I was born on Febuary the sixth, 1919,
and there was a great big snow storm in Western Kansas at the time.
The Doctor didn’t get there till the next day in his horse and buggy.
So that’s my start in life.
My first ten years was in Dresden Kansas,
and my father was in France at the time, and when he came back,
he was not interested in either his wife or his son. And so they were divorced.
And my mother and I lived with her parents for then for ten years,
and when she got a little older so to speak,
she taught school in a one room farm school, eight grades.
And in 1926 she had saved enough money to buy a Ford Model T coup.
So she started coming home every day then from school.
Where she had been staying all through the week at a farm nearby the school.
My interest in airplanes started back when I was five or six years old.
And one of the farmers near by had bought a World War I Curtiss Jenny.
And he used to fly around, and that got my interest in Airplanes.
And so before I was ten years old I was taking Model Airplane News
and building model airplanes.
My first one was a Fokker D7 fighter: a WWI German fighter.
During that time I decided I wanted to become a fighter pilot,
You might say an aero engineer.
So that’s my early start on my history.
When I was 10 my mother remarried and we moved to Norton Kansas.
And in Norton I started the sixth grade and went through High school
building model airplanes, by the way, all the time.
And my ambition sort of ran along the lines: I need to go to West Point,
and then go what they call West Point of the air in San Antonio
to learn to be a fighter pilot.
Well In my Junior year in high school, a good friend of mine who graduated that year,
got an appointment with West Point and did that basically.
Well nearing graduation in high school, I wrote to my Congressman.
He said “I don’t have an appointment to West Point this year,
I have one to Annapolis.”
Well, I didn’t know much about Annapolis, (living) in western Kansas.
You know, Navy?
So, I decided, well I would go to K State. And I went for a year
as a mechanical engineer.
And worked, by the way, for the department chairman
making drawings for ten cents an hour.
That was the going rate.
And it cost me about four hundred dollars a year to go to college.
I stayed in an apartment building with about eight different fellas
and we all ate at the little restaurants around Aggieville.
And we’d get a meal ticket for twenty dollars, and that would last for a month or so.
And so that was the year I was there, and again I knew I needed to
well, I was in the ROTC too of course
but that wasn’t going to get me where I wanted to go.
And so I wrote my congressman again - Congressman Carlson.
And he said “I don’t have an appointment to West Point,
but I’ve got one to Annapolis.”
Okay, someone is telling me something.
He said “if you are interested, go to the post office on a certain date
and take my competitive examination.” So I said, “Okay I’ll do that.”
So I went back to Norton and took the whole day’s examination.
What it was, was essentially the Naval Academy entrance exam.
So I got the appointment,
and he told me to go to Fort Riley to have a physical, to see if I pass.
Well it turns out everything was fine, except I had two teeth that wouldn't get in.
They were crooked.
So I went to Topeka to an orthodontist, and he gave me a real quick job
on straightening the two teeth.
And so on— oh, and while I was at K State, in one of my classes –
I think it was my speech class -
I got acquainted with another person
that had an appointment to Annapolis too (Don Reader).
And he was from Jetmore, Kansas,
which is about a hundred miles south of Norton.
So we decided if we got orders to go together,
we’d go together, and we did.
Well his parents brought him over to Norton and took us to Nebraska
where we’d get the Lincoln-Zephyr
and we’d go to Chicago.
No trains go through to Chicago. So you’d have to transfer.
And so we transferred at Penn Central I think, I am not sure.
Anyhow, we went to Washington DC.
We got in in the evening, and went to the Annapolis Hotel in Washington DC.
So the next day we went over to see our congressmen.
We went over to see mine, and he wasn’t in, but his secretary had a nice conversation with us.
So we went over to see his congressman, and he was in. And he says,
“Have you ever been to Washington DC before?” “No.”
“Well my car is out in the back lot, here’s the keys,
and just come back by five o’clock tonight.”
And so we took the congressman’s car and drove around Washington
and saw some of the sights and got back at five o’clock at night.
And stayed all night again at the hotel and the next day we went to Annapolis.
And there was a Midshipman a couple of years ahead of us
who Carlson had appointed from Salina.
and he (Carlson) got him to arrange a place for us to stay in Annapolis,
which we did. And so then we went to the academy;
took our physical exam — our grades form K State did that part of it.
And so on the 30th of June 1937
we both entered the Naval Academy,
and we became roommates for the whole time.
The summer was spent, some math and classes like that;
rifle range in particular: firing 30 caliber rifles and
45 caliber colt pistols, 30 caliber machine guns, and so forth.
I never could qualify for a marksman.
Then some of the summer was spent
in sailboats, rowboats, and that sort of thing.
And then school started of course,
and for everyone but the freshmen coming in
they had what they called September leave
and when that was over we all started school.
And I guess the whole four years was,
as far as academics went, was, you know, hard.
I made three gas model airplanes during that time,
one of which almost got me kicked out because I was
doping it over the Officer of the Day of the academy.
His office was right under our room and all that smell was coming down on him
nd he didn’t think that was appropriate.
