Saying Goodbye to New Caledonia

Chapter 32

Return from the Pacific 1943

“'Hey, boy,--this gonna be okay.  She’s headed stateside and I hear the chow aboard them civilian-operated transports is better than Navy chow!'” 

USAT SEA WITCH

When I reported to the Noumea Receiving Ship (which was not a ship at all but was a barracks at the Noumea Naval Bass) on the afternoon of 11 February 1943, I found to my surprise and delight that my old shipmate Oscar Hook was also there awaiting transportation stateside.  Since we had been informed that it would be a day or two before we went aboard ship, we promptly got into clean white uniforms and neckerchiefs and went on liberty, the first I had been on in two months.

Wartime Noumea still had little to offer in the way of amusement.  We walked around town for a while the, realizing that I had failed to bring along a fresh pack of Luckies, I went into a corner store that appeared to sell such items.

There was a beautiful little brunette behind the counter who spoke to us in French..  I hauled out my little French phrase book found the right page, and said uncertainly, “Bone jour, mam’selle—dawn e mwa une package du cigareets, si’vous play?”

The French girl giggled (it was really a melodious chuckle that set my red corpuscles racing around) then my face turned beet red as she answered in flawless English, “Sailor boy, are you by chance trying to ask me for a pack of cigarettes?”

“Yes, ma’am—that’s what I need!”

She produced a pack of Gauloises and I inquired where she had learned English so well.  She explained that at the mission school she attended it was required.

Oscar and I hung around for a while talking to the girl and trying to get her to show us the local sights when she got off work.  She politely declined and, during our persistence, managed to work into the conversation that her father was warden of the French prison on Ile Nou.  She was expected to be home promptly after she got off work and her papa was very strict.  That did it—we ceased our efforts to date her and, instead, got directions to a café where we could get a bite to eat.  It was just down the street from the pharmacy.

The café again would not have been used for a set for a Hollywood south seas movie.  There was a curtain of strings of colorful beads in the doorway apparently leading to the back rooms but the café proper was quite plain and lacking in decorations.  There were rattan chairs at a few bare wood tables.  The shelves behind the small bar were devoid of liquor except for some bottles of Australian rum and a few of red wine.  The only other customers present were two old Frenchmen at a table in the corner playing checkers.

The wihte-aproned waiter apparently spoke no English—or, if he did, preferred haughtily not to admit it.  We struggled with the little phrase book and finally learned that all they had to offer in the way of food was some bread and cheese.  We settle for that and a bottle of red wine for our supper because when we asked for something more the waiter shrugged, “C’est la guerre.”

Over our modest repast (the French bread was delicious crusty golden brown and the cheese was excellent), Hook and I compared notes of our recent experiences while we consumed two bottles of the heavy red wine.  I no longer recall where Oscar was being transferred, but it was not to NATTC where I was headed.  (I believe that Hook may have been a radioman.)

At one point the subject of our Waikiki escapade and escape from the Shore Patrol came up.  Hook laughed and, rubbing his shoulder, said, “Man on man—I can still feel hitting that damned fence!  I remember being in that garage in the alley, but how the hell did we get back to Ford Island?  I was always too embarrassed about passing out on you to ask before VP-11 moved to Kaneohe.  Also could never figure out where that little whitehat with the name ‘Dolan’ in it came from.”

I recounted what had happed from the time I left the garage until we got back to Ford Island.  Oscar laughed until tears rolled down his round cheeks and poured us each some more of the red wine.

“Well, old buddy—I sure owe you one for that!  We get to “Frisco, we are going out on the town—on me!  I got plenty back pay in my kick and we’ll spend some of it.  Right now, let’s go find that ‘Pink House’ and it will be my treat, too!”

We were both feeling the effects of that red wine.  We drained the last of the second (or was it the third?) bottle and unsteadily made our way down the street.  By the time we reached the Pin House, the night air and exercise had sobered me considerably.

That Noumea cathouse was no more attractive in the night than it had been when Troy Anderson and I cased it in the daylight when we first came to New Caledonia.  We stumbled up the steps and into the “parlor”.  There was a tinny piano being played in a corner and a few sailors and soldiers were having drinks at a small bar.  No women were present at the moment.  The place stank of stale beer, stale smoke, cheap perfume, and other odors I could not identify.  The décor featured green plush upholstered furniture and gold fringes on the lamps.  A green and gold carpet that had seen far better days covered the floor.  At one side of the dimly-lit room, was a wide staircase.

