 |
| The unfinished Hangar 2 at Kaneohe on December 7th 1941 |
With
the one airplane away from the flames, Dick and I turned toward the hangar
which was apparently undamaged at that point.
Men in both dungarees and white liberty uniforms were milling around and
attempting to salvage airplanes and guns.
A group was endeavoring to pull an airplane in the water, one wing
burning, to the beach. We started toward
them when Dick halted. His eyes were on
the sky to the north where the attackers had disappeared over the entrance to
Kaneohe Bay.
“Y’know,”
he said thoughtfully, “there was just fighters in that bunch strafing us. I’ll bet you money there will be some bombers
in here. We got to find us a gun!”
We
raced to the hangar. It was not yet on
fire but something had set off the sprinkler system and water was pouring down
inside the big building (water that would quickly deplete the station reservoir). We ran splashing to the ordnance room. The door was open and the place had been
stripped of guns. Airplane 11-P-4 that
we had been working on the night before had been pushed out the north door
along with a VP-12 airplane and they sat nose to tail out on the ramp away from
the fires.
“Wait
a minute,” I said, “I’m sure I saw a fifty in the waist hatch of number seven
back there. Let’s get that!”
We
ran back through the hangar. Outside,
11-P-7 had one wing starting to burn but there were guns in the airplane. We scrambled u[ the entry ladder to the gun
blister.
“We’ll
need c=some place to rig it,” Dick said.
“I know, there’s still no gasoline in Number Four—we’ll put it there and
have a clear shot to the north where they came from.”
As
we got the gun free of its mount, Glover appeared from somewhere. Dick hailed him to give us a hand and we
handed the heavy gun down to him.
Scrambling down the ladder, Dick shouted back at me, “Get a case of ammo
and some magazines—should be a case under the aft bunk. Hand it down then we’ll take the gun around.
The
adrenalin was flowing. Although a case
of fifty-caliber ammunition weighs in the neighborhood of one hundred pounds
and I weighed all of 140, I handed it out of the hatch with apparent ease, then
turned and yanked four or five empty magazine cases from the rack on the
bulkhead. When I came down the ladder
with them, Dick and Glover were disappearing around the corner of the hangar
with the big machine gun between them.
The case of ammunition was sitting on the ground.
Under
normal circumstances there was no way that I could shoulder that heavy case but
these were not normal circumstances. I
swung the brown wooden case onto a shoulder, seized the straps of the magazines
with my free hand, and went at a shuffling trot around hangar.
Dick
and Glover got the big machine gun mounted on the trunnion in the port waist
hatch facing north toward the entrance to the bay. I handed up the case of ammunition then
scrambled into the waist compartment with the empty magazines. Glover said, “You don’t need me here—I’ll go
and find another gun.” He went down the
ladder and disappearance into the hangar.
“Hurry
up,” Dick snapped, “and get some ammo into those cans. We don’t know when they might be back but I’ll
bet it won’t be long!”
I
opened the case, picked up a magazine, then curse. “Dammit—that’s a port gun and these are
starboard cans! They are backwards—I’ll
have go back.”
“Don’t
take time for that, dummy—turn the feed spindles around! They may be here any minute!”
I
had no tools but I yanked the cover hinges out with my bare fingers, somehow
got the spindle cotter pins out, and reversed them. Dick did one of the but he mostly kept a wary
eye on the northeast approach to the base.
In the process, I accumulated cuts on my hands so that I was leaving
bloody smears here and there that would later give raise to scuttlebutt that
one of the Frieze boys had gotten wounded in Number Four.
Just
as I got the first magazine loaded and handed it up to Dick, we heard a shout
in the distance, “Here the bastards come again!”
Dick
slammed the magazine onto the gun, threaded in the belt, and pulled the
charging handle. “Keep your head down
and keep them coming,” he said grimly.
I
was sitting in the hatch leading forward.
By turning my head, I could see under Dick’s left arm. We had a perfect field of fire away from the
hangar and over the roof of the incomplete Hangar No. 2. I folded an ammunition belt into the next
magazine and slammed it into the ready rack on the bulkhead at his elbow just
as the big machine gun started thudding.
A Zero was sweeping in over the other hangar headed straight for us, his
wings winking points of fire and orange tracer reaching out as a twin line of
bullets walked across the ramp toward us.
I could see Dick’s tracers fanning the air behind the speeding airplane
as it pulled up over us and the hangar.
Several other streams of tracers from the ground were also passing
behind the speeding airplane.
Adrenalin
was pouring through us. I slammed
another magazine in the rack and yelled over the din, “Lead the
sonamabitch! Lead him like he was a
duck!”
The
Zeros kept coming and Dick’s machine gun kept up an almost steady thudding. The canvas bag beneath the gun quickly filled
with the empty brass casings spilling out.
