The American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews The Museum of Flight Seattle, Washington
Harry W. Swinburne
Interviewed by: Eric M. Hammel
Interview Date: circa 1980s-1990s
2
Abstract: Fighter ace Harry W. Swinburne is interviewed about his military service with the United States Navy during World War II. He describes his wartime experiences as a fighter pilot, including his time stationed on the USS San Jacinto (CVL-30) with Fighting Squadron 45 (VF-45). Special focus on a combat mission on March 28, 1944, in which Swinburne scored victories against two Japanese gunboats east of Okinawa. Afterwards, he piloted his severely damaged Grumman F6F Hellcat back to the carrier task force and made a one-wheeled night landing onboard the USS Hornet (CV-12).
The interview is conducted via telephone by historian Eric M. Hammel. Note that the audio may be difficult to hear due to spots of distortion present in the original recording.
Biography:
Harry W. Swinburne was born on January 4, 1923 in Delhi, Iowa. He joined the United States Navy in 1942 and graduated from the Navy Aviation Cadet V-5 program the following year. Swinburne served aboard the USS San Jacinto (CVL-30) with Fighting Squadron 45 (VF-45), flying missions over Formosa, Okinawa, and other areas of the Pacific Theater. In addition to his aerial victories, he also scored three ship victories: two gunboats east of Okinawa and a freighter in Takao Harbor. Swinburne remained in the military after the end of World War II and went on to hold a number of command positions, including air officer for the USS Essex, skipper of Attack Squadron 6 (VA-6) on the USS Enterprise, and commander of Naval Support Force Antarctica. He also served as a helicopter pilot during the Korean War. Swinburne retired as a captain in 1972 and passed away in 1991.
Biographical information courtesy of: Boyce, Ward J., ed., American fighter aces album. Mesa, Ariz: American Fighter Aces Association, 1996.
Restrictions:
Permission to publish material from the American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews must be obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives.
Transcript:
Transcribed by Pioneer Transcription Services 3
Index:
Introduction and service details ...... 4
Combat mission against Japanese gunboats, part one ...... 5
More service details ...... 9
Combat mission against Japanese gunboats, part two ...... 9
Return to the task force with a damaged Grumman F6F Hellcat ...... 17
Skill as a pilot and a night carrier landing ...... 28
Mission aftermath and conclusion ...... 32
4
Harry W. Swinburne
[START OF INTERVIEW]
[Begin Side A]
00:00:00
[Introduction and service details]
HARRY W. SWINBURNE: …you just let me know what you want here.
ERIC M. HAMMEL: Okay. Tape recorder’s on. By the way, if your voice starts giving out or anything, just give me a heads-up and let me know.
HWS: All right.
EMH: All right. All right, well, basically the questions are as I stated. And the story’s good, and all I’m trying to do, really, here is fill in and, you know, go for more detail.
HWS: Right. Understood.
EMH: Okay. So what I—I don’t understand the nature of the escort carrier groups, and so that’s why I asked how many—
HWS: Well, now, this wasn’t an escort carrier group. This was the fast carriers, of course.
EMH: Oh, yeah?
HWS: Yeah. Okay. On our—I was on a CVL, the San Jacinto, CVL-30. We had 24 Hellcats aboard, which were, at that time, composed of the older F6F-3s and the new F6F-5s. Now, my plane that day was a brand-new F6F-5. It had less than five hours on it from the factory.
EMH: Now, what are the characteristics of the five versus the three?
HWS: Well, the main thing it had was Change #75 in it, which beefed up the tail and the wing roots. They were getting a lot of wrinkles and damage and were restricted in their dives, their top speeds, in the old F6F-3 to keep from pulling the tail or the wings off. And we also had nine TBMs, torpedo bombers, aboard.
EMH: Okay. And that was a whole air group?
HWS: That was the entire group, was 24 Hellcats and nine TBMs.
EMH: Okay. And I’m a little—so Forkner [Levern Forkner] was both the air group commander, but he was also a— 5
HWS: Fighter skipper.
EMH: …a fighter pilot?
HWS: Right. He was a fighter squadron commander and the air group commander because we’d lost Gordon Schecter, who was a full commander. And that made a lieutenant an air group commander, something people can’t understand today.
EMH: [laughs] I was about to ask you that.
HWS: Well, nowadays, you’d probably have four commanders in a squadron that was half that size, you know. And the life jacket officer is probably the lieutenant commander nowadays.
00:02:08
[Combat mission against Japanese gunboats, part one]
EMH: Yeah, something like that. Now, you were in a division of four planes. Were you a division leader?
HWS: No. I was flying section on the new skipper, Forkner.
EMH: Okay. So you were number two on the squadron?
HWS: Yeah, I think our ships call was “Lucky” that day. You couldn’t have a better one than that.
EMH: Boy, for you, it couldn’t have been.
HWS: And I believe my call was Lucky-One-Three. In other words, the first division would be One-One, One-Two, One-Three, One-Four, and then—and I think I was Lucky-One-Three, but I can’t swear to that.
EMH: All right. And you were JG that day, according to the records.
HWS: That’s correct.
EMH: Okay. Now, as I asked here, how many carriers launched to find the fleet? I would imagine this is a very large—
HWS: We had either four or five in our task group under Jocko Clark. And our task group would have been basically—now, we’d lost the Franklin, and so there’d been a— you know, it had to go back to the States after it had been badly hit. And so we did some shuffling, and that’s why I can’t be sure. But I am sure of the Hornet, which was called Arab Base, and I’m quite sure 6
that the Monterey was one of the other CVLs in our group. We had either four or five—I’m positive—either four or five CVs and CVLs total.
EMH: Okay. And—but this was a full-scale launch. I mean, this was a—soon-to-be a battleship with [unintelligible 00:03:38].
HWS: Yeah. Now, we—I think we only launched eight Hellcats, as I recall.
EMH: Your ship?
HWS: My ship only launched eight Hellcats because we’d probably had the combat air patrol over the force, also, that day. The others would have been replenishing the other task groups.
EMH: Okay. But at least the entire task group launched there, you would assume so, from—
00:03:59
HWS: We launched every plane, basically, that was available, I think, that day. I think he said, “Get everything off you can get.”
EMH: Now, where is the task group in relation to the nearest island, do you recall?
HWS: Well, we would have been east of Okinawa, someplace northeast, southeast, or east of Okinawa. And we were from the—we were just about 240 miles from the little bunch that we ran over there, the 12 Imperial Jap Navy gunboats.
EMH: Okay. Now, you’re within three days of the Okinawa invasion, so I presume that what you were doing was basically opening the way for the invasion force. I mean, that was the general mission out there at the time.
HWS: Yes, that’s correct.
EMH: Okay. All right. So you heard that the Japanese—now, who—do you—
HWS: Now, I might have been an ensign then. I’m thinking with that—with the date, March 28th—
EMH: March 28th.
HWS: Well, I think I made JG on the 1st of April.
EMH: Well, there you go.
HWS: So I think I was an ensign. Yeah. 7
EMH: Well, then probably by the time the report was written—because I think you show as a JG in the records.
