Bernard W Peterson Oral History Monologue

BERNARD W. PETERSON: After I came back from the hangar deck

that leads outside, 20 millimeter guns were on the

starboard side, just after the superstructure. One the

guns had sustained light damages from a direct hit on the

bomb of a diving bow and the bomb when the plane exploded

just above our superstructure. And the debris had

sprinkled down everybody -- just rained down from a higher

altitude than normal, and I was able to take a position and

we shot down a couple of Vals that they credited us to.

The assistant gunnery officer of the Enterprise, his

name was Elias Mott, M-O-T-T. Very fine man, and I was in

fairly close contact with until the end of his life. And

he died several years ago, probably 1988 was (inaudible)

contact. (inaudible) we were fairly close, because I met

his formerly Torpedo Six -- former commander [Glen Massey?]

who became Torpedo Three. Mott and Massey had been at

Annapolis graduating classmates, and so there was, he had

quite an association with our Torpedo Three, and later

interrogated all of us that participated from the Sixth

Squadron, the Sixth Company, when they were making up their

post-battle assessment of just how many planes attacked,

and just how many planes were shot down, and so forth. So

1 it was quite an air action, of course. And probably about

39 Jap dive bombers actually attacked the Enterprise. And we were officially credited with 15, and the supporting ships, mainly the North Carolina, which was the only one in service out there, got credited with some of the cruisers, others got partial credits.

But we had a lot of fires, and we had a lot of cavities, and we had a lot of holes in the flight deck, and we had to patch those and put these steel plates on to take on the returning flights. One of the returning flights was bombing three, which was diverted during [Caldwell’s?] time, it was diverted to Anderson Field at (inaudible)

Cactus Air Force Base for a month until (inaudible) while the planes were useless and pulled them out of there.

Class (inaudible) General Caldwell. This flight, as they left the Enterprise, it was designated flight 300, and then that’s pretty well documented. Some of our planes came back, they did night landings on the damaged deck. Some of them were diverted to the Saratoga, cause I (inaudible) once they would mayday (inaudible) during that, so.

Admiral Fletcher was worried, it took an awful lot of gas for seemingly two voyages, (inaudible) hot spot, and the rest of us were -- seemed like he was always low on fuel.

(laughter)

2 Anyway, the rudder was flipped, and went into a

circle, and it didn’t occur right away. We were underway,

probably doing 18 to 20 knots. All systems in the engine

room were working, functioning. Most of it was just

cleaning up dead, wounded, having to repair the flight deck

to take the planes back on. And suddenly, the ship went

into a hard starboard turn, and we couldn’t get it out.

And there was a destroyer that we just missed, just by

yards, just by yards, and we steamed in a circle until some

other ships company repair people finally got down there in

those compartments, (inaudible) and found the problem and

we had it under control again. (overlapping dialogue;

inaudible).

BRUCE PETTY: That was a warning to fix it, I think. To fix

that.

BWP: There were several --

BP: Recognized his wife.

BWP: -- several that were credited. He may be at our reunion

tonight, I think.

BP: Wife is.

BWP: The wife is here?

BP: Yeah. The fellow engineering officer, I think, retired as

a captain. He’s deceased now, but I think I recognized his

3 wife the other day. Seems like his name was Scott, but I’m

not sure.

BWP: So, that was corrected, we were underway, and in the

morning, all of the planes that were, that landed the night

before were dispatched directly to Cactus, but most of them

to [Efate?], and including our six [TBSOs?] that had made

it back.

And our skipper was named Commander Jett, J-E-T-T, and

he was the first to take off in my squadron the following

morning for Efate, and because he was going to be operating

on a remote field, we had loaded up his plane with spare

parts, and tools, and personal gear of the three crew

members, he and the two other crew (inaudible) and he had a

pretty heavy load -- he even had depth charges when he took

off. And he got airborne, he just dropped over the bow and

then you saw him flying, and then he made that climbing

turn, and he hit, he took the water and he carpeted it.

Second plane did the same damn thing. Heavily loaded.

Third plane did the same damn thing. One, two, three. And

they were just off a few hundred yards on our port side as

we cruised by. And the depth charges apparently shook

loose in the bomb bays of the [TBF?]. And they were armed

then, as it drop deeper into the water, and the depth

charges were going off, and our men were right close by.

4 And many of them died in those three planes. The nine men

in those three planes. And someone had permanent lifetime

internal injuries, those that survived.

Our skipper survived, this was August, we got him back

to my squadron in December, and none of the other men made

it back to us, (inaudible) so I wasn’t able to give you a

good follow up on the dead and the injured, or the names.

But one of them standing in the number four position was my

friend Bill [Lester?] and two others. Can we click off?

BP: No problem.

BWP: And landed in Efate. Operated in Efate for, until the

first of September, then we flew up and fought with the

Cactus Air Force, so AT Three was on Guadalcanal. They

weren’t there very long. The planes were damaged by

Japanese ships that were firing at night and attacked us.

And so, we have just a handful of F4F Wildcats left

onboard, and probably as many SBDs, just as a skeleton

fighter, and long range search support for the Enterprise

as we left the area on the -- late on the 25th, or early on

the 26th of August towards Tongatapu, and they had a repair

party down there consisting of CB1, and when we got into

Tonga, I had been assigned as a machinist mate, I had no

torpedo squadrons aboard, so I -- the ship’s company

grabbed me as a machinist, and then of course we’re all

5 checked out, and welding, and settling, and what have you.

I was on the settling cutting crew, cutting out all of the bomb damage all the way down to Tonga, and also I was put on the party to go down to the starboard aft quarter below the metalsmith’s shop that had taken a bomb hit, and we had a hole at the waterline, and we were shipping water, and we shored it up with timber, and mattresses, and whatever, and we had the pumps running 24 hours a day to get and keep the water out of it. So, the first thing we did when we got to

Tongatapu was to flood the port ballasts to drop the port side and raise the starboard bomb damage, and pull all that debris out there.

And over the years, friends of ours from Concord, New

Hampshire put me in touch with one of the Sea Bees that was on the wharf outside to do the repair. His name is Elmer

Barnard, B-A-R-N-A-R-D, of Concord, New Hampshire. Seems that Elmer and I were looking eye to eye, possibly, me from the inside and him from the outside. Well, the upside of that was we got the temporary patch put on, and we headed for Pearl, but every able-bodied man that was capable was, had a torch, was cutting out damage, and they had wired

Pearl Harbor about the extent of the damages in the bulkhead, DO numbers, and so forth. And so, when we got in on the 15th of September, 1942, they put us in drydock.

6 They had the finished pieces sitting on the dock ready to be loaded onto the carrier. It was amazing. (laughter) It was absolutely amazing. And I told you the Sara had been torpedoed the middle of January of ’42 when I was on it.

Well, she caught another fish at the end of August right after Enterprise left the area. Sara took another fish, so

Sara came quickly just behind us. We were in drydock together. We went over to [Canoy?], the air crews, and we got new planes, we got new pilots, we got new air crew, because they were strung all over the Pacific islands, and so we had to replenish there and retrain, but we didn’t have long to do it, because the Enterprise was scheduled to leave in the first week of October. This was the middle of

September. This was not 30 days. And they had to repair that ship and outfit it with a new air crew 10 that had come from San Diego forward training -- no, wait a minute,

I’m mistaken there. No, I’m not. That’s right, I’m right about that, because they shoved off without us, without the air crew on the 11th of October, and joined with the Hornet for the Battle of Santa Cruz, which took place on the 26th of October, where the Hornet was sunk, and the Enterprise got three 500 pounders, and where the (inaudible) was sunk.

And they, the Enterprise retired to Nouméa.

7 And at that point in time, you could accurately say

that there wasn’t no operational aircraft carriers in the

South Pacific. The Sara, when it got out of drydock, our

squadron, BT3 came aboard and sailed on her on the 7th or

the 10th of November. And then we headed for Nouméa. But,

the Enterprise was to get up to the northwest corner of

Guadalcanal on the 13th of November. And you will recall

the big battleship battle with the Hiei and the Kirishima,

and a half dozen heavy cruisers, and probably a dozen or

more tin cans against our measly little light cruisers and

our destroyers. It was dead night battle action on the

13th of November about 1:00 or 2:00 a.m. in the morning.

Some of the ships I still remember. I remember the Laffey,

destroyer Laffey.

BP: And was the Chicago (inaudible)?

BWP: No. The cruisers were the Helena, the Juno, the Atlanta,

the Portland, and the San Francisco. Some of them were not

-- even the light cruisers that normally have a six-inch

battery had had the 6 inches removed and became

antiaircraft cruisers with 12 batteries of 5 inch. The San

Francisco was Admiral Callaghan’s flagship. Admiral

Callaghan was killed aboard with most of his officers. I

don’t remember the exact losses, but almost every

battleship -- right every cruiser, light and heavy, and

8 every destroyer in our force (inaudible) save one was damaged or sunk that night.

And in the morning, we retired, that fleet retired -- now remember, the Saratoga, and I’m on the Sara, and we’re headed for Nouméa -- we haven’t even reached Nouméa yet.

In fact, we were slowed looking for Eddie Rickenbacker, who had made a water landing out there and was floating around in his life raft. It happened that the 13th of November is when they found him. The 13th of November is the date of the Battle of Guadalcanal, this naval battle that I’m speaking of. So we were out of the action, but the action was pretty heavy. The Hiei was hit, H-I-E-I, that battleship, 31,000 tons. They never fired a shot in anger in 30 years of its existence, got sunk in its first engagement by destroyers and flight crews in this horrible night action battle. Friend was firing on friend, and foe was firing on foe. And it was a hell of a mix up. The

Kirishima escaped; it went north and didn’t get hit that night. But the, our ships in the morning retired around

10:00 or 11:00 in the morning, and Cactus had gone up around six o’clock and they found Hiei off of Savo Island a derelict, just basically floating around with a couple of destroyers standing by. So, the Cactus Air Force went to bat on them. The Enterprise reached the area, and by that

9 time launched its planes in daylight, and every bomber, and every fighter, and every torpedo plane on the Enterprise, and everyone on Cactus all claim they sunk the Hiei, but the truth of the matter I think, goes to those surface ships the night before in that night battle action.

Now, I mentioned Admiral Callaghan had died. He had been Ghormley’s Chief of Staff back in Nouméa. And Nimitz had replaced him just days before he gave him this task force. And here died in his very first major combat. The upside of that battle would be Nimitz’s fourth star, and he congratulated everybody that had anything to do with it.

We even got congratulated, we had absolutely nothing to do with it. We were steaming. But we didn’t mind.

(laughter) We got the Presidential Citation when we were on the Enterprise, and we were pretty proud of that.

So that pretty well -- now, Hiei’s forces were the night bombardment force to cripple and level Cactus and

Henderson Field, they never reached it. The following day, the two lead battleships that left Nouméa with Enterprise were slower, came on the scene for the night action of the

14th that engaged then with Kirishima, who was coming back down to do the job that Hiei failed to do with his forces the night before. And were in the fore of the US 11th troop transport carrying the Jap replacements for

10 Guadalcanal. South Dakota and Washington were the two battleships involved. South Dakota took it in the superstructure and had to hightail it. It already had one of its turrets inoperable from the Battle of Santa Cruz on the 26th of October. So, Lee -- Admiral Lee, “Ching” Lee they called him -- he was on the Washington, that was his flagship. Kirishima had hit the South Dakota, turned the guns on four of our destroyers and sank them just like that. The Washington, who had the radar, and the Kirishima didn’t, put broadside right into Kirishima, and it sank almost immediately. Or it was sunk by the Japs aboard so we wouldn’t get possession. Because they were right off -- just between Savo and Cactus. They were right in our clutches.

So, the 11th troop transport, carrying thousands of

Japanese replacements, were sitting ducks for our dive bombers, and our torpedo bombers, and our fighters. And the upshot of that was they sank 10 out of the 11 of those

Jap transports. The last four were ordered to steam ahead and beach themselves on Guadalcanal. And some 2,000 troops got off, (inaudible) 1,500 pounds, or 1,500 bags of rice and just a paltry number of artillery pieces. All of that, almost five days of naval battle, and all that action, all those troops, and all those supplies, that was the end

11 result of the attack on Guadalcanal. And that battle was called the Battle of Guadalcanal.

Things changed when we came up on the Sara there in early December -- late November, early December to join the

Enterprise. We didn’t have anything to do. We could -- that was like an American lake, where just days we just didn’t tear it out in that area, they were hurt, they lost two thirds of their air force in the Battle of Santa Cruz on the 26th of October, and during the carrier action during the Battle of Guadalcanal, a lot of the Zeroes had come down, and they had subsequently been shot down, so they were hurt. And that probably goes down as the greatest naval battle in World War II, and the first time we sank a battleship, and we sank two of them.

So, we went on back to Nouméa, because they wanted us to save one of our carriers. Remember, we didn’t have any more carriers around. The Lex had gone down in Coral Sea, the Yorktown had gone down in Midway, the Hornet had gone down, and the Luxemburg, the Wasp had gone down by submarine action in September, and the only carriers we had were the Enterprise and the Saratoga. Both were OK in

December of ’42. Both ready to fight, but nothing to fight. We spent time on [Tontouta?] Island -- our squadrons off of the Saratoga, practicing, training, flying

12 long-range search, and swimming in that cold rive, and

taking the one-man life rafts and down the falls, and kind

of R and R up there. Kind of a laid back month of

December. I was flying, training air crew and turret. And

we would range through several hundred miles around New

Caledonia, and we looked at the beautiful countryside and

all of the mining operations, and we discovered a hereto

undisclosed secret airfield called on the planes -- was it

the [Galack?], because [Placida Galack?] I believe is what

they called it.

BP: I hadn’t heard about that.

BWP: Uh huh. They were flying V-17s and 24s and so, like 38s

out of there. It was a secret field on New Caledonia.

