With today the 70th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, I wanted to post some stuff of my Dad's, and tell what he did in his day and how Pearl Harbor changed his life. My father was lucky, he did not serve in an active theater, or combat, but came away from his duty with a different prospective on life and a wealth of experience and knowledge. I remember as a kid the stories he told of all his friends who died in WWII. That's what seems to have bothered and affected him the most. As my father has gotten older, I have been trying to get to understand more things about what he did, etc., so I have been constantly pestering him with questions whenever I can. Last week I finally got some old photos of him from his days in service. There aren't many, maybe 50 or so, and I started scanning them this weekend. Today seems a good day to show some old pictures, some famous WWII planes, and maybe tell a story.

 

My father's interest in flight came at an early age. He was always building model planes as a kid, went to airshows and watched barnstormers and was mesmerized by the thrill of flight. When Col. "Tex" Hill (one of the original Flying Tigers) visited my father's high school in 1941 to give a talk to students, I think my father became hooked on Naval aviation. He enlisted after Pearl Harbor, but he was still in high school. When he graduated, he picked the Navy with a goal to get into their V5 program. He immediately went to Pensacola, FL. where he spent a year in 1942. There he was delayed starting the V5 aviator program, so after basic training the Navy had to give him something to do so he learned and became an aviation machinist's mate. From there, he was shipped to upstate New York in 1943, where he started studies at Colgate and then Sienna College as part of the Navy's V5 college program. Courses included aeronautics, physics, celestial navigation, etc. He soloed out of Albany Airport, where the school had a small Piper Cub. In 1944 he went to Memphis, TN, where he began Primary Training. There, he flew the bi-plane Stearman and SNJ trainer. In 1945, he returned to Pensacola to finish Squadron Training flying SNJ's and the legendary Dauntless. He was preparing for shipboard training and a carrier assignment, off to another adventure, when the war abruptly ended. He would get his wings in November of 1945, and served another year in the reserves 'til 1946.

 

When I asked my father why he had so few photos of such an experience over a four-year period, he said; "It was wartime. We weren't allowed cameras on base. Some guys snuck them in and that's how I got these pictures."

 

When I was younger I always battled with my father, I guess youthful ignorance does that to you. That's changed and we've been at peace for the last four decades, he's still my best hunting and fishing buddy, and he is and always will be my hero.

 

 

 

A hint of where his passion was, a visit to Teteboro Airport. This is a snapshot of my uncle taken by my dad. Teteboro was still a turf field then. Based on the size of my uncle, we guessed this photo to be from 1934. (Years later my father would donate his leather cap, earphones, and goggles to the Teteboro Air Museum for their WWII exhibit.)

 

Memphis, TN - Primary Training - Stearman

 

Six plane echelon - Pensacola, FL (my father is in the plane behind and below #5-225)

 

 

Practice bombing run - Pensacola, FL - SNJ (SNJ's carried a single .30 cal. machine gun mounted in the engine cowling. It was used for gunnery practice on towed and stationary targets. It was synchronized to fire between the propeller blades.)

 

 

Saufley Field - Pensacola, FL (Some fellows in my father's unit, my father is on the right) Plane is the Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bomber.

 

 

SBD Dauntless - My father would describe the Dauntless as a "truck." It was not fast, but it was a sturdy plane and intended to be slow for precision (at that time) bombing. It possessed special flaps to slow its dive on descent and its wings were designed to handle 9G's of load force. The planes they trained on were refurbished wartime units, many were shot up and had bullet holes patched over for they had seen combat.

 

 

Dauntless taxied and in chocks. (The SBD had twin .50 cal. M2's mounted in the nose behind the engine cowling. They were synchronized to fire between the propeller blades. My father said sometimes they would "get out or synch" and when they'd land after gunnery practice they would sometimes have a hole in the propeller blade.)

 

 

Pensacola, FL - My Dad at 20 years of age.

My folks were both quite young during WWII. My father tells stories, mostly of being bombed by the Americans, sitting in bomb shelters and someone next to you dying and you living, and how big the German Soldiers were on their enormous horses (he was a little boy at the time).

Parker, thank you very much for sharing. It was great to read your father's story, and take a look at some of those pictures.

Parker,

 

Great pictures, so nice to have a little family history. Glad you and your Dad are best hunting and fishing buddies.

Great stuff.

Thanks. I've got a few more photos to go through and I may add them.

 

Some more snippets:

• If you got married while enrolled in the V5 program, you were immediately "washed out" of the Navy. (Times have changed huh?)
  
• Many pilots were killed in simple training exercises. My father said night flying was the most dangerous. Many airmen are buried in those Florida swamps today. Those that didn't make any mistakes during training are who survived to graduate.
  
• Instrumentation was limited. You flew by eyesight. A map that you rested on your knees was how you plotted your course. At night, you flew by the stars. (Hence the celestial navigation training.)
  
• The only time an instructor went up with a pilot was for training prior to their solo flight. Once a pilot had a solo under his belt, he flew alone throughout the remainder of the program. When he had a new plane to fly, his training consisted of:
  
  • Classroom training on the new plane.
    
  • The instructor walking the pilot out to the runway tarmac to the plane.
    
  • The instructor seating the pilot in the plane and showing him the basic controls.
    
  • The instructor handing him a manual of operation, with the statement; "Here's the instruction manual. Read it to familiarize yourself and take 'er up when you're ready to fly it."
    

  [*]The SNJ's and Dauntless' were two-seat airplanes. The rear seat was occupied by a radioman/rear gunner. You'll note no plane has another person in the back and the rear seat is devoid of the rear-facing gun. If a plane crashed, there was the potential of two lives that could be lost, so pilots always flew alone during training.

Amazing pictures. Thanks for sharing.

Those are great pictues!

 

Yeah - if the timing chain goes, you'll be shooting your own prop. I learned that from the A-Team, lol!