Tuesday, December 20, 2011

The first Purple Heart opportunity

So I'm running full speed, and those bombs are getting closer and I jump head first into that foxhole, and my helmet comes down and hits me in the mouth, and the blood is running out of my mouth and I'm spitting out my teeth. And in the meantime, the bombs come and the bombs go, and I get up and go the medics to see about my damage.

So I get there, and the guy says, "Well, what's the matter?"

And I say, "My helmet came down and hit me in the mouth and cut my lips and knocked out some teeth."

"Well, let me take a look at you."

So he gets his flashlight and he looks very carefully, and he says, "Yeah, well there's a little cut right over there.  And let me look at your teeth.  Well, I don't see any teeth out.  But that one big tooth has got a little chip right on the edge of it."

Guess I've got a good imagination.

So he says, "You want me to put you in for the Purple Heart?"

And I says, "No, I don't want the Purple Heart."

Because I knew that anybody that got the Purple Heart was either dead or couldn't fly an airplane.

from my South Pacific Diary

May 19 Buttons to Cactus #213 2:15 pilot & 2:15 co-pilot Rockwell - May 21

We got to Cactus about 3:00 pm and found a tent empty.  We moved in & found that the other occupants had been driven out by rats.  The mosquitos were the worst I have ever seen.

At 9:00 pm the Japs started coming over so we had to get in our fox holes mosq. and all.  The search lights got one and we could hear the roar of the night fighter's engines. (P38)  We were watching the Jap plane in the lights when all of a sudden there was a stream of tracer bullets out of the darkness and they passed right through the plane and it caught on fire.  It looked like one engine was on fire.  It started to fall and then began to recover & it looked like it was getting the fire under control.

And now a stream of tracers shot out but the plane kept going a couple seconds more and another hose of bright red tracers lashed out and the plane started to fall.  It was now falling and burning fiercely.  It fell about three thousand feet and exploded in a tremendous burst of flames.  Pieces continued to fall burning to the ground.
A roar of voices went up from the men watching it.  Those were the last bombs those Japs would drop.  

We were standing beside our fox hole about 11:30 pm when all of a sudden we heard the whistling of falling bombs.  I made a jump for my fox hole and got in before the bombs hit the ground.  My helmet came off & I chipped two of my teeth & cut my lips on the damn thing.

The night fighters shot down two more but the planes did not catch on fire.  All we could see was the red tracers hitting the plane & noise of them exploding.  There were 26 planes over in all.

We spent from 9:00 pm till 5:00 am in our fox holes.  Slept till about 11:00 am, woke up with blankets all wet from sweat & heat.  Last night we had one alarm about 9:00 pm but they didn't come over for some reason so we got to sleep all night long.

Not much doing during the day.  We were supposed to strike and got up at 10:30 pm and messed around until 12:00 am and then were told the strike was called off because of weather.  We went back to bed but couldn't sleep.  A rat came into my bed about 2:30 & woke me up even more than I was.  Finally about 4:00 am got to sleep & got up at 7:00 am for breakfast on my first wedding anniversary.

Sunday, December 18, 2011

From my South Pacific diary

Feb. 22, 1943

Washington's birthday and nine months since Irma and I were married.  God, it seems so long since I last saw Irma. I hope the next five months past fast.

Last night the Japs came over and bombed us.  Only one went off and a tree fell on the tail of a B24 & rocks through a wing.  Several duds or time bombs, the area is roped off.  The raid was at 12:30 and it was a bright full moon night.  I could hear the bombs falling through the air & then hit.  Some sensation I can tell you.