Very few people know about it. But it was there. I didn’t

report it. So, I got my flight orders. Flight squad, put

in for it a year and a half before, and I was selected to

go to flight school. And they told me if I packed up and

got down to Nouméa, then I could get on the learn line and

I could get back to San Francisco and I could start my

flight training. Well there wasn’t any transportation, so

I headed out at night with my parachute pack on my back and

my .45 across my chest in the middle of the night, and I

had about 25, 30 miles to go, you know, down that jungle

road. The natives came out, jumped me, and they scared me

13 on the trail. And they had bushy head, and with the white

paint on their face, and ugly looking creatures. They were

out of bounds around Nouméa. The French wouldn’t let them

get anywhere near the place. And they were making gestures

to me with their fingers -- two fingers -- and their

fingers going up in the air going puff. I knew what they

wanted, they wanted cigarettes. Well, that was easy. I

took my parachute bag off, and I gave them each a package

of cigarettes, and I discovered the Hershey’s in there, so

I gave them some Hershey bars, oh yeah, and I said bye-bye.

Adios. I says, “Me, Nouméa.” “Me, Nouméa.” And I started

out about 15, 20 feet down the road. One of them come

running back to me and he says “(inaudible) Nouméa,” 90

degrees from the direction I was going. Well, I knew damn

well that road was Nouméa, I’d seen signs on it. But what

it was, was a shortcut. They wanted to take me on the

shortcut. So, all night long we followed this old jungle

trail.

BP: These natives?

BWP: Two natives. Two natives in front of me, me in the back,

and with my .45 all cocked in my holster, me and my

parachute pack. And in the morning, when day break come up

over those mountains, sure enough, there was Nouméa, and

there was the mainland. I gave them all of my Hershey’s

14 and all of my cigarettes, and I went down there, and signed

into a Navy receiving camp down there. Very primitive.

And I caught a boat out to the Sara and I took my final

flight physical. I had all my final papers signed onboard

ship, and went back to the receiving ship. We call it a

receiving ship -- it’s a tent on shore, but it’s a

receiving ship. Navy terminology.

BP: Yeah.

BWP: And the Sea Bees were building a road back in the direction

of [Tontouta?] that I had actually traveled on by foot.

(inaudible) was going to sail for a number of days, and

they were recruiting able-bodied seamen out of the

receiving station, and they put me on a D8 Caterpillar

tractor, and I pushed probably about a mile of road back

into the jungle back in the direction I had come until the

ship sailed. And I had been told by the officer at the

receiving station sorry, but you’re going stateside. It

doesn’t carry as much priority as getting these wounded

marines that they had in the hospitals the in Nouméa from

Guadalcanal back on the ships and back home. So, I thought

to myself, I’m going to be here forever because we’ve got

nothing but wounded Marines all over the place, by the

thousands. And I wondered, how am I going to get out of

this mess? So, for a couple of nights I had gone down to

15 the dock and I talked to the officer that was in charge of the Lurline, resupplying, whatever, there was a dockside there. And I said, what are you going to do if you get torpedoed? You’re going to need a few able-bodied sailors onboard. He says we can handle it. I said how many you going to have? He said we’re going to have a couple thousand. I said those guys are going to be wounded.

They’re walking cripples. I said if you need me, here’s my name, I’m over to the receiving station, I’ve got orders, first available transportation to the States. I’m going back to flight school.

Well, I saw from my position on this D8 Cat,

(inaudible) was sticking, had -- getting up steam, smoke was coming up out of the stacks, and I’m about three miles away. And I thought to myself, well, there goes my chances. And the yeoman there in the receiving station,

(inaudible) came out and got me off the tractor, and brought me in the receiving station, and had my orders.

And the lieutenant said, “What are you doing?” He said,

(inaudible) “Peterson’s orders ready to go (inaudible).”

He says, “He’s not going anywhere.” Says, “He doesn’t have permission.” And the yeoman produced a note that they wanted me, able-bodied. So I got on. We had a lifeboat rail, and I had the boat in charge, and a lot of them were

16 walking wounded, (inaudible) amputees and I would say the bulk of them were section eight candidates, psychos. They would play poker out on the promenade deck, with their little model bag, little leather bags, little cloth bags, and they’d open them up, and the money was Japanese gold teeth that they’d knocked out with their rifle butts. I’ll bet you two gold teeth and I’ll raise you three. I watched that go on for three weeks, we went all the way back to San

Francisco unescorted, which I thought was criminal. And we landed January of 1943. And just as I was leaving,

(inaudible) had come on to Nouméa, on the land, and

(inaudible) had been there recuperating from malaria, and he went on back to Guadalcanal. [Ozzy?] had his headquarters there, had taken over the whole -- several buildings. One was an old warehouse, and one was a diplomatic building, French, or our US Embassy. One was world class, one was pretty lousy. But (inaudible) number of days, and a short tour of the mainland, hundreds of ships in Nouméa.

The 25th Miracle Division had relieved all the Marines in the end of December, and we had (inaudible) to New

Zealand to retrain and regroup for the subsequent island hopping that they were going on in the Solomon Islands. We got to San Francisco, and I checked into St. Mary’s Naval,

17 St. Mary’s College in Moraga, just a short ways out of San

Francisco, and I hoped to be an enlisted private, but they said sorry, we canceled that program, and I had to resign my aviation (inaudible), and swear into the US Naval

Reserve V-5 Cadet Program if I wanted to go through flight training, which was totally different than the information

I had received. I wanted to stay enlisted, but I wanted to fly, so I resigned my Navy enlisted rating, which really hurt, because I’d worked awful hard for that. I was making

275, $300 a month working as flight crew, and I had to go to $75 a month cadet pay for the remaining year of 1943.

Went on to primary flight (inaudible) at the Livermore

Naval Air Station just a short ways from St. Mary’s. We pulled a weekend, (inaudible) Sunday in San Francisco, so spent four or five months there in the area, which was pretty nice.

And when we got to, past our primary stage, they sent us to Texas, three old World War I Pullmans, and that was some trip, I’ll tell you. You wake up in the middle of the night, and there’ll be a diner on the deck, and the next morning there’d be a load of pigs on the on the deck. And it took us, must have taken us a week or 10 days to get down there. It was hot, it was like August. No air conditioning. Sometimes some of the guys would get off and

18 have dates (inaudible) be there two or three hours. The

last stop, (inaudible). About six guys got to have dates,

and they left early. So, the rest of us cadets were on the

train, about 89 of us, and we got on down to Corpus

Christi, and we were assigned quarters in an outlying field

called the cabins, where we were going to start what they

called basic training, (inaudible) vibrators there.

BP: Thirteen?

BWP: Thirteen.

BP: And when -- oh?

BWP: (inaudible). I have the figures at home, but I don’t

remember my flight class, (inaudible). But when we got

there, those six had hitchhiked, and got there before us

and had the best quarters.

BP: How about that? God, (inaudible).

BWP: (laughter) Crying face, yeah. So, we had our basic

training BT-13s there, cabinets, and unusual maneuvers

under the hood. Basically, it was radio range, navigation

training, following that, we went to, Livermore for

fighters, Livermore Air Base, we were SNJ-5s, we call that

fighter squadron.

BP: Livermore California?

BWP: No, Texas. Livermore, Texas.

BP: Oh.

19 BWP: Just south of Corpus Christi.

BP: Oh, OK.

BWP: And there, we flew the SNJ-5s. We did a lot of gun

reading, a lot of cross-country navigation on our own. And

one of those early December mornings, cold, freezing

mornings, I had to tow the sleeve out of the Gulf for my

flight. I was a tow plane. And they were making runs and

the engine cut. Well, I figured well maybe I’m messing up,

so I reached up to hit the carburetor heat lever, and I

pushed that (inaudible) forward, and nothing changed. So,

Ensign [Hannah?], my flight instructor, (inaudible),

Hannah. Hannah told me (inaudible) and head on back to

Padre Island. I don’t know, probably it’s only a mile and

half, Padre Island, out on the Gulf. Then he told me to

keep my wheels up and make a beach landing, because he

didn’t want me to flip over on my back, because if I’m

dead, they wouldn’t be able to get down to help me. So I

did, and I went in screeching on in, on a belly landing on

Padre Island. (inaudible) that evening, Ensign Hannah came

into our quarters, and I was sweating blood thinking it was

my fault somehow and I might get washed out of the program

because in December of ’43, the Air Force and Navy were

washing pilots out for the slightest infractions. They

thought that they had the war won. And I was really

20 sweating blood. And it must have been ten o’clock, he came in, knocked on the door, and he came on in. He said,

“Peterson,” by the tone of his voice, I knew I had had it.

(laughter) He said somebody left the Cotter key out on that carburetor heat control, he says you’re completely exonerated. So I thanked him.

So at any rate, we have celestial navigation at Corpus, and we learned navigation through sextants, and I loved it.

And I would never use it again, because it was mainly for the patrol bomber squadron navigators. And we were pretty adept at plotting a course. That’s all we ever used, other than the radar and radio (inaudible) I never used celestial after that. I was well trained in it. Loved it.

(inaudible) star finding. Any rate, our class graduated

December the 21st, 1943. About six of us went into the

Marine Corps as second lieutenants, the rest of them chose

Navy ensign. The selection had been made through Colonel

Roy Mangrum, who was head of cadets. Now he had led the

Marine dive bomber squad -- first squad off the long island of Guadalcanal on August 21st. And he his rear seat man,

Dennis Burke, had like 50 missions between (inaudible) transport.

21 Dennis was one of the five enlisted men that had gone back

to flight training. And he was a corporal in the Marine

Corps. Of course, I was, back then (inaudible) Navy, but

we met at St. Mary’s, we went all the way through primary,

and through (inaudible) and Corpus, and there we were

standing in line being commissioned and Colonel Mangrum was

pinning the wings on us, all of us, all the cadets. And he

came up to Dennis, his old rear seat man, and he hesitated.

(inaudible) brand new, sparkling golden wings, and he had

one in his hand, he put it back, and he took his old

tarnished set of wings off of himself and pinned them on

Dennis, that was very touching.

BP: Yeah.

BWP: I was standing right next to him, and he pinned a bright

new pair on me. So anyway, we took a train down to Opa-

Locka, Florida, and it was Christmas of 1943, and we had

travel time, so about a dozen of us stopped at New Orleans,

and we had quite a three days. I had been engaged to be

married to a young girl who was three years younger than

me, I’m only 20 at this time. And so she was 17. She

didn’t choose to come and marry me when I got my

commission, so I broke the engagement off. So, I was

footloose and fancy free at that time, and we went on down

to Opa-Locka Florida, and I joined an SB-5 squadron down

22 there at Master’s Field, up on the main base right next door, they were flying TBS, flying a TBS at the time.

The chief that had saved my life on the Enterprise on

August 24th ’42 was Jim Hudson. He was permanently based

(inaudible) as leading chief of the training squadron that

I was at there in Opa-Locka. And March used to get on my case something fierce. “Why in the hell did he join the

Marine Corps if you -- I thought you were Navy through and through. (laughter) I was flying backseat on the SBD, and one of my instructors was (inaudible) and I had

(inaudible), and I had a terrible tummy ache, and I raised

-- on the intercom I said, “I’m not feeling so hot,” and we had just about finished with the training mission, and I asked him if we could go back, and he said sure. So, we went on back, he said go to sick bay and check in. So, I went over to sick bay, and they started asking me a million questions. And all I wanted to do was get something for my stomach. But again, they were looking for every damn little reason to wash a cadet out, or a brand new ensign, or a new second lieutenant who only had his wings, because they’re trying to thin back the forces. And they gave me, they subjected me to two days of testing. It was ridiculous. I had to take the Naval entrance exam for

23 cadets, the Air Force entrance exam for cadets, other bunch

of battery of tests. Then I had to go up -- I had a

perfect record, you understand. I even saved an SBD one

night from crashing. It took off, and I lost my engine,

and I had my gears pull, and I managed to get the gear down

and stopped it before it crashed into a chain link fence at

the end of the field. I never scratched a plane other than

that SMJ that I spoke of earlier on Padre Island. And that

wasn’t my fault. I had a perfect record, or actually it

was a top gunner at Kingsville, highest (inaudible) bullet,

colored bullets, painted bullets in the sleeve that spread

throughout the entire war, because of my previous

(inaudible) experience. (inaudible) tie the sleeves, from

the time I got in the squadron, from the time I went to

cadets. Had kind of a leg up there.

BP: Yeah.

BWP: At any rate, I came up for a board review of officers, and

they asked me what I thought was wrong. I said there’s

nothing wrong. I said, I complained of this tummy ache, I

came to sick bay for some pills, and they put me through

all of these tests. And then they asked one of the

officers in the medical department, a psychologist or

something, “How did he do?” Perfect, he said. “Well,

what’s he here for?” “Well, we couldn’t find anything

24 wrong with him, and we need a decision. I can’t turn him loose without having put a finger on this problem.” They said, “How do you feel young man?” I said I feel fine.

And so, sitting up there on that board was my old AP friend

Bill [Lester?], who’s now a full lieutenant or possibly lieutenant commander. And Bill and I stood eye to eye, looked at each other, he says, “Are you the Peterson who

(inaudible) BT-3?” I said, “Yes sir.” He says, “And you’ve been in cadet training all this year, when did you get your survival (inaudible)?” I said everybody

(inaudible). We were something, and that day (inaudible) one battle to the next, and he spoke up for me, and they all said this is ridiculous. They gave me a 30-day leave, which I took and went to California.

On the way back, I road my (inaudible) convertible to outside of Tallahassee. I was in the backseat, I picked up a Naval ensign who was going to Sanford, Florida at the train station in New Orleans. He was driving in the wee hours of the morning, and he came upon a cattle crossing in the road, and he turned radically, and went off the road, we rolled three times. So, I got back right into the flying, never had any problem, not at all, nobody ever raised a question, and yeah, never ever knew why they did what they did to me.

25 BP: That’s weird.

BWP: That is weird.