And fortunately he didn’t find me,
but he had a midshipman chase down until he did and tell me to quit
which I did.
The first gas model airplane I actually made was when I was on September leave,
my first leave in ’38;
the second was made during the academic year at the Naval Academy.
A professor, who was actually a Lieutenant in the Navy,
who taught radio and electrical systems
had a radio that would go in a gas model airplane.
And he asked me if I’d like to have it.
So I made another gas model airplane to put this in.
And it flew in the summer of 1939, radio control - rudder control.
But he didn’t get to see it. He was sent to China Station.
And his name was Lt. Ronald J. Worthington.
He was on his way home from China Station, fleet,
and was in Cavite Naval Yard (Base in Manila Bay) in the Philippines,
when the war started.
They gave him a destroyer, which didn’t have any guns on it,
to go to sea and do whatever.
The Japanese of course sunk it, killed him and everybody.
The summers there were real neat.
The summer of ’38 I was on the USS Texas for about three months.
We went to Le Havre, France,
to Portsmouth, England, and Copenhagen, Denmark.
When we got into Le Havre, France
real stinky port by the way
we got a Cook’s Tour to Paris, and it cost forty dollars.
And that covered transportation from Le Havre and back on the train,
a nice hotel —Letitia Hotel, which is still in existence
meals, as well with a room
and then a tour of Paris was all included in that forty dollars
for four days.
While we were there, one thing my roommate and I did,
we went out to the Airport Le Bourget and took a flight over Paris.
We spent a little time around Le Havre, but that’s a pretty poor place.
We were there (in Denmark) over the fourth of July as a matter of fact.
Those crazy Danes go swimming in the water up there,
in the Baltic, and it’s as cold as icebergs almost.
but they go swimming and enjoy the beach.
We didn’t do much there, we went to a castle which is where Hamlet was from.
And I was impressed by the armor, they had a whole bunch of old-time armor.
You know, a kid today, ten years old, couldn’t hardly get in it.
I mean, those people were little;
sort of like the Japanese were years ago too, you know?
So anyway, then some native sort of took a hold of us one day
and showed us around Copenhagen a little bit.
And he informed us that -this was the first I had ever heard of, over there, Hitler at all -
how Hitler was improving Germany.
And see, the Danes go up to Bavaria and Switzerland for vacations,
and they’d travel back and forth, and of course here were some nice roads;
you know, he was really improving Germany.
And so this guy was highly impressed with that.
And the one thing I do remember particularly there, was the Tivoli Gardens, have you ever heard of that?
well it’s the original — you might say the original Six Flags or Disney Land
It goes way back to the ‘20s or earlier,
and it’s a really nice garden, so to speak. They have performances and a band and these sort of things.
It’s just really neat. And it’s still in existence but just operates during the summer.
And from there we went to Portsmouth and again took a tour to London for four days
— forty dollars also.
Incidentally the Franc was 39 Francs to the Dollar in those days.
Anyhow, we went to England for the same price
and stayed at the Imperial Hotel which is in Russell Square
not far from the (British) Museum and quite a few nice things to see.
And again we had meals, rooms, and so forth, transportation, tour of London.
So that was an enjoyable experience too of course.
From Portsmouth also, I went to Brighton,
which is sort of, in those days anyway, one of their summer beach places.
Again it’s too cold to go in, but they do it.
And from there, I don’t know; we came back to the states.
Fired five inch guns, and things like that.
The whole tour, being the first one from the Midshipmen’s point of view,
was to do the work and stand the type of watches that the enlisted men stood.
The whole thing: you know we scrubbed the deck, and you know, all these things like that.
So that was the whole purpose of the trip: to acquaint you with sailors.
So then going back, the next summer,
about a third of it was devoted to helping incoming plebes, moving them around.
About another third was devoted to flying in a twin engine sea plane, a PBY sea plane.
We co-piloted, navigated, and shot the guns out of the side at a target, that sort of thing.
So that was, you know, really good for me.
We also went down in a sub in Chesapeake Bay and were inside of a sub.
And the last part was supposed to be a destroyer cruise for me,
about two weeks up to New York and Boston.
Well unfortunately just before that came up, I was high jumping and broke my leg.
So I spent that time in the Hospital.
And while I was there - during the first three years of the acedemic year
Two of us had roomed together all four years,
and an additional two, we had a four man room.
One of these members was from California (Mac Nicholson).
He was a real sailor type,
and he fell out of a mast way up on the sailplane
or racing yacht,
that had been given to the Naval Academy,
like for the race from Bermuda and back, that sort of thing.
He was up in the mast and fell down onto a hatch;
broke his pelvis into umpteen pieces, and he came into the hospital while I was there.
and I got a little better at this time, and got let out just in time for Sept. leave.
And I came back, and of course he was still in,
and he probably didn’t get back out till November I suppose, before he got out of the hospital.
So that was my third summer, you might say.
My fourth summer was on the USS Arkansas.
This cruise didn’t go to Europe because the war going on of course.
We went to Venezuela, and Panama, and Puerto Rico, and Cuba.
And come up to Norfolk area and shot guns and so forth.