HWS: Yeah. Yeah. It probably does.
EMH: Now, okay. So just some search plane—do you know—do you have any idea what kind of search plane found these ships?
HWS: I think it was a B-29. And I’m sorry. I’m a little bit parochial there, but I think he was flying so high—the way we put it together afterwards was that he probably thought the destroyer that we went over was a battleship. He probably thought the two DEs that I know were there were probably cruisers. And the 12 Imperial Jap Navy gunboats, he probably thought were destroyers.
EMH: Sure. And from any height, you would—you could see why.
HWS: And I’d guess he was probably up at 30,000 or something, you know. Damn high.
00:05:48
EMH: Okay. So he wasn’t really a searcher. He was just a guy who happened to find these guys.
HWS: Well, he wasn’t from our force. He was Air Force.
EMH: Yeah, I realize.
HWS: Yeah. And he just simply probably was tooling down there from one of his targets or something and saw them.
EMH: Okay. So you get this big call, and there’s a big, fast launch. Now, do you remember what time of day that the launch was put up?
HWS: Well, all I remember was it was so late in the afternoon, we knew it would be a night landing, and none of us had really flown at night except pre-dawn launches and practice.
EMH: But you weren’t real worried about it?
HWS: Not especially. I think there was a little apprehension in everybody. Everybody was checking flashlights and every other doggone thing that you normally—we didn’t worry much about.
EMH: Okay. Just a side question here. I mean, I’m sort of convinced by that stage of the war that there were so many pilots going through the pipeline—and you weren’t that far out of the 8
pipeline, in terms of training—that the Navy was slowing you down and taking the time to do things like night— you know, night practice carrier landings and stuff like that.
HWS: Oh, yeah. We all got—we had to have two practice night landings off Hawaii before we went to combat, and everybody had to have them. And the strange thing today, too, is that I wound up with a whole war with four night landings, you know, and nowadays—half the landings, almost, of the people today are—
EMH: That’s right. Well, most of my research has always been the early war, where the carrier pilots were lucky to have two daytime carrier landings underway, you know? [laughs]
HWS: Well, we were lucky that way. I had over 500 hours in the Hellcat when I went into combat—
EMH: Jesus.
HWS: …which was almost unheard of, you know?
EMH: Unreal. [laughs]
HWS: Yeah. I was over-trained.
00:07:23
EMH: I know guys who had done their first tour early in the war, didn’t have 500 hours cumulative.
HWS: Yeah. Well, people on Guadalcanal, you know, would—their P-38s came in, and their first hop in the P-38 was a combat mission, you know.
EMH: Yep, yep. Do you recall the task group designation? 58-point…?
HWS: I just can’t. I would be guessing if I did, and I’d rather not guess.
EMH: Okay. That’s fair. That’s fair.
HWS: I bet it’s in—I’m almost sure it’s in Jocko Clark’s Carrier Admiral.
EMH: I haven’t read the book, but I’ve got some stuff—
HWS: You read that book. You’ll love it.
EMH: Okay. [laughs]
HWS: It’s quite a book.
9
[More service details]
EMH: You got it. Now, just a little—I want to back up a little bit, just about you. When did you go aboard the San Jacinto with—you went with the squadron?
HWS: Well, to be honest, we relieved George Bush’s air group.
EMH: Oh, yeah?
HWS: Yeah. We relieved them in Guam. And I do have the date, but I don’t have it in front of me.
EMH: But just shortly before.
HWS: It would have been in December. Yeah, it would have been in December. Late November or December, I know. But I think it was December.
EMH: Okay. And going into this thing, as I recall—I’m not looking at the notes here, but you had one kill going into this thing?
HWS: Yes. That’s correct.
EMH: All right.
HWS: When the Franklin was hit, we were—the San Jacinto was assigned to escort her out. At first, she could only make two knots, and then she got up to six knots. And the plane I got was a Jill, which was out snooping, trying to keep track of us and—so they could hit us. And I caught him.
00:09:03
EMH: Okay. You were vectored out in that case.
HWS: Yeah, I was vectored out with combat air patrol.
EMH: Okay. Like I say, I have a hard time adjusting to this late in the war. It seems so easy after a while. [laughs]
HWS: Yeah. Yeah. I know what you mean.
[Combat mission against Japanese gunboats, part two]
EMH: Now, on your way out, about, as I asked, how far or how long before you passed the gunboats? 10
HWS: I would have said we passed over them approximately an hour and forty minutes after launch, probably. And we proceeded on north because we didn’t think that was what we were looking for, you know.
EMH: About the strike formation, was this a loose-strike formation as—you know, as they were launched, or was this a formal join-up-and-go?
HWS: Everybody’s going together, and we were supposed to be on radio silence. And one of the comical things was somebody called up, you know, and said his engine was running rough, and he thought he’d have to return. And of course, you knew he didn’t want to make a night landing, so—and pretty soon his leader called up and said, “Mine’s not running too good, too. I want to go back with him.” And of course, you heard a few “Chicken shits” and what have you over the air. We were supposed to be on radio silence, but anyway. Whoever his skipper was sent him back. Now, my group was not the flight—was not the strike leader. In other words, the strike leader was from some other air group who was overseeing the whole thing. And I don’t know who that was.
EMH: But you were just back—you still were back along the formation?
HWS: Yeah. We were just back there loosely, all of us heading to the same place at the same time.
EMH: Okay. Any—do you remember what altitude, approximately?
HWS: I would have guessed about 8,000 feet.
EMH: All right. So this—
HWS: It was the best visibility, you know, and the distance and everything else for searching.
EMH: Okay. What kind of weather? What kind of visibility?
HWS: The weather was excellent, as I recall. There was no problem whatsoever with the weather. That’s for sure.
EMH: All right. No—how’d it look to you? Clouds? No clouds?
00:10:51
HWS: I don’t remember any clouds. If there were, they were up high where they weren’t—no problem to us whatsoever.
EMH: Real good visibility, though?
HWS: Yes, yes. 11
EMH: Okay. Now, how—after you passed over the gunboats, were there any comments? I mean, since you already blew radio silence. [laughs]
HWS: Well, yeah, I remember them saying something, and they said, “No. We proceed on north along the east coast of Kyushu.” We were just off the east coast of Kyushu. And we headed north until almost the northern edge of Kyushu and decided there wasn’t anything else coming down there, so we turned back. And at that point, our eight planes were assigned to destroy the 12 Imperial Jap Navy gunboats.
EMH: Ah, just your—
HWS: Just our eight planes.
EMH: All right. Any idea how that came about?
HWS: No, except that we were all fighters, and we were all carrying rockets and 50-caliber machine guns. And they would have been probably the best armaments to hit any small things like that there, but—
EMH: Okay. But—so none of the other fighters were similarly armed? Rocket [unintelligible 00:11:55]?
HWS: I don’t know what the others had, but I’m sure the SB2Cs probably had bombs. There were SB2C Helldivers along. And because I had to wait—I was supposed to wait to land on the Hornet until they got all theirs aboard. They were still—but it turned out later—well, we’ll get to that, but there still was six of theirs in the air—
EMH: Sure. But your TBMs off the San Jacinto were on the run, too?