While we waited at the bar to get attention, two of the Pink House women came to the lower steps.  They were dressed in “crib clothes” of brief shorts and halters.  One was a tired-looking brunette Eurasian with a bony figure.  The other was a slatternly appearing blonde with stringy lank hair and sagging breasts.  The blonde called out in a hoarse voice, “Okay, boys—who’s next?”

No one answered right away.  Hook and I looked at each other and simultaneously shook our heads.  He said, “Don’t know about you, Frieze, but I just decided I think I’ll wait and save it for ‘Frisco!”

“That makes two of us!”

While a sheepish-looking soldier and a very drunk sailor followed the two women up the stairs we tossed down our drinks, made our way out into the clean night air, and found a taxi to take us back to the Naval base.

The next morning just after breakfast the base P.A. system carried an announcement that all personnel in transit were to report with baggage in front of the duty office.  From there we were herded down to the dock and boarded a whale boat.  The boat took us out into the harbor to an anchored ship that reminded me at first glance of the old USS TIPPECANOE.

This one was no tanker.  The rust-streaked black stern carried the name “USAT SEA WITCH”.  It was an old freighter about three hundred feet long that had been converted into an Army transport and was operated by a merchant marine crew under contract.  As the boat came alongside the boarding ladder I looked at the rusty old hull and muttered, “Oh, boy.”

Hook smiled complacently.  “Hey, boy,--this gonna be okay.  She’s headed stateside and I hear the chow aboard them civilian-operated transports is better than Navy chow!”

New Year's and New Orders

We in hut C-4 had made advance preparations for New Year’s Eve.  We bought nuts and potato chips from the ship’s service on a supply ship in the harbor and each of us were to provide a bottle of booze.  By the end of December, we had four bottles of the potent Old Soldiers Australian rum, a quart of torpedo alcohol, and a fifth of Ancient Age for which I paid a flight crew thirty dollars.  We were really going to celebrate.

I never got to participate.  On December 31^st I was posted on the base watch list as leading petty officer on the eight to twelve watch.  I tried to bring every first class I could think of to take my watch but got no takers even for a promise of that fifth of scarce bonded rye.

That evening, as I made my rounds checking the sentries, I could hear parties, poker games, and crap games all over the base.  It was as noisy in “officers’ country” as it was in the enlisted section of Dallas huts.  I stopped by C-4 around ten and all five of my bunkmates were already pretty well swacked.  Andy and Pappy Berridge both drunkenly swore they would save me some fo the rye for when I got off watch.

The only drink I had that evening was a shot of brandy provided by the OOD when we were relieved of the watch at midnight.  I shucked off the 45 and the armband and trotted back to C-4.  It was a shambles.  The table was littered with empty bottles (including the rye), an empty grapefruit juice can, and the debris of the nuts and chips.  Four of my bunkmates were snoring—little Amuchustagi under the table—but Troy Anderson was nowhere in sight.

I stepped outside and called Andy’s name but got only a distant groan in reply.  After a search I found him draped over the main float of an SOC that was parked near the end of the row of huts, sick as a dog and smelling to high heaven of booze and vomit.  He was barely aware when I shook him and tried to talk to him and would only groan, “Gawd—I think I’m dyin”!”

Finally, I hoisted Andy onto my shoulder and carried him up the hill to the shower enclosure where I deposited him under one of the shower heads and turned on the cold water.  I sat down outside and smoked a cigarette until he came spluttering, ripping, and cursing out of the shower and I could guide him firmly back to the hut.  I went to bed and left the mess for them to clean u when they finally woke bleary-eyed and remorseful on New Year’s Day.

The days passed uneventfully through January 1943.  As the Solomon Islands were secured and the combat zone moved northward, our supply situation improved.  We got all the engines, parts, and tools we needed and the food at eh chow hall was better.  Our engine crews were working like clockwork and we cut the turnaround time for the overhauled PBYs in half.  I spend nearly as much time on test flights as I did supervising the shop crews.  They all knew their jobs and did them well.

On the first day of February, 1943, Chief Barnes strolled into the office and said, “Frieze, the exec wants to see you.”