March 26 4:15 hrs. Co-pilot (P. Sutton 72nd bomb squadron)

Arrived at Cactus about 11:00 am and had a good lunch & dinner.  Went to bed about 8:00 pm--air raid warning at 3:10 am.  I went over by a search light and pretty soon two planes came over in formation.  We did a lot of shooting but didn't hit, the Japs didn't drop their bombs either.  They made two more runs and dropped bombs both times.  The last run they dropped a 500 lbs. right on our mess hall.  It hit the top of the planes and exploded downwards.  Completely ruined the mess hall, a cocoanut tree top fell on officers mess & on the dispensary.  It killed one of our men who wasn't in a fox hole.  Hit a co-pilot in the chest in 307th Group about 300 yds away.  We could hear those bombs falling.  There is nothing like it.  Sounds like each one is coming at you.  26th was going over to engineering in afternoon when we saw a lot of smoke rising.  A Lockheed Hudson groundlooped on take off and caught fire.  IT burned about five minutes and three 300 lb bombs exploded in a terrific explosion.  Fire stopped and the plane was blown completely to bits.  Put one of our 17s out of commission.  One of crew didn't get out.  Some welcome!!

En route to the South Pacific, 69 years ago this weekend

The first entries in my South Pacific diary:


December 16, 1942

Well this is quite a day.  Mom's birthday.  Sure wish I could be home with her.

Today we left Oahu for the Fiji Island and then to the New Hebrides and war.  Up to now it has been a ways away.  But it won't be long until I'll be in it.

We are on a new ship on her maiden voyage.  The Hunston, a troop transport built in Seattle, Washington.

The quarters are very good.  There are four of us in one room with our own toilet and showers.  Kind of hot in the night time.

Dec. 17, 1942

About the best thing on this ship is the food.  I haven't eaten such good food since I left the states.  Although he only two meals a day, they are the best.  We are four to a table and have our own waiter named Joe.  A Filipino.

Haven't done much today, just read and had a boat drill at 10:00 am.  A few are sea sick but I feel fine.  Sure am glad.  I wouldn't want to miss any of that good food because where we are going it will be lousy eating.

Friday, Dec. 18, 1942

Just about like yesterday, no boat drill though.  Reading and sleeping.  I got a smallpox vac. today which will bring my record up to date with smallpox.  Also I have to get Typhus, Cholera, & Typhoid.

I bought some cookies, candy and huts from the P.X. today.

Saturday, Dec. 19, 1942

We had a boat drill in the afternoon.  Spent most of the day reading and sleeping.  Woke up in the middle of the night and as I could not sleep I went out on deck and slept in a life raft for a couple hours until it got so cold I went downstairs again.

It has been quiet enough the past two days and the wind has been blowing very loud.





Monday, September 5, 2011

The Beauty of the Islands--a Bird's Eye View

Now I've mentioned our coast watchers in the South Pacific--well, the Japanese had coast watchers, too.  So they sent a message: any pilots that are checked out in small aircraft, we would like to have you fly some search missions for the Japanese coast watchers.

I learned to fly in a single engine Piper Cub, so I volunteered.

I get in that Piper Cub that they have--this was in Espiritu Santo--I take off, and I'm flying at about 500 feet above the jungle and the cocoanut trees that came right down to the water's edge.  I'm flying along the edge of the water, looking for an antenna sticking up.  And if I'd seen one, of course I'd have immediately called in and said where I was and what I saw, and they'd have sent out some aircraft or some marines to that area to locate those Japanese.

 But I saw nothing--except the beauty of the islands.

The fuel tank on the Piper Cub has a  little float with a piece of cork on the bottom and a wire sticking up that shows you how much fuel you've got left.

Well, I was so concentrating on what I was doing, that I didn't realize I was running out of fuel.  So here I am, I look up and here's that fuel tank, it's past the half-way mark, so, man, I did a 180 degree turn and flew back to Espiritu Santo and called in and said I was landing with minimum fuel.  Of course they knew that because they knew how much fuel I had and how much longer I was supposed to fly.

I landed, and I said to myself, Dan, this is stupid.  So I didn't do it anymore.  I just flew my combat missions in our B17s.  But I did get to see the beauty of the islands at close range.



This is a story Dad told when I interviewed him at the Grand Central StoryCorp booth,
May 5, 2004.  