And we also went to, I guess it was, New York and Boston too.
And that was a cruise primarily to see what the Junior Officers did.
We stood Junior Officer watch and so forth.
And then we came back to the Academy
and they told us our last year was going to be shortened up
and that we’d graduate in February instead of June.
And we didn’t have any vacations and so forth; everything was jammed up a bit.
I also got a letter from
We moved battalions, I moved to a different battalion,
we all did actually, but there were just two man rooms.
So Don Reeder and I were together and the other two were together (Mac Nicholson and Jim McManus).
And I got a letter right away from the battalion commander
that I should not be building any model airplanes in my room
and I would have to have permission from the admiral.
So I wrote a letter to the admiral, and of course three or four months later, I got back approval.
Well I was going to leave. So that sort of ended the model airplane building at the academy.
And we graduated on February seventh, just a day after I was twenty-two years old.
I might say, in those days, from the beginning of the Navy,
midshipmen were commissioned in the United States Navy.
I’ve got a piece of paper over here that shows my first Commission.
We all took the same course except for foreign language.
We had a choice of French, Italian, Spanish, or German.
Except for that, we all took the same course to be a Junior Officer on a combat ship.
There were four hundred in my class that graduated. About twenty-five went into the Marines
and there were about twenty who couldn’t pass the physical to become naval officers
and they were commissioned as Ensigns in the Reserve
but the rest of us, which was about 350
were commissioned as Ensigns in the United States Navy
and we all went to combat ships.
he first member of my class was killed a couple months before the war was started,
in the Atlantic on a destroyer which a German sub torpedoed.
He was the first casualty.
Then Pearl Harbor. Of course I went on the USS Maryland.
I joined it actually in Long Beach, California, and went up to Bremerton, Washington for six months overhaul.
From there we went into Pearl.
And while we were in the six months overhaul, I went down to Valejo, California
for a six weeks education in range finders and optics.
And I was the Range Finder and Optical officer on the Maryland. That was my job.
And we didn’t have radar.
We were supposed to get radar and new boilers and several things like that,
that were not available when we were in overhaul.
Strikes on the, you know, strikes here and there in the country so
we didn’t get several things we should’ve had.
And so then we went to Pearl.
We operated out of Pearl, probably about half the time and half the time in Pearl.
And the system of operations in those days was:
the battleships had an area to operate in, the destroyers had an area to operate in,
the cruisers had an area to operate in, and the submarines had an area to operate in.
So supposedly there were no submarines in our area; however, on occasion we saw some.
And on several occasions we actually called in destroyers and they dumped some charges on them,
— of course, too late.
Anyhow, maybe the Japanese knew we knew they were there.
I would say our attitude at that time was,
we knew we were going to be at war with Japan.
The problem was we didn’t know where or when.
When we went into Pearl, we were there for a while,
we’d see these B17s being flown into Hickam Field which was right next door
and then on to the Philippines.
And so, Washington thought the war would be started in the Philippines, you see.
In fact, MacArthur had quite a bit of information on codes and what-have-you,
that the people in Hawaii didn’t have.
And there was one code (machine) on breaking down the Japanese major code,
which the British had one copy of the machine, we had one in Washington,
and the third one was with MacArthur in the Philippines.
And so the Pearl Harbor people just got what someone happened to tell them.
And nobody suggested really, Washington never suggested we were a problem.
So that was the background, I think you could say, of my point of view of Pearl Harbor
Well, on the specific day,
I had bought a new Bell and Howell movie camera
and I had taken about one or two rolls of film.
There’s a nice golf course up the mountains behind Honolulu, we used to go play golf.
I had taken my first roll of film up there.
When Pearl Harbor started, I of course had that in my room there.
And there were three of us rooming together,
two of them were out of the class of ’40, and I was out of the class of ’41.
One of them out of the (class of) ’40 was, my boss actually.
He was John Mutty; he was in charge of the F-division.
The other one was Dusty Rhodes and he was in engineering.
Well, Naval Academy graduates weren’t supposed to get married for two years after you graduated
but Dusty Rhodes got married about a year after he graduated.
And his wife, she was able to afford to come over and live in Hawaii.
You see, we were home ported — oh I can’t think of the name right quick,
well that was the home port (Long Beach, CA)
Well everyone’s family lived there you see.
Well, to come over from there to Hawaii, they had to pay their own way.
Well that was, well I was getting $125 a month,
you know, you can’t afford to bring your wife over or family over with $125 a month.
You couldn’t afford to live there either.
Well his wife came over — she had the money in other words.
Well, when Pearl Harbor started, he was home with his wife.
John and I were in our room, and we had just finished (dressing),
just ready to walk out the door to go to breakfast.
We had started to hear noises, and looked out the port.
And here was an airplane going by, at about a hundred feet off the ground
with a great big red meatball on it, you know.
Well we knew what was going on,
so we started to our battle station when they started calling general quarters.
And our battle station for the F-division was down in the,
about four decks down, in the middle of the ship.
Once you got there, you couldn’t get out (the water tight doors were sealed).
