerated y the more than 200,000 poinds of JP-4 jet fuel we had in the tanks to achieve that weight.

(Later, the motion picture film from the theodolite station on the hill recording our takeoff showed that we had missed the edge of the warehouse roof by a mere twelve feet.  We had been that close to eternity.)

When the excess adrenalin subsided, we went about our business of recording roller coaster maneuver data at the various gross weights as we burned off all that fuel.  It was after working hours when we landed and taxied to the hangar.  We found then that we were not the only ones who thought we were crashing.

Our lead Ground Operations Engineer, Ed Foster, had been parked in the radio car beside the runway at our calculated unstick point of 8,500 feet.  When we went by still firmly on the ground he, too, braced himself to see the apparently inevitable crash and conflagration.  Then Ed drove back to the hangar, walked silently through the offices (his face was said to be white as a sheet), and disappeared for the day.

When Brien, the Air Force co-pilot, and I walked into the crew locker room after the flight Foster was sitting at the table.  He was obviously happily drunk and had a two-gallon coffee thermos in front of him.  He also had glasses, ice, and a jar of olives.  The thermos held not coffee, but (contrary to company regulations) very dry martinis.  It was nearly midnight when I finally found my way home from that celebration of the crash that did not happen.

1946-1953

EPILOGUE

1946 -1991

It is possible, grandchildren, that I may not have the time or energy to set down the details of my even more adventurous second quarter century; therefore, in this “epilogue” I shall simply summarize the events that led me all over the world and into a truly “golden” retirement.  Some of you might protest, “You have lots of time, Papa Con!” but I am approaching seventy years of age and much of the time left my beloved Phyllis and I intend to devote to us and to the travelling we would like to do.

My entire life has been full of adventure that I would like to record in detail later as Part III of my story.  Meanwhile, I hope that you have found the tales of my first quarter century interesting and perhaps amusing in places.  The following is but a bare summary outline of the events that led me all over the world and finally here to the peace and quiet of Sandy Point in the Pacific Northwest.

It took me two years to make the adjustment to civilian life in peacetime.  I first took a job at Meir & Frank in Portland, Oregon, selling ladies shoes.  That was not satisfying and did not last.

Conrad Frieze, graduation from OSC 1949

I then got a job in Vancouver, Washington at the courthouse as a draftsman for the county assessor.  During that two-year period, I realized one of my dreams—on the veteran’s G.I. Bill I started flying lessons and by 1948 it was time to complete my final year of college.  The University of Washington was over-crowded with returned veterans on the G.I. Bill and housing was hard to find in Seattle.  I settled on Oregon State College in Corvallis and in June of 1949 graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering with an Aeronautical Option.

My ambition was to be in the light plane industry as a designer; however, none of the light plane companies were hiring engineers.  It was a bad year in general aviation.  Then one day I spotted the new, swept-wing sleek Boeing experimental B-47 jet bomber sitting on the apron at Boeing Field.  I was entranced, applied for a job at Boeing, and was accepted as a junior engineer.

That began my lifetime career with Boeing.  It got off to a slow start.  I was put to work in the Tooling Department designing riveting jigs for the B-47.  It was not what I wanted.  Every day without fail I would stick my head into the cubbyhole office of Stan Little, the engineering representative and say, “Stan, when the hell are you going to get me a job in Flight Test?”

Wichita Flight Test

1950 – 1953

In February of 1950, my persistence paid off.  I got my job in Flight Test on the condition that I would go to Wichita, Kansas, for eighteen months to help set up the B-47 flight test program down there.  I was assigned as a flight test Operations engineer, planning test flights, obtaining and analyzing data, and writing test reports.

Except for being in the relative desolation of Kansas from the green mountains and ocean of the Pacific Northwest, it was a dream job.  In Wichita, I worked with a happy-go-lucky bunch of flight test engineers and test pilots who would become life-long friends.

I did not stay eighteen months in Wichita—I stayed three years, three months, and six days.  As the program built up I received regular promotions until I was a Flight Test Operations Engineer A and the lead engineer on the B-47 flight loads program.  Brian Wygle was the pilot, Ross Patrick the co-pilot, and I was the test engineer recording data while we flew the No. 2 B-47A to the limits of its structural design.

