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Thomas S. Harris The American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews The Museum of Flight Seattle, Washington Thomas S. Harris Interview Date: April 16, 1990 2 Abstract: Fighter ace Thomas S. Harris discusses his military service with the United States Navy during World War II. He describes his wartime experiences as a fighter pilot, including his time with Fighting Squadron 18 (VF-18) and Fighting Squadron 17 (VF-17) in the Pacific Theater. Special focus on a combat mission on April 12, 1945 in which he downed a Kawanishi N1K-J “George” aircraft near Kikaishima, Japan. Biography: Thomas S. Harris was born on April 21, 1921 in Tamaroa, Illinois. He joined the United States Navy in 1942 and was designated a Naval Aviator in May of that year. Harris served two combat tours in the Pacific Theater, one with Fighting Squadron 18 (VF-18) aboard the USS Bunker Hill (CV-17) and one with Fighting Squadron 17 (VF-17) aboard the USS Hornet (CV-12). He participated in the Tarawa invasion and the Okinawa Campaign, among other actions, and flew missions in the Central Pacific, South Pacific, and Japanese home islands. Harris remained in the military after the war and retired from the inactive Navy Reserve in 1959 at the rank of commander. He also worked as a test pilot for North American Aviation and the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation. Harris passed away in 2010. 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 near Kikaishima, Japan (April 12, 1945) ............................................................. 5 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 6 4 Thomas S. Harris [START OF INTERVIEW] 00:00:00 [Introduction and service details] THOMAS S. HARRIS: Testing, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Dear Mr. Hammel, this report is Commander Tom Harris, USNR, Retired. Looking over the letter I received from you, I noticed the first thing is a questionnaire, which I have filled out, and I’ll to answer some detailed questions on some of these things that aren’t directly connected with the action that I want to describe. One of them, I noticed, is rank at the time of the mission. I was lieutenant junior grade. And official duties or responsibilities, I think—we had secondary duties but not too much in wartime. I think I was Assistant Ordnance Officer. Most of our desk-type duties were taken care of by the AVS people. 00:01:07 Background on this mission: I had been deployed once prior to this in VF-18 in USS Bunker Hill. And so this is my second trip out. I had one kill in VF-18. And the rest of them, I’ll go into detail later. As far as a biography, I think the best one is in The Fighter Aces Album, which came out, I think, in 1978. It’s got my past history and where I went to school and so forth. I don’t have a photo of just myself that I can lay my hands on, but I do have one of my division, several sizes and also a negative. And this happens to be when I was with VF-18. We were temporary land-based on Espiritu Santo in the New Hebrides. If you’d like that, I’ll send it to you and you can use it as a negative or the other one. And the type of airplane at the time was an F6F-5. The one mission that stands out in my mind the most was undoubtedly not the most exciting one, but to me, it was most memorable because of the length of the dogfight, which lasted, I guess, 10 or 15 minutes. Some of these, as you probably know, lasted a matter of one second, as long as it took to fire one burst. As an example of that, one of the Kates that I—or the only Kate I shot down was carrying a torpedo west of Okinawa, flying along straight and level in nice, clear, blue weather. And apparently, he didn’t see me. I made a flat-side run, one burst, and it blew up into a cloud of blue smoke. Didn’t see any parts at all big enough to identify. I flew through the debris; whole thing was over in one second. 00:03:54 5 Incidentally, I’m sending you some copies of three pages of my logbook, which you might find interesting. One of them is this particular mission I’m going to tell you about. And you can keep them. I have other—I made these copies. I’ve got some others. [Combat mission near Kikaishima, Japan (April 12, 1945)] First one I want to describe to you occurred on the 12th of April. It was a T-CAP in the vicinity of Kikaishima, K-I-K-A-I-S-H-I-M-A, which, as I recall, was an island up north of Okinawa, 75 to 100 miles. The strategy, as I recall at the time—this was during the Okinawa Campaign—was to station fighters along the path between Okinawa and the southern tip of Kyushu to intercept Jap enemy airplanes that came down, fighters and bombers, to either go harass the fleet or to get involved in action at Okinawa. And I don’t know why they call it “T-CAP.” I think it was “Target CAP,” but I don’t—can’t quite see what that means. We had Barrier CAPs, and that I can understand. But anyway, that’s what’s down in the logbook. The airplane was a George, which, as you probably know, is one of the second-generation fighters, came out in mid-’44 and thereon. Had armor plate, self-sealing fuel tanks. Was a pretty good match for the F6F. It didn’t blow up in a ball of flame like the Zekes and the Zeros. 00:05:52 This action, I don’t recall how we got started on it, except we had quite a melee and all of us became separated. Don’t even remember what happened to my wingman, except we got back aboard. In thrashing around initially, we—I finally got on his tail, oh, about the port quarter. Got a few rounds at him and got some hits, all little flicks along the left side of the fuselage, and may have wounded the pilot at that time because they really didn’t do any hard maneuvering to try to get back on my tail. He was—developed into a tenacious jinking-type of flight, left and right, and pulled all kind of tricks, like whacking off the throttle and dropping gear and flaps. And so we were going along pretty good, full power at times. But I think the thing that I remember the most is he was so tenacious, and he really earned my respect, that he didn’t just pull up and bail out. Again, maybe he was injured. I’m not sure. The airplane never really did burn. I got a little fire going underneath the engine at six o’clock, and it wouldn’t go out—start up again, a lot of black smoke, which I’m sure was oil. Well, what we finally got into doing, he would turn, full deflection, fully around. In one direction, he’d hold it until you had gone through about 30 degrees of heading change, throwing off the deflection, go the other way. So about the only thing that I could do was to—instead of just wasting ammo, when he made his turn reversal, for a fraction of a second there was no lead. And I’d squeeze off maybe a half-a-second round—or a burst, that is, and get hits from the—I was slightly underneath him, so I would hit him from the nose and along the belly. And then he would burn a little and go out, smoke. And as I say, he was dropping flaps and gear and then raising them and 6 going to full throttle. So I had to stay back about 600 to 800 feet to keep from overrunning him. We started this out probably at 12,000 to 15,000 feet, and due to all this drag with the gear and flaps, we gradually descended, so over the period of the dogfight, kept getting lower and lower. And the end of the scrap came when he hit the water. 00:09:31 Never, as I said, never did—engine was still running. Don’t know whether it was developing full power or not, but still had some. And he was a very determined pilot. I wonder sometimes if he was one of the pilots that, if you’re familiar with Henry Sakaida’s book, The Winged Samurai, that flew Georges that we would tango with over Kure. And I think it was on the 19th of March, I think, he’s got described on page 126 of his book—I was reviewing that a while ago—that were such good pilots, and this guy sure acted like one of those. Anyway, after he hit the water—and all this time, we were heading away from my home base—I pulled up, raised the gear and flaps, and pointed nose back towards home and started climbing.
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