HWS: I don’t believe they were, but I just can’t swear to that. I just don’t remember. They didn’t do anything, and I don’t believe they were along.
EMH: Okay. We can, you know—that’s a detail we can gloss over. Now, just tell me about your armaments. You had six 50-cal machine guns with how many rounds per gun?
HWS: We would—we normally carried 2,400 rounds, so we’d have had, uh—
EMH: Four hundred per gun.
00:12:42
HWS: Four hundred per gun.
EMH: Okay. And that was armor-piercing incendiaries with tracer? 12
HWS: We—every fourth round, usually, was a tracer, and probably every fourth round also was probably armor-piercing.
EMH: Okay. All right. So the other rounds were—
HWS: They were high-cap, high capacity.
EMH: Okay. And your rockets, how many of those?
HWS: We had—I’m almost certain—you know, that’s funny, but I think we had six five-inch heads, and we had the old three-inch bodies. Later, we had five-inch bodies and five-inch heads, and I say that because they were so damn inaccurate. Sometimes you’d fire them, and you wouldn’t even see them come off the leading edge of your wing. They’d just dive straight down, and sometimes they’d loop up over. So on my first run—if I can take the time on that—my first run I would say was, oh, about a 30-degree dive. I said, “I should fire now, but I won’t. I should fire now, but I won’t. I got to fire now or hit him.” You actually flew right down until it looked like you were going to hit him on the deck, and then you let go a pair of them. And it couldn’t miss. I mean, it was so damn low that no matter what they did, they hit.
00:13:59
EMH: Okay. So you could fire from any range? There wasn’t a safety range on these things?
HWS: Well, you had a best range that you would have fired at if they’d have been accurate. You’d probably fire at about a thousand-foot altitude in your dive if they would have been more accurate. But they just—they were so inaccurate that—
EMH: You just didn’t trust the suckers.
HWS: No. They just—they didn’t track true. See, the body was too small for that big five-inch head.
EMH: Okay. I understand. Just want to check with you. I gather you didn’t participate in the air action in which some planes were down, including the [unintelligible 00:14:34] glider. That was another squadron.
HWS: That was another squadron. Here was an [unintelligible 00:14:38] and a glider. And I remember them assigning the squadron to go get that guy, and they had a lot of trouble shooting down the damn glider because what do you hit, you know. There’s nothing—you’ve got to kill the pilot. That’s the only way to shoot it down.
EMH: That’s a bizarre combination, in any case.
HWS: Yeah, it was. It was kind of fun listening to them working it over. 13
EMH: Now, this is before you went into the attack?
HWS: That was before. We were still proceeding north or coming back. I think we were still going north when they sighted the glider [unintelligible 00:15:07]. Yeah.
EMH: Okay. All right. Let’s see. We got the—all right. Over the gunboats, it’s clear weather?
HWS: Yes.
EMH: Okay. What kind of formation were they in?
HWS: When we got there, they were all proceeding in formation. But immediately when they saw us getting ready to attack, they just—everyone went every which way. They just were maneuvering independently.
EMH: What was the formation? Do you recall? I mean, could you guess it?
HWS: No, I couldn’t. I just know they were all steaming the same direction.
00:15:34
EMH: Okay. I do want to bring up something here. I have the Japanese—or at least the— actually, American records of all the Japanese ships that were destroyed. That is to say, destroyer escort and up. And I can’t find any destroyers or destroyer escorts from those dates, and I don’t—you didn’t say whether they were destroyed.
HWS: Yeah. There was a DE. In fact, I have a picture of it blowing up.
EMH: Ooh.
HWS: A guy fired a five-inch rocket. And he must have got it from another squadron. I didn’t see it at the time, but he must have got that thing just right in the armory because that thing just blew sky high. There wasn’t anything left of it. With one five-inch rocket.
EMH: Now, I can’t—as I say, I can’t find a record of a DE or any Ds or DDs destroyed on that particular day.
HWS: I assumed that they got—we weren’t where they were, but I would have assumed that they—with all the planes we had, that they would have totally demolished those other three ships.
EMH: Okay. But you were going after, specifically, the gunboats? I mean, that’s what you were told was your targets.
HWS: Just the gunboats, was the only target we hit whatsoever on that trip. 14
EMH: Okay. How big and how much armament would you say those gunboats had?
HWS: Well, stupid me, I didn’t think—I don’t know why I would have thought that an Imperial Jap Navy gunboat wouldn’t have something for AA protection, but I just—I never saw any. They weren’t using any tracers, and we never—I never saw a single one of them fire until the one that got me. And I saw that bullet coming. It was smoking, so I think that’s why it was— I’m sure it was an incendiary.
EMH: Incendiary. Sure.
HWS: Yeah. And I saw it coming. I just—well, what happened was I had sunk two of them, and all of them were sunk with the exception of a couple or three. One, as I recall, was dead in the water—two were dead in the water, I believe, and one was still underway and smoking, burning. And the leader called, “Rendezvous south of the force.”
EMH: When you say “the leader,” you’re talking about—
HWS: Forkner.
EMH: Okay. Forkner.
HWS: Forkner called. Yeah, we were totally independent of the rest of them. I don’t know where they were or anything. They were all off doing something else. So we were—just had our own little show going there. And he called to rendezvous south of the force. Well, I just happened to be north of the force at the time. So in order to go over to the south side of the force for the rendezvous, I thought, well, I’m going to get that one that’s still underway. So I slowed down just as slow as I could slow, which was kind of stupid, and was just pumping every round that I had into him. And I was so low that I raised up to go over his mast, and that’s when I saw that damn thing coming. And I heard it hit, and I heard the ripping and everything as it went through that left wing. And my first thought was, well, that was kind of stupid, Harry. Why did you think you had to do that? But that was hindsight.
00:18:50
EMH: There’s a lucid thought. I want to jump back a little bit, and then we’ll move back up to here. And that is your first run, you had one of the gunboats and from which—you know, what angle—
HWS: I fired a pair of rockets on the first one and got him dead center.
EMH: What angle were you coming in at?
HWS: I’d say just under 30 degrees. Pretty shallow dive. 15
EMH: Okay. And angle to his heading? Straight in?
HWS: He was going from my right to my left but also almost going my heading. In other words, I was coming right up his stern.
EMH: Okay. And what was your aiming point?
HWS: My aiming point was right at the bridge, just right in the middle of it.
EMH: Okay. So you fired—
HWS: I couldn’t miss. I knew if you got him with a rocket—they weren’t very big boats. I would guess that they weren’t more than—oh, I don’t know. I don’t think they were over 60 feet long or something like that, you know—60, 70 feet long. They weren’t very big boats.
EMH: All right. What do they have? One basic gun mount with some other stuff thrown in?
HWS: I never saw a gun mount. I never saw a gun mount on them. I never saw a gun fire, actually.
EMH: Okay. So you fired the two rockets from real close?
HWS: Oh, yeah.
EMH: What altitude do you think you were?
HWS: They hit almost simultaneously, with me pushing the pickle on it. It just was zip, bam, you know. And I just saw the debris and everything flying.