On February 19, 1951, I became a father.  Our little daughter Stephanie Kathryn was born.  Like most men I had hoped for a son, but Stephanie was adorable and was the apple of my eye.  I was a proud father and assumed a son (or sons) would come later.  (I was dead wrong.  It became apparent that Shirley had a great dread of getting pregnant and she instituted a strict regimen of birth control.  I accepted the situation, but I fear it laid a brick in the wall that would grow between us.)

[There is plenty that I can fault my mother for, but in her defense, I will tell you what she told me.  She told me that she had two miscarriages before having me and that after having successfully delivered me her doctor told her that further pregnancies would be a danger to her life.  My mother has a tendency to hear whatever is most dramatic and may have exaggerated her doctor’s advice.  It would not be the last time.  I spent a childhood (and my adult life) wishing I had siblings so my father wasn’t alone there and adoption seemed to be out of the question.]

The End of an Era

The biggest change at ComNastsAsia came early in May when we had our change of command.  Captain Luthi was replaced by a “by-the-book” Annapolis man, Captain Williams Soech (pronounced “Shay”), USN.  The relaxed days were suddenly gone.  Now we were required to wear our black neckties in the office and shined black shoes. Reserving our old boondockers for duties outside.  We no longer flipped our captain a casual morning salute, but snapped one off crisply with military precision.

Shoech was a fair man but tough.  Every regulation was enforced.  The pass-through in the office was closed up, a new intercom system installed, and the offices were re-decorated.  Visitors no longer sauntered casually into the captain’s office but had to make a formal appointment through me.  When a VIP captain was due to visit, I was required to look him up in the Annapolis register to find if he was senior to Shoech in date of rank.  (Carl Luthi had not given a damn about date of rank.  He had been casual with VIP visitors all the way up to the rank of Rear Admiral.)

Part of the change in life on Guam was the arrival of our spouses on the 22^nd of May.  Spaulding and I laid on a large cocktail party at our quarters in their honor and it was well attended by officers from the captain on down and the small handful of wives that already had arrived on the island or came on the GENERAL MITCHELL.

It was, no doubt, a dull existence for our wives. There was little to do on Guam except some sightseeing around the island, an outside movie theater, the officer’s club at ComMarianas, and occasional parties.  It was bearable, but occasionally Shirley would voice her dissatisfaction with the Navy wives pecking order that was established by the husband’s rank.  A Reserve ensign was the lowest of the low seated “below the salt” at any table.  The same applied to Shirley at Navy wives functions.  She resented that.

My required year of active duty would be up in November of 1946; therefore, it was time to decide what I was going to do.  I started the paperwork applying for transfer to the Regular Navy.  Meanwhile, I applied for retention on active duty for another year.  (Shirley was not exactly pleased about that.  She preferred to return to civilian life, being simply no cut out to be a Navy wife.)

The situation resulted in some heated arguments on the subject.  I tried to confine them to times when we were off in the jeep or away from others at the beach at Talofofo Bay across the island, but Commander Spaulding and his lovely brunette wife were fully aware that life was not too rosy for Ensign Frieze and his wife.

In addition, we Reserve junior officers did not take entirely to the spit and polish of the peacetime Navy.  We soon formed an informal organization called “The Pissed Officers Club” complete with private stationary on which we wrote our informal memos to each other.  Our crest was crossed purple shafts (we felt that in some respects we were being given “the purple shaft” without benefit of Vaseline) on which was superimposed a thunder mug called “Supreme Latrine” and our motto was “A Bitch In Time Saves Nine!”  Commander Spaulding provided the motto and he and our Reserve Commander Ben Hardin, NATS Asia executive officer, were the only senior officers ever to become PSOB (“Brother Son of a Bitch”).

Finally, the dissatisfaction at the office pus the occasional bursts of temper in our private life got to be too much.  Although I longed to have “USN” instead of “USNR” after my name, the day before I was to take my application for transfer to the Regular Navy which had been approved by Captain Shoech to ComMarianas for submission I tore it up and threw the pieces into the wastebasket.

It is possible that I might have reconsidered and taken a different course (I apparently had to make a choice between Shirley and the Navy); however, in June of 1946 I received notice that my application for a one-year extension of active duty had been rejected as the Navy cut down on personnel.  As of August 20^th, of that year I would go on inactive duty in the Naval Reserve.

After a rousing going away party thrown by my enlisted men for their “mustang” officer, I was detached from ComNatsAsia and we sailed on the USS GENERAL MANN for San Francisco and the separation center.  It was the end of my active duty with the Navy and the close of my first quarter century.