BP: I never heard of it.

BWP: No, I never heard of it before or since. But I do know

that I didn’t get the survivor’s leave, and that I should

have. I never had any time off as a cadet, and I couldn’t

go home when I got to travel, (inaudible) to Florida

because I didn’t have time. I had received (inaudible)

right on down to the next station.

Well, that was from January until the end of April. We got

orders to Cherry Point, I went on up to Cherry Point

because I was bitching, because I didn’t want to fly SBDs.

They said, well we’ll send you up to Cherry Point to see if

we can get you into a fighter squad. At that point in

time, I met my wife Marian, she was in the corporal recruit

assignment office. We were married 28 days later. I came

on down to join the newly formed fighter squadron, the

Corsairs, 350 miles south of the main base at Cherry Point,

a place near Columbia, South Carolina. A little outlying

field that the Air Force had deserted. It’s called

Congaree, C-O-N-G-A-R-E-E. Tarpaper shacks, no hangars.

Very primitive, just like overseas.

BP: No plumbing, either.

26 BWP: Yeah, we had plumbing, but barely. So, the commanding

officer was (inaudible) his name was Major Donald Sapp, S-

A-P-P. Later in his career he put a T in there, to S-T-A-

P-P. And we were doing the regular fighter syllabus,

section division tactics, gunnery, night carrier, day

carrier, field carrier, landing practice, hanging about 30

feet over the tops of pine trees, at 75 knots, wheels down,

flaps down, in a big circle until the commander (inaudible)

deviate, cut. We lost Frederickson, he just coughed and he

hit the trees, and he crashed into a reservoir, and some of

the boys ran out to try to get him out of his Corsair, and

he was just underwater and he hit his head on the gun sight

and he was dead before we knew it.

But my engine coughed a couple times in that pattern, right

over the tops of those pine trees, and I thought I’d crash,

but I caught it and managed to keep it from hitting the

trees. However, Corsairs have wing folding mechanisms, the

mechanism down between the rudders which equalized the flow

of hydraulic fluid, so that the wings would go out slowly

and together, and a line came loose from the rough

landings, the field carrier landings, and I hit on one of

the landings, and I got a shot of hydraulic fluid right in

the eye, and I was rolling at 75 knots down the runway

27 blind, and I managed to slow her down and get it on off the runway, and get it grounded, (inaudible) grass off to the side, and they rushed me in and washed my eyes out, and that was close.

Well from there, we went to Parris Island for the gunnery, because we couldn’t have gunnery inland -- we were inland 100 and some odd miles, too far to fly out over the water. So, we went to Parris Island and we had gunnery there for a couple of weeks. Finally we got our orders to, on the end of November of 1944, I believe. So the year mark.

Oh, I forgot one of the interesting little episodes.

A week after Marian and I got married, June 24th, 1944, I flew the squadron order up from Congaree, 350 miles north of Cherry Point, dropped the orders off, said hello to

Marian, got back in the plane, was flying back to Congaree at night. And Florence, south of Atlanta, population about

30,000 people, there’s an Air Force base there, and that happened to be one of my radio checkpoints, so I was right over the tower when my engine cut. I was about 4 or 5,000 feet, and what had happened was I broke a fuel line. The main fuel line, it hit the hot exhaust and caught on fire, and flames were engulfing the entire plane. And I’m over

Florence, population of 30 or 35,000 people, with lights

28 and, you know, dense lights right around the city, and then a smattering of lights the further out you got. I had to take that plane 20 to 1 glide ratio, something like that.

Flew like a brick without an engine. And I got it on out to the outlying area, and I bailed when I had less than a thousand feet. Pulled the hatch back, and I tried it earlier, but the flames came in, but by the time I slowed it down, and got it nose up to almost a stall, when I jumped to the right hand side, and I cleared, and I popped the ‘chute. And I hit some of the pine trees as I was coming down, I was coming down like a bullet, and I had like two or three oscillations before I hit the ground, and

I hit the ground real hard. I hit my feet first, then my butt, then my chin came down and hit my knees. Not how to land a parachute. All the people of Florence came out, ambulances, and fire trucks, and like half the population saw me because I was right over their city like a rocket coming down. And mothers would come out and pat me, kiss me. (laughter) My son’s a pilot, you know, and one thing or another. But the plane hit -- the Corsair hit. You know, Corsairs were affectionately called dead wing birds well this one really had dead wings. (laughter) Blew the roof off a Negro farm, and we had to adjust for that when I made the report. The officer really (inaudible) handled it

29 for me, but I had to sign the papers and send them down to the squadron a few days later. The government took care of his trampled corn field, all the wrecking trucks that had to go in and pick up the pieces of my Corsair, and fixed his roof, and probably paid some extra money on top of it.

It wasn’t the first time we had to compensate somebody for our damage. When we were flying Opa-Locka, our gunnery range was along the Tamiami Trail, and the Indians lived back in the Everglades, and we didn’t know where they lived on these little islets back in the swampy area back in there. One day they brought up an old Model A that was riddled with bullets, and claimed we had shot it.

(laughter) And we had to compensate the Indians for their beat up old Model A. So, the dark family there, they got compensated. The next day, Major Sapp says, it’s customary for me as commanding officer over there in Bougainville, somebody got shot down, they had a bad wreck, just to get them back in the plane just as quick as possible. He says,

“How do you feel?” I said, “Oh, I just have a stiff neck,

I’m ready.” Next morning, he says, “Let’s go and have a friendly little dogfight.” I said, OK. So, we went up about 25,000 feet, and we dogfought all the way from

Charleston all the way back to Columbia, South Carolina pulling probably four and a half, five Gs. And of course,

30 now he’s got 11 kills back in late ’43 out of Bougainville.

He is clearly tops, and he was showing me every trick in the book, and he’s getting on my tail. No matter what I did. But I was watching very, very closely, and by the time it was over I was getting on his tail. He was damn proud. So, we fought for about an hour and a half, and came back. And planes used for that period of time was just hell on the body. I mean, you’re just exhausted; it’s like you done a full day’s work. But that helped me. I mean, I just washed the night before out completely.

Without telling Marian, and Marian flew down on a DC-3 a week later, and Major Sapp went out to the plane to help her with her bag, and the first thing he said was, “Boy, that was a close one Pete had the other night.” And so he spilled the beans, I couldn’t hide my bailout probably.

Anyway, we went to Miramar as replacement pilots in the end of December. Drove that old beat up Mercury that I had all the way over, sold it when I got to San Diego.

Marian went on down and met my mom and dad there, and my stepfather, and she stayed about a week. She stayed through Christmas. By that time, we were on the high seas with about 2,000 ground crunchers from (inaudible) and probably three dozen Marine pilots on the general OHS, the

Marine transport. We went out to Russell Island, dropped a

31 bunch of the ground crunchers off, then we went, then they

took us up to Guadalcanal, and the pilots went into a pilot

replacement pool. I was there a week or 10 days, and I

toured the island, I did all the battlefields to

familiarize myself with what I had not seen back in August

7th, 1942. I had a pretty good idea of Guadalcanal, the

control towers, the legs were all eaten off by termites,

you know, the fighters stripped, and (inaudible) the ground

battle and air battle that went on there.

Well I drew VMF 223, which was (inaudible) Airfield up

in Bollingville; with about five other pilots, they all

drew 212, and 222, and 221, and whatever. And so I went up

on a two day cruise up there on an LST to Bollingville, and

(inaudible) skippers meeting (inaudible) [Bill Miley?] that

I had gone to high school with.

BP: (inaudible).

BWP: So anyway, I checked into the [Tokino?], and our squadron

had already flown the Corsairs off to [Finch Haven?],

(inaudible). In the second week of January, 1945. And

there was nothing there but the gunner (inaudible), he was

our leading chief, and a dozen enlisted men, and some old

beat up Corsairs they couldn’t get flying that they

cannibalized for one thing or another. We turned them to

the New Zealand Air Force, they took them. DC-3 came in

32 and I loaded onboard, and flew on up the same way our squadron had gone, about a week behind them. (inaudible)

New Guinea, we had lost an engine before we got there, and

(inaudible) Air Force looked at it for us. We thought they had it right, we took off (inaudible) and had a little trouble there, and we got up to (inaudible) and we had engine trouble, and finally we demanded an engine change, and we were in the OQ tent area off to the east side of

(inaudible).

The Jap invasion first came down during the night, coming down in a battle truck, and made a suicide landing a hundred yards from our tents. And they came through with bayonets, grenades, and everything, blowing up tents, jabbing beds at night, whether anybody in it or not, and the Marines. And ran out to the planes, out to the strip, the grenades still on their bodies, pulling the pin on the grenade and blowing up the planes. And in the morning, I had slept through it all. They had to wake me up, thought

I was dead, and they shook me. And I was just dead tired.

I mean dead tired. A Marine came in, “Wake up, sir, wake up, sir, are you all right, are you all right?” I said,

“All right, yeah, why?” “We’ve had an invasion,” he says,

“there’s a lot of men killed out there. We was coming through tents to see if everybody was OK.” They killed us.

33 (inaudible). And I slept through the whole damn thing.

Providence.

We got that engine changed and we flew on to Samoa, and I joined MF-223, the Bulldogs. The Japs had left probably 150,000 of their troops spread out all over the

Philippine islands, after we had gone through (inaudible),

1945 (inaudible) and came on down, (inaudible) the Japs

(inaudible), they put the torch to it, though they weren’t supposed to. (inaudible). But we were (inaudible) on the landings, they cleared the islands, (inaudible). And we were flying two and three missions a day, but of course

(inaudible) napalm and 500 pounders, 1,000 pounders, and most of the information (inaudible) being rescued by

(inaudible) supplied (inaudible) and then kept there, so that when MacArthur’s forces did come in (inaudible) ’44, that they would be able to see what they were doing for us, and so we (inaudible) air controllers, and so we were getting fantastic targeting information.

And I think the most fun flights that we were having was attacking hundreds of Japanese airfields that were

(inaudible) Del Monte plantation areas in Northern Indian

Isle, and there were still planes down there. And we’d go in there and we’d just go and we’d blow them up. Sometimes

(inaudible) wouldn’t blow, (inaudible) they were simply out

34 of gas, or sometimes they were dummies that they left

simply to sucker us in, and (inaudible) antiaircraft gun.

Because we were able to get a lot of planes on the ground,

and one of these bases I remember (inaudible) airfield just

as he was taxiing, and he put the troops on there, they had

a lot of antiaircraft fire, and I was just pulling up from

one of my runs, we made repeated runs, we didn’t just let

all our ammunition go at once, we probably did 10 runs,

right there at ground level. And we had a hell of a lot of

flak. I was coming out of my last load, I was coming up

under a B-25 just as he caught it, got it right in the

engines, and that B-25 just came apart right in front of

me, and I flew through some of the debris and ground

antiaircraft, Japanese aircraft, (inaudible). And nobody

got out, it crashed. And that’s what I was flying home

with back to Samoa, another 300 miles with that vision of

the B-25 going in, and it stuck with me for a long time.

BP: This was in spring of ’45?

BWP: This was March ’45, yeah. And then, we would catch the

Japs in the open, you know, and we would get them up

against a ravine, or a mountain, or whatever had been

trapped, and they wouldn’t give up. And they laid out

their panels, it was all Army operation, on the ground

operation, no Marines on the ground. Marine air. No

35 Marines on the ground, it was all Army. And we would come in and we’d lay the napalm on them, and we would just kill thousands of them. We’d just see those guys just burning and squirming down there. But they wouldn’t give up. And it was easier for us to do it than the Army to go in there and take a lot of losses for the infantry. It was horrible. It was just an incineration, day after day we would fly back with that load and lay it in there. They wouldn’t let some 25s come back in there, and they dropped

(inaudible) they wanted just Marines, so we were flying double duty. Some of our missions, if we had to fly cover a task force, a resupply task force over on the west coast going almost six hours, and there usually wasn’t any action, because by that time the Jap kamikazes had started in October, and they had hundreds of kamikazes that had just started their kamikaze operation, and we had taken a lot of losses on our ships, particularly in the second week of January ’45, when they made the landing (inaudible)

Gulf. And we drove them back, but not then (inaudible) probably no Japanese aircraft after January, or certainly by the first of February in ’45, they just used them all up. And so we were just cleaning up the air force that was still on the ground.

36 However, they could fly in from (inaudible) and resupply some of those fields, and (inaudible) some of the live stuff that we were getting. However, it wasn’t all just a bunch of trash that we were shooting at, we got some operational aircraft that never got into combat and tangled with us. About May we got brand new (inaudible), I called

(inaudible), we had some problems with them, (inaudible) the engines would cut out at 15,000 feet, and it turned out there was softening (inaudible) in the supercharger area, where the mixing, you know, the mixing valve. And we got to that after a couple of weeks, and I had a dead stick landing, and didn’t want to bail out (inaudible) water land or bail. I was an assistant engineering officer, and I was doing most of the checkout, (inaudible) was also -- well he and I went through all 24 planes to get them operational.

But it took (inaudible) people come in and help us. We put

(inaudible) just to stoop it over. (inaudible) took out raw materials for the oil, for the fuel, (inaudible) came in with the supercharger. We got them all flying, they weren’t cutting out. And so we flew on up to Clark Field, and there was four squadrons of us, probably 20 to 25 planes in that squadron. Stayed in Clark overnight, refueled, (inaudible) crew chief, and we didn’t have any enlisted crew with us. Got on the truck, went into Manila

37 that one night, (inaudible) and the next morning we

(inaudible) B-25 Marine airplane going all the way, 1,200 miles all the way up to Okinawa from Clark Field. And we flew through a hell of a thunderstorm, we got spread out all over the map, and [A.H. Perry?] we called him [Cuz?], he was very close to me, he never come out of it. So,

(inaudible) when we got to Okinawa that his wife had just given birth to a baby girl. It was sad. When we came in, we were supposed to (inaudible) there was two Japs

(inaudible) but we couldn’t find (inaudible) and we came in over Cherry Castle, the Marines were still fighting the

Japs holed up in the limestone caves there at Cherry

Castle. Four hundred and 500 feet (inaudible) shooting at us. We got, we had received no instruction whatsoever in how to come in, it was still raining, just a pouring rain, lasted more than a day. Had over 100 Corsairs trying to get down to Okinawa.

