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.

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.)

NAS Ile, New Caledonia

Chapter 31

NAS Ile, New Caledonia

We were transferred from the USS COPAHEE to our new base on Ile Nou on the 5^th of October, 1942.  The base was still not ready for occupancy.  The tin shed that would be our shops were incomplete and the small square plywood huts for living quarters were still being erected.  The small wooden screened building that were mess hall and administration were complete and in business.  In the meantime, a tent city had been set up for us around the hill form the base and adjacent to the old French prison.

We found that the huge stone prison building was still in use.  It was peopled by all sorts of convicts—thieves and murderers mostly.  The interesting thing about it was that the prison hates were not locked in the daytime.  The prisoners were free to come and go in the daylight as long as they did not leave Ile Nou.  Some of the New Caledonia natives even had their families living in the prison with them.

A day or two after our arrival, with no facilities or duties as yet, we were invited by the French warden of the prison to have a tour.  The prison was built in a hollow square with a large open courtyard in the center.  In the center of the courtyard there was a large guillotine that we were informed was still in use.  The large sharp steel blade and the brown stains on the cobblestones beneath the haollowed neck rest certainly looked as if it were.  We were told that the guillotine was the same one that had beheaded Marie Antoinette in Paris 149 years before.

From the tent city by the prison there was a narrow path that led around the hill to our new base.  We walked it three times a day to reach the mess hall.  On our second or third day there, Troy and I were walking along the path on our way to the mess hall.  Halfway along we suddenly halted.  Coming the other way was a fearsome apparition.  It was a New Caledonia native that must have stood seven feet tall and was about four feet across the shoulders.  He had a mean and ugly face topped with a shock of orange-colored hair.  (In later years his hairdo would have been called an Afro.)  He was carrying a mean looking machete.

Anderson poked me and muttered, “What’ll we do –run for it?”

I shook my head, “No—keep walking as if we own the place.”

It was a good guess.  The big native backed off the narrow path and favored us with a sort of salute and a big grin that showed blackened snaggle teeth.  We smiled in return and went on our way feeling very relieved.  (We were to learn later that the native was a trustee at the prison.  He was serving a long term for murdering a man he had caught in bed with his wife.  He was actually a big amiable man who did odd jobs for us later.  For a pack of Luckies a week, he did our laundry for us in the stone trough at the prison for as long as we for there.  He spoke some French, but very little English.  We soon learned to communicate in the local “pidgin’.  We never could pronounce his name so called him “Sam”.  That seem to please hi and he answered to it readily.)

We lived in tent city beside the prison for nearly a month while the base was being completed.  The tin shop buildings were completed first to get the base operational as soon as possible.  Living quarters cold wait because the war was going on and airplanes were needing overhaul.  In the first old photograph of the base at Ile Nou that I will include, our engine assembly building is the one on the far left.

Once the shop was complete our problem became to equip it with the tools we needed to accomplish assembly of new engines to install on the airplanes that came in from the combat zone to the north.

The chief petty officer in charge of the engine shop, CPO Barnes, and I sat down in our new office (a walled off corner of the tin building) and drew up list of our needs, then we made out requisition after requisition for the items we needed—chain falls to remove the new engines from their crates (when and if we received any), work stands, and tools.

With the massive quantities of war materials then being moved south, most of our requisitions were filled quite promptly from the huge supply dump that had been set up near Noumea.  Before long we had most of the larger items needed to set up our assembly line.  We built up our own little library of overhaul manuals.

The two items that continued to be in short supply were new engines and the hand tools our crew needed.  Japanese submarines were all too successful with their “torpedo junction” off the Fiji Islands.  Many supply ships were being torpedoed and sunk.  Most of our requisitions for engines and hand tools came back marked “NA—not available”.  Many of the food resupply ships were also sunk and for a long time we lived on a diet mostly of beans and Spam.

Dark-haired and clever little Amuchustagi, a third class aviation mech on my crew, turned out to be a good scrounger without peer.  One afternoon he came to me in the shop.  He had ridden the mail boat to Noumea and had found an old buddy of his on duty at the Naval Supply Depot.  “Mooch” had made a little tour of the supply dump and found a bunch of crates of hand tools in a far corner of the barbed wire compound.  He proposed that we “draw some midnight small stores”.