I headed for the Ad Building wondering if I had fouled up some way.  Maybe, I thought, they are going to make me pay for that damned pig I had shot.

It was not the pig and I had not been put on report.  The executive officer informed me that orders were being cut to send me back stateside.  I was stunned.  I told him I did not want to go stateside.  If I was due for transfer, I wanted back on a combat flight crew—in VP-11 if possible.

The lieutenant commander informed me that was not possible.  I was being sent back to go to advanced AMM school at the Naval Air Technical Training Center in Chicago.  More PBY squadrons were being formed and they wanted some experienced men from the fleet.

I wandered back to the shop, flopped into a chair by Barnes’ desk, poured a cup of black coffee, and voiced my complaint to the chief.  I did not want to go to school—I wanted to stay and fight Japs.

Barnes was not sympathetic.  “Look, you knot head, this is a great chance for you.  You do good at NATTC and get into a new squadron, you’ll make chief in no time at all!  You might even make warrant officer or even chief warrant before this damned war is over.”

“But why the hell did they pick me?”

“You done a good job here, even if you are still wet behind them big ears, and I recommended you, that’s why!”

I could see the logic in what both the exec and the chief had said but it was not easy to sever the times with Ile Nou and my shipmates.  I recommended my replacement as leading p.o. and also recommended Troy Anderson, who had made AMM2/c, to take over one of the two crews.  I had accumulated an excellent tool kit (each man had his own) which I passed along to Andy.

On the 11^th of February I got my orders, packed my sea bag and hammock, said my goodbyes, caught the mail boat to Noumea, and reported to the Receiving Ship for transportation back to the United States.  I had been in Hawaii and the South Pacific for two years.  I had some accumulated leave to look forward to enroute, then a new adventure waited in Chicago.

Getting PBYs Back into the War, Thanksgiving, and a Chance Meeting with Admiral Halsey

"One such emergency we had was one afternoon when one of the new PBY-5As (the amphibious version with retractable landing gear) arriving from Hawaii on the way to Esprito flipped over on landing. "

Airplanes for overhaul came with enough frequency that it became necessary to augment our crews and work two shifts, first shift from 0800 to 1600 hours and a second shift from 1600 to midnight.  As the leading petty officer, I continued to receive flight pay since each PBY was test flown after overhaul before it was turned back to the combat flight crew.  I was the test crew plan captain.  I was also the final inspector of the engine build-up and installation and the fact that I would be flying in the airplane made me more than me more than meticulous.  I was known to blow my stack at the unfortunate mechanic that failed to safety wire a propeller governor or had improperly installed an oil strainer!

In extreme emergencies we would turn out all hands regardless of shift and work all night if necessary.  One such emergency we had was one afternoon when one of the new PBY-5As (the amphibious version with retractable landing gear) arriving from Hawaii on the way to Esprito flipped over on landing.  Fortunately, none of the crew were seriously injured.

Apparently what happened was that the 5A made a water landing to come to the ramp at Ile Nou.  When the hull contacted the surface, the uplock on the big main wheels failed and the main landing gear fell out of the wheel wells in the side of the fuselage.  The wheels tripped the airplane over on its nose, the nose landing gear doors failed, and the nose wheel blew a spout of water upward between the pilots that peeled back the cockpit canopy like an opened sardine tin.

Barnes and I considered it an extreme emergency because we wanted to salvage the precious engines that were submerged beneath the upside-down 5A in salt water.  The ordnance people wanted to salvage the guns.  Every shop needed spare parts and this had been a brand new airplane.

The accident happened in the late afternoon at the end of first shift.  In less than an hour a crane on a barge had righted the PBY-5A and it was brought up the ramp at Ile Nou.  I had both port and starboard crews standing by.  We wanted to get the engines off, stripped down to the crankshaft, flushed down, and pickled in oil before the saltwater corrosion ruined them.

No one stopped for evening chow.  It was a race between the two engine crews to get the engines off and disassembled.  It could have been some sort of record as both engines were completely disassembled and the parts in an oil bath before 0200.

We wound up with a lot of spare parts but not with two usable engines.  We saved every major part except for the supercharger sections of the engine crankcases.  They were the only parts of an R-1830-92 made of magnesium and salt water corrosion had already set in on the metal when we got the cases off after 0130.   The insides of the blower section were already chalky with corrosion and were beyond use.