 --Kathryn Paulsen

Friday, June 24, 2011

Honor Flight

Since May 2005, a year after the World War II Memorial was completed, the Honor Flight Network has been bringing World War II veterans to Washington, DC, free of charge, to see their memorial, along with the others.  This month, Dad got to be part of an Honor Flight San Diego tour.

 
Dan and his daughters, Joanne, Kristine, and Kathryn



It was a moving and memorable day.  Many people of all ages came up to Dad and the other vets and shook their hands and said, "Thank you for your service."  "I'm just glad to be here," said Dad, or "I'm glad I made it through."

                                       --Kathryn Paulsen


Dan's group at the Iwo Jima Memorial 

photos by Jim Creegan


For more information about the Honor Flight Network:
http://www.honorflight.org/





Thursday, June 9, 2011

The man who came back from the dead

For all the deaths we saw during WW II, now and then, as with Capt. Classen and his crew,  someone survived against all odds.

The attack

The Japanese, when they would attack us, would climb above us.  Say, we were at 23,000 feet, they'd climb to 25,000 feet, then push the nose of the fighter aircraft down and dive at our formation, which was usually 5 or more B17s flying in a V.  Increasing its speed, the fighter dives straight down, shooting at one aircraft in the formation.

What we think happened in this case was, as the fighter was shooting, one of his projectiles hit and probably killed the pilot of the aircraft.  Because that B17, instead of staying in formation, started moving to the left, which put him in the middle of the V formation.  And this fighter comes down and goes through that V, and they collide.  The fighter hit the B17 just behind the wing of the aircraft and exploded and broke the B17 in half.

The front of the aircraft started spinning down, and everybody in the  formation is looking at that piece of the aircraft to see if anybody bailed out of it.  They saw nobody.  They just saw it spin down, until they'd flown past the area.

Bailing out

However, the tail gunner, who was in the tail of the B17, in a very cramped area, had his parachute, not on and buckled, but just in back of him, which would be the front of the aircraft--only now was nothing except air space.  So he's quickly putting on his harness, he gets one leg strap fastened, he gets the chest strap fastened, but he can't find the right leg strap.  And the tail of this B17 is spinning down towards the water, and he knows he'd better get the hell out of there while he can, because if he doesn't, he'd be hitting that water.

So he went out that hole in back of him, and as soon as he got out, he pulled the rip cord.  The shock of that parachute opening twisted his back, and he doesn't remember this, but he went unconscious.  So he's hanging in his parachute unconscious, and he knows nothing more about this.

Rescued

He woke up, lying on the his belly on the sand on a beach, his head turned toward the side.  He opened his eyes, and he saw black legs and feet.  He tried to move, but lost consciousness again.

Time went by, and again he opened his eyes and saw legs and feet.   Gradually he went from unconsciousness to consciousness, and when he could move his head, these natives signaled him to follow them.  They didn't touch him.

Their village was right in the cocoanut groves, near the beach.  He crawled to their village, and they took him to a little grass shack, and he crawled into it.  They had a bed there made of palm fronds and other materials, and he crawled into it and lay there.  They brought him food and water.  The food was some kind of stew, and it was pretty good.

So he gradually became more and more able to move around.  He had his Baedeker's Guide for the Castaway, which had some words in pidgin English--a combination of English and native languages which the natives had learned because of the long time periods that the British had been in these islands establishing cocoanut groves.  So he asked what he was eating.

In the evening they showed him.  They pointed up at some fruit bats that were flying low underneath the cocoanut trees to feed on them, and the natives would throw rocks at them.  The wingspan of these bats was about, oh, a good three feet.  They would hit the wing and break the bone, and down would come the bat.  They would then prepare it, and that was what he was eating.

Back from the dead

There was a coast watcher who had managed that cocoanut grove and knew everything about the area.  He had a radio for communication with our forces, and any boats, any airplanes he saw, he would report.  So the coast watcher reported that he had an American crew member there.  Eventually they sent a submarine there, and he was picked up and brought back to Guadalcanal and left off, and he went to our area.