We landed at [Nonten?]. [Nonten?] is about 7,000 feet long, but it had a runway that went up, and then the last half of it went down, and we were landing on (inaudible), so you could get a lot of planes on the deck quickly. And when we got up to the top of the end of the 3,500 feet, we were breaking down, and we looked at the top and looked down at 3,500 feet more of runway that nobody told us

38 about. The tower never said it’s a 7,000-foot runway.

When you get to the center there’s another 3,500 -- don’t let it fool you, boys. Not a peep, not any help at all.

We never lost a plane, (inaudible) I don’t know how we did it. But I remember it was a trying six and a half hour, seven-hour flight because of that wing tax. Sit there, just compound up the taxi way, they let us enter. Raining come down, (inaudible) couldn’t see a God damn thing. It was getting dark. Cut my engine, and I just remember easing back in my seat saying thank God. We really sweat it out.

We fought kamikazes mainly between Kyushu, southern

Japan, and northern Okinawa. We went on raids to -- clear up to, we had a big raid in July of ’45. [Haldin’s?] task force was up there, and they were raiding the area. And we went into a field called Miyazaki on the east coast of

Kyushu. Colonel King was our commanding officer, and he was leading the -- actually he was a major, but days later he was became colonel, Howard King, and he was the commanding officer of VMF 223, our squadron. We had Ken

Walsh there at the time, he was a former enlisted pilot, first Marine (inaudible) member in Guadalcanal, shot down

20 in the Solomons from the time the first Corsairs got there in February until he left in September of ’43. He

39 was with 222 in the Philippines as their operations officer, but when he got to Okinawa became grouped --

King’s operations officer. He had five fighter squadrons under him, so he flew with the squadron of his choice, fly one day with 221, another day with 222, fly with us, 223.

With 223 one day he shot down his 21st fighter. I wasn’t on that flight; I flew (inaudible) Jim [Van Rye?], he was flying wingman with Ken Walsh.

Any rate, I think the outstanding raid that we had was the raid that we pulled on Miyazaki. We came in from 15,

20,000 feet, and we were using the first proximity fuse bombs, and the flight the day before had gone off with a flight of four, and wiped out all four Corsairs. They were improperly armed. And we worked all not on arming them, the next morning, we were the next flight out, and we hoped that they fixed the arming problem, yeah, and they did, fortunately. So we -- I came in on number two as wingman on Kenny as we came in on Miyazaki through cloud cover, in the quite early morning, and we caught hundreds of Jap planes on the ground, and with our proximity fuse bombs we just wiped them out. And I strafed the control tower, and on my way out I still had my eight five-inch high velocity rockets on my wings, and I fired at a destroyer or destroyer escort sized Jap ship that was firing at us off

40 of the coast. And I laid all eight rockets and broadsided him. I’m sure he either went down or was certainly out of order. He was hurt badly.

And so we weren’t jumped by any Jap planes, mainly because of the weather. It was just stinky weather. Maybe they figured nobody in their right mind would be up there bombing in that kind of weather, but we were. We lost of couple of guys who ran out of gas, or were shot, had engine trouble, one or the other. And one of them was in our squadron, and he later took a submarine, and he got back in about two weeks, had a nice crew on a submarine.

(inaudible) Bay, which had all of the ships, hundreds of ships that were ready for our invasion of Kyushu scheduled for the following November were assembling. I mean there’s tens of thousands of people in Okinawa, and ships, and their supplies ready for the invasion. We already had our fuel marked out for us in Kyushu that 223 was going to operate on. So we were plagued by kamikazes, but not to the extent that the folks on the initial landings in March.

This was -- we got up there in June, mid-June. The fighting was still going on by a week later, and secured the whole island. So, we were just fighting occasional kamikazes that were coming down that headed for the destroyer radar picket patrols, which were out 50 mile

41 distances north of Okinawa on a 180-degree grid, and they

would send us out and stack us in one of those grids maybe

off to the west 10,000 feet, 15,000 feet, 20, 25, 30,

35,000 feet. And we’d go back another 45 miles, another

might be 50 miles, another might be 100 miles, after that

might be 150 miles out. So, this was a cap on that air

control, and so sometimes a kamikaze would come through

your sector, sometimes they wouldn’t, sometimes it’d be in

the sector next to you, but the wrong altitude, you

wouldn’t get -- the fighter director wouldn’t send you out.

So you saw a lot of the action, and only got to chase two

or three flights. But they were still hitting those

destroyer escorts and taking horrific casualties.

One famous destroyer escort was the second Laffey.

The first Laffey got sunk in the Battle of Guadalcanal on

November 13th. The second Laffey took 22 kamikazes in that

position. (inaudible) some war bonds off of it. So, war

was over. Five or six of the top people got killed

(inaudible) celebrating, riding in the Jeep and they got

(inaudible) they flipped over into a rice patty, and they

all drowned in six inches of water, and broke their necks.

Flak and everything --

BP: Were these pilots you knew?

42 BWP: Yeah, top pilots. (inaudible). Aces. Some of them been

up there two years. Any rate, the celebration killed a lot

of people in Guadalcanal. A lot of the ships and everybody

was firing, you know, raining on like Quonset huts, and

(inaudible) metal rain, you know, just coming down. It

wasn’t safe, everybody was firing their .38s or their .45s,

(inaudible) that they’d had ready for (overlapping

dialogue; inaudible). And then September came, and we had

the terrific 140, 130 mile an hour hurricane that just

about destroyed Okinawa and the forces. Most of the

seaplanes, (inaudible) beach, flipped upside down on the

beach, (inaudible) finally in the car. A lot of ships were

pulling loose, were floating out after we repaired half a

dozen or more damaged planes in the morning, we went out

the next week (inaudible) the hurricane, some had people on

them, the crews. And I got my orders. I was high on the

list, me and Big Jim Robinson got that top billing for

home. We took off mid-September 1946 with a bunch of

Marines, and we lost an engine just outside (inaudible) we

just barely made it back on one engine, we got about a

quarter of a mile short of the runway. We just didn’t have

the power to get back in. (inaudible) we got into that,

(inaudible) fly the plane. We got them back to [Evo?], and

there was hundreds of people coming back at that time

43 (inaudible) for the transportation, you just let us do it, figure it for you, and tell you when we’re ready. He said

BS, and so we went out and (inaudible) a ride on the battleship Maryland. And the Marine officer of the deck

(inaudible) he gave us the admirals, emergency battle station quarters, up in the superstructure, Jim and I.

(inaudible). And the crew was a pretty stiff outfit. They had really locked down, and they were battleship officers and crew, and very stiff Navy. We weren’t used to this, and we decided we wanted to soften these guys up. Jim and

I had always -- there’d been garrison fights, (inaudible), and he’s 6’4”, 235-pounder. Just made it as a pilot. He was a big jolly guy, a fun guy. We would do soft shoe dances, and ask the deck officers -- he asked if we could sing old Navy ballads. They just loved us. We got those guys loosened up by the time we got back to Bremerton.

They had [Robby?] on the wheel, and me on the horn, bringing it on (inaudible) pretty good on it, yeah, I mean they made (inaudible) you know? So a big celebration, the crowd knew we were coming back, and nope, I was coming back

(inaudible) treatment like that at all. Nothing. We got the royal treatment from the home crowd there in Bremerton.

And they met us, Robby and I, there was a Marine sedan there waiting for us, and they took us over to the Marine

44 barracks in Bremerton. They said, what did you do

(inaudible) Chevy, ’40 Chevy, (inaudible) Robby and I did,

we just had a blast. A few other Marines straggled in,

other transportation there, Marine pilots. It was 30 days

before (inaudible) poor Marian, living (inaudible) driven

to southern California, was waiting with my mother for me

to come down, and every day I thought I would be coming

down. It was drug out for 30 days. It was cruel and

unusual punishment.

BP: Indeed.

BWP: So, I finally got my orders in November of ’45, and I took

the, went on inactive duties, what they did with all the

(inaudible) pilots that had gone through the training

program. And I went to Curtis Wright Aeronautic Institute,

and became an instant aeronautical engineer. I went and

joined the corporation, the Air Research Manufacturing

Company, (inaudible). And we bought a little home in Dell,

little fix up deal, which (inaudible) closer to (inaudible)

where they were doing the flying wing for a year, and then

we had designed and built, had built a (inaudible) later

there. And we had two sons, Eric and Randy, and I was

working in the research lab there, (inaudible) research

assembling their early research gas driven engines. When

the Korean War started June of ’50, and I volunteered

45 (inaudible) when you’re ready, come get me, he came and got me, and ordered me to pilot training in El Toro, refresher training in July of 1951, and I trained in SMJs for a few days, and then stuck me right into a Corsair, and I hadn’t flown in six years. And I was VMF 232, we had rocket dummy practice at South Central, and rocket dummy at Fallon, and they put us all through a week of training, and heck when that other cold weather training program (inaudible) in

’50, they said all Marines, regardless of when they took cold weather training, and I had to go through that, and I flew out, Marine transport (inaudible).

Actually, they flew us to Moffett Field, Marian came down with my brother to say goodbye to me (inaudible). It was very emotional when I took off. A lot of the guys had not served, a lot of the regulars had not served, a lot of the organized squadrons were not being called in, so she couldn’t quite rationalize how her Reserve husband who had fought a war before had volunteered, had to go in again.

So, I went in, and I got off the C-54 in Moffett

(inaudible) about (inaudible) so I flew over a 15-hour flight (inaudible) red circle (inaudible). The way the vibration would go fore and aft, just back and forth, we watched it coming right through our bodies, too. And you could just feel it for 13 hours, they gave us a box lunch

46 and a day break (inaudible). Picked us up and took us over there on August 20th, we rejoined our C-54 plane

(inaudible) to Japan. And (inaudible) Osaka, Kobe. And I was assigned VMF 212, which was just getting off of the carrier in Korea, just off the Korean coast. I went through [Kunsan?] and got reassigned (inaudible) and they sent me out by 347 up to a little airstrip up on the east coast K-18, just below the 38th Parallel. And these guys had just come off the carrier, and so the Air Force had abandoned the place, the tents were rags, and the mess hall was a shambles, and yeah, it looked like poverty row if I ever seen it. And of course, March was still (inaudible) winter, (inaudible). And immediately they assigned us to the 5th Air Force, which was calling all the shots out of

(inaudible). Immediately assigned us deep interdiction pilots and (inaudible) close air support all the way across the 150 mile (inaudible) working with the Air Force, or working with the Army. Korean forces, and UN forces.

And after a couple of weeks we took quite a few losses, weather, operational, and enemy fire, (inaudible) assigned a new, a field that the Air Force was giving up over 100 miles south of (inaudible) on the west coast of

Korea. It was about a 200 mile distance from where we were operating (inaudible). And that was an upgrade, that they

47 had a first class facility, they were Quonset huts,

(inaudible) had a nice mess, (inaudible) hot shower, and so

we were flying our missions out of there. I flew 60

missions as flight leader through the end of June of 1952,

and then they wanted replacements up from the 1st Marine

Division for forward air controllers. Nobody wanted to go.

And I certainly didn’t want to go. I wasn’t training. And

I thought it would be a splendid opportunity for a career

Marine officer to have that experience. (inaudible). But

I drew the short straw, and I went back to [Kunsan?] for

about two weeks of forward air control training -- tactical

air control (inaudible) operations (inaudible) 1st Marine

Division. And I joined 3rd Battalion 1st Regiment, 1st

Marine Division on the line, which was way forward of

division regiment and battalion. (inaudible). And I

served for five months as (inaudible) air control

(inaudible). And I had all the bunker (inaudible). And

when they recognized the talents of my co-partner, Major

Bill Beal, (inaudible) and myself as the captain of the

battalion, (inaudible) and General Pollock, who was the

commanding officer of the 1st Marine Division.

And in the rain, he filled out a full regiment, on

behalf of myself, and he awarded me the Silver Star, the

Bronze Star, (inaudible). I was proud to get that with the

48 1st Marines, with the 335 (inaudible) I earned with the squadron, (inaudible) Presidential (inaudible) citation on the Enterprise back in ’42, and I left, and was pretty proud to go back to my job and my family. I resigned my commission as a captain, you could do that by directive from Congress, and got out of the Marine Corps, (inaudible) active reserves, and had served 17 months of active duty when I tendered my resignation. (inaudible) could not tender your resignation. But that letter (inaudible) I sent my letter and I wanted to go regular, Marian would not

-- they begged us guys with all this experience to regular.

To integrate (inaudible) with the Marine Corps (inaudible).

It sounded great. Then Marian said, if you do it, I’ll leave you. (laughter) She almost left me anyway

(inaudible) six years out of the service, and out of flying, and she didn’t understand it at all.

Any rate, I went back to my job, and strangely, my letter of resignation must have passed, (inaudible) letter making me a major, but I only served on active duty as a captain, and that was about April of ’53. I wanted to go back to getting my full four-year engineering degree.

That’s what I was planning to do. But my house was riddled with termites and I had to damn near tear it apart to get it fixed and get it back to safety (inaudible). And I had

49 not been an engineer. I’d been in a research lab when I

left. You needed an engineering degree to be an engineer

(inaudible) Curtis Wright certificate. It was a quickie

course, (inaudible) math, and we (inaudible) sheep skin

(inaudible) that the company demanded. Chief engineer

Homer Woods called me one day --

(break in audio)

BP: Today is July 27th. We’re in Denver, Colorado at the

Enterprise reunion, and we’re going to interview Bernard W.