I ripped the bag loose and let the hot casing spill onto the bilges
under out feet. The odor of burned
gunpowder filled the compartment and the noise of the diving airplanes and
hammering machine guns was continuous.
We had no anti-aircraft guns on the base and had only the machine guns
we had salvaged from the burning planes, Springfield rifles, and Colt automatic
pistols but this time we were fighting mad and we were fighting back with all
we had. When a magazine went empty Dick
yanked it off, threw it behind him into my lap, slammed another in place, and
recharged the gun in one continuous motion.
The
day dissolved into a series of quick impressions. At one point between Zeros I glanced out
across the ramp and saw Joe Brooks holding the barrel of a thirty caliber
macine gun on his shoulder like a human gun mount while a man knelt behind him
and fired at the attackers. Out by the
road an officer knelt in the shallow ditch and fired a 45-caliber
automatic. Others were firing rifles.
A
lull in the strafing attacks came and then the bombers came in from the
sea. They were small Kakajima 97s with
fixed landing gear. They came over at
about fifteen hundred feet in a long line.
The smoke of the burning airplanes was blowing away from us so we could
see them clearly. When they dropped a
bomb we could see the black shape tumble from the belly. Each one looked like it was falling straight
for us.
One
bomb hit on the open ramp just a few yards short of our position. A hug geyser of shattered concrete and sand
was thrown up and the concussion nearly deafened us and rocked the airplane. Another bomb hit the airplane parked
immediately behind Number Four. That
concussion picked me up and slammed me face down into the hot shell casing in
the bilges. That was the only time Dick
left his gun. He wheeled around and
grabbed my arm. “You hurt?!” I shook my head and he went back to the gun.
A
bomb hit in the parking lot across the street.
I saw Whiskey Willis’ Chev coupe go fifty feet into the air, execute a
slow roll, and land upside down. Another
scored a direct hit on the hangar behind us. The new corrugated siding bulged at the
explosion then went flying off in huge pieces.
The office spaces in the hangar were now burning.
When
the bomber had gone the Zeros came back.
They went after every airplane that was not yet on fire, including
Number Four. At one point a Zero banked around
low over us apparently assessing the damage or perhaps wondering why this one
airplane from which tracers kept coming was not on fire. For a long second, Dick and I gaped up at
him. The canopy was open and we could
see the pilot clearly—his goggled face circled by the fur of a flying
helmet. He appeared to be grinning.’
Number
Four was probably the only airplane on the ramp that was not on fire. Three or four Zeros set up a racetrack
pattern and kept coming after us. Fortunately,
they were good. Their wing guns were set
to converge at three hundred yards for air combat and they were flying so low
on their strafing runs that the lines of tracers and bullets chipping the ramp
kept straddling us.
At
one point I had dropped an ammo can and leaned down to get it. As I did, I felt a tug at the back of my
ahirt as if there was someone forward in the airplane trying to get my
attention. I looked over my shoulder,
but there was no one there.
Dick’s
gun kept up its heavy thudding. I
slammed another full magazine into the rack and looked up just as one came at
us. The sight of the nose of a Zero with
its wing guns spitting tracers became engraved indelibly on my memory. This time Dick was leading the speeding
airplane. I saw his tracers hit the nose
and walk the full length of the green fuselage.
A thin stream of white vapor poured out of the airplane and Dick yelled
exultantly, “I HIT THAT SOME OF A BITCH!
I HIT HIM!”
I
saw movement to my right and looked out the other blister toward the
hangar. Trucks were coming to that
corner of the hangar and taking away wounded that were carried out of the
burning building. Six or seven dead had
been laid out in a row beneath the port wing of the airplane. Crimson blood was everywhere. One body had no legs. Another, that of a big burly sailor in dungarees,
lay on its back with one arm raised toward that sky as if in death shaking a
bloody fist at the sneak attackers. The
eyes were open, their glazed gaze directed at the treacherous sky. I quickly turned away.
After
what seemed like hours but was probably twenty or thirty minutes, the sound of
diving airplanes and the hammering of machine guns and rifles dwindled. The bombers had gone and the Zeros were
swinging away out of range over the bay to get back in formation. My ammo case was empty. I sat with the last belt draped across my
knees and watched them go.
The
airplane Dick had hit was still streaming white fuel vapor. When the others were in formation, the
cripple turned and came back at us in a suicide run. He came straight in at full throttle, his
wing guns spitting win lines of tracers.
All guns on the ramp, including Dick’s, came alive and the Japanese flew
into literally a vortex of our tracers.
The canopy shattered and the Zero pilot must have been dead because the
airplane dived into the side of Hawaiiloa Hill at full throttle, guns still
firing, and exploded sending a ball of greasy black and orange smoke rolling
into the sky. The gunfire ceased in the
sudden silence I could hear cheers all over the ramp area.