So here he comes with his parachute in his arms.  We've been on a mission and nobody's flying, so we're in our tents, and somebody sees him: "Who's that guy?"  We didn't have people come to our area unless they belonged there.

They kept looking:  "Is that ole Bill?"*  "No, that's not ole Bill."  "Well, it sure looks like him."  And sure enough, it was Bill.  We couldn't believe it because we all knew that Bill was dead, along with the rest of the crew members.  So we all came out and welcomed him, amazed at the miracle that had happened.  He went to the hospital, where the medics checked him over, and of course he'd lost lots of weight.  Eventually he went back to the States.

*I don't remember his actual name.  If you are this gunner, or know who he was, let me know!


This is a story Dad told when I interviewed him at the Grand Central StoryCorp booth,
May 5, 2004.  

 --Kathryn Paulsen

http://storycorps.org/

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

from my South Pacific diary

Feb. 9 1943  11:30 miss.

At at 2:15 am and flew another search.  Saw only water and clouds.  When we got back we heard that Capt. Classen was shot up by Zeroes flying over Nauru Island.  We had to make a water landing.  Two 17s and a P.B.Y.* went out looking for him.  I sure do hope they all got out O.K.

*Navy designation for a boat than can land on water.


Feb. 10  9:30 miss.  Search for Classen

Searched all day for Capt. Classen and crew with no success.  We flew at 250 feet and stared our eyes out, it sure made me tired.  But when I think of those poor fellows out there!!


Captain Classen and his crew were missing in action for 66 days.  For the dramatic story of their survival, see:

http://militarytimes.com/citations-medals-awards/recipient.php?recipientid=22858

http://www.wartimepress.com/archive-publication.asp?q=2452&FID=31

http://www.pacificwrecks.com/aircraft/b-17/41-24450.html


--Kathryn Paulsen

The Wayward Navigator: from my South Pacific diary

Here's what I wrote about the episode:

April 19  6:15 pilot  6:15 co-pilot Lt. Schnier  B17E

800 mile search with a new navigator who lost us!  We were all ready to make a water landing when we spotted the island.  We landed with less than thirty min. gas.  I sure was scared for a few min.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

The Wayward Navigator: Conclusion

The Cause and the Consequences

So we're all asking:  How in the world could we get a navigator who doesn't know how to navigate on a search mission?

Come to find out, the navigator who was supposed to fly had dengue fever and was in the hospital, and this was the only navigator they had.  So they put him on.

But the standard procedure was, any crew member who came from the States, before he could fly a combat mission, had to get checked out:

If he's a pilot, he has to fly the aircraft, land, take off, make bomb runs, and so forth.  If he's a navigator, he has go go on a navigation mission to review and apply all the things that he learned in school.  If you're a bombardier, you go out and practice dropping bombs, and if you're a gunner, you go out and shoot bullets at targets that are towed, so that you won't forget how to shoot.

In our case, that hadn't happened.  But it now became top priority that if a crew member doesn't fly until he's been checked out by the combat unit.

Looking Back

If you were that navigator, I'd love to hear your memories of that flight. . . .

The Wayward Navigator, Part III

Into the Wind and Stretching the Gas

So we're going back, and that tail wind is now a head wind.  Everybody is upset about that, and one of the gunners comes up to me and says, "Lieutenant, what are we gonna do with this navigator?  If we have to ditch this aircraft, it'll be the 3rd one for me."

If we run out of fuel, which seems likely, ditching the aircraft is what we'll have to do--in the Pacific.

I tell the crew:  Disconnect the empty bomb bay tanks and salvo 'em--drop 'em out of the aircraft.  They're heavy.  Throw all the machine guns and all the ammunition overboard.  Take all the radio frequency boxes, and there were a whole bunch of them--all the radios we had were low frequency--and throw them  all overboard except the one we'd need when we got back home.