It was a real nice place to be as long as the ship was afloat.
If it wasn’t, you couldn’t get out.
But anyhow, that’s where we went.
But Dusty couldn’t go. Well he had his battle station there too,
and when he got back over, he couldn’t go down there.
He went up to grab my camera, thought he’d take some good pictures,
but he decided, ‘can’t get them developed, they’re colored.’
So he didn’t take any. And so that was a crazy one.
While everything was going on,
obviously our sixteen-inch guns weren’t much use,
and neither were the five-inch. The anti-aircraft basically got to firing,
When you were in port, you put all your ammunition down - It’s a hot place, you know?
and your ammunition spoils, so to speak, in that heat —
so everything was down in the magazines.
So it took fifteen, twenty minutes to get everything going.
It takes fifteen minutes to get a ship from one condition to battle condition.
And so, the it was all over by the time we were ready to fire.
So all we did down there was,
we had essentially three different radio circuits,
mine was to the range finders, and then we had two computers
range keepers we called them
which Dusty operated one, and
actually Ensign Lowere operated the other one.
And I worked with Dusty on one, in other words, I was a range finder,
and I put in an input for the range, and he worked the machine.
And, so that was a different circuit (gunnery control circuit manned by Ensign Lowere)
It was a circuit that went to the, among other things,
the mast where people up there could see around good.
Then the third circuit - Mutty was on more of a command circuit.
Well we got all kind of information from those people during the affair you know:
like the Oklahoma going over, and all these things.
*And you were right next to the Oklahoma.*
Yeah, we were tied up with eight-inch Manila lines,
back and forth between them,
they snapped like a thread, like a 60 thread.
And it (the Oklahoma) flipped right over.
So we got information on all these things going on.
And, anyhow, that’s sort of what we did while the war was going on.
And then finally after they decided there wasn’t anymore Japanese ships coming in,
then they opened up a bit.
Various people began to get new job.
The ones with boats tried to rescue people.
And my job, actually, was anti-aircraft gunnery.
And so that went on for quite a few days.
We (on the USS Maryland) received one hit for sure, and apparently another one.
But one of the horizontal bomber’s bombs
which was armor piercing shell
went through right up at the bow, went through the bow and on into the mud below.
Didn’t explode, but it opened up a big hole in the bow.
There were two sailors up there that were killed, drowned.
Then we had an officer killed on an anti-aircraft battery.
We never really knew for sure whether it was some little bomb that went off up in the air,
and he got hit with it or whatever, or something else.
Anyhow, he was killed on the top side of the ship.
And this was after probably during the second bombing.
We had a pilot over on Ford Island,
our aircraft had gone over to Ford Island, and the pilots were over there.
I am not sure, but he was one of the pilots that was killed.
Apparently, he was shot down in his airplane, but I don’t know what did ever happen.
So that was our damage. And behind us was the Tennessee,
with the West Virginia on the outside of it.
And again the West Virginia got the torpedoes like the Oklahoma got the torpedoes,
but the two of us (Tennessee & Maryland) didn’t get torpedoes.
And they (the Tennessee) didn’t get too much damage either.
A horizontal bomb got them too, but it didn’t go off.
They got a little damage but not much.
So the two of us were in pretty good shape.
On the outside of us was the Oklahoma which turned over,
and the West Virginia (on the outside of the Tennessee) sunk down;
they were able to quickly sink it down so it (the West Virginia) didn’t turn over.
And of course the Arizona was behind that,
and it got a bomb down, it went down into magazines
exploded and of course, everything.
And behind that was the Nevada and they got hit a little bit.
and tried to get out of the harbor and then they got bombed really quite a bit.
And they were told not to get out of the harbor, block the harbor, in other words.
Two other battleships: the Pennsylvania and the California were ahead of us.
One was over in the shipyard,
and one was just ahead of us a ways,
and they both got seriously damaged.
And in each battleship, eight of them,
there were five of my classmates.
So that’s forty of my classmates right in the group.
Now I don’t know how many more there were,
because every battleship got five of my classmates,
the cruisers got something like three or four,
and there were several cruisers in there.
And then the destroyers generally got one officer.
So, there were probably anywhere from ten to fifteen more of my class in the Pearl Harbor attack.
And I don’t know how many were killed.
The Oklahoma, I think lost all five, and the Arizona lost most of theirs too I think.
You wouldn’t know this, but there were people that tried to say
that we were all ashore and that sort of thing (i.e., derelict of duty).
But probably on our ship there were 1,200 people all told,
and I doubt if there were 15 ashore.
In other words, the families couldn’t afford to get over, you see.
The admiral was ashore, he had his wife there.
The captain didn’t have his family out, for instance. He was on board.
And of course, Dusty Rhodes had his wife there.
Probably the one ensign’s wife there, actually.
There were very few people (offshore), we all stayed on the ship,
we didn’t get off, you know.
We maybe had a picnic that we’d all go on with the division some place,
or we’d take a bus tour around the island,
and occasionally go to Waikiki beach obviously, and some other beaches.
But we didn’t have money to be spending a whole lot of time that way anyhow.