EMH: Okay. Now, this is flying up just in front of you, actually.
00:20:13
HWS: Yeah. It’s—I mean, it’s damn dangerous. It’s a wonder you didn’t shoot yourself down, to be honest. But you just wanted to get him so bad, and I had such poor luck with—I later became a—what they called the Iron Bomber. I could bomb and rocket better than anybody in our squadron, the next squadrons I was in. But those damn rockets just made me sick that they wouldn’t fire straighter.
EMH: All right. Now, so you hit him. You see the debris and stuff coming up. You follow up over him, which would—
HWS: Well, when I pull up, you always roll into a steep climbing turn and look back. And he was just pretty well demolished. There wasn’t much left of him.
EMH: Okay. It may sound like a stupid question. Which way did you pull up? Left, right? 16
HWS: I pulled up to the left. I always pulled up to the left.
EMH: Okay. Steep climbing turn to the left, you look back over your shoulder, and he’s smoking and burning and—
HWS: Yeah. He’s just a lot of debris.
EMH: Okay. Then what did you do?
HWS: Then I went around and made another run on another one. And that one is not real clear. I remember the getting him and everything. And I know I used four rockets on him because I fired from farther out, and I know I got him. But I just—I was trying—before I made the thing up for you to get to you—trying to remember just what the hell the situation was on that. I think the other one—being the first one, you know—I remembered it because everything was calm, and then everything was getting kind of mixed up around there about that time.
EMH: Okay. So—but so you can’t be sure you made a duplicate run on this guy?
HWS: It wasn’t a coordinated attack at all. Everybody was doing their own little thing, and it’s a wonder we weren’t running into each other and every other damn thing. It just wasn’t very well coordinated, I didn’t think.
EMH: So you put four rockets on him and you saw hits?
HWS: Yes.
EMH: All four, too?
00:22:12
HWS: All four—well, you can’t swear all four hit because if one of them hit the water, you wouldn’t know it. In other words, you don’t actually—
EMH: But you know you got solid hits?
HWS: Yes, because of—it was by itself, you know, and there wasn’t anybody else making a run on that one at the time.
EMH: Was it the same kind of run, you know, from astern to forward?
HWS: That I just can’t swear. I just can’t remember what direction he was going.
EMH: All right. Now, you’re out of rockets now, and you’ve gotten two of them. Do you know if they—if those two sank outright? 17
HWS: I’m sure that both of them went down because, in a matter of minutes later, we’re down to three ships left.
EMH: Okay. So you pulled out of the second one and—
HWS: We can see all the Japs in the water, you know. They’re all over the—hell, they’re bailing out over the sides of those things. I couldn’t tell you how many, but we could see them swimming all over the place.
EMH: Okay. And you made a third run. You had no rockets left.
HWS: I’m sure I made a strafing run or two before they called to rendezvous. Yeah. But I don’t remember doing any significant damage or—I certainly would not say that I got any other ship at that time.
[Return to the task force with a damaged Grumman F6F Hellcat]
EMH: Okay. All right. Now, jumping back to when the round hit, you saw the smoking round coming up at you. It wasn’t a tracer or incendiary or any—well, it would have been an incendiary, but you didn’t see a flash of—
HWS: I didn’t see any tracer at all. Of course, it was coming towards me, and you don’t see a tracer near as good coming towards you as you do going away from you. But I did see a smoking round coming from that damn ship.
EMH: All right. And you did feel it go in?
HWS: Oh, yeah. It just—oh, it really tore when it went through.
EMH: Did it jolt the plane or—
HWS: Yes.
EMH: Okay. And you’re thinking, boy, that was a stupid thing to do?
HWS: Yeah. I thought, God, you really did it this time, Harry.
00:24:12
EMH: Uh-huh [affirmative]. Now, I have a question about the fire. How did—you know, how did you—how were you sure you’re on fire? Because I hear lots of stories from—
HWS: Oh, it burst into flames immediately. I would say it was just almost instantaneous. Now, I made a mistake here. One of my wingmen or somebody at some point after that—and this was 18
quite a bit later—said, “I think it’s your wheel that’s burning, Harry. If you dropped your gear, maybe it would go out.” Well, we had magnesium wheels, you know. And of course, the tire I knew was burning.
EMH: You could smell that.
HWS: I could smell the rubber burning, see, and I—[audio distortion 00:24:48]—but I wasn’t thinking about tire. I was thinking bulletproof gas tank. Because that was a rubber, you know. And I immediately dropped my drop tank, and then I shifted to left tank. Now, I know this sounds stupid, and I hope you won’t put this in your book, but we didn’t study much engineering in those days like you do now. And we had—[audio distortion 00:25:14]—right tank and the reserve tank. And I always visualized that as the left tank out here on the left wing, the right tank on the right wing, and the reserve tank in-between. That wasn’t—when I learned about them, that wasn’t the way they were. The left tank and the right tank were up against each other, and the reserve tank was behind them. And you always took off on right tank because the overflow from the carburetor returned to the right tank. So even though this may not be a lot of fuel, it might just be the difference between you landing in water and getting aboard.
EMH: Absolutely.
HWS: So you took off on right tank and made your rendezvous usually and everything on right tank so you would get—have room for any overflow coming back from the carburetor. And then you would switch to your drop tank and use your drop tank next. So I didn’t know how long I’d run on right tank because—this’ll come up later now—I don’t know how long I ran on it. But anyway, I ran on it, shifted to the drop tank, and was using the drop tank all the time until the attacks. And I think I probably switched to a better tank at that time.
EMH: You got a lot of mileage out of the drop tank.
HWS: Oh, yeah. [audio distortion 00:26:38] That was a 150-gallon tank, you know, and at 150 knots or so, we weren’t [unintelligible 00:26:44] much. That probably gave us the better part of two-and-a-half, three hours, you know. So anyway, when I was hit, I immediately dropped the drop tank for fear of explosion, you know. It had no bulletproof or no self-sealing or anything, so you always got rid of it right away if you were hit. You never got rid of it otherwise because it was the best identification feature on the Hellcat. [audio distortion 00:27:09] So I dropped it, went to left tank, and went full rich. Not immediately because I was thinking about other things. Now, when my plane started burning, I actually stood up to bail out. And I had forgotten to unfasten my earphone cord.
EMH: Oh dear. 19
HWS: And it kind of yanked me back into the cockpit. Simultaneously, or as near as you can figure on that, somebody came on the radio. And I think you can imagine the relief you feel when somebody says something on that radio when you don’t think you’ve got a radio or anything left, you know. All the guns went on automatic fire, and they’re firing, and I’m trying to keep from pointing at anybody or anything, you know. And all of a sudden now, I hear somebody. Well, now I can talk, so I sat back down, and my leader called me almost right away—Forkner. And he wanted me to land my plane in the water, and he’d drop me a five-man raft that he was carrying under one of his bomb positions, in case somebody went in the water. It’s a lot better than that one-man—
EMH: Damn straight. [laughs]
HWS: Well, my concern where I was, there were Japs swimming all over the water, and I knew they’d want that five-man raft worse than I would. But that wasn’t the main thing. I was concerned—once again, not knowing much about engineering—how long is that left wing going to stay on? Because I can look right through it, see.