So we did all that, to lighten the aircraft to stretch the distance we could fly with the fuel we had left.  Then we get to where we should see land--but there's no land.

Now what do we do?

The navigator has a procedure for this circumstance:  You make either a left turn or a right turn, and the navigator tell you which way because he figures that if his figures aren't quite correct, then land should be in that direction.  Then you figure out how much fuel you have left and how far you can fly in that direction before you see land, and still go the other way.  If you don't see land, you fly back and fly in the opposite direction.  If you don't see land then, you prepare to ditch the aircraft. 

Well, we made that left turn and flew about 15 minutes, and somebody said, "There's land!"  That's the big word.  What land it was, we didn't care--there was land!  If you're over land, you can bail out instead of ditching your aircraft.  It happened to be where we left from, so we called--broke radio silence, because when you're on a mission you don't use your radio at all because the Japanese are listening for it.

So I broke radio silence and gave my number, and said, Here I am,  we're coming in, straight in.   Of course they knew, our base, that something was wrong, because we should have been back by then.

Landing

When the aircraft is flying, we call that "straight and level."  When you land, you pull the nose up and the aircraft sinks.  And you pull the power back, and the aircraft sinks down to the runway, and the wheels hit the runway along with the tail, and you've landed.

So I did that, and we landed.  We're going down the runway and one engine quits, and a few seconds later, another engine quit.  So we had not much fuel left--not a surprise.  And they would have cleared any traffic out of our way, because they knew I was about to run out of gas.

Monday, June 6, 2011

The Wayward Navigator, Part II

Searching

So we took off, and we're flying at 1,000 feet above the water.  The airplane is flying on automatic pilot, so we don't have to sit there and physically fly the plane.  Everybody's looking out the window, looking for the Japanese fleet.  And we see nothing but water, except every now and then you'd see a pod of whales--big whales, two, three, four, maybe five--and every now and then one of them would jump out of the water completely, and fall back into the water.

So the navigator, of course, is navigating.

We've been flying for quite a while, probably 5 hours, and somebody says, "Look at that front up ahead of us."  A large mass of clouds, cumulus, which are the boiling type of cloud.  And about that time, somebody says, "That looks like land."  Immediately the navigator says, "Do a 180 degree turn."

So we didn't fly our 60 miles over to come back 800 miles, we just turned and started back.

What happened?

Well, in flying over water, it's very difficult to tell where the wind is coming from and how it's affecting your airplane.  For example, if you're flying north and you have a wind from the west, it's pushing you to the east, so you won't maintain your northern heading unless you correct the aircraft to fly the course you want.  So we had a drift meter, it was called, in the B17, which was a telescope in the bottom of the aircraft that looked down, and the navigator would look through it and look at a whitecap, and then he would put his cros  hairs on that and watch which way the aircraft was drifting.

Only our navigator hadn't flown in an airplane since he got our of navigator training.  Which was a couple of months ago.  And he studied the drift meter, probably in Kansas, where you don't have any water.  And what he did was, he read the drift incorrectly.  He read a tail wind as a north wind.  So we had in effect a tail wind blowing us further along, and that's why we got close enough to see those islands.




The Wayward Navigator, Part I

Those 800 mile search missions. . .

The Japanese navy  fleet was the number 1 priority of our armed forces in the Pacific.  Why?  Because we had Pearl Harbor to remember, when the Japanese fleet sunk a great part of our navy.  We maintained submarines that located the Japanese fleet--aircraft carrier, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, all moving as a unit--and would keep their eye on it.

The Japanese had good weather information because they controlled so many of the weather stations--in all of China, Manchuria, Korea, the islands.  When a big front was moving in, they would notify the Japanese navy.  And when that front was coming in, the commander of the navy would go right into the middle of it, and he'd stay right in the middle of that front as long as he felt he needed to, and then he would exit at some point.  Of course there was no way our submarines that were shadowing them could follow them in this severe weather.