But at any rate, the Japanese did a nice job.
They planned that. If you look back at history, they planned very well.
They started to plan the attack about a year ahead.
They even had a trial run up on one of their islands up there a month or so before,
on a harbor that looked a lot like Pearl. You know, they did their homework.
And we didn’t have anywhere near enough aircraft to search around the islands,
for ships coming in.
The navy had few PBYs, which I flew on a few times,
and we’d take a sector and go out three-hundred miles or so.
There’s three-hundred and sixty degrees, you know.
And when you cover fifteen degrees of it, you’re not covering much of it.
We didn’t have any airplanes to be able to do that.
And that was another criticism of course, that we didn’t cover the seas, you know.
This is a nice book, by the way, on Pearl Harbor,
and there’s another real good one by Admiral Layton
which covers more than Pearl Harbor, covers Midway and other things. (book references in credits)
He was the chief intelligence officer for Admiral Nimitz,
and Admiral Kimmel too.
And he’s got one of the best books for history there,
before and after, including the intelligence area.
After the shipyard put a patch on the hole on our bow and pumped us out,
what we had to do was blast a quay out that we were tied up to
for us to get out with the Oklahoma sitting there beside us.
So this happened, I don’t know, about a week after Pearl Harbor.
So we went back to Bremerton, Washington, and had some repairs made.
We still didn’t get the radar by the way.
We were there before Christmas, and were there for about a month and half I guess.
And we used to have to get up and man everything at night, two or three times.
Every time some truck would go down the highway,
there would be reports of incoming Japanese aircraft.
So it was sort of cold, a cold rain up there a lot of times.
And you'd have to get up, and those trucks going down the highways.
Well anyhow, from there I think we went to San Francisco for a short period.
And we got into a task force of fifteen ships or so, and this is before Midway.
And we went out towards Midway and to north of Midway
and that’s the location we were in, when the Midway battle took place.
So here’s Midway, we were here, and Alaska is here,
so we were sort of in between.
Washington said the Japanese were going to attack Alaska,
and they told Admiral Nimitz to get things up there.
Well his people say they’re going to attack Midway, and I’m going to go to Midway.
So that shows you how good Washington’s information is.
So anyway, Admiral Layton, who was his chief intelligence officer,
and the guy that who broke the Japanese code, Rochefort, (Joseph J. Rochefort) I think.
He was the intelligence man, Hawaiian department, Navy Department.
He was the one that decided it was Midway.
He (Rochefort) sent a message out to Midway to have them to openly say that their water system was broke.
So here comes the Japanese code telling their people that the water system on Midway was broke.
And that is what gave him the assurance that that’s where they were going.
And Nimitz went with him. Well at any rate, that’s sort of going along.
Well from there we went back into San Francisco
yeah San Francisco, and we actually got the radar hoisted aboard.
Well here’s the top of the mast, it has to go up there,
all these places to go up.
So it got hoisted aboard. Well we went to Pearl right quick,
and from Pearl we went to Fijis
And about, well at that time it was a couple three months, after Midway.
So, one of my classmates got the job of getting that thing (radar) installed,
and when it got it installed that took my job.
So I was given the job to become the Division Officer of the Third Division,
which manned turret three: two sixteen-inch guns
which fired, each shell was 2,000 pounds,
and you had five one-hundred pound bags of powder to fire them.
Well so that was my next job for the second year essentially I was on the Maryland.
And along with that, the four turret officers stood all of the Officer of the Deck watches underway
and so what the Officer of the Deck does which you probably aren’t aware of,
he runs the ship essentially for his tour; moves all the actual operations of the ship, and so forth.
So that was - the four of us did that.
And then there were four airplanes on the ship,
and the turret officer number four and myself were
the catapult officers and recovery officers for those aircraft.
and I was twenty-three years old.
Well anyhow, that was a year.
And at most we were operating with about twenty-five ships,
of which three of them were jeep carriers,
and the rest were battleships and cruisers and destroyers.
And we operated primarily around, as a backup for Guadalcanal.
We operated from Efate in the New Hebrides,
which is not too far from Guadalcanal and not too far from New Caledonia for example.
And that’s, when I got my orders to go to flight training,
in spring of ’44, ’43 yeah.
So I left the Maryland and got on the USS Washington
which was one of the new battleships.
And they’d had a torpedo. They’d been torpedoed,
and so they were going back to Pearl to get repairs.
And so I rode the Washington back to Pearl, and then I sat there for a few
three or four days, maybe week, before I could get another ship to go back to San Francisco.
And then I went by train to my home in Norton for a short time,
and from there then I went down to Dallas, Texas to start my flight training in June of ’43.
And on essentially July 10th, I met my future wife,
Well one of my classmates There were several classmates in flight training at the same time
and we all lived in a motel which was on the Fort Worth cut off
which was about fifteen miles from where we were flying.
And so one of them had a cousin who lived in Dallas
and she wanted my future wife to meet him,
and so we met them in downtown Dallas, and he wasn’t very impressed.
And so several of us were going to go to the Starlight Theater in Dallas.