My Navy career was not yet completely over.  When I returned to Vancouver to try to find a job and consider finishing the year I needed for my bachelor’s degree in Aeronautical Engineering, I joined the Voluntary Reserve and, later after we moved to Seattle, obtained a billet as ordnance officer in a Reserve fighter squadron at the Sand Point Naval Air Station.  By then I had been promoted to lieutenant, junior grade, and was taking correspondence courses to be ready to accept promotion to full lieutenant.  in effect, however, it was the end of an era in my young life.

[It is tempting to feel bad (and I have) for my father at his giving in to my mother and leaving the Navy, but the promotions were going to men who had been to Annapolis and you may recall that his test and chances of that had gone literally up in smoke on December 7^th 1941.  As it turned out his career path allowed him to see as much, maybe more, of the world than if he’d stayed in the Navy.]

Guam

On Guam in 1946, where I landed in mid-January, I was assigned as Staff Secretary to ComNatsAsia in the headquarters offices at Agana Naval Air Base.  The first few months were a happy time.  The commander of the Asiatic Wing of NATS was a wartime reserve captain, Carl Luthi, once a pilot with Northwest Airlines.  He ran a very relaxed and informal staff.

We had a crude “squawk box” system between offices; however, Captain Luthi did not like being sequestered alone in his office.  He had a pass-through hole in his office so that his desk and mine as staff secretary and administrative aide in the anteroom with our yeoman were effectively side by side and we could chat back and forth.

I was the junior member of a staff of nineteen officers.  Most were reserves with airline backgrounds.  Luthi liked the informality of the wartime Navy and kept it that way.  In the tropical heat we were not required to wear neckties during working hurs and our footwear was unshineable “boondocker” work shoes.

The quarters assigned me were a room at the BOQ at Commander, Marianas, headquarters high on a hill overlooking Agana Harbor and a Japanese prisoner of war camp that was still well filled.  (The Marines were still bringing more holdout Japanese soldiers out of the jungle almost daily.)

We were two to a room at ConMarianas and my roommate turned out to be Commander Earl Spaulding, the senior medical officer on the island and a very likeable officer.  Spaulding had a hospital at Agana NAB and a staff of nurses who resided in a guarded compound of Quonset huts adjacent to the ComNatsAsia offices on the base, also a series of Quonset huts.  That period from January to May of 1946 was a pleasant time in my Navy career, then changes started to occur.

The changes started gradually as the Navy began converting back to a spit-and-polish peacetime basis.  Some of or relaxed reservists began to be replaced by Regular Navy officers.  We soon were informed that included ComNatsAsia and Carl Luthi would be replaced by a career Regular Navy captain.

Meanwhile, we merrily went on our relaxed way.  Even though I was the junior officer, I was accorded some consideration by my fellow officers since one of my collateral duties was Motor Transportation officer and I controlled the assignment of jeeps from our motor pool. (Inevitably, I drove one of the newest of the jeeps.)

We found in March that the Navy was going to allow dependents to come to Guam as long as quarters for married couples could e arranged.  A housing area of married Quonset huts across the base was being set up but would not be ready for occupancy in the near future.

Commander Spaulding, my roommate at ComMarianas, came up with a great idea.  In the nurses compound at Agana NAB there was an extra Quonset set aside for the senior medical officer.  Spaulding had not occupied it because he enjoyed the camaraderie of the BOQ and the nearby ComMarianas officers’ club which was considerably more luxurious than the one on our base.  Earl’s idea was for the two of us to convert the senior medical officer’s Quonset to a two-bedroom dwelling and we could both have our wives come to Guam.

We worked on that Quonset ourselves every evening after working hours and on weekends using scrounged materials.  Meanwhile, in my assignment as Staff Secretary, I was in a position to hand walk our paperwork through the captain and through ComMarianas for approval.  On the 20^th of March we applied for transportation for our wives to Guam.

Spaulding turned out to be a scrounger without peer when it came to furnishing our residence.  We seldom bothered with requisitions for furniture, but scrounged our own.  It was easy because some of the bases on Guam had already been abandoned, but the furnishings not yet removed.  Earl spotted an abandoned Marine base somewhere on the far side of the island.  As Motor Transportation officer, I issued truck trip passes and, for a bottle of booze, we could always get some of our enlisted men to help.