00:28:46
EMH: Okay. You had a big hole that you could see from your—
HWS: Oh, I could look right down at the water through the damn wing.
EMH: Okay. How big was the hole, would you say?
HWS: Well, eventually, it was probably about 20 square feet.
EMH: Because there was stuff being pulled off?
HWS: Well, it’s just this wheel’s burning. And I know afterwards now why it was—the guy was right.
EMH: You were feeding the fire.
HWS: Yeah, it was feeding that fire. And it was a V-shaped hole from about midpoint—well, it was forward of the midpoint. I would say about four or five feet back from the leading edge of the wing, and then it just got progressively wider as you went to the rear. Everything was burning.
EMH: About how far from the cockpit?
HWS: I would say about three feet, three or four feet, something like that, from the cockpit. Now, when I sat back down, I didn’t want to go down and land in the water for fear that wing came off just as I was ready to land— 20
EMH: Was that the first guy who was talking to you, was Forkner saying—you know—go ahead.
HWS: Yeah, that was Forkner talking to me now. And so I said, “No. I’d rather bail out.” But in the meantime, that plane’s holding together and we’re ready to head south for our force. And I was doing 240 knots. I had a lot of power on. I wanted to use up that damn left tank before it blew up, you know? And I—at first, I left the cockpit open and left my shoulder harness and safety belt off, figuring if the plane blows up, I will be out there in the air and I can pull the ripcord and float down. I’ll admit it. At the time, I was—hell, I was praying. I’ll be honest. And I wasn’t praying that I’d get back that night because I didn’t think I had a chance. I was praying that I’d be captured, and I’d get back after the war was over with.
But every mile that went by, why, my spirits are coming up, and, you know, you’re feeling better all the time. You’re getting closer to home. I knew our force was leaving that night as soon as we got back. We were going out to replenish. And the whole force was moving south, so nobody’s going to pick me up if I don’t get back that night. I’ve had it, as far as our force is concerned. So anyway, that’s kind of the way we were going. And people were joining up on me because I’m— it’s getting dark now.
EMH: All right. So you—they were huddling around you to—
HWS: They’re all—hell, I’m leaving a 20-foot sheet of flame behind me, you know, and this makes a good rendezvous point for everybody, and they’re all joining up on me. And eventually, of course, why, Forkner flew up. And then I joined on him, and he led us back.
00:31:30
EMH: Now, how far from the carriers were you at this point? If you were about an hour—
HWS: Just about exactly 240 miles.
EMH: Two hundred and forty miles. Okay.
HWS: Nautical miles. Yeah.
EMH: Okay. So that’s an hour flight, doing the speed you’re doing.
HWS: That’s about an hour flight to get back. Yeah.
EMH: Okay. And when they pulled around you, was that when one of the other pilots checked you out?
HWS: Yeah, one of the other pilots. I don’t know whether it was my wingman. I suspect it was my wingman. 21
EMH: Who was?
HWS: It might have been somebody else, said, “If you’ll drop your gear, I think the fire will go out. I think it’s your wheel that’s burning.”
EMH: Who was your wingman?
HWS: My wingman. I can’t swear that it was him that day, but my wingman normally was Larry Grossman from New York City—Jew boy from New York City.
EMH: Was he—so he would have flown a little under you and—I mean, he took a look—he checked you out, is what I’m saying.
HWS: Oh, he’d fly back and forth underneath me and watch and see what’s going on and what have you, you know.
EMH: So you don’t—you blew the wheels down, I know. I know there’s a—
HWS: Well, not until I got ready to land, now.
EMH: Ah, okay. So—[audio distortion 00:32:30]—he made the suggestion—
HWS: The reason I didn’t want to put the wheels down, to be honest, is I got 240 miles to go, and the minute I drop those wheels, I ain’t going anywhere very fast.
EMH: That’s right. Okay.
00:32:39
HWS: And I was heading for home, and boy, every minute that that damn plane held together, I made another four miles towards home. Don’t think I wasn’t thinking exactly that.
EMH: Well, that’s one way to look at it. So this is a conscious decision on your part? You’re willing to risk the fire, as opposed to [unintelligible 00:32:56] speed?
HWS: Oh, yeah. Yeah. The fire isn’t apparently doing anything to me, and I’m making knots.
EMH: All right. Were your—were the fellow pilots just—they were talking to you? They were—
HWS: Well, there wasn’t much talking going on from that time. Once we all joined up, I don’t think there was anything basically said except that one saying that, “Drop your gear, and I think the fire’d go out.” And I don’t remember any other calls until—are you familiar with ZB/YE?
EMH: Yes. 22
HWS: Okay. We were probably—I assume we were about 8,000 feet because I remember when we picked up ZB/YE, which was line of sight, I said, “Oh, boy. We’re within 80 miles of the carrier, roughly.” And—[audio distortion 00:33:40]—and before I got to the force, the fire did go out. You asked that. The fire did go out.
EMH: Just because the wheel finished burning, I guess.
HWS: I’m sure that that’s what happened.
EMH: Okay. You also had the—oh, what do you call it? In the oleo struts, you had gunk—I’m trying to think what’s the word—hydraulics and stuff that also would have burned down.
HWS: Well, I’m sure the hydraulic fluid was also burning, see, because I didn’t have any— that all—I had no hydraulic pressure on anything in my plane. That’s why I couldn’t charge the guns on—I pushed the guns on safe, and the chargers just—you know, just fell forward—
EMH: Sure. Any kind of blowout would have blown the whole system out, right?
HWS: What?
EMH: Any—that round—any kind of penetration on any—anywhere in the hydraulic system would have—
HWS: We only really had one hydraulic system.
EMH: Yeah, that’s what I mean.
HWS: So as soon as that was gone and you lost pressure—
EMH: It’s all gone.
HWS: …why, it was gone. Yeah. No flaps. No landing gear, except blow it down with the air bottle.
00:34:43
EMH: Okay. So now you’re 80 miles out, approximately, and you got to—how long did the other planes stay with you?
HWS: They stayed with me until we got a call from Lucky Base that they would not take me aboard because of the damage. And they figured it was too risky. And at that point—and you asked—I don’t believe that was Mike Kernodle. I just think it was one of the operators on the ship, the air boss or somebody. 23
EMH: Well, Kernodle’s name only came up—it was familiar to me because he was aboard the Wasp when—he was the air boss aboard the Wasp when they went—and I’ve done that.
HWS: We called him “Kernodle the Ka-noodle” because he had the biggest nose, I think, of anybody I ever met.
EMH: Only an ensign could say something like that about a captain. [laughs]
HWS: There’s Mike Kernodle, we called him.