So some of them had dates and I didn’t have one so, we decided to try Bobby.
So she went with me. That was our first datewas at the Starlight Theater,
And I guess at that point
you ever hear ‘Some Enchanted Evening’? You ever hear of that music, that song?
It’s from South Pacific (Rodgers & Hammerstein).
Well anyhow, it ends up, “once you have found her/ never let her go”.
So we were engaged in August before I left for Pensacola,
and she came down to visit me in Pensacola to see if we really wanted to get married,
and we made arrangements to be married in November.
And so she and her mother and father and her best girlfriend came down
and we were married November 5th 1943.
And so we had a long engagement. And it lasted almost 70 years.
We lacked 36 days of being married 70 years.
Well anyhow then I got through flight training,
in fact I was finished before the end of the year, except I hadn’t passed Morse Code.
If you know what Morse Code is.
I hadn’t passed my Morse code. You had to take so many words a minute by ear, and so many words by blinker
so I passed that then right after the first of the year,
and got my wings.
And went from there to fighter training at Vero Beach
flying Hellcats, Grumman F6Fs, the one in the middle up there,
and so I spent about two years in a row then, flying Hellcats.
I went through flight training there,
then I went to Chicago and Gross Isle and I landed on a carrier in the Great Lakes there,
and got my carrier qualification, went back to Vero Beach.
And they kept me around as an instructor for another several months.
Instrument instructing the students coming in, and then later taking a fighter group through.
So come summer then, I was assigned to Air Group Sixteen.
Started out as a fighter squadron, which had 72 fighters,
and they decided to split it into two squadrons, 36 each,
one being a fighter squadron, and the other being called a fighter bomber squadron.
And so we had some extra training then, in close air support of incoming troops,
and so that’s what we were getting set for, is to go out then for the invasion of Japan,
And we went Bobby met me every place she could during those years
Couple weeks or less in Providence, Rhode Island when we got off loaded,
and less than about eight hours in Los Angeles, when we came into San Diego for twenty-four hours.
And we were on the Bonhomme Richard, and we went through the canal,
and were to go to San Francisco actually,
to get the guns put on the side that couldn’t get put on when we went through the canal.
And so Bobby was going to meet me in San Francisco.
Well, we got a change of order after we got through the canal to go to Hawaii
post haste, and stop in San Diego for one day and get fuel.
And so we got into San Diego to get fuel.
Well I called my mother in-law, and she said Bobby was in L.A.
she didn’t know where
but she was with one of my roommates: Mac Nicholson
the one that fell off the mast and so forth.
He and his mother he had been stationed in Washington; he had been transferred,
and so Bobby had driven with them into L.A.
And I knew where they lived in Pasadena,
and he had a house that they rented, but I knew where that was. And I went to that house
and they said they, They had been there just a few hours ago.
And I didn’t have any idea where they were going, except that at eight o’clock that night
they were going meet his sister coming in on a train at the Union Station.
So I went to Union Station and found them,
and so that was eight o’clock at night
and I had to be on a ship to leave eight o’clock the next morning
so we didn’t see much of each other you see.
And she went on up to San Francisco with a friend of hers up there, and then later went home.
Anyhow, the Bonhomme Richard went to Hawaii
and took off our air group and put a night fighter group on,
and the reason was the Enterprise had the night fighter outfit,
and they got pretty well damaged, so they wanted a night fighter group out real fast.
And so, we (air group 16) spent a few weeks on Maui,
and then they sent us off to Saipan, and we were there for a couple weeks,
and then we went to Leyte Gulf and got on the USS Randolph,
and relieved the Air Group 12, actually.
And so, after we got on the Randolph we started for Japan.
And, so the last months of the war,
we were going up and down the coast of Japan.
And we would make three days of runs into a particular target area,
then we would back off and refuel, and so forth.
And then take another area someplace else and bomb them.
I think in the months there, I made eight, I think about eight bombing trips into Japan itself.
And the other flights I flew were combat air-patrols over the ships;
the Japanese kamikazes were coming in, and I never was in the right place to meet with one.
I was either at 20,000 feet and they’d come in at five,
or I was at 10,000 and they’d come in at twenty, or something, you know.
I never got close to one.
But, I did make about eight bombing runs into Japan itself.
We went into the Tokyo area, the Sendai area, the Hokkaido area:
the northern isle between the ferries.
And then the Osaka-Kobe area.
And that was the area we went into,
and in fact, we went into the Kobe-Osaka inland sea,
and that was the only time I had ever had a plane with me that was damaged.
My number four team man got a shrapnel into his engine,
and knocked out one of the two magnetos actually,
and we of course turned right out and went home, and he made it home fine.
And then, on the fifteenth, the first flight off of the carrier that day was the dawn patrol.
It was fighters summoned to the area
as the first clearing of the area
before the bomber squadrons would come in.
And so on the fifteenth, I took sixteen planes to, I can’t remember the exact area,
near just on the side of Tokyo, and we were over Tokyo Bay, and so forth,
and we dropped our bombs and what not, and we were just starting to come back to the ship.