We planned an operation that would have been a credit to the old TV program “Mission Impossible”.  By making some discreet contacts and handing out some bottles of scarce Australian “Old Soldier” 150-proof rum, we arranged for a boat one night.  The supply dump near Noumea was close to the beach.  Amuchustagi found out what night his old buddy could arrange to have the perimeter watch on the back side of the supply compound and about midnight that night, clad in dungarees and dark jerseys, four of us hit the beach like commandos.

We had brought wire cutters.  When Pete’s buddy had gone by, we cut the bottom strand of the barbed wire and slithered into the compound.  Using a masked flashlight Pete quickly found the crates of tools that our requisitions had failed to produce.  In less than an hour we shoved our boat off the beach with most of the tools that our hop needed.

The next morning after muster the shop Chief, Barnes, saw the crew sorting the hand tools.  He came into the shop office where I had coffee going in a battered pot heated by a blowtorch.  After pouring himself a cup of the strong black java he said, “Looks like one of our requisitions finally produced some tools.

“Ye’—came in late last night.”

“Reckon I had better not ask to see a copy of the requisition.”

“Seem to have misplaced it, Chief,” I said with a faint smile.  “Let you know when I find it.”

“Sure, Frieze,--you do that.”

By the first week in November our repair base was in full operation and weary, battered PBYs from the combat area in the Solomons began to arrive.  In addition to our engine shop, Ile Nou included metalsmiths, instrument shop, ordnance shop, and radio/radar repair.  While the flight crews were sent on to Auckland or Brisbane for a week of R&R, we could completely overhaul a war-weary PBY and return it to combat.

Bullet and shrapnel holes to be patched attested to the fact that our P

BYs were not limited to passive patrol actions.  From the flight crews, we got word of our shipmates (and occasionally of brother Dick) who were flying from aircraft tenders scattered around the Solomon Islands and at Esprito Santos.

Before the war began, the Time Between Overhauls (TBO) of the R-1830-92 engines hd been set by Pratt & Whitney at 400 hours.  Immediately after December 7^th, 1941, the TBO was raised to 800 hours and, subsequently to 1,200 hours.  Some of the big fourteen cylinder radials that came into Ile Nou had been flown longer than in the field.  It is a tribute to Pratt & Whitney that they remained the most reliable engines in the history of aviation.

When we finally began receiving some new engines we still faced problems.  We found to our dismay that the shipments included new carburetors but we were slow in receiving new starters, alternators, propeller governors, and the other accessories.

The starters were the worst problem.  The flywheel of a Jack & Heinz aircraft inertial starter spins up to 12,000 rpm when the starter is energized.  That resulted in wear on the ends of the starter bearings.  We had no overhaul manual for the starters so one weekend Chief Barnes and I sat down in the shop with one fairly new starter and disassembled it, carefully measuring clearances with a micrometer.  I then went out to the repair ship ANTARES, anchored in Noumea Harbor, and had the machine shop make up a batch of brass shims of the proper diameter and of different thicknesses.  After that the chief and I overhauled the old starters and returned them to service.  That was but one example of the ingenuity required in those early black days of the war in the Pacific.

The Battle of Midway: Part III: Another Lesson and Survivors

"That day almost got me a court martial and I got a hard lesson in tropic sunburn."

A Day Off

My memories of the two weeks following our arrival at Midway on the second day of the battle are mostly of long fourteen-hour flights every day.  For the first few days we anticipated that the Japanese main battle fleet and the invasion fleet might show up at any time.  Finally, however, we became convinced that the Japanese were really headed home in disgrace.  Yamamoto had us out-numbered four to one in ships, more than two to one in airplanes, four aircraft carriers to our three, but the incredible had happened—we won.  There were more black days in the war in the Pacific to come but the blackest of them were over.  The Imperial Japanese Navy would no longer run wild in the Pacific.