EMH: All right. So—all right, but you did speak with somebody. Any—
HWS: Well, the others would have broken off and gone into the pattern to land. And that left me up there by myself. Because, at that point, I just couldn’t believe it, and I still can’t. But I know it was him. Old Jocko Clark was the only one permitted to use the call “Bull Durham.” And all of a sudden, he came on, “Lucky-One-Three,” or whatever it was—and I think it was Lucky-One-Three—he asked, first of all, “This is Bull Durham. What’s your problem?” So I told him that, you know, I’d been hit, had no flaps, no landing gear. That’s the way I described it because, at that time, I didn’t know whether they would blow down or not, you know. No flaps, no landing gear, and a large portion of my left wing gone. And he came right back and he said, “Listen. If you’ll remain airborne until we get all our planes aboard, Arab Base will take you aboard.” And so that’s where I stood at that time. Now, I just kept circling and circling. And of course, being night landings, you know, this isn’t going very fast down there.
EMH: Sure. Question for you. When did darkness overtake you on your flight back?
HWS: Well, it was pitch dark when I got there, so it would have been someplace on that 240- mile trip home. It took about an hour. And it was beginning to get dark. I remember the sheet of flame showed up, you know, much brighter than it would have been if it would have been daylight. It was getting dark.
00:37:22
EMH: Sure. Another question. How—what was your altitude approximately during the return, during that 240 miles?
HWS: I think it was about 8,000 because of the ZB/YE coming in and I—estimating that I was 80 miles out when I heard it.
EMH: Okay. All right. So you’re circling where relative to the—which—the fleet was retiring at this stage of the game, so they’re going more or less west or southwest?
HWS: Well, no, they would strictly—whatever—I don’t remember— 24
EMH: [unintelligible 00:37:48]—the wind was blowing.
HWS: …but whatever the direction into the wind was, they were just—obviously, this was nothing being done now but recovering airplanes.
EMH: Okay. And they sent you off in an area out by yourself?
HWS: Well, I just was circling over the—I can see the ships down there, you know. I can see the wakes in the water and what have you, so I’m just circling. We only got one task group, so it has to be the right task group, so there was no problem there. Now, I don’t know which carrier’s which and what have you. And that’s where the stupid conversation came up later, which we’ll go into here in a minute.
EMH: Right.
HWS: But yeah—do you want me to kind of go through—walk through—
EMH: Yeah. Walk through it. What the heck? I mean—
HWS: Okay. At some point here—now, looking back, remember, I took off on right tank. I probably used it for 20 minutes or something before—during the rendezvous and heading out on course and then shift to drop tank. Okay. Now, I’ve run my left tank dry.
EMH: How many gallons in those tanks?
HWS: Let’s see. We had 75—87-and-a-half in each of the left and right, which would be 175. And 75 in the reserve tank, which is 250, and then 150 in the drop tank.
EMH: All right. Drop tank’s gone.
HWS: Drop tank’s gone. Left tank’s dry. Reserve tank’s dry. And I’ve now been running for 40 minutes on my right tank again. So I haven’t any—I had no gas gauges. They had gone out, so I don’t know how much I’ve got left, but I know it’s getting close now. So I called Bull Durham again. Well, I called Arab Base this time because I was talking to Arab Base. And I gave them my situation, and they called back and said, “Get in the pattern, and we’ll wave-off— we’ve got six SB2Cs to land—six Helldivers to land—and we’ll wave-off the plane when you’re approaching the deck.”
00:40:09
EMH: All right. Would they have said “SB2Cs” or “Helldivers”?
HWS: They would have said—they said Helldivers. Yeah. And so I asked, “How can I know which is Arab Base?” And they come right back and said, “We’re flying a red truck light.” Well, I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed that. We weren’t too smart in those days, I guess. But how 25
lucky can you get? I look down and here’s a red truck light. Boy, right there. So I proceed upwind, turn downwind, come around. And I’m chugging up the groove, you know, and something is wrong. First of all, there’s no paddles. I can’t see—we used a florescent light back there, shining on this reflective cloth, you know, that they had on their flight suit and the paddle. And I couldn’t see that, and there was no lights, no dustpan lights or anything. And the wake— you’ve probably heard pilots mention that the fluorescents in the water was fantastic out there when they’re churning along. It’s just like day, you know, almost. You look down and see that wake.
EMH: It’s like a highway.
HWS: Yeah. You didn’t really like that because you knew the enemy planes could see that, too. [laughs] But anyway, it’s just not a big enough wake, you know. This is an Essex-class carrier I’m supposed to be making approach on. This was a little dinky wake. So I pulled out of my approach and went by the starboard side. And my Aldis lamp was working, luckily. We carried that for signaling, you know. Morse code. And I shone it as I went by, and here’s a damn destroyer I’d been making a pass on.
EMH: You were—you just shined a light on him? You weren’t trying to signal?
HWS: No. I just hit him with a light to see what the hell is this that I’m—you know—and here’s a destroyer. Well, I think back how lucky you were that the ships were fantastic. I just couldn’t believe the answer came back. I called and I said, “I just made a pass on a destroyer.” I said, “I don’t know where Arab Base is. I’m shining my Aldis lamp vertically in the air. Do you have me in sight?” And there was no hesitation whatsoever. They said, “You’re proceeding up our starboard side.” And I said, “Well, give me a mark when I go by abeam to starboard.” Because I know the heading now, into the wind, you know, because of the wake. And they gave me a mark almost right away that you’re passing starboard side.
EMH: Now, what was the mark? Did they say, “Mark,” or—
HWS: They just say, “Mark.”
EMH: Mark. Okay. That’s what I thought.
HWS: I said, “Give me a mark when I pass abeam to starboard.”
EMH: Wanted to be sure about that. Okay.
00:42:48
HWS: They said, “Okay. Stand by. Mark. You’re abeam to starboard.” And then—so I proceeded probably for, oh, maybe ten seconds or so, you know, just on this course a little bit. Made a 90-degree left turn, and I said, “Give me another mark when I’m directly ahead of Arab 26
Base.” Well, I think I probably was a mile out or something about that time. And so, you know, just a very short time, a half-minute later, they said, “Okay. Mark. You’re passing directly ahead of Arab Base.” Well, now, the problem is solved, see? All I’ve got to do is turn downwind. I can see that ship over there. I can see its truck light and everything now.
EMH: Quick question for you before we get here, and that is, when did you blow your gear down?
HWS: Oh, before I made the pass on the destroyer.
EMH: Pass on the destroyer. Okay.
HWS: Yeah. Yeah. As soon as I started my—what I figured was my approach, I blew it down. I didn’t know what happened. I did the best I could. You blow down, and you don’t really know whether they’re down or not, except that you’ve got more drag, so you know something is down.
EMH: Okay. But you knew you didn’t have a left tire, but you forgot about it, huh?
HWS: Well, yeah. I knew all along that I wasn’t going to make a good landing because I haven’t got a left wheel [unintelligible 00:44:02].
EMH: [laughs] You’re going to—
HWS: But I totally forgot about that. Now, I had called Arab Base, and I said, “Does the LS know my condition?” And they said, “Affirmative. He does.”
EMH: Now, this is when?
HWS: This was before I made my pass—
EMH: Okay. Before you made your first—
HWS: When they said, “Get in the pattern.” Because I figured I could not take a wave-off because if I took a wave-off and poured full power on with no flaps and that part of my left wing missing—
EMH: You’re going nowhere.
HWS: …it’s going to do what you call a torque roll to the left. Because it tends to roll you to the left anyway, the torque on the engine.