Peterson, who was a member of the Navy during World War II,

and he will tell us some of his experiences during that

time period. So Pete, just go ahead and talk. (inaudible)

BWP: Well OK, Bill. Well, I’m a product of the Depression years

in southern California, like so many of us were. The

country, of course, was very much isolationist, and until

such time as we realized the intensity of the war with

Germany, and possibility of war with Japan. And I remember

I was born in 1923 -- March 18th, 1923 at Long Beach,

California, and so I was used to seeing all the ships

coming in the harbor, and see all the Navy boys, the white

hats all over town until about 1929, the family moved to

Huntington Park, a small town about 15 miles inland. And

we were, of course, bombarded with the news of the European

situation ever since Germany went into Poland in ’39, and

50 pretty much the rape of the European continent. And of course, Britain’s engagement, and we were recruited by the

Navy, Marine Corps, Army, Air Force at the high school periodically during our regular forums, and so you got a pretty good idea of where, if you were going to enlist, which service, which branch you might enlist. I had a preference for the Navy I guess, from my seeing all the ships in Long Beach, and going onboard during Navy Day.

The one thing that I thought a great deal about, however is when I was only about 10 years old and went on the Saratoga during the Navy Day, visitor’s day, and I must have seen 20 or 30 guys peeling potatoes and carrots, and I thought to myself, “That would be one hell of a job to get into, I wonder if that’s the only thing they do in the Navy, peeling potatoes and carrots,” because that’s all I saw that day was guys getting ready for the -- probably noon- day meal. Of course, when I saw the planes in the hangar deck and so forth, well that kind of changed the situation a little bit.

My daddy was a World War I veteran, and at the time, he was not doing too well at the Sawtelle Veteran’s

Hospital, he’d been there 13 weeks, going in the fall of

1940. And at that time, we would visit him during the visitor’s hours and talk to veterans of the Spanish

51 American War, World War I vets, and after 13 weeks we got to know some of the old codgers there. And they were all talking about the impending war in Europe and so forth, so

I was getting a pretty good bombardment about the war situation. And at school, we would talk to each other about which branch of service we’d go in, and so forth.

Well daddy died in 1940, and my family broke up. And I had a year to go to high school, but before my mother and my brother, who had polio, went on up to live in Montana to live with her sister, and left me there in my last year, I was working for a Ford garage in South [Cadence?] doing parts delivery and so forth at night, sleeping upstairs in the parts department for my last year of high school. And

I had my mom sign for me down at the Navy recruiting in

L.A. in October of 1940. But they asked me to finish high school before I came down and fully enlisted, and so that’s what we did. I finished up in the end of January in 1941.

I was 17 and went down to the L.A. Navy recruiting, and swore in, and got on a streamliner, and went to San Diego boot camp, and had the opportunity to take the exams they give there. I was pretty high mechanical aptitude, I’d been working on my own cars for two or three years and working for the Ford garage and being around the mechanics.

So, I scored very well on the mechanical aptitude.

52 So, that got me a slot over at the North Island aviation machinist (inaudible) school. And during that school period, which lasted from I would say the end of

February to about the end of August of 1941, there was a great deal of activity at North Island. F4F Wildcats came in, the SBDs, and of course the beautiful TBF, or TBDs, torpedo planes, (inaudible) mile plane. And so we, as mechanic students, were given an opportunity to go through the ONR shop and work in different branches. The aircraft would land in the drink and they’d fish them out, and they’d bring them in, and if we happened to be in that particular slot at the ONR shop that day, it was part of our training, then we’d hose them down with fresh water, and we’d start down the line to be completely disassembled, and parts all oiled, and then we’d be able to work in different branches in the ONR shop then.

I remember one day while we were there, a Marine transport flew by with a parachutist dangling. He had, they had been practicing jumps, and all of the men had gone out except the jump leader, and the jump leader got sucked out, and his shroud opened, and he was dangling behind the plane, and we watched two of the test pilots jump in an

SOC-1 and fly up. We didn’t see the actual recovery, they flew out over the ocean -- it was calmer out there than

53 over land. But they managed to cut the shroud with the prop, and one of the men in the backseat caught the dangling pilot. He was a Marine lieutenant, they dropped him in the back of the plane, and they landed there at

North Island. We all ran out there and watched him come in. He was pretty shook up, but he was OK. They took him to the hospital there, and we learned later that everything was OK. And these two pilots were given very high awards -

- at least Distinguished Flying Cross, maybe Navy Cross in the case of the pilot. I’m not sure about the actual award. But that sticks out in my mind, seeing that poor dangling Marine back there. You wonder how in the world they were going to get him down from there?

Any rate, we had an opportunity to work again as students, they would work us midnight loading parties, loading 500 and 1000-pound bombs on the Enterprise and on the Saratoga, and back then of course we worked all night, until three or four o’clock in the morning, they might let us sleep in nine, ten o’clock in the morning before we started class. But we were a ready pool of hard workers

(overlapping dialogue; inaudible) labor. And so, including a period at the launch ramps where the PBYs and the PB2Ys, the big flying boats, we’d be in our bathing suits, and we’d go on out there and attach the floating landing gear

54 to them as they came in, and then we would go on out with them as they’d load up the tractor, let them down into the water, and then we’d have to go out and pull the pins to get the removable landing gear off of them.

And I remember, I think the reason I brought that up is because one of those big four engine PB2Ys was rolling up those engines, and start taking off, the engine would vibrate. I remember the vibration coming back up through my body. (laughter) And I thought, you know, I just was not in the least bit interested in flying one of those big crates. Not after having seen the F4F Wildcat and a few others. But any rate, end of my machinist mate training there, which occurred about the end of August of ’41, when we went over to, when we were assigned to -- well I was, maybe two or three others from my class were assigned to

Torpedo Squadron Three, VT-3, associated with the USS

Saratoga. And at that time, the Saratoga was home ported there at San Diego, North Island. While we were attached to the squadron, we were going out for carrier qualification off Point Loma, maybe 20 or 30 miles occasionally, and I remember we were qualifying some

Marines in flying the F2A Buffalos, and while we were out there, I was doing an assignment. I was getting ready to pull my fire watch off on the port side. It was part of my

55 duties onboard that, during that period of time in the squad I was on, which was probably four or five days during these short qualification trials.

And I remember the F2As coming in and landing hard, and it looked like to me, like they had a box type landing gear, and they had hit hard, and that those landing gears would just explode, and absolutely washed the F2A Buffalos out, and they weren’t hitting any harder than the Wildcats, or the SBDs, or the TBDs, but the F2A Buffalo was simply not designed for hard carrier landings like the Wildcats were. Occasionally, some of the debris would come flying over into my side of the flight deck, and we’d have to duck. I saw at least three Buffalos like that, during that one day, that crashed.

So, the other things we did was in October we actually headed out to the Pacific for what was supposed to be a resupply of the outer islands. Aircraft parts, personnel, heavy equipment, whatever. And I believe for sure we went

Midway, and we may have gone to Wake on those two runs.

Other carriers were doing the same thing, Enterprise was doing the same thing, Lex was doing the same thing. And we didn’t have any maneuvers with those other carriers, but they were always practicing gunnery. I think every day, all the gunners would have a shot at the balloons that they

56 would release. Sometimes they would be firing at a target

sleeve that was pulled by another plane. And so, it was

quite exciting. In fact, the Saratoga even fired their

eight-inch guns. Now can you imagine anything so stupid as

an aircraft carrier with eight-inch guns, but the Lexington

and Saratoga both had eight-inch guns at the time. Boy,

when those things go off it’s just unbelievable. Later on,

I’d compare it to a 1000-pounder going off. So those were

really the early --

BP: On the Enterprise?

BWP: -- carriers, those were relative early carriers, and they

were converted from cruisers during the negotiations with

Britain and Japan. We agreed not to build any more

cruisers, and we had to haul, so we converted them to

aircraft carriers. They were pretty left handed. They

even had pigeon cages down below, and if I’m not mistaken

they might have even had some torpedo tubes down underneath

the hull. But the 8-H rifle shows you the mentality that

persisted at that time, because later on, as soon as -- I

don’t want to get too far ahead of my story, but in January

of ’42 we got torpedoed and we went back to Pearl Harbor.

And it went in drydock for patching of this tremendous hole

that was in our starboard hull. I believe they killed six

firemen down below in that period. We went back to

57 Bremerton, but left us at Ford Island (inaudible) and when

they were at Bremerton, they removed this eight-inch guns,

and they replaced them with the classical five-inch .38

automatics.

And so anyway, not to get too far ahead of my story,

back up a little bit, coming back to October ’41, I was

flying the islands, we had a few weeks at the Ford Island

where we (inaudible). (phone ringing)

BP: (inaudible).

BWP: The Air National -- not the Air National Guard, but the

Long Beach National Guard, which is an antiaircraft unit,

had been recalled to active duty sometime around that

period, because as I recall, our last -- as we pulled out,

they were, we saw sandbag antiaircraft positions around the

hangars at Ford Island. They were manned by the Long Beach

antiaircraft Guard units. And so, of course that coincides

with the call up of a lot of Reserves in the country. And

so, you see our Ford Island was starting to prepare for any

eventuality, and in fact, as we came back through there

back in ’41 later, I talked to some of the guards, and they

claimed that a number of the Jap aircraft, particularly

they were in an advantageous position when the dive bombers

and torpedo bombers had attacked the battleships, they were

recovering right over their position at Ford Island. And

58 of course, they were in a beautiful position to shoot them down, and they did shoot some down, they were damn proud of that, some of the fellows that we talked to later on.

So let’s see, then we, in November (inaudible) of

1941, the Saratoga was preparing to go back to Bremerton,

Washington for its annual 30-day overhaul, and so we left the area, and they took this to, back to North -- took the air group back to North Island, San Diego, and we were hangared in the old hangars out there. While it went on up to Bremerton, and it did not have time to undergo its 30 days at Bremerton. From the time they left us off to the time they came back and picked us up, because it was

December 7th, 1941 when they pulled back into North Island, so therefore, they were alerted that this was an emergency, an emergency was pending, and they had better get their fannies back there and pick up their air group and get on out there.

Well, we, through the time differential between Pearl

Harbor and North Island, this Sunday morning we were already alerted, we were already at the hangar. And we heard about the bombing while we were preparing all that equipment to get onboard the Saratoga. And at that time I was still a first class seaman, I hadn’t gotten my aviation ship’s mate third class rating yet. But I was still, I was

59 crew chiefing and I was flying rear seat in the back of the

TBDs, and I was doing all kinds of bounce drills out at

[Otai Mesa?] and [Berry?] Field up at Miramar, and went down to another field at Borderline. So I was getting quite a bit of backseat time, as well as being crew chief,

(inaudible) TBDs. So we loaded all night long, and then got done at nine or ten o’clock in the morning, (inaudible) and we pulled out for Pearl Harbor. And it took us about five or six days. It wasn’t quite forced draft, because the Lexington had done it a few years before in 72 hours, but we got out there in about five days -- five, six days.

And as we pulled into Pearl Harbor, some of the Jap submarines that had been left over from the December 7th

(inaudible) were detected by some of these old four stacker destroyers that were out there to protect us, and they were crisscrossing them, and I believe they fired some torpedoes at us. They were dropping the depth charges as we went in

Pearl Harbor. And they had strung the anti-submarine net across the harbor, and they had to pull that out for you as you went on in. So, as we went in the harbor, we crossed past Hospital Point there, and we actually were the first combat ship that Pearl Harbor had seen coming to reinforcement the Pacific Fleet, and they were waving, and hooting, and hollering at us as we came by. And we went

60 over and pulled up alongside Ford Island, and after that is regular carrier berths, and of course we saw all the battleships that had been sunk and what have you. It was an unbelievable sight the water, and the debris and everything was still floating in the harbor. Ghastly sight. We were stone shocked. People were still in shock, the people we saw and talked to (inaudible) that day, they just couldn’t believe it. The magnitude, the audacity of

Japan doing that unprovoked attack. So, we loaded up the ship. We had brought supplies, and discharged them at the supplies dock of Ford Island, and we took on some additional equipment.

Earlier, the Enterprise escaped being in the harbor, because they had taken a Marine, F4F Wildcat Marine squadron to Wake, VMF 221. And we had brought out the

Marine, the Second Marine fighter squadron for Wake, which was VMF 211. And one of the pilots in that squadron was

[Marion Caw?]. And of course, our Fighting Three had the famous O’Hara and John Thach, of the Thach Weave, and several other great names that later proved themselves great fighter pilots later on in the war. So anyway, we took a Marine battalion on the transport, and away we headed for Wake to try to -- we were going to be the support group to save Wake Island. And we had an oiler

61 with us that was capable of about 11 or 12 knots,

(inaudible) slowed the whole darn task force to the speed of the tanker, which delayed our getting there. And of course, history shows that the Japs actually, after sustaining great losses by the Marine fighter squadron that were there when the Wildcats, they lost all their planes, and they had no active infantry (inaudible) ground Marines, until they either died or were captured. We were late when the Japanese took Wake, and here we were with all the aircraft onboard, and so we were diverted to Midway Island with the Marine squadron that we had onboard. And the

Marines turned around and went back to Pearl on the transport. And we got up to Wake, and dropped off the

Marine Buffalos, and of course later used down in Midway

(inaudible). Most of them were lost.

So then we came back to Pearl, as I mentioned, and then we were assigned patrol duty the first two weeks of

January of ’42, about 500 miles southwest of Pearl Harbor.

And one night, doing about seven knots to conserve fuel, we took a Japanese submarine torpedo, and we were in a roll to starboard, and the torpedo came and hit us port side underneath the roll blisters that they had put on the

Saratoga and Lexington because they were narrow-hulled battle cruisers, but when they made aircraft carriers out

62 of them, they were top heavy. So, they put these

tremendous blisters on the side that protruded out --

BP: Because they didn’t have any stability.