After a week of the daily flights I did not like the sound of the engines of our PBY.  Instead of singing, they started to complain with misfiring when we started in the morning and running rough during approach for landing.  I had to keep the cowl flaps cranked unusually wide open to keep the cylinder head temperatures down during normal cruise power settings.  Both we and the airplane were tired.

Davenport noticed it, too, and talked to the PPC.  We had put more than one hundred twenty hours on the airplane since the engines had an eighty-hour check.

We were given on day off.  Dave, Herrin, and I spent it on portable work stands changing the fifty-six spark plugs (two each in the fourteen cylinders of each engine), cleaning the magnetos and replacing burned points, and checking each system on the airplane.

That day almost got me a court martial and I got a hard lesson in tropic sunburn.  It was delightfully cool in the early morning when we put up the portable work stands and went to work on the engines.  I peeled off my dungaree shirt and started changing spark plugs.  A little later I also pulled off my skivy shirt.  It was time for noon chow before I thought to put my shirt back on.  My back was uncomfortable warm.

By evening I was in agony.  The searing tropic sun had literally fried the skin of my back.  Recalling that they had used tannic acid jelly on my sunburn in boot camp, I went looking for the Midway sick bay.  In the sick bay bunker a young Navy doctor took one look at me and exploded.

“Sailor, you have gone and got yourself a second degree burn there!  If I have to put you on the sick list as unfit for duty, you could get a summary court martial—that’s like shooting yourself in the foot!”

My back was hurting something fierce but I gritted my teeth and said, “Lieutenant, Sir, I am on a PBY flight crew and I will fly tomorrow.  All I ask is that you put on some of that tannic acid or something.  I can sleep on my face for a while.  I did not come here to get off duty!”

I did exactly that.  I slept face down.  Three or four days later Dave and I were in the shower one evening and he said, “Hey, Con, there’s a piece of loose skin on your shoulder.”  He took hold of it and the outer skin of my back peeled off in one piece looking like a sheet of onionskin typing paper.  From then on, if I wanted my shirt off, I left my skivy shirt on!

Japanese Survivors

Approximately two weeks after the Battle of Midway, I believe on the 19^th of June, our patrol sector was west toward Wake Island.  Two hundred miles or so out of Midway I was on watch at my gun station in the port waist blister when Lt. Camp said quietly on the interphone, “Gentlemen, we have a lifeboat out ahead of us and it is flying a Japanese flag.  Rig out the port fifty—I will make a low pass by the boat.  If they don’t haul down that damned flag—shot it down!”

Almost as an afterthought Camp added, “Don’t shoot at the boat unless they fire at us.  One shot from even a hand gun—sink the damned thing!”

I swung out the big machine gun and was looking through the optical sight when Camp made the pass.  The flag had been hauled down and Camp said, “Hold your fire.”

The lifeboat was a sorry sight.  It had a stubby mat rigged from oars.  A tarp or blanket that had been used for a sail covered some of the occupants.  One man was standing by the mast watching us.  Three or four others had pulled off their white jumpers or skivy shirts and were waving them apparently in a sign of surrender.  One man in what appeared to be officer’s whites sat with his head bowed in the stern.

We sent a contact report then orbited the lifeboat while we waited for the ship Midway promised.  I stowed the machine gun then leaned out as Camp made two or three other passes near the enemy boat.  For a moment I had a feeling of disappointment that they had not fired at us.  In retaliation for December 7^th I would have happily sent the boat and its occupants to the bottom of the ocean.

The feeling did not last.  All the occupants of the boat had looked up at us and were now sitting with bowed heads as if in submission.  Geez, I thought, they are just a bunch of poor bastards that have been floating around out here for two weeks trying to make Wake.  Sure don’t envy them!

The nearest ship turned out to be an old WWI four-stack destroyer that had been converted to an aircraft tender, the USS BALLARD.  It was a sister ship to the HULBERT that had come to our aid when we were down at sea in 71-P-7.  When the BALLARD had the lifeboat in sight we left the prisoners to them and went on with our patrol.