EMH: Okay. So you’re coming around at about what speed? When you got the mark off the bow, you’re about what speed? 27
HWS: Well, I didn’t have—my airspeed indicator wasn’t working either, so I’m just flying by feel now, pretty much. And the way I could tell—the Hellcat was probably the most stable airplane we ever built in this country. [audio distortion 00:45:02]. Air Force pilots call it a “rocking chair airplane” when they—or “Grandma’s airplane” when they fly it.
00:45:08
[End Side A]
[Begin Side B]
00:00:00
EMH: And you were saying that they call it a “rocking chair airplane”?
HWS: Yeah. It’s just—it’s so stable. The way we used to make a landing at night was just to bring it down close to the ground and cut the throttle and just slowly bring back on the stick, and she just fell through right straight, you know. And if you tried to land a Mustang or anything like that that way, you’d be on your back. Or Corsair, too. So I was lucky the plane I was flying. There’s no doubt about that that day.
EMH: Okay. So you got the mark off the bow, and you’re sweeping around to—
HWS: So then I’d make a 90-degree, slow 90-degree turn to downwind leg, see. And I already know that that carrier’s right over there. I could see by—
EMH: You could make it out? You could see it?
HWS: I could see, you know, activity. I couldn’t see the outline of the ship itself, but I can see the truck light, and I can see lights shining on the deck, you know. You can see there’s something over there. And so I now know—and when I went down abeam to port now, going downwind, why, I just make my regular pass around.
EMH: All right. So you’re on automatic as—I mean, you know, in terms of your emotions? I mean, this is a routine landing—as routine as you can make it, I guess.
HWS: Yeah, well, I’m just so bloody happy now. I’m home, you know. [laughs] And I’ll be honest. I was praying all the way. That’s another thing. When I got on that ship, I tried to—went to the scuttlebutt to get a drink of water, and I couldn’t swallow it at first. I had to rinse it around my mouth to get up—to prime the pump, so to speak. My mouth and throat were so dry that I couldn’t believe it, you know. But anyway, I’m coming around—and you asked kind of how did you—how’d the LSO and what have you—well, I’m coming around there, and I would slow my 28
plane down until the left wing would just start to drop, you know. Not really drop, but it’d just get heavy, and I couldn’t hold it up with aileron.
00:01:58
EMH: All right. Now, that’s the torque doing that to you, huh?
HWS: Well, actually, that’s—with steady power, that’s just simply—I’ve got my plane trimmed, and as you slow it down, why, the left wing will start to drop because of the—not the torque, but because I don’t have any flaps and that amount of wing that’s missing.
EMH: Okay. All right.
HWS: So you couldn’t pick it up with aileron. I’m too slow to pick it up with aileron. They lose their effectiveness at real low speed. But you could put just a little bit of right rudder and very slowly—because you don’t want to torque-stall it—you just slowly put just an inch or two of manifold pressure on. Just a little extra power and a little right rudder, and she picked that wing back up. And that was the way I was riding her in, see.
[Skill as a pilot and a night carrier landing]
EMH: Let me ask you a question. Were you a natural pilot? I mean, you know, it’s easy now, after all these years, just to, you know—just to go through the motions of what you did, but—
HWS: I have never lost an honest dogfight in all my life.
EMH: All right. So you would say you just had a natural ability here?
HWS: I wasn’t natural when I started, but I loved to fly. And when the squadron was secure for weekends and at night, another pilot in our outfit, Billy Pettigrew from Greensboro, North Carolina, and I would go up and fly after everybody secured at night. We’d get permission in Hawaii to go up and fly when nobody else was flying. I’d fly on weekends. And I loved gunnery, and I just—I had a little problem going through training. I never had a down-check, but I never—in answer to your question, I never figured I was a natural pilot.
Now, Chuck Yeager and I have had conversations together, and we—it’s amazing. We almost— how many things were the same. Both came from little tiny towns. We both were high school graduates. Neither one had been to college. We both figured we could see farther than anybody else. I wouldn’t go as far as he did. He said he could see farther than any pilot there was. Well, I knew I could see them farther than most of the pilots in my squadron, but I didn’t know that I could see them farther than anybody else. We both got airsick on our first flight and that type of 29
thing. But later, I don’t—I got the highest grade ever given in jet training in Olathe, Kansas, by Whitey Feightner [Edward L. “Whitey” Feightner], who is a fighter ace.
EMH: I know Whitey, sure.
00:04:33
HWS: And he would vouch for this. He took us out and did something that I—he said afterwards—when we came down, I said, “God, I must have not learned something. That was work.” He said, “Harry, I heard you guys were hot, and I had to see it. And I’ve never done that to anybody that’s ever gone through this, what I did to you guys today, and you all hung in there. I just couldn’t believe it.” So eventually, I became an outstanding pilot. I was Top Gun on the East Coast one time for gunnery and rockets and bombing. And we got a guy up here in Oak Harbor called Captain McKenzie, who’s retired, and he taught me special weapons, and he calls me the Iron Bomber. When I went through the training later, my own pilots, who were now instructors, and I went through, and they owed me 87 beers when I finished for betting me on bomb hits.
EMH: Now, on this landing, though, I mean, you know, you’re talking about all these very slight moves—I mean, easy stick pressure, the whole thing.
HWS: I don’t think many people could have got it aboard that night.
EMH: Okay. But were you thinking about it? Or were you—or, I mean, I can imagine your concentration was absolute. Or was this something that just kind of felt—you knew what to do?
HWS: I didn’t have any choice, I think, at the time. I was always thinking, “I’ve got to get it aboard,” you know. If I go in the water, they may get me, and they may not. And so I just didn’t question that. I’ve got to get aboard. And—
EMH: So here’s the LSO, and he’s giving you “come ahead” signals—
HWS: He’s giving me violent fast, you know—fast, fast, fast. An agitated fast and pumping that right hand up and down, you know, with the left hand in the “roger” position. And, well, I had taken off everything I could, and there was no way I could do anything else, so I just chug up the groove like that. And he must have given me my cut signal 150 yards astern.
EMH: Because he thought you were riding, huh?
HWS: He thought I was just coasting, you know, and I’m going to go over everything and into the barricades, you know. Well, when I—so I did something—there are two signals that are mandatory on a carrier approach: wave-off and cut. And you have to take it. Well, I took it, but I took it slowest one I ever took. I just—I didn’t take a cut. I just eased the throttle off and down 30
she came. And of course, when she hit the deck, I realized, oh, no left landing gear. So that stub cut two of the cross-deck pendants, you know.
EMH: Oh, man.
00:07:05
HWS: It didn’t cut them, but it damaged them, so they had to change them before they would land the SB2Cs. And you couldn’t believe those crews on those decks in those days. I bet it didn’t take them five minutes to change both of those squares. And, well, they might not have put the other wires on. They might have just taken off the damaged ones and—because they had about nine of them back there.
EMH: Oh, yeah. Well, those wires could, I mean, snap and could kill a couple of people.