And they started calling the bomber squadron with the fighter escort,
told them to drop their bombs into the water, and to return to the ship,
so we were the last combat group in other words from the Randolph.
Why I am here actually is because they dropped an atomic bomb.
To start with, we had been asked to plan a flight from our ship to Pusan Harbor
Well there was a Hurricane, what do you call them over there? A typhoon.
And a lot of (Japanese) shipping was going into Pusan Harbor
and so our fighters, fighter bombers, were the only ones who could possibly make it back, (from Pusan)
and we couldn’t really do it either (not enough fuel to return).
And we were planning a flight to Pusan Harbor, and fortunately it went over Hiroshima.
And so the Army came out.
They didn’t want anybody over Hiroshima. So it was cancelled.
And actually, what it amounted to was the flight went across Japan, into Pusan (to bomb), made it back,
Our best chance was we would have had to land in the water,
after we made it over Japan again.
Hopefully get picked up by a destroyer, submarine or PBY.
If we had any extra use of gas, we would have never made it home.
So that’s the number one reason I am here. The number two reason is that,
if we had actually landed troops, (in occupation of Japan)
we would have been pretty dangerously operating in support of the troops,
as being the planes that supported right down, close by the action against the Japanese, you see.
So that’s the number one reason of my being here.
The Lord has taken care of me. Which is all I can really say.
Well, after the war was over, my air group was disbanded in November,
and my next job was being the navigator of a carrier.
And so I went to the USS White Plains in Seattle and started navigating out of the fog out of Seattle,
and turned out we were going out to Boston through the canal
and were being put out of commission in Seattle, I mean Boston.
And incidentally, I couldn’t get a place to live, anywhere near.
We lived in Foxborough, Massachusetts, in a motel.
And Bobby and my oldest daughter, I met them with her father in Detroit,
and then I took over, and we drove to Boston, and this is about April of ’46.
And so we had a few months in Boston, in this motel,
and then I got orders to three years of postgraduate school
first two years in Annapolis, and the third year at the California Institute of Technology.
so we lived for two years in Annapolis and our second child, Sherrie,
was born that summer in Dallas, and I was in Alameda.
The summers of post graduate school, I spent the first summer at the Patuxent River Naval Air test section,
and flying test aircraft there.
And the second summer I spent at the Alameda Naval Air station
the overhaul and repair station.
They would take airplanes like that, and tear them down and repair them and put them back together.
So I was learning that trade, so to speak, and test flying the airplanes that would come out.
And Sherrie was born in August before I was through.
So anyhow, I got on an airplane, and I wasn’t too late, like 24 hours after her birth.
And from there then, I went to Cal Tech and spent a year there,
and I have an Engineers degree from Cal Tech,
Now, It’s what they call a junior PHD
it has the same course work as a PHD, but you don’t do a dissertation, instead of that you do a project.
It’s almost similar to KU’s doctorate of engineering degree. Not too much different.
So anyway, that was my education. I went from there to Corpus Christi,
and I was a Maintenance Officer for forty some airplanes,
and I had about five-hundred men working for me.
And then I went to Jacksonville, Florida,
and was a gunnery officer for COM FAIR JAX (Commander Fleet Air Jacksonville)
and that’s where I made Commander.
Oh, by the way, I made Lieutenant Commander just before the war was over.
I was Executive Officer of Fighter- Bomber Sixteen, by the way.
That was because the previous Executive Officer had been shot down.
And I lost my roommate when we were over Japan too.
And anyhow, when I made my Lieutenant Commander with flight pay,
I finally exceeded four-hundred dollars a month for salary,
which is what Dusty Rhodes got when he quit the navy in 1942 and went to work for DuPont.
But so, that was always a milestone.
Here Dusty had worked all through the war, and here I was getting shot at;
I finally made more money than hed made, when he started.
I don’t know how much he was making by this time.
Well let’s see, that was a quickie on some of that.
Let’s see, after I made Commander,
they gave me orders to be Commanding Officer of an anti-submarine squadron on a carrier.
I didn’t want it.
Well anyhow, they sent me to Corpus Christi.
Went through a real nice instrument training school,
and got a green card, which means you can fly anytime you wanted to
didn’t make any difference what the weather was.
While I was there, I really injured my back flying, just tore it up.
Couldn’t even sleep.
So anyhow, I went from there to Norfolk, Virginia,
to go to an anti-submarine school, and anti-submarine tactics and so forth,
I was resting the whole time I could for my back.
And I went back to the Com Air Atlantic office and told them I didn’t want that,
I wanted a fighter squadron.
Well, they said, just keep going, we have something coming up.
So fine, and they were jet fighters Grumman F9Fs, actually is what they were.
And unfortunately, or fortunately, really, for me,
the Commanding Officer of Fleet Aircraft Service Squadron 795 was killed.
And it was a squadron in Bermuda which serviced Sea Planes.
If you look back up here there’s a picture of one of them those are Sea Planes, PBM.
Well there I was and there I went. I went to Bermuda
If I had got that fighter squadron, I was going to Korea.