Late in the afternoon, the BALLARD delivered the Japanese prisoners to Midway—the only prisoners that were taken as a result of the battle.  The lifeboat as a cutter from the aircraft carrier HIRYU that had been sunk on the afternoon of June 4^th.  The story we got (and which was later confirmed) was that the survivors had been trapped below when the carrier was abandoned and had been left behind when the Japanese fleet hastily retreated.  There had been three officers and thirty-two enlisted men in the boat.  There had been four or five more who had succumbed to either wounds or to dehydration and starvation.  They had been making for Wake Island with a makeshift sail, but it was obvious none of them would have made it.  They were far less than half way when we found them.

That evening when we had finished our re-fueling and had checked the airplane for the next day’s patrol, a messenger showed up looking for the PBY crew that had spotted the Japanese lifeboat.  He was carrying a cigar box containing some little souvenirs consisting of uniform buttons and insignia.  He announced that the Japanese commander from the boat (the prisoners were being held in the mess hall because the Midway bring had been blown up in the attack the morning of the 4^th” had sent them to us as presents in appreciation for the fact that we did not sink the boat but had saved their lives.

I selected a brass cap device.  It was similar to a CPO’s cap device with an anchor in a rope circlet on which a lotus blossom was superimposed.  The messenger thought it was the cap device from a Japanese ensign ad it later wound up in the bottom of my sea chest where it lay for twenty-five years until it resulted in an incredible reunion with survivors of that lifeboat in Tokyo.

(I will record that reunion of old enemies in detail in an appendix to this part of my story.  It was almost as incredible as the wining of the Battle of Midway.  It resulted in friendship with the Japanese officer who had been standing by the mast of the boat after hauling down the Japanese flag.  Even today we still correspond.)

The Battle of Midway: Part III: Another Lesson and Survivors

"That day almost got me a court martial and I got a hard lesson in tropic sunburn."

A Day Off

My memories of the two weeks following our arrival at Midway on the second day of the battle are mostly of long fourteen-hour flights every day.  For the first few days we anticipated that the Japanese main battle fleet and the invasion fleet might show up at any time.  Finally, however, we became convinced that the Japanese were really headed home in disgrace.  Yamamoto had us out-numbered four to one in ships, more than two to one in airplanes, four aircraft carriers to our three, but the incredible had happened—we won.  There were more black days in the war in the Pacific to come but the blackest of them were over.  The Imperial Japanese Navy would no longer run wild in the Pacific.

After a week of the daily flights I did not like the sound of the engines of our PBY.  Instead of singing, they started to complain with misfiring when we started in the morning and running rough during approach for landing.  I had to keep the cowl flaps cranked unusually wide open to keep the cylinder head temperatures down during normal cruise power settings.  Both we and the airplane were tired.

Davenport noticed it, too, and talked to the PPC.  We had put more than one hundred twenty hours on the airplane since the engines had an eighty-hour check.

We were given on day off.  Dave, Herrin, and I spent it on portable work stands changing the fifty-six spark plugs (two each in the fourteen cylinders of each engine), cleaning the magnetos and replacing burned points, and checking each system on the airplane.

That day almost got me a court martial and I got a hard lesson in tropic sunburn.  It was delightfully cool in the early morning when we put up the portable work stands and went to work on the engines.  I peeled off my dungaree shirt and started changing spark plugs.  A little later I also pulled off my skivy shirt.  It was time for noon chow before I thought to put my shirt back on.  My back was uncomfortable warm.

By evening I was in agony.  The searing tropic sun had literally fried the skin of my back.  Recalling that they had used tannic acid jelly on my sunburn in boot camp, I went looking for the Midway sick bay.  In the sick bay bunker a young Navy doctor took one look at me and exploded.

“Sailor, you have gone and got yourself a second degree burn there!  If I have to put you on the sick list as unfit for duty, you could get a summary court martial—that’s like shooting yourself in the foot!”

My back was hurting something fierce but I gritted my teeth and said, “Lieutenant, Sir, I am on a PBY flight crew and I will fly tomorrow.  All I ask is that you put on some of that tannic acid or something.  I can sleep on my face for a while.  I did not come here to get off duty!”