BWP: As stability, for the role of stability. And in them, they

filled them with extra diesel fuel. So, in the starboard

roll, the torpedo hit under that port side blister, and

when it exploded in the darkest night I’d ever seen -- in

fact, the only light we had was from the North Star, and

that’s what the submarine took its bearing on. And that

day, old Saratoga bounced like a plastic boat in a bathtub.

It just kept bouncing, I wished it’d settle down. And we

all went to our general quarter stations, and I was at my

bunk, which was forward of the hangar deck end, and below,

and I had to dress quickly, and I had to run up on the

hangar deck to a boat pocket on the port side which I used

to go in and then go up a ladder up to the flight deck to

my quickest access. I had to get to my plane, which was

tied aft on the deck, and that was hard, because in the

black of night there are chains that they put on as kind of

railings, and the out through the boat pocket to go up the

stairs had been blown up. The torpedo hit right underneath

it, and the part of that little deck there that you would

step on before you went up the stairway, the gangway there,

was missing. And I was the first one out, and I stepped on

63 it, and I went into thin air until I grabbed the chains and pulled myself back up, then two or three other guys came out and blocked a lot of other guys that were pouring out of that boat pocket to go up to the flight deck, and so then we laid some planks across that so they could walk across it, and anyway, I made my way on up to the flight deck. And by that time, we were rolling, listing at 27 degrees, and we all thought we were going to roll over.

Again, there was no light whatsoever; black. And the entire deck and all of the planes were covered with crude oil, and so you were slipping and sliding, and you had to pull yourself up with the arresting cable, it was about the only thing that could get yourself up to center deck there, to get up to the planes. The planes were creaking, and those lines were about ready to snap, you know? And it seemed like we were in the longest position in that 27 degrees until the engineers flooded some starboard compartment’s ballast and brought us up to not quite upright position. And then they brought out tons of waste rags to clean the crud off of the deck, and ourselves, and our planes, until way into the next day.

Any rate, the action that took place, that night action against that submarine was pretty dramatic because the destroyers and the cruisers in the task force opened up

64 on that submarine. They were dropping ashcans. And it surfaced -- the tail end surfaced, and they had the floodlights on it, and they were firing at it point blank, and hundreds of us swore they got it, because we could see the debris, the bubbles, and the debris, and the oil that would come up. I guess it wasn’t four or five hundred yards off of our port position. But as history shows, it wasn’t even harmed in any way, and it got away, but it was later sunk in the war, but for years we all said we got a submarine, and we swore to it. (laughter)

Anyway, we crippled on back to Pearl, Sara went in drydock, and I think we took six deaths in the boiler room.

Meantime, they put a patch on it, getting it ready to go back to Bremerton, Washington. And because there were so many other things to be done in the drydock, they knew it was going to be three or four months on that sucker, and they didn’t want to tie up the drydocks that long, so they put a big temporary patch on it. The hole was big enough to drive a freight train in.

So we operated out of Ford Island, operated out of

(inaudible) TBDs, BT-3 -- Torpedo 3, and all (inaudible) three fighters, dive bombers. And some of us were assigned to CASU 1, meaning Carrier Aircraft Service Unit, which had been formed at North Island. Later in the war a number of

65 those units were formed under yeoman service, because they could handle all the planes, and they had all the equipment and so forth that some of the squadrons didn’t have, because of the need for moving about base to base, carrier to carrier. The Carrier Aircraft Service Unit was on a par with overhaul and repair, but they were right there in the middle of the squadrons, and they were permanent, and they were top notch people.

While I was working there on assignment, I remember 19

SBDs come in by freighter, and I had to put wings on 19

SBDs. They were changing the paint schemes like crazy, we couldn’t keep up with the damn Navy regulations, but we got an order to strip and repaint our 18 TBDs -- and remember,

I got the assignment to deliver them to overhaul repair across -- so each time we would strip down to bare metal and look for corrosions and treat it, and file it down, and treat it, and the whole plane got to the hangar area

(inaudible), and then I’d have to help take it plane to plane, and I got the planes stripped, (inaudible) hip boots, and big rubber aprons, (inaudible). Yeah. So anyway, we got that dirty job done. We got the planes all repainted, and I did other types of work. I remember I got an assignment to work on a big plane, (inaudible) and I did some minor work on (inaudible) attachment to the wings we

66 were making. And it turned out after the Battle of Midway

(inaudible). One of those, one of (inaudible).

While we were, moved over (inaudible) north of the island of Oahu, and (inaudible) the Japs went suicidal, they had lost an unbelievable number (inaudible). And a lot of the (inaudible). So, there were still some limitations with (inaudible). I’m guessing (inaudible).

So we were doing a lot of training, we would fly long range searches in the TBDs, two to three hours a night flying

(inaudible) on those missions. We’d go out over

(inaudible), the next day we go back out, next day we might go north or we could go west a couple hundred miles. Then occasionally we would spot what we thought were submarines, and check with headquarters, (inaudible). We think we might have shook some up (inaudible).

About that time, it was approaching May, the Yorktown and the Lexington were down in the Coral Sea. The

Lexington was sunk. The Yorktown took a (inaudible) and was coming back to Pearl. (inaudible) was preparing a fleet to meet the Japanese invasion fleet (inaudible)

Midway. And we were all alerted. Yorktown came into drydock, and there were yard workers working around the clock to repair the damage. We were bringing our Torpedo

Squadron Three and air group for the equipment by truck

67 (inaudible) was offloading (inaudible) by truck to Ford

Island, or to the Navy yard, and we were loading up the ramp, loading the Yorktown (inaudible) while it was still in drydock. And we had a couple days to work on

(inaudible). And we were cutting out the bomb damage and so forth.

And as an upshot of it, we replaced the Torpedo

Squadron Five, (inaudible). And they left the bulk of the support crew on the north side, well we left the bulk of our crew (inaudible) to service Torpedo Five. And it was just a few key of us, (inaudible) experienced mechanics and

(inaudible) and so forth doing repairs, (inaudible) lead crew (inaudible). That was complicated (inaudible) the enlisted group (inaudible). So, it was a real mix up. The

Fighting 3 was merging with the Fighting 42, which was the designation of (inaudible) fighting squadron (inaudible).

So, we had a merging, and I really don’t know whether they

-- I think the Fighting 3 guys preferred to be the Fighting

3 and the Fighting 42 (inaudible) Fighting 42, and I don’t know which of the final designations (inaudible) fighting squadrons (inaudible), Fighting 3.

And on the last day we were (inaudible) came onboard, and (inaudible), I think it was the 29th of May, the

Enterprise (inaudible) had gotten (inaudible) day lead on

68 us (inaudible) position several hundred miles northeast of

Midway Island. And we caught up to (inaudible). Well the

Battle of Midway, of course, is pretty well documented.

(inaudible) our squadron took off. (inaudible). And the squadron commander was [William Massey?] (inaudible)

Enterprise Torpedo 6, he was leading our 12 planes, and our

12 pilots, and our 12 (inaudible), and (inaudible) that day. (inaudible) enlisted pilot [Henry Cleary?] and Harry

Corl. But Dwight [Shrouders?] was flying instead of Corl that day. They went out about noon, and they were at fairly low altitude, and were (inaudible) missiles

(inaudible). And the first one to be shot down was a skipper named Massey (inaudible) on his own pilot, and crashed. It was one plane after the other.

Some say they got close enough to the (inaudible) Jap carriers (inaudible) any of the torpedo squadrons

(inaudible) Enterprise (inaudible). But we all suffered considerable losses. John Thach’s fighters were up in

(inaudible) torpedo squadron (inaudible). And all three of those squadrons were definitely sacrificial. All those guys knew it was basically a suicide mission. I don’t know the exact numbers of the opponent’s loss, that is the number of planes they started with, but I was told survival was (inaudible), and that Torpedo Six again, I don’t

69 remember the exact loss numbers, but (inaudible) most of it. Our 12 were -- the two surviving pilots were

(inaudible) Wilhelm Esders, E-S-D-E-R-S, and (inaudible)

Harry Corl. And they were both shot up and ditched before they got back to the carrier, and they got into their rafts. (inaudible) Harry Corl, and he was shot up at

(inaudible) 727, 221, (inaudible). And Corl wasn’t

(inaudible) floated a raft to him, picked him up pretty shortly -- within minutes. And Esders water landed, and his rear gunner, name of Blazer, and Blazer was hit really, really badly in the plane, and shook up on the landing, and just spoke a few words to him, to Esders, just before he died in the raft. And 24 men in our squadron took off, 21 died.

So, Ensign Gay of Torpedo Eight was the sole survivor, the one that got all the interviews, and all of the medals, and all of the recognition, but there was tremendous loss from other torpedo squadrons. (inaudible) bombing squad, both of those carriers during the day, and they, the torpedo squadrons diverted the Zeroes from the slower climbing SBDs, until they got in position, and (inaudible) carry out tremendous precision bombing on those four carriers, and subsequently sank all four. And they sustained some loss from antiaircraft fire (inaudible) from

70 the fighters jumping, but very few fighters intercepted

them because they were so preoccupied with (inaudible)

torpedo squadron.

BP: The torpedo squadron went in first?

BWP: They went in first, that’s what we did, right. Yeah, and

that did it to them. Over the years I’ve been in touch

with (inaudible) 30 years in the Navy, came out a full Navy

commander (inaudible) died at the Naval Museum in

Pensacola, I believe it’s close by (inaudible), I’m 68

right now as we’re talking, and he must be 77, 78. He went

in the Navy, I think it was (inaudible) got to flight

school. (inaudible) destroyer (inaudible) was accepted.

That was (inaudible).

BP: Oh, really?

BWP: Yeah. He’s an electrician (inaudible) and radios. Back in

those days, ’35, ’36 they were the only ones who could

figure out (inaudible) you were an engineer or a

boilermaker, (inaudible) no way to be accepted. So we

helped with the casualties onboard and fought fires, and

repaired bomb hits, and as many torpedo hits on the

(inaudible) until the order was -- Captain Buckmaster

(inaudible). Buckmaster ordered (inaudible) hindsight,

(inaudible) was the low side, and might roll over,

(inaudible) on the high side. (inaudible) picked up by

71 (inaudible) destroyers, brought to the destroyers, and certainly later transferred (inaudible). And subsequently,

(inaudible) transferred to a (inaudible) submarine

(inaudible). (inaudible) Marine base on Ford Island, interrogation, doctoring, and basically to hide the fact that the Yorktown actually sunk. They wanted to hide the fact, they didn’t want us coming into Honolulu (inaudible) blabbing it all over the place. (inaudible) everybody was all mixed, all mixed, personnel (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). And we were highly pissed off.

(inaudible) issued new uniforms very quickly, there was some leave, and so forth, and the Navy was trying to protect our secrecy at the time, the Yorktown went down, but it was no secret. The sub that (inaudible). And well, when we finally got back to Kaneohe, a lieutenant informed me in San Diego, and they were brought out on transports to man the Enterprise right after the Battle of Midway. They let this hybrid air group off, and just fly the new TBFs that were replacing the old TBDs, and I learned at this

Enterprise reunion here from Tom Powell just two days ago that we got a substantial number of the VT-10 torpedo bomber pilots and air crew to make up for our Midway losses. And I might have known it at the time, but I had it refreshed talked to Tom Powell. And at any rate, our

72 guys went and lost the 10 pilots, and the 11 receiving, and

we probably only had 8 or 10 more that would go there at

Kaneohe. But we got all new TBFs -- we got 18 new TBFs

sitting there waiting for us. We’d had one before we left,

but not enough to fly or study it. And Torpedo Eight had

gotten eight.

BP: Oh, they had some?

BWP: They had eight, and they had them on Midway. They didn’t

have them on the carrier, they only had the TBDs on the

carrier.

BP: OK.

BWP: And they didn’t (inaudible). Most of them got shot down,

so it wasn’t necessarily the TBD, it was the mission. Low

and slow, and a hell of a lot of top flight Jap fighter

pilots. Right. So, by the 15th of July -- now remember,

Battle of Midway was the 4th of June, and we didn’t get

back until the middle of June. We got all brand new

airplanes, the pilots in our squadron, Torpedo Three, had

never flown them. Those replacement pilots we got for the

VT-10 of course had trained in them in San Diego. And so,

undoubtedly, there was a lot of help from them because they

had experience with the new TBF (inaudible).

At any rate, we went onboard the Enterprise on the

15th of July, 30 days -- normally a new air group with new

73 airplanes would take at least 8 to 12 months under normal conditions. So, that was the situation as we boarded the

Enterprise on the 15th of July, 1941 and set off for

Tongatapu, (inaudible) Islands. Barely met the Marines that were assembling for the Invasion of Guadalcanal, which was scheduled for the 7th -- August 7th, 1942. There were

10 Marine transports with troops, and 10 or 11 supply ships, and about 21 transports there with Marine divisions,

(inaudible), and destroyers, and battleships. In fact, there was -- North Carolina was brand new, was out with the

Enterprise air group. Nice to have that big old dreadnaught across our starboard side.

And they wanted to schedule a dry run on the beaches, and they had picked an island, a small island off Fiji for the mock invasion, which went off very, very badly.

Marines didn’t get any of their landing boats right, and nobody was coordinated worth a damn, but I guess they learned something, because it went off -- the final landing in Guadalcanal went off fairly smoothly. But I often wonder what would have happened if had they not taken time and risked being found out by the Japanese for that little mock practice invasion. But many of the Marines that they had recruited and were on those ships had never had one day of amphibious practice. They had rounded them up from

74 clerks, and typists, and everybody from all of the East and

West Coast Marine bases, and little island, and off ships, and grouped them all together, and most of them assembled at (inaudible), New Zealand. And the ships were so badly loaded that they had to take time to completely reload it for the landing, or the invasion. And I remember that they had told us that, the Marines that I talked to later had -- they were really ticked off with the New Zealand dock crew, because they went on strike. They wouldn’t load and unload the ships. Our forces, our troops had to do it, and they weren’t used to the heavy equipment and all of that, it went very slowly, but they got the job done.