We had another “extreme emergency” shortly before Thanksgiving.  The Navy was making every effort to provide us with a traditional Thanksgiving dinner and some break to the monotony.  They wound up flying in turkeys in some BPY-2s—the big four-engined version of the PBY that was called a “Coronado”.  In the meantime, it was decreed that every man should have two cans of beer (there was no beer garden at Ile Nou and none was available in Noumea) for the holiday.  The beer shipment made it through “Torpedo Junction” off the Fijis and a consignment for Ile Nou was barged to our small dock.

The emergency came when the beer barge came in late and was left moored to the pier, still loaded with our beer, overnight.  The barge had a leak and, come morning, the beer consignment was on the bottom in fifteen or twenty feet of water!  The word went out and there was no lack of volunteer divers to recover the beer.  We managed to salvage enough that everyone who wanted beer got at least a can and most of us two.

The salvage operation was a tribute to loyalty to the shipmates.  To my knowledge, not one can of beer was smuggled away from the dock or consumed during the salvage operation.  The beer was put into a waiting truck and on Thanksgiving Day was dispensed at the mess hall during an afternoon “happy hour”.

The Thanksgiving turkey dinner turned out to be too rich for most of us.  After weeks of becoming accustomed to a bland and monotonous diet, we scoffed up great quantities of turkey, mashed potatoes, dressing, and all the trimmings.  Our stomach rebelled and there were more people lined up at the community privy that evening than there were sitting in poker games!

The infrequent beer was not the only source of alcohol available to us at Ile Nou.  We found a source of “Old Soldier” 150-proof Australian rum in Noumea and the base mail orderly made considerable money smuggling in bottles of rum in the mail sacks.  We could also occasionally buy a bottle of good whiskey from flight crews just arrived from Hawaii or back from R&R stints in Brisbane or Auckland—at quite inflated prices that did not deter us because we were not spending much money on liberty in Noumea.

There was also other black market alcohol to be had.  It was primarily medical alcohol filched from supply shipments.  It was straight grain alcohol and required a mixer.  When it was available (which was not often) we would bum a half-gallon of grapefruit juice from the galley and a mixture of one-half grapefruit juice and one-half alcohol became known as an “Ile Nou Cocktail”.  We would have preferred orange juice but none was to be had.

One evening we had just started a crap game in hut C-4 when a sailor knocked on the door and offered to sell us a quart jar of medical alcohol.  After Pappy Berridge had sampled it and pronounced it good alcohol and, being ahead in the game at the time, I bought a quart.  We sent Amuchustagi to the galley to scrounge the grapefruit juice and went on with the game.

A half hour later there was another knock on our door.  I was the shooter at the time and backed p to the door with the dice in one hand and a wad of greenback in the other.  When I pushed the door open, there stood the JOOD (Junior Officer of the Day) and the PO of the watch.  Oh boy, I thought, he’s got me dead to rights. Shooting craps (all gambling aboard was against Navy Regulations) and the rest of the bottle of medical alcohol was in plain sight on the deck under my bunk!

Apparently the young ensign was just going through the motions to follow orders.  He ignored the dice and the money both in my hand and on the blanket-covered table and said, “Sailor—there are five gallons of medical alcohol missing from sick bay and we are informed that someone is out selling it.  Haw anyone been around offering to sell you some?”

I edged slightly sidewise hoping to be between the ensign and the bottle under my bunk and answered with a straight face, “No, sir, nobody like that been by—but,” and I grinned at him, “I hope I see him before you do, sir!”

The JOOD smiled slightly, still trying to keep his eyes away from the dice and the money.  “Well,” he said solemnly, “just remember it is your duty to report it if you become aware of anything against regulations.”

He and the grinning petty officer of the watch turned away and headed for the next hut as I said, “Yes, Sir, we’ll sure enough remember that!”

We waited until the JOOD would be out of earshot before we poured another drink and went back to the game.

There were many regulations “honored in the breach” down there in the backwaters of the war where leave and liberty were almost non-existent and entertainment was limited to movies, most of which we had seen before.  Our officers not only looked the other way, they participated in the same activities.