While I worked on wall finishing, Spaulding would disappear across the island with a truck and a couple of men.  He would return with, first of all, bathroom and kitchen fixtures, then living room furnishings from the abandoned Marine officers’ club.

Beds were another problem.  All we could find were regulation cots with thin mattresses until Early came up with another idea.  At the ComMarianas BOQ we slept in comfort on good Beautyrest single mattresses.  There was a BOQ two-story Quonset building that had never been occupied and it had a plentiful supply of new beds and mattresses, but our requisitions failed to produce any.  Ingenuity was required as, before we had our quarters completely furnished, our wives had sailed from San Francisco on the Navy transport USS GENERAL MITCHELL.  They were due to arrive together the third week in May.

We mounted a “Mission Impossible” type operation that reminded me of my procurement of hand tools at Ile Nou except this one required some close timing.  Earl had already paid off the CPO who was ComMarianas Master at Arms in charge of the buildings with a bottle of good scotch.  I issued an evening truck pass and got two of our enlisted men to assist.

On the appointed evening, Dr. Spaulding drove his chief nurse to the ComMarinanas officers’ club for dinner where he proceeded to apparently get quite drunk.  It was part of the plan that had to be executed with literally split second timing.  The key was that an officer escorting a female off base at night was required to be armed.  Spaulding wore his 45-caliber sidearm.

While they had dinner and Spaulding drank enough afterward to have booze on his breath, I took the truck work party to ComMarianas and located the unused building.  The Master at Arms was there, unlocked the door, then quietly disappeared.  We loaded four of the single beds that could be pushed together to form doubles and waited in the darkness until Spaulding hand his nurse appeared in the parking lot.

The main gate at ComMarianas had a double lane with a Marine guard on each.  We timed our arrivals at the gate so that Spaulding got there a few seconds Ahead of the truck.  When we pulled up Spaulding was in an argument with the one guard who had checked his sidearm and found that there was no magazine in the pistol.  The guard was insisting that he had to go back and get a magazine or he was not armed to escort the nurse back to Agana.

While Spaulding argued, apparently, a bit tipsy, the guard on my side was distracted by listening in on the conversation of the drunken commander.  He casually looked at my trip pass, did not inspect the cargo of the truck, and waved us on through the gate.  As we disappeared down the road, Earl suddenly found the magazine for his pistol under the Jeep seat and, he too, was waved on through.  Operation Bedsnatch was a complete success.  We had our beds and the boys who helped us had enough booze to throw a party in their quarters to which Earl and I were invited.  We went.

A Wedding, a Transfer, and a Sentimental Journey

Chapter 37

End of an Era

The wedding took place in St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Vancouver, Washington, on November 8^th, 1945.  Since Johnny Berry could not be there, my best man was Pat Madden, an old VHS classmate and husband of Shirley’s sister Mary.

We borrowed my father’s car (by then the old Chevy had been replaced by a newer Plymouth sedan) and spent our wedding night in the New Heathman Hotel in Portland.  The balance of our honeymoon was spent at the Mills family beach house at Seaview, Washington.

After the honeymoon, accompanied by my new wife, I reported in at Moffet Field near Los Altos, California.  There I was assigned temporary duty in the Inspection Division of VR_4, a squadron of Douglas R5D four-engined transport planes of the Asiatic Wing of the Naval Air Transport Service (NATS).

It was in California that I first became aware that Shirley was not going to be happy as a Navy wife.  She disliked hotel living so we moved to a furnished room in Los Altos.  After a party at the Moffet Field Officers’ Club late in November, Shirley expressed unhappiness at the Navy wives pecking order.  Among them, being the wife of a lowly ensign, she was low on the totem pole.  Otherwise, we were quite happy.

During the first week of January, 1946, orders came for me to report to the staff of Commander, Naval Air Transport Service, Asiatic Wing on Guam.  While I awaited transportation to Guam, Shirley’s parents flew down to Los Altos to drive back to Vancouver with her.

On the evening of January 9^th, we went to the Naval Air Station at Oakland for me to catch one of the VR-4s airplane to Honolulu.  There we were all subjected to a bit of a fright.  As the airplane taxied out for takeoff near dark, Shirley and her parents watched from the observation platform on the roof of the terminal building.  Just s the R5D got airborne, I became aware of a glow outside my window.  The number four engine was on fire!