So here we go off to invade the first Japanese held island in the war. The scouts had B-17s, and some of the scouts had watched for some time the buildup (inaudible)

Henderson Field being built, and knew of its existence for at least 30 days before landing. But it was a surprise as we landed in our three aircraft carriers, the Enterprise, which we were on, the Wasp, and the Saratoga. And the landing went off very, very well. There’s -- the crew that were working Henderson Field over were just a bunch of rag tags, they were lowlife Japanese wranglers, and some

Koreans that were brought into the Japanese construction companies, and a few Japanese soldiers, which they ran off

75 and left all of their equipment, which was later used to

help finish the runway, including some rollers, and

graters, and they left an ice house, and left the famous

pagoda that became the Marine headquarters, which later was

destroyed because it was too much of a target (inaudible).

BP: A visible target.

BWP: Several of my friends served there, Rex Hamilton, who was

with VMF-223 fighter squadron, first fighter squadron on

Guadalcanal, he was a supply sergeant, and he related some

real fantastic stories about having to run for shelter out

of the pagoda during these Japanese air raids and shore

bombardments that were just fierce. Another very good

buddy of mine, [Alfred Cruiser?] of Frederick Maryland was

a radio operator in the pagoda. And actually gave them

directions, fighter directions to the pilots flying out of

Cactus there (inaudible) Henderson. At any rate, our

forces had to get out of the area, after the troop

transports and the supply ships were there the following

day. And the Japs had come in during the night and had

sank four of our cruisers in a night battle, and we had

terrible losses. And our supply ships had to leave

prematurely, and General Vandegrift was not very happy

about that. So, we had to go south down off of

76 (inaudible), several hundred miles to, or even further to get out of the way of the Japanese aircraft.

And about the 23rd of August, our whole task force headed back up, and on the 24th of August, which we were about 200 miles east of Guadalcanal, near Stewart Island, and that became the name of the battle, the Battle of

Stewart Island. And we were -- the Wasp had retired south to refuel and wasn’t in the battle, but the Saratoga and the Enterprise were the two principal carriers. And we engaged the Japanese, we exchanged air groups. The

Saratoga was not hit during the battle, but the Enterprise sustained three direct hits. And my job was, as a Navy machinist’s mate second class at this time, was the hydraulic rigging in the (inaudible) section of the squadron. I wasn’t flying, although I was qualified.

That’s the way they did it; they usually qualified

(inaudible) in the case of TDF, it was the top .50 caliber turret, or it was the bottom .30 caliber stinger. And the bottom stinger was generally manned by a radio or radar operator, whereas the turret gun could be almost anybody.

But there wasn’t much of a battle as far as our squadron was concerned. We made some attempt at drops, it missed. However, some of our planes got shot down. Harry

Corl, which I mentioned was one of the pilot survivors of

77 Midway, his plane was shot down, and he was dead in the cockpit. And his radio top gunner, that -- not radio man, but his .50 caliber gunner up in the turret survived that crash, but the other air crewmen and the pilot, Harry Corl

-- C-O-R-L -- died in that crash. It wasn’t a water landing, it was a high speed, high angle crash into the water, and Delmar Wiley went down with the plane, had a hell of a time getting squared away to get out of that turret, managed to get out, and surfaced, and when he came up, there was a life raft. There was the plane’s life raft sitting right there. He was wounded, he had taken 20 mm shots in the leg from bursting shells, and he was the only survivor. The only other planes flew away, and he was floating around in the water. And I guess he floated for the better part of the week in the northeastern direction, and came up on a little island east of Bougainville around

(inaudible), and he came across the reefs, (inaudible) and the natives found him, and (inaudible) he was seven months on an island. We knew that there was a possibility of one of them having survived and being on an island. They didn’t know where or who, and they never recovered the bodies of the other pilots or crewmen. (inaudible).

But Marian and I were friendly with Delmar Wiley, who lives in Fullerton, California, and has come out with a

78 little book he calls Wiley’s Island, and he published it himself; he did it on his computer. He’s sent out a few copies, and a few years ago I contacted Admiral [Kaine?], I went down to the museum in Pensacola, and I told him about

Delmar, and Admiral [Kaine?] wanted it, and wrote him up in one of their magazine’s foundations. So his story is well told.

So, that was about the extent of it during the battle.

I was knocked around on the hangar deck very badly. I sustained flash burns, and a concussion, and shrapnel. We all treated our own wounds, we had to pull the shrapnel out with our long nosed pliers and pour the sulfa powder in, because the more serious amputations and so forth were down in sick bay, you didn’t even go down and bother them with a mere flesh wound or shrapnel. And at one time, one of the gunners -- 20 mm gunners up on the top side had a fragment in his eye, and the gunners knew me, and when I came up to top side, the battle had only been engaged for about two minutes, and I had sustained a tremendous experience down on the hangar deck when it blew, and Chief Mortz, M-O-R-T-

Z, had told us all to get away from the center of the hangar deck, because if it took a bomb down below it would bulge, and we would all be flopped up to the overhead of the hangar deck, and we’d be pasted up on that. So, we all

79 abided his recommendation, and we all went to the outward

side of the hangar deck, and we did take a bomb down below

the hangar deck in the chief’s quarters, when it blew it

plumped the hangar deck, and we’d been near the outside,

and didn’t shoot up as high as some of the others that had

not heeded to Mortz’s warning, and they went all the way up

overhead, killed, and then they came down, and some of us

were landing on some of those bodies that cushioned our

fall, and that’s why we survived.

So, I made my way up the ladder up to the flight deck,

and had to dodge men that were lying there with arms 20

feet away and a leg over here, and a couple of them were

pulling themselves over the side to commit suicide, they

couldn’t bear the thought of living in that condition. I

ran into a 20 mm gun crew that was, that knew me, knew I

was a qualified gunner, and they strapped me in the 20, and

for about two or three remaining minutes of that five-

minute attack, I was shooting Val dive bombers.

(break in audio)

BWP: The date is September the 24th, year 2000. My name is

Captain Bernard W. Peterson, United States Marine Corps

Reserve, retired. I’m recording here in my home at 27015

N. 92nd St., Scottsdale, Arizona, 85255. My phone number,

for reference, is 480-485-4868. Mr. Bruce Petty has asked

80 me to prepare this oral history of my experiences as a

sailor in the United States Navy in World War II, and later

as a Marine fighter pilot in the Pacific. Mr. Petty has

indicated he may give consideration to using it in his

tentative book entitled: The United States Navy in the

Pacific During World War II: An Original History.

(break in audio)

BWP: A sailor, Marine fighter pilot, by Captain Bernard

Peterson, United States Marine Corps, retired. Captain

Peterson was born in Long Beach, California, and enlisted

in the United States Navy in February of 1941. After boot

camp, he received training as an aviation machinist mate,

and was assigned to Torpedo Squadron Three, VT-3, aboard

the USS Saratoga.

After the Saratoga was torpedoed by a Japanese

submarine in January of 1942, VT-3 was transferred to the

USS Yorktown in the latter part of May. VT-3 aboard

Yorktown suffered the loss of all of their torpedo planes

and most of their crew during the Battle of Midway in June

of 1942. VT-3 was then rebuilt with new crews and the new

Grumman Avenger Torpedo Bomber, and boarded the USS

Enterprise in time to join the opening days of the Battle

of Guadalcanal.

81 In January of 1943, Peterson received orders to flight school. For the first half of 1944, he trained in SVD-5 dive bombers and F4U Corsairs during the second half. He returned to the Pacific as a US Marine Corps fighter pilot, flying the F4U Corsairs with VMF-223. Captain Peterson returned to civilian life after World War II, but volunteered to return to active duty during the Korean War, again flying the F4U Corsairs.

I’ll begin with a little history, Bruce. My father was a World War II sic] veteran, and he died in 1940, and the family broke up. I had a year to go in high school, but after my mother and my brother moved to Montana to live with her sister, I had her sign a letter for me so I could join the Navy. However, the Navy had asked me to finish high school before enlisting. So, that is what I did. I finished high school in January of 1941, and swore into the

Navy in February.

My training as an aviation machinist mate ended in

August of ’41, and I was assigned to Torpedo Squadron

Three, VT-3 aboard the USS Saratoga, which at the time was home ported at San Diego, North Island. In October, we headed out to the Pacific for what was supposed to be a resupply of Hawaii’s outer islands: aircraft parts, personnel, heavy equipment, and whatever. We went to

82 Midway, we may have gone to Wake, I can’t remember exactly.

The other carriers, the Enterprise and Lexington, were doing the same thing.

Then, in December ’41, the Saratoga left to go to

Bremerton, Washington for its annual 30-day overhaul. The air group was taken back to North Island, San Diego while the ship went on up to Bremerton. However, the Saratoga returned to North Island from Bremerton, it’s overhaul being cut short. It came back to San Diego on the 7th of

December, 1941 to pick us up. We were alerted that an emergency was pending. We heard about the bombing of Pearl

Harbor while at the hangar on North Island, getting ready to go back aboard the Saratoga. We loaded aboard the Sara all night long, and at 10:00 in the morning on December the

8th, we pulled out for Pearl Harbor. We arrived at Pearl five days later. We dropped off some supplies and took on some others. Then, we took on a Marine fighter squadron, which we had had from North Island, and headed for Wake

Island. We were going to be the support group that would save Wake Island from the Japanese. We had an oiler with us that was capable of doing only about 12 knots, and for that reason, they slowed the whole task force to the speed of the oiler, which made us late getting to Wake, and the

Japanese took it before we got there. We were then

83 diverted, along with the Marine squadron we had onboard, to

Midway. We dropped off the fighters as well, which were later used against the Japanese in the Battle of Midway.

Most of them were lost during that battle.

We came back to Pearl and then were assigned patrol duty the first two weeks of January ’42, about 500 miles southwest of Pearl Harbor. One night, while doing about seven knots to conserve fuel, we took a Japanese submarine torpedo. We were in a roll to starboard, and the torpedo came in under the port side blister. The Saratoga bounced like a toy when that torpedo went off. It was the darkest night I had ever seen. I was in my bunk, which was forward and below the hangar deck. I dressed and ran down the hangar deck to a boat pocket on the port side -- that was the quickest access I had to get to my planes, which was right aft on the flight deck. The torpedo had hit right underneath the ladder that I took to the flight deck, and part of the deck was missing. When I stepped to go up the ladder, I went into thin air until I grabbed a piece of chain and pulled myself back up. Some other guys laid some planks across the opening, and I made my way up to the flight deck. By that time, we were listing at 12 -- 27 degrees, and we all thought the ship was going to roll over.

84 Again, there was no light whatsoever. It was black, and the entire deck and all the planes were covered in crude oil. So, we were slipping and sliding. I had to hold onto an arresting cable to pull myself up to the planes on the center deck. The planes were creaky, and the lines holding them to the deck were about to snap. It seemed like we were in that position for the longest time until the engineers flooded some starboard compartments and brought us up to not quite the upright position, and we brought what seemed like tons of waste rags to clean the crud off the deck and the airplanes. We did that until the next day. Destroyers and cruisers in our task force opened up from the Japanese submarine, dropping ashcans, depth charges, and it surfaced. Our ships had floodlights on, and were firing at point blank. It surfaced just four to five hundred yards off our port position, and everybody swore we got her, but because we could not see too clearly, the bubbles did show, and the debris showed oil coming up.

But as history shows, it wasn’t even harmed. It got away, but was sunk later in the war.

Anyway, we crippled back to Pearl Harbor, and we went into drydock. A patch was put on the hole so we could get her on back to Bremerton. It was so much damage that they figured she would be there for three or four months. The

85 hole in the side of the ship was big enough to drive a train through. Our air group was offloaded at Ford Island in Pearl Harbor. In May of ’42, the Lexington was sunk at the Battle of Coral Sea, and the Yorktown had taken a hit from a 500-pound bomb. It was on its way back to Pearl.

Admiral Nimitz was preparing the fleet to make the Japanese invasion fleet heading for Midway, and we were all alerted.

The Yorktown went into drydock, and yard workers were working around the clock to repair the damage. We, Air

Group Three, were loading our gear aboard the Yorktown while it was still in drydock. We were replacing Torpedo

Squadron Five, but they left the bulk of their enlisted support crew on the Yorktown, while the bulk of our enlisted support crew were left ashore to service Torpedo

Five. There were just a few enlisted personnel from VT-3, experienced mechanics, radio repairmen, and so forth, who came aboard the Yorktown with the rest of the squadron. It was a real mix-up.

We sailed out of Pearl on the 29th of May. The

Enterprise and the Hornet had a day and a half lead on us.

We caught up then several hundred miles north of Midway

Island. On June 4th, about 0830, our squadron took off.

We had 12 TBD torpedo bombers. The squadron commander was

Commander Lance Massey. He was leading our 12 planes with

86 our 12 pilots and their 12 rear seat men. I was not flying that day. Had I been flying that day, I would have been flying with an enlisted pilot, Harry Corl, but Lloyd

Childers was flying with Corl that day.

The torpedo planes were at a fairly low altitude.

They were jumped by swarm after swarm of Jap Zeroes. The first one to be shot down was our skipper, Lance Massey, who was seen getting out on his wing root of the plane.

His plane was on fire and crashed. One after another of our TBDs were shot down. All of the torpedo squadrons suffered considerable losses. All of those guys knew they were on a suicide mission. The sole survivor from the torpedo squadron on the Hornet was Ensign Gay. On our squadron, the two surviving pilots were Wilhelm Esders and

Harry Corl. They both got shot up and ditched. Lloyd

Childers, the rear seat gunner, got into a wreck with Harry

Corl. Childers was wounded, but Corl wasn’t. Robert

Blazer was with Esders. Robert Blazer was Esders rear seat gunner, and he was hit pretty hard. He spoke only a few words to Esders before he died in the raft. Out of 24 men in our squadron who took off, 21 died.