One had to do with shaving.  Some men grew full beards (our young squadron photographer, Kofoed, who had a cherubic face grew a magnificent full blond bear) and others grew mustaches.  I was one of the latter.  I had always admired my Grandpa Stanley’s handlebar mustache and resolved to grow one.

A handlebar mustache requires no trimming and it became a nuisance when it got long enough to curl over my lip. But was not yet long enough to brush to the side and curl the ends.  It got in the way when I was eating especially if we had soup when it became downright messy.  I stayed with it, however, and by the time I got back to San Francisco early in March of 1943 it had a span of over five inches with beautifully curled ends.  I used beeswax to control it since I could not find mustache wax in Noumea.

Admiral Halsey while in New Caledonia

In either December or January, I had occasion to meet Admiral Halsey and had arrived at Ile Nou in his personal plane, one of the PB2Y Coronados and remained on the base for two or three days.  On the second morning of his visit I had gone to the shop early and had a pot of coffee going in our blowtorch-heated pot when Chief Barnes stuck his head in and announced that Halsey was going to inspect the base right after muster.

Normally, preparation for an admiral’s inspection required a couple of days and we had, at the most, an hour’s time.  All we could do was scramble around and clean up our work spaces and I sent those with the most disgraceful dungarees to their huts to change and get clean white hats.  We made it with bare minutes to spare while the admiral and his party inspected the adjacent shop.

When we fell into ranks outside the shop door as the inspection party approached, the chief poked me in the ribs and whispered, “Frieze, did you turn off the coffee pot?”

I was chagrined—the blowtorch was still going on the desk in the office and I could smell the coffee outside the door.  I turned but it was too late.  Admiral Halsey was standing in front of me.  He looked us over then, as he started to enter the shop, he halted and turned back.  “Sailor,” he said, “is that Navy coffee I smell?”

I gulped and cold feel my face turning red, “Yes, Admiral,” I managed weakly, “I am afraid it is, Sir.  I forgot to turn off the blowtorch we make it with when we got word of the inspection!”

Admiral Halsey grinned and said, “Well, sailor, how about a cup?”

“Yes, Sir!”  I darted into the office corner, got the cleanest mug in sight, and poured a cup of the strong black coffee.  Halsey carried it and sipped at it while he strolled around the shop and listened to the chief’s description of our procedures.  When he returned to the door, Halsey handed me the mug with a “Thank you, son—pretty damn good coffee” and went on his way.

A Promotion and the Pig Incident

"Later I had no recollection of unbuttoning the flap of my holster, drawing the 45, or charging..."

On the 24^th of November 1942 I was advised that, effective as of 1 November, I had been promoted to Aviation Machinist Mate First Class.  Not long afterward Barnes announced that I was the leading petty officer of the engine shop.  It was a bit mind-boggling to me because I had still been in the Navy for only two years and four months but it was gratifying to feel that I was successfully doing my small part in the war.

New Caledonia is not a part of the tropical south Pacific.  It is too far south and there was nary a palm tree to be seen.  The main island is heavily forested and, according to the New Zealanders from whom we took over the base in Ile Nou, at the time was populated in the hills by natives who were cannibals.  The Kiwis told us some hair-raising tales about savages that would come down from the hills and paddle out to Ile Nou in canoes.  They (the Anzacs) solemnly assured us that more than one of their sentries had been clubbed to death or knifed in the middle of the night.  We were sure that such tales were pure malarkey but they did contribute to a memorable night when I was base petty officer of the watch and fired the one deadly shot of my wartime career.

Our little base on Ile Nou was not fenced but there was a perimeter road around it that ran along the brow of the low hills on either side.  There was a total of nine or ten sentry posts along the perimeter road that were manned during the hours of darkness.  It was the duty of the leading petty officer of the watch to make hourly checks of the sentries that walked the posts carrying rifles.

One warm night in December (it was summer “down under”) I was posted as leading petty officer of the midnight to 0400 watch.  At 0200 I set out, armed with a Colt 45 automatic in a holster on my hip, to check my sentry posts.  I went up the hill to the north toward the leper colony moving very quietly as a result of all those hours I had spent in the Ozark woods stalking squirrels and practicing moving noiselessly through the darkness.