I did exactly that.  I slept face down.  Three or four days later Dave and I were in the shower one evening and he said, “Hey, Con, there’s a piece of loose skin on your shoulder.”  He took hold of it and the outer skin of my back peeled off in one piece looking like a sheet of onionskin typing paper.  From then on, if I wanted my shirt off, I left my skivy shirt on!

Japanese Survivors

Approximately two weeks after the Battle of Midway, I believe on the 19^th of June, our patrol sector was west toward Wake Island.  Two hundred miles or so out of Midway I was on watch at my gun station in the port waist blister when Lt. Camp said quietly on the interphone, “Gentlemen, we have a lifeboat out ahead of us and it is flying a Japanese flag.  Rig out the port fifty—I will make a low pass by the boat.  If they don’t haul down that damned flag—shot it down!”

Almost as an afterthought Camp added, “Don’t shoot at the boat unless they fire at us.  One shot from even a hand gun—sink the damned thing!”

I swung out the big machine gun and was looking through the optical sight when Camp made the pass.  The flag had been hauled down and Camp said, “Hold your fire.”

The lifeboat was a sorry sight.  It had a stubby mat rigged from oars.  A tarp or blanket that had been used for a sail covered some of the occupants.  One man was standing by the mast watching us.  Three or four others had pulled off their white jumpers or skivy shirts and were waving them apparently in a sign of surrender.  One man in what appeared to be officer’s whites sat with his head bowed in the stern.

We sent a contact report then orbited the lifeboat while we waited for the ship Midway promised.  I stowed the machine gun then leaned out as Camp made two or three other passes near the enemy boat.  For a moment I had a feeling of disappointment that they had not fired at us.  In retaliation for December 7^th I would have happily sent the boat and its occupants to the bottom of the ocean.

The feeling did not last.  All the occupants of the boat had looked up at us and were now sitting with bowed heads as if in submission.  Geez, I thought, they are just a bunch of poor bastards that have been floating around out here for two weeks trying to make Wake.  Sure don’t envy them!

The nearest ship turned out to be an old WWI four-stack destroyer that had been converted to an aircraft tender, the USS BALLARD.  It was a sister ship to the HULBERT that had come to our aid when we were down at sea in 71-P-7.  When the BALLARD had the lifeboat in sight we left the prisoners to them and went on with our patrol.

Late in the afternoon, the BALLARD delivered the Japanese prisoners to Midway—the only prisoners that were taken as a result of the battle.  The lifeboat as a cutter from the aircraft carrier HIRYU that had been sunk on the afternoon of June 4^th.  The story we got (and which was later confirmed) was that the survivors had been trapped below when the carrier was abandoned and had been left behind when the Japanese fleet hastily retreated.  There had been three officers and thirty-two enlisted men in the boat.  There had been four or five more who had succumbed to either wounds or to dehydration and starvation.  They had been making for Wake Island with a makeshift sail, but it was obvious none of them would have made it.  They were far less than half way when we found them.

That evening when we had finished our re-fueling and had checked the airplane for the next day’s patrol, a messenger showed up looking for the PBY crew that had spotted the Japanese lifeboat.  He was carrying a cigar box containing some little souvenirs consisting of uniform buttons and insignia.  He announced that the Japanese commander from the boat (the prisoners were being held in the mess hall because the Midway bring had been blown up in the attack the morning of the 4^th” had sent them to us as presents in appreciation for the fact that we did not sink the boat but had saved their lives.

I selected a brass cap device.  It was similar to a CPO’s cap device with an anchor in a rope circlet on which a lotus blossom was superimposed.  The messenger thought it was the cap device from a Japanese ensign ad it later wound up in the bottom of my sea chest where it lay for twenty-five years until it resulted in an incredible reunion with survivors of that lifeboat in Tokyo.

(I will record that reunion of old enemies in detail in an appendix to this part of my story.  It was almost as incredible as the wining of the Battle of Midway.  It resulted in friendship with the Japanese officer who had been standing by the mast of the boat after hauling down the Japanese flag.  Even today we still correspond.)