HWS: Yeah. You just can’t land a plane with some of the wires cut, you know—with, you know, the strands cut because something could happen and that decapitates the—what we call the hook runner that’s coming up the deck behind you to make sure your hook releases when you let it go. No, so they had to fix them. And here comes the LSO up. He says, “Well, why the hell didn’t somebody tell me you were all damaged?” And I said, “Well, what were you told?” Because I was told he did know. He said, “They said you couldn’t take a wave-off, and I assumed you were out of gas.” So he thought that I couldn’t—they did tell him that I could not take a wave-off, see. Well, I assumed that when they said the LS knows—quote, “knows your problem”—that he knew that I was damaged and what have you, and that I couldn’t take a wave- off. That was the conversation. Well, all he knew was that I couldn’t take a wave-off, and that’s why he’s giving me these violent fasts. But anyway—
EMH: I want to make sure on one thing. This is just the nomenclature. He’s giving you the fist to tell you you’re going too fast or to tell you to come ahead faster?
HWS: No. He gives you a signal what you’re doing. In other words, if you’re low, this—
EMH: He’ll tell you low.
HWS: That’s a very good question because a lot of people have asked this many times. I was air boss on the Essex and what have you, and people used to constantly ask us. He tells you what you’re doing.
EMH: Okay. That’s what I thought.
HWS: Now, he’ll give you a come-on, which is putting the paddles together like you’re rowing a boat, you know? That’s a come-on. But if he’s giving you the signal—now, let’s see. Low means you are low. His paddles are down. That means you’re low, and when you come up to a roger, you’re okay again. 31
EMH: All right. Roger is straight? Roger is paddles straight out?
HWS: That’s right.
EMH: Okay. I know a little of this stuff.
HWS: Yeah. Okay. And then high—so he’s telling what you’re doing. Now, the one signal that he does tell you to do something is a come-on and the cut. The cut is your right hand comes across your face and you drop your left hand, and that’s your cut.
EMH: Got it.
HWS: And he was giving me a violent fast, meaning, “You’re too fast,” you know.
EMH: But, of course, you didn’t have any—[laughs]—you didn’t have [unintelligible 00:09:47] to slow down with, right. No flaps.
HWS: Yup. I was fast. There was no doubt I was fast because I suspect I had at least—I suspect with no flaps, I was probably 10 to 15 knots, at least, above the normal approach. Yeah.
EMH: All right. So you’re down and that’s it. Now, how’d you get back aboard your own—I mean, your plane was dead.
HWS: They transferred me to a destroyer the next day.
EMH: Oh, they did it the hard way.
00:10:14
HWS: Yeah. You had to go—there wasn’t any other way in those days, unless they had a spare airplane.
EMH: Yeah, that’s what I was going to say. I don’t—
HWS: Now, what they did—that’s another kind of a little aside on this thing, if you’re interested. Here’s a brand-new airplane. I now have twice as many hours on it. I flew five hours that day, as I recall, and so I’ve got twice as many hours on it as it had when it came—you know, when I took it off that day. The only thing they saved from it was the cockpit canopy. Because the canopies used to get all that hot tropical sun and occasional damage, you know, and what have you. They’d get all chipped and scratched, and it makes it difficult to see an enemy plane or what have you. So here’s a brand new, not a scratch in it, you know, cockpit canopy. So I remember them taking that off so they can use it on another airplane.
EMH: They didn’t jettison your plane? 32
HWS: Yes, they did.
EMH: Oh, so as soon as you were down—
HWS: Yeah. They just put a dolly under that left stub and, next morning, wheeled it back and pushed her over the side.
EMH: Oh, okay. Well, the point is—but you had a chance to look it over the next—
HWS: Oh, yeah. I still got the clock. [laughter] I’ve still got the bloody clock.
[Mission aftermath and conclusion]
EMH: Okay. All right. Anything else attendent to this thing? I mean—
HWS: Well, one of the SB2Cs did crash on deck after I got aboard. He hit the island, partly.
EMH: But that had nothing to do with you?
HWS: No. No. He just—he didn’t make a very good landing.
EMH: All right. Now, they—I—this is just—
HWS: But they did get them all aboard. They got all six of them aboard, so nobody went in the water or anything because of my coming aboard.
EMH: Okay. And did you—who did you—who attended to you after you came aboard?
00:12:03
HWS: Well, I don’t know. They took me down and gave me a room. And my Gold Dust Twin from many years later was aboard there, Harry Sundberg. Harry Sundberg and Harry Swinburne are pretty close, but we were in five outfits together after that, but—and one of the guys I went through initial training with, Dick Pollard from Minneapolis, he was also aboard there. But I didn’t see any of them that day, so—
EMH: Okay. And they sent you over the next morning to—
HWS: Sent me back to my ship the next day. And this is why I have a little trouble with one or two of your questions. You asked if anybody else was hit. I think I remember one of the other pilots being hit, but not seriously. But, see, I wasn’t back for the briefing that night, and so I don’t really—
EMH: And you weren’t hurt at all? I mean, you were totally unscathed? 33
HWS: I was not hurt at all. Not one bit.
EMH: Okay. And you had credit for two gunboats?
HWS: I got two gunboats that day. And I sank a ship, a freighter, in Takao Harbor on Formosa before that, so I was credited with three ships during the war.
EMH: Okay. You were almost a ship ace. [laughs]
HWS: Well, this is a funny thing. I don’t know whether you know this or not. If a dive bomber pilot or a torpedo bomber pilot sinks a ship, it’s an automatic Navy Cross.
EMH: No, that I didn’t know. Explains a lot—
HWS: Yep. That’s how it was. But if a fighter pilot—his job isn’t to sink ships, so if he sinks a ship, he doesn’t get anything for it.
EMH: There you go.
HWS: I always justified this, though, by the fact that the TBMs and the Helldivers don’t have a very glamorous life anyway, compared with a fighter pilot—
EMH: Give them what you can, right?
HWS: …up there doing air-to-air combat and stuff. So we had something that we could do we got medals for if we did it right and were lucky enough, and they had something they got medals for—and they couldn’t get medals for shooting down airplanes because they didn’t have an opportunity to shoot down planes. So I never—it never bothered me, but it kind of—was kind of an interesting aside, that I could sink three ships and get nothing for it. [laughs] But I got my share of medals for other things.
EMH: Just as a corollary to that, did the fighter pilots get a Navy Cross for five kills?
HWS: Five kills on one flight was an automatic Navy Cross.
EMH: Okay. Well, I got a letter from one of the Taffy pilots who got one in—you know, off Leyte.
HWS: Yeah. My wingman for a while, Mollard, got five the day that I shot three down. Why, he got five, and he got the Navy Cross for it. Yeah.
EMH: All right. Well, that’s something I didn’t realize. All right. Any other details on this one? Anything come back to you while we were talking?
HWS: I don’t think much on that one. That’s just about it. 34
EMH: This is a hell of a story, by the way. And we got, oh, well over an hour of tape on this thing, which means it’s a long story. [laughs]
HWS: Well, that cost you money. Well, anyway, that’s pretty much it on that part. You asked me about—I did not get a copy of Guadalcanal, but I would—I’d sure—
00:15:12
[End Side B]
[END OF INTERVIEW]