There were two sentry posts along the perimeter road along the brow of the hill.  There was no moon but the starlight was sufficient that I could see that the road was empty.  Neither of the sentries (not members of my engine crew) were anywhere to be seen and did not answer when I softly called out.

I moved along the road and, to my dismay, found both watch standers sitting on a low embankment sound asleep.  Apparently they had sat down to chat a minute or share a smoke and both had fallen asleep.  It came to me with a shiver along my spine that sleeping on watch in wartime is a court-martial offense punishable in the extreme by execution. 

It was agonizing.  I knew that my responsibility by Navy Regulations was to arrest the two and report them to the OOD.  They would certainly be court-martialed and it did occur to me that the death penalty was unlikely since we were not actually in a combat zone.

I stood over the sleeping men for two or three minutes then came to a decision.  Their weapons were held loosely between their knees.  I reached down and took both rifles in the course of which both men woke with a start.  They leaped to their feet and came to attention, both obviously terrified.  I was pointing the rifles directly at their belt buckles.

Neither man was a personal acquaintance of mine but I knew that both were fairly recent recruits and were still seamen first class.  One of them reminded me of my y9unger brother Rex.  I also recalled the nights that I had stood the mid-watch by our airplanes on the ramp at Kaneohe and, on one occasion, had come so close to falling asleep leaning against an airplane that I nearly dropped my rifle.

It was simply beyond me to put the two frightened young men on report.  Instead, in a low voice as cold as I could make it, I ripped them up one side and down the other.  I do not recall my words but they were harsh as I reminded them of the possible consequences of sleeping on watch.  They stood ramrod straight and shivered as they took it.

Finally I grounded the butts of the rifles then handed them back to the chastened two and said, “Look, it wouldn’t be any satisfaction to me to turn you in and I’m going to make you a deal.  My butt would really be in a sling for not putting you on report if word of this got out and so would yours so you are not to breathe a word to anyone!

“From now on every time I have a watch I am going to make sure you are on it.  Whenever I check your posts—and you never know I’m coming—I want to find you on your feet, your weapon on your shoulder, walking your post.  Furthermore, I want to hear you challenge me and make me advance to be recognized just like it says in the book!  Now, shoulder arms and get with it!”

The men moved off marching their posts and I turned and took a shortcut down the hillside toward the watch shack to make my report to the OOD that all was well at 0200 hours.  Just down from the road I stepped up on a small boulder.  In the starlight I could see something that looked like a log lying beneath the boulder so I stepped down on it, forgetting that there are no long sized trees on Ile Nou.

When my weight hit the “log” three was a sudden “OOF!” as if the breath were going out of someone.  The thing rolled and I went sprawling.  As I fell, a thought of the Kiwis’ tales about the savages flashed through my mind.  I rolled in midair and hit the ground on my back.  There against the skyline I could see what appeared to be a man getting to his hands and knees.  My flashlight had gone flying out of my hand.

Later I had no recollection of unbuttoning the flap of my holster, drawing the 45, or charging it but I must have done that in midair as it was in my hand.  As the shape moved without challenge or hesitation I fired.  In the quiet of the early morning hours, the boom of that 45 sounded like a 16-inch naval rifle!  There was a sort of squeal and the dark form went down.

Lights came on all over the base.  Still holding the gun on the inert form, I found my flashlight.  I heard the duty officer’s jeep come to life so I signaled it with the light then shined it on the “man” I had shot.  When the duty officer skidded to a halt beside me he found me staring down at a very large and very dead pig.  My shot had hit it just below one eye and had blown a sizeable chunk out of the other side of the head—and I never could have hit the broadside of a barn with a handgun on the target range!

Men, including my two sentries from up the hill, came running from all directions—many of them in their skivvies.  I explained what had happened to the OOD.  He laughed ruefully and said, “Oh hell, go call out the duty cook to butcher this thing.  We’ll have some fresh pork for breakfast—which will be a nice change from those beans and Spam!”

That, of course, was not the end of it.  I took an unmerciful ribbing from my shipmates although tempered by admiration that I was apparently a dead shot with a forty-five.  (I chose not to mention my scores on the target range with a pistol!)

The next afternoon a very mad French farmer from the leper colony was in the commanding officer’s office raising Cain about our shooting his “best and finest sow” as well as the interpreter could understand his voluble sputtering.  I never did find out what the Navy paid him but he finally went away somewhat mollified.