So that was a real good deal, probably not in the long-run, but personally it was a good deal,
and we enjoyed our year in Bermuda just greatly; and that’s what it amounted to was a year.
And so from there we went to Dallas Texas,
and I was what’s called an Assistant Bureau of Aeronautics Representative
and this is the group of people that inspect and buy new airplanes, like from Chance Vought.
They were still making those, but of course they were making jets too.
And I was there for a year.
Then they decided to make a new Bureau of Aeronautics Representative at Fort Worth,
which had Bell Helicopters primarily.
And so I got moved from Assistant BAR of Dallas to BAR of Fort Worth,
and so I got into Helicopters.
I had never got into them before well I had flown one too but that wasn’t my cup of tea.
Well anyway I was there for a year.
And after I got through with the year they sent me to Helicopter school.
And so the next job was Commanding Officer of Helicopter Utility Squadron One,
which is the Pacific fleet rescue squadron.
If you look back at the Korean War, you’ll find there’s a movie even, made of them:
‘The Bridges of Toko-Ri’
it’s a movie of the rescues that Helicopter Utility Squadron One was doing in Korea.
And actually, they were given the Presidential Unit Citation, actually
which is unusual for a non-combat outfit.
So anyhow, that was my next duty.
Well the next duty was Chief Staff Officer for Commander Fleet Air Philippines in Manila.
Actually Sangley Point (Naval Air Station) That was the first year.
Then he (the Captain) left, he was also the Commanding officer of Sangley Point.
He left and went to,he made Admiral actually, and left.
Then the staff was moved over to a new base at Cubi Point in Subic Bay,
which was a nice airfield for carrier aircraft.
So that was my next assignment. Two years in the Philippines,
and quite a few things took place during those two.
On occasion I had to fly to Singapore, Ceylon to check the bases.
We were about to send some planes from Japan around to the Suez Canal.
That was when there was a fuss between France, England, the United States, and Nassar (President of Egypt)
on who owns the Suez Canal.
And another time, for instance, we had got
the planes coming in from Japan picking up mines,
We were about to mine China, and it turned out we didn’t.
But several things took place in those two years that were interesting.
I used to read the messages from the State Department, for example,
classified messages on what’s going on, you know.
I didn’t have the clearance Hillary had,
I would have been strung up if I had mishandled any of that.
At any rate, from there I went to the Memphis Naval Air Technical Training Center as the Executive Officer.
I was there for three years. It’s a school of about 12,000 students.
Primarily, the biggest bunch of them are electronic people who qualified out of boot camp.
And there were three levels actually; the boot camp level,
and then there was a level for sailors who had about six - seven years first class,
and then the high level was for maintenance officers. It was sort of a Junior College level.
And so, I retired 24 years to the day from when I got in the Naval Academy.
And we had bought a house in Dallas when we lived there,
and were planning on trying to go back there; hopefully work for Chance Vought.
Well I went over to Chance Vought. I knew the President,
and he said we just can’t help you, and he suggested I go to a different company
which I didn’t want to go, so I didn’t.
So I sent in letters to a number of schools, in Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, and Arizona actually relative to teaching.
And I got three offers actually, and I thought KU was the best.
So it wasn’t necessarily the best program, but it was a good one,
and Arizona was probably a bit better, but not so handy: my folks here in this state, and Bobby’s in Texas, you know.
So anyway, that’s why we came here.
So I put in twenty-eight years at KU, chairman of the department for twelve,
and I did about a bit over a half-million dollars of research at that time.
One was on tornados with Dr. Eagleman, and one was on Venus Probes about ’76 or so. I forget exactly when
the main probe and three little ones.
And the other major one was the streamlining of eighteen-wheeler tractor trailers.
So a lot of what you see that way are things that I have actually worked on,
some of them were my own ideas, and others were taking NASA’s ideas and checking them out.
And then I had a real good, interesting program,
KU, in those days wouldn’t think to having a security clearance,
and in my area you needed it; aerodynamics, supersonic flight, things like that.
Well anyway, Black and Veatch contacted me, and I got a secret clearance through them,
through the army, actually. And I worked for them for twenty years on the side.
The key element of all of it, you can see back here on the wall,
the picture that shows two shock tubes.
It was put in operation in 1968, and it was the largest facility of its type in the world, in Aberdeen Proving Ground.
It was to test the effect of atomic blast on gas turbine engines, and diesel engines.
The Antiballistic Missile program needed a steady source of electrical power,
and so each unit, which they ended up only ever building one.
I don’t know if they ever completed that because politics tore it out.
But anyhow, that was a nice accomplishment on my part,
because I had to present it to Washington DC at the Army,
what’s the engineers’ Army Engineers (Core of Engineers), I can’t think of the name of that.
Anyhow they sent me up to Cambridge, Massachusetts to the Bechtel Company to present to the
power committee of the National Academy of Sciences.
And so they bought it and after that, they started designing it and constructing it.
Well that’s one of my sort of good accomplishments, there’s been probably a lot of bad ones too.
And then I retired, after 28 years, and that’s been 28 years now.
So then I had to work for my boss for most of these years, you can see, she was pretty hard on me.