The torpedo bombers diverted the Jap Zeroes from the slow climbing SVD dive bombers, allowing them to get into position to carry out their attack on the four Japanese

87 carriers -- the Kaga, the Akagi, the Sōryū, and the Hiryū -

- subsequently sinking all four of them. Very few Jap fighters intercepted them because they were so preoccupied with the low flying torpedo planes.

Over the years I’ve been in touch with Wilhelm Esders.

He went to a full 30 years in the Navy and came out a commander. He started out as an enlisted man, and got his wings as a second class petty officer. The Yorktown was hit with bombs and torpedoes. I helped with the casualties and fought fires onboard until Captain Buckmaster ordered abandon ship. Most of the crew went over the side on the starboard side, the high side. We were afraid it might roll over, the list was so bad. I was picked up by a destroyer, and got back to Hawaii on the 8th of June.

With some new planes and some new pilots and crew, we went onboard the Enterprise on the 15th of July, 1942, and set sail for Tonga, the friendly islands. There, we met the Marines who were assembling for the Invasion of

Guadalcanal, which was scheduled for August the 7th of

1942. The landage went off very well, but the Japs came in during the night and sank four of our cruisers, and the supply ships had to leave prematurely. We had go south several hundred miles to Espiritu Santo to get away from the Japanese aircraft.

88 On the 23rd of August, our task force headed back up, and on the 24th we were about 200 miles east of Guadalcanal near Stewart Island. The Wasp had retired south to refuel.

The Enterprise and the Saratoga were the only two American carriers in the next battle, the Battle of Stewart Island.

The Saratoga was not hit during the battle, but the

Enterprise sustained three hits.

My friend Harry Corl, who I mentioned as one of the survivors at Midway, well, his plane was shot down. He didn’t make a water landing, it was a high speed, high angle crash. Harry and one of the crewmen died. The gunner, Delmar Wiley, survived. He went down with the plane and had a hell of a time getting out. When he did get out and came to the surface, there was the plane’s life raft sitting there, but he was wounded. He had taken some

20 mm shell fragments in the legs. I guess he floated around for the best part of a week before he came ashore on a little island east of Bougainville, the Island of

Carteret. The natives found him, and he spent a total of seven months on that island.

I was knocked around on the hangar deck when the

Enterprise was hit. The chief, Mortz, had told me -- told us all -- to get away from the center of the hangar deck, because if we took a bomb that went off below the hangar

89 deck, it would bulge, and we would be all flipped up to the overhead, and be left pasted up there. So by his recommendation we all went to the outboard side of the hangar deck, and we did take a bomb hit. It came in and blew up below the hangar deck in the chief’s quarters, and like Chief Mortz predicted, it humped the hangar deck. We, being on the outside of the hangar deck, didn’t shoot up as high as some of the others who hadn’t heeded Chief Mortz’s warning. They hit the overhead and were killed. Their bodies cushioned our fall when we came back down. I sustained flash burns, shrapnel wounds, and a concussion.

We all treated our own wounds. I pulled some shrapnel out of my leg with some long nosed pliers, and poured sulfa powder in the wounds. I climbed up a ladder to the flight deck, and made my way through men lying with their arms and legs missing. A couple of them were pulling themselves over the side of the ship to commit suicide. I guess they couldn’t bear the thought of living in that condition.

I went over to a 20 mm gun crew that knew me as a qualified gunner, and they strapped me into a 20 mm gun, and for the remaining two or three minutes of the attack, I was shooting at dive bombing Vals. The original gunner had sustained an eye injury with a direct hit he made with a bomb being carried by a Jap plane. The bomb and the plane

90 exploded just above the superstructure of the ship and debris came raining down on everybody. Anyway, I was able to take his position and shoot down a couple of Vals.

We had a lot of fires, we had a lot of casualties and holes in the flight deck. We patched those up with steel plates so we could take our planes coming back from their flights. Some of our planes came back and made night landings on the damaged deck, and others were diverted to the Saratoga. The next morning, all the planes that had landed that night -- the night before, actually -- were dispatched, some directly to Henderson Field on

Guadalcanal, but most of them were sent to Efate. Efate is a small island south of the Espiritu Santo in the Vanuatu group. This included our six TBFs that had made it back.

Our skipper, Commander Jett, was the first to take off in our squadron for Efate, and because he was going to be operating on a remote field, he had loaded his plane with spare parts: tools, personal gear, and the three crew members, and even some depth charges in the bomb bay. He had a pretty heavy load when he took off. When he got airborne, he just dropped over the bow. Then, we saw him come up, and make a clearing turn. His wingtip hit the water and he cartwheeled in. The second plane was the same damn thing, and so did the third. They were just off our

91 port side by a few hundred yards as we cruised by. The depth charges shook loose and started going off. There were nine men in the water when this happened, and many of them were killed. Of those who survived, many had lifelong internal injuries. The fourth plane took off with no problems and landed in Efate.

We left the area on the 25th of August for Tongatapu, the largest of the Tonga islands. The Navy had a repair party down there. On the way, I was put on the salvage crew, the acetylene cutting crew, cutting out all the bomb damage. I was also put on the party that went down to the starboard aft quarter below the metal shop where the ship had taken a bomb hit. We had a hole in the ship at the waterline, and we were taking water. We shored it up with timber and mattresses, and we had the pumps running 24 hours a day, trying to keep the water out of there. The first thing we did when we got to Tongatapu was to flood the port ballasts to raise the starboard side and pull all the debris out. The upshot of all that was we got a temporarily patch put on and headed back to Pearl.

When we got back to Pearl on the 15th of December,

1942, they put us in drydock. The Saratoga had taken another fish -- torpedo -- at the end of August, right after the Enterprise left the area, and came crippling in

92 right behind us. So we were in drydock together. We, the

air crews, went over to Kaneohe. We got new planes, new

pilots, and new air crews. We had to retrain, but we

didn’t have long to do it because the Enterprise was

scheduled to leave the first week in October, and this was

the middle of September.

The Enterprise pulled out on the 16th of October, 1942

without us for the Battle of Santa Cruz, which took place

on the 26th of October. That’s where the Hornet was sunk

and the Enterprise took three 500-pound bomb hits. It

retired to Nouméa, New Caledonia. At the time, it was

accurate to say we had no operational carriers in the South

Pacific. When the Saratoga got out of drydock, our

squadron, VT-3, came aboard, and we left for Nouméa the

middle of November, 1942.

(break in audio)

BWP: December of ’42, the Enterprise and the Saratoga were the

only operational carriers in the Pacific. By that time,

most of the major battles for the Solomons were over, and

we didn’t have much to do. December was laid back. A year

and a half before I had requested Naval flight school. I

wanted to be a pilot, and I was selected to receive my

orders. I boarded the Lurline, which during peacetime had

been a luxury liner. Most of them passengers were wounded

93 Marines from the fighting on Guadalcanal. A lot of them were walking wounded. I would say the bulk of them were

Section Eight candidates -- psychos. My heart really went out to those kids, some of whom had what the Marines called the thousand-yard stare; there was no way to describe what they had been through. They would play poker on deck, and the money they would play with was gold teeth they knocked out of Japanese with their rifle butts.

The end of January ’43, we arrived in San Francisco.

I had to resign from my enlisted rating, and became part of the Navy’s V-5 Naval Reserve Program. I was making between

175 and 200 a month with my flight pay. I had to go to $75 a month cadet pay for the remaining of the year 1943. I graduated from flight school on 21 December 1943, and about six of us from my class went into the Marine Corps as second lieutenants. The rest went into the Navy as ensigns.

After graduation, I was sent to Florida for dive bomber training. I’d led myself to believe I was going to be a Corsair fighter jockey and never even considered that the Marine Corps would assign me to anything but Corsairs.

When I finished on 1 April ’44, I’d flown the SVD-5

Dauntless dive bomber 118 hours, but on 7 June ’44, my big

94 day arrived. My orders were to report to VMF-524, Marine fighter squadron with Corsairs.

By Christmas ’44, I was on high seas with about 2,000 ground crunchers from Camp Pendleton and three dozen Marine pilots on the USS O.H. Ernst, a Marine transport. We left the ground crunchers off at Russell Island, and went on up to Guadalcanal, where all the pilots went into a pilot replacement pool. I was there for a week or two, and went all the way -- all over the islands visiting all the battlefields to familiarize myself with what I had seen back in August of ’42. I, along with five other pilots assigned to the VMF-223 -- which was supposed to be on

Bougainville -- I checked in, but the squadron had already flown their Corsairs off to Samar in the Philippines via

Finschhafen, Bick, and Peleliu. A DC-3 came in, and we all loaded onboard and flew on up the same route the squadron had gone. We were about a week behind them. On Peleliu, we were in a BOQ, Bachelors Officers Quarters, tent area, actually.

One night a group of Japanese came down from [Bottle

Top?] and made a suicide attack landing about 100 yards from our tents. They came through with bayonets and grenades, blowing up tents, jabbing at the beds whether there was anybody in them or not. They got to our planes

95 and started blowing them up with grenades. I slept through the whole thing. The next morning, a young Marine came in and shook me. He said, “Wake up, sir, wake up. Are you all right?” He thought I was dead. I asked him what was wrong. He told me about the suicide attack, and that we had had a bunch of our men killed. All six of the Japs were killed, and I slept through the whole thing.

We flew on to Samar, where we joined VMF-223. We were supporting the Army on their landing at Cebu Island, Panay,

Mindoro, Mindanao, and Negros. We were flying two and three missions a day on the Corsairs loaded with napalm,

500 pound and 1,000 pound bombs, and five-inch high fire rockets. Most of the information being given to us on our target was coming from guerillas. We’d attacked a lot of airfields the Japanese had on Mindanao. We got a lot of planes on the ground; some of them were dummies meant to suck us in so they could shoot us down with their antiaircraft guns.

With the landings on Cebu, I was able to get a sally bomber on the ground just as she was taxiing to take off.

We made repeated runs of Cebu, and I was just pulling out after dropping my last load. I came out under one of the

B-25s just as he caught it right in his engines. He flew apart right in front of me, and I flew through some of his

96 debris. Nobody got out. I flew back to Samar, another 300 miles, with that vision in my mind. That stuck with me for a long time, the vision of that B-25 crashing. That was

March of 1945.

Sometimes, we would catch the Japs out in the open.

The Army would push them into a ravine, or up against a cliff, and they wouldn’t give up, so we would fly in and lay napalm on them, and just kill thousands of them that way. You could see them burning and squirming down there, but they wouldn’t give up, and it was easier for us to go in and do it than let the Army go in and take losses. It was horrible. We would go in day after day and lay loads of this stuff on them.

In June of ’45, four squadrons of us -- there were about 20 to 25 planes per squadron -- came up to Clark

Field on the Island of Luzon. We refueled there, stayed overnight, and the next morning we flew with a Marine navigation plane 1,200 miles all the way to Okinawa. We flew through a hell of a thunderstorm, and got spread out all over the map. A.H. Perry -- Alvin was his name -- who was very close to me, never came out of it. There was a telegram for him when we got to Okinawa saying his wife had just given birth to a baby girl.

97 There were two Jap airfields that we had taken over in

Okinawa. There was Yontan and Kadena. We couldn’t find

Yontan, it was raining, and Marines were still fighting the

Japs at the south end of the island, and it was getting dark. And here we had 100 Corsairs trying to land. We finally found Yontan, and the airfield was about 7,000 feet long, but the first half went uphill, and the last half went down. We were landing two planes at a time so we could get everybody down quickly. When we got to the end of the 3,500 feet of runway, we were braking because we didn’t know there was another 3,500 feet of runway. The tower never said a thing.

From Okinawa, we were fighting the kamikazes between

Okinawa and the island of Kyushu in southern Japan. We went on raids clear up to a field called Miyazaki on the east coast of Kyushu. Colonel Howard King was the commanding officer of our squadron, VMF-223. We also had

Ken Walsh, an enlisted Marine pilot, the first Marine ace of the war from Guadalcanal.

In July we hit Miyazaki. We came in from 15 to 20,000 feet. We were using the first proximity-fused bombs. The fuses were designed to detonate the bomb above ground, so as to disperse the destructive power of the explosion over a wider area, causing more damage than a bomb with a

98 contact fuse. A flight of our four planes that went out the day before with these new fuses got wiped out when one of the bombs went off prematurely. They had been improperly armed. The ground crews worked all night on the arming problem, and the next morning, we were the next flight, and we were hoping they had fixed the arming problem, which they did, fortunately. I was a wingman of

Colonel King, he came in through cloud cover in the early morning, and we caught hundreds of Jap planes on the ground. With these new proximity-fused bombs, we just wiped them out, and then strafed the control tower. On the way out, I still had eight five-inch rockets on my wings, so I fired them at a destroyer or destroyer-escort sized ship that was firing at us just off the coast. I laid all eight rockets broadside into her side. She either went down, or was at least hurt badly.

At Buckner Bay on Okinawa, we had all the ships assembling for the Invasion of Kyushu, planned for the following November. We already had a field marked out for us on Kyushu that Unit 223 was going to work out of once the island was taken. However, the war ended, and we lost about six people from our squadron during the celebrations.

They were driving down the runway in a Jeep when it flipped over into a rice paddy. They broke their necks and drowned

99 in six inches of water. A couple of them were aces, and had been out there a couple of years. The celebrations killed a lot of other people on Okinawa. All the ships were firing off their ammunition, it was raining down on our Quonset huts.

In mid-September, I left Okinawa, and by November I had my orders to inactive duty, which they did with the rest of us Reserve pilots who had gone through the training program.

Well Bruce, I’ve skipped an awful lot in between the family history, and my Navy training, and my aviation cadet training before I got my wings, and so forth, but I hope

I’ve covered the primary area that you’re interested in, so

I’ll close this out. Good luck on your program.

Sincerely, Captain Bernard W. Peterson, US Marine Corps

Reserve, retired. Signing off.

END OF AUDIO FILE

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