The Black Cats

"The Black Cat would take off at dusk and prowl the enemy shipping lanes in the darkness.  "

“The Black Cats”

It was, I believe, in December of 1942 that our PBYs came into their own as weapons of war.  Being slow and downright clumsy to maneuver, the PBY “Catalina” was a sitting duck in the daylight for enemy fighters or anti-aircraft fire.  Consequently, they were relegated to scouting and anti-submarine patrol missions.  Not for long, however.  The ingenuity require that I mentioned earlier manifested itself in many ways during those early days of the war and before long “the Black Cats” became deadly to enemy shipping.  Captain Richard Knott said it best in his book The Black Cat Raiders--"Not since David and his slingshot has there been a more unlikely instrument of war.”

The PBY was the only airplane of that time with the endurance to fly—“prowl” if you will—all night and radar had been installed to give it the eyes of a cat.  When it was realized that in the darkness a PBY could literally sneak up on enemy shipping and arrive overhead undetected, that capability was put to use.

The airplanes were painted dull black (see the photography of the Ile Nou base) and flame dampeners were installed on the exhaust stacks of the engines.  The Norden bombsights, of little use in darkness and at low altitude, were replaced with simple aiming devices that were literally made from coat hanger wire and scraps of metal.  The airplanes were then armed with four bombs under the broad wing—a 1,000 lb bomb inboard on each wing and a 500 lb bomb outboard.  The alternative was a 21-inch torpedo on each wing.

The Black Cat would take off at dusk and prowl the enemy shipping lanes in the darkness.  When a target was picked up on the radar—freighter, tanker, supply barge, and sometimes even warships—the “Cat” would come in at low altitude.  Before the enemy could figure out the significance of the sound of airplane engines in the darkness, the PBY would be overhead, release its deadly load, and be off into the darkness before searchlights and anti-aircraft weapons could be brought to bear.  Our VP-11 squadron alone sank more than 100,000 tons of enemy shipping during that first deployment to the South Pacific and was subsequently awarded a Presidential Unit Citation.  I longed to be back on a combat flight crew but consoled myself with the thought that someone had to keep those Cats ready to prowl.ne noteworthy black cat episode occurred on October 22, 1942.  It was a long distance raid on Tonelei Harbor on Bougainville Island 900 miles northwest of the base at Esprito Santos where some of our VP-11 airplanes were operating.

Three airplanes took part—one piloted by my old friend Jack Coley, one by George Poulos, and one by my old co-pilot “Whiskey Willis”.  They were each armed with a torpedo beneath the port wing and two 500 pound bombs on the starboard wing.

They took off at dusk, Jack Coley in the lead, and flew the 900 miles over enemy-held territory to arrive off Tonelei at 0200 in the morning darkness.  Not a shot was fired by the Japanese until the three black cats started dropping torpedoes and bombs at the many ships moored in the harbor.

All three pilots believe they scored heavily—Coley with a torpedo into an armed transport, Willis with a torpedo hit on a cruiser and bomb hits that sand a destroyer, and Poulos with both torpedo and bomb hits on a heavy cruiser.  (In deference to my old shipmates I probably should not repeat the rumor I heard soon after the raid that one of them dropped a torpedo at what, in the darkness, he believed was an aircraft carrier but that turned out to be a dock!  It was only a rumor.)

The PBYs had no time to stay to observe results.  To quote Whiskey Willis, “Then all hell broke loose.  It was like the Fourth of July!”  Searchlights came on and anti-aircraft fire lit up the night.

The airplanes stayed low on the water as they left with the waist gunners shooting out searchlights as they went.  All three made it safely back to Esprito after a refueling stop at Tulagi Island in spite of numerous bullet holes in the airplanes including a hit on Coley’s starboard fuel tank that nearly caused him to run out of gas short of Tulagi.  He landed at Tulagi with barely ten gallons left in the port tank.

(Such sea stories were commonplace as we went about our business in the heat, dust, and sometimes torrential rains of New Caledonia.  Since this is intended to be my story and not a history of the war in the Pacific, I will confine myself to personal incidences at Ile Nou and will include a bibliography at the end of my story with some books that will give a better insight to World War II in the Pacific and the role that my beloved PBYs played in that long ago war.)