We made a tight pattern around the field, trailing a thirty-foot plume of flame while four ambulances and fire trucks raced to the end of the runway.  Fortunately, the fire was simply burning grease and oil on the engine set on fire by a faulty high tension lead in the ignition systems and was quickly put out.  We drove back to Los Altos for the night while the plane was being repaired.  

I guess my bride was more than a bit tense when we reported back the next morning.  She had noticed the tail number of the airplane that caught fire and we were leaving in the same airplane.  I assured her that it had been repaired and that the Douglas airplanes were very reliable.

To me, it felt like a homecoming when we landed at Hickam Field near Pearl Harbor.  I relished the warm breeze that stirred the coconut palms when I stepped off the plane.  The situation was a bit dreamlike.  Only five short years before, I had arrived on TIPPICANOE, a young and inexperienced seaman second class.  Now, with the war behind us, I had returned wearing the gold braid of a Naval officer.

I soon found how irrevocably my life had changed.  I checked into the BOQ at Fort DeRussey in Waikiki for the two-day wait for further transportation to Guam.  First I had a drink in the Banyan Court of the Moana Hotel which had once not welcomed me as an enlisted man.  I then rented a car.

For old times’ sake I stopped at the Black Cat on Beretania Street for a drink.  The bar had not changed and was still a hangout for enlisted men.  It was a lesson that there comes a time when you can’t really “go back”.  The several enlisted men stared at me and edged away at the batr until the bartender came to my rescue.  Spotting the red good conduct ribbon I wore, the bartender called out, “Hey. Fellows, he’s a mustang!”

(“Mustang” is the cognomen applied to officers who were  once enlisted men.  I was to find that in many situations that red ribbon was to my advantage in dealing with enlisted men.)

From the Black Cat I drove over the Pali to Kaneohe to see Ludi Carpenter who had once been a surrogate mother to me, stopping at Lilly’s Fruit Stand on the old road to buy her a bag of fruit.  It was not a happy visit.  Ludi welcomed me with a big smile and hug.  Admired my officer’s uniform, but then had a sad story that was all too common in the islands.  Carpenter had abandoned her and the several children for a stateside haole wahine sometime during the war.

My visit to NAS Kaneohe was a real exercise in nostalgia.  PBYs still lined the wide ramp.  There were the marks of bullets still visible in our old hangar.  I stood for long moments on the patched area in the ramp where there had once been that bomb crater in which Richard and I had set up the machine gun after the attack.  I could almost hear the snarl of diving airplanes again, the thudding of machine guns, the whine of ricocheting bullets, and the explosions of bombs.  The scenes were still fresh in my mind and I had a feeling of pride that we had been there.

After lunch at the Kaneohe Officers’ Club, I drove back to Waikiki via Kaimuki and the little house at 1256A Ekaha Street then tracked down Diane and invited her for a drink at the old Waikiki Tavern.  That was a happier time in spite of the cloud of the divorce form Dick.  She was no longer with the Marine but lived in a hotel for women only and had started playing golf professionally.  She, too, admired my uniform and was mystified at how I had found her until I explained that I simply had called one of her brothers.

Diane and I had dinner at the one taboo Banyan Court of the Moana.  Sitting there in the warm darkness after sunset with the glow of candles on the white linen, silver, and the gold bars on my collar I could have sworn I saw, outside the wrought iron fence, a white-clad young seaman looking wistfully in at us.  Perhaps it was only a figment of my imagination.

(I was back in Hawaii about every five years of my first sixty and watched the changes as they took plae.  In the 1940s I love Hawaii and each return was a sort of homecoming except that I was sad as the influx of tourists wrought radical changes, first on Oahu, then on the other islands.

I watched the freeways go in, first replacing the dusty road to Pearl Harbor.  The exciting old road over the crest of the Pali was closed when the four lanes through a tunnel were completed in the late Fifties.

Periodically, from the vantage point of Punchbowl Hill where the World War II military cemetery and memorial were built, I watched the carpet of green that was Waikiki except for the white bulk of the Mona and the pink pile of the Royal Hawaiian give way to a concrete jungle of high-rise resort hotels.

In later years came hordes of our old enemy, the Japanese.  They came first as tourists with cameras slung about their necks, then they came as prosperous businessmen carrying briefcases.  They could not conquest Hawaii so, after the U.S. occupation brought them to unprecedented prosperity, they proceeded to buy most of it.  I no longer care to go back.  My Hawaii is long since gone.)