So where's the Japanese navy?  Don't know. So what do you do about that?  You fly a search mission.  Our job was to drop bombs, but a search mission had higher priority over dropping bombs.

So they would set up a section--think of a piece of pie:  One side of that piece of pie is 800 nautical miles long; the top of the slice is 60 nautical miles, and the other side of the pie, coming back to the point where we took off from, is another 800 nautical miles.  This took more gas than we could carry, so instead of having bombs in the aircraft, we had bomb bay tanks--tanks full of gasoline to fly the airplane.  We would use the gas in those tanks first, and when they were empty, we'd use the gas that normally comes in the wings of the aircraft.

We're briefed about where our ships are, and any other other things that are going on, the weather, and one question is always:  Will we see land?  And for the mission I'm about to tell you about, the answer was: 
No, you won't see any land. At the end of your leg, there are some islands but they're another 50 or 60 or 70 miles further, so you won't see them.

This is a story Dad told when I interviewed him at the Grand Central StoryCorp booth,
May 5, 2004.  

 --Kathryn Paulsen

http://storycorps.org/

From my South Pacific diary


Feb. 2, 1943
04:25   Going up to Cactus

Flew up to Henderson Field, "Cactus," * today.  Got a tent and dug a fox hole for Lt. Burch, Capt. Marion & myself.  Japs dropped four bombs about 9:00 pm on flight strip, got in fox hole & it started to rain.  Got wet & bed got wet.

*Cactus was the code name for Henderson Field on Guadalcanal. 

Feb. 3, 1943
04:50    Search mission

Flew search today to Shortland.**  Climbed to 25000', number 3 & 4 motors acting up, so we ran down to 20,000', #3 o.k. but #4 still rough.  Flew over Gizo** harbor and took pictures, down to Munda Point**, took pictures.  A.A.^ fire not too bad.  Came back.  Saw seven ships beached & sunk on last Jap push
         Two Jap air raids about 8:00 pm dropped about 14 bombs quite a distance away.

** In the Western Solomon Islands.
^ A.A.=anti-aircraft

Feb. 4, 1943

Went out to plane in the morning to check ship.  Looked over 853 which was shot up quite bad.  Bombardier & navigator and one other crew hit.
         Went on alert starting tomorrow.  Ten searches looking for the Jap fleet which is lost.  800 mile searches.
          Japs bombed us all night long.  One plane about every two hours.  We got very little sleep this night.
          Fleet 800 miles out.  9A had two carriers, four battleships, seven cruisers and a lot of destroyers.


Feb. 5, 1943
11:00 hrs.

Up at 2:45 am after being bombed all night.  We got out to our plane about 3:45 am for a 4:30 take off.  While we were waiting to be led out to the mat, we got another alarm and had to stop the engines and head for a ditch.  The search lights picked him up and the anti-aircraft was shooting at him, quite accurately.  All they could use was the bit stuff because he was too high.  Flew all day and sure as hard keeping awake.  We saw one Jap destroyer.  Two other planes found the Jap.

Friday, June 3, 2011

On Espiritu Santo

 

Pictures from some negatives given to Dan by the Army photographers at Espiritu Santo Island.


                                                                      --Jim Creegan


How to survive on a tropical island

When we went into World War II, suddenly we had hundreds of men in the tropics--in the jungle.  So we went to Baedeker's and said make us a book for survival. They came out with this book, Baedeker's Guide for the Castaway, and it was issued to us.

This was something I wanted to learn about.

You're on a bomb run, you get shot up, you crash into the water.  You've got a life jacket, and somehow you survive.  You're on this island--in the tropics there are islands all over the place, mostly tiny--and there's nothing there.  What do you do?

Your first need is fresh water.

Then what could you find to eat?  The best thing you could do would be find a rotten log and eat the grubs that were eating the log.

They talked about bananas--if you find bananas, choose the ones that are black.

Saturday, May 28, 2011

from my South Pacific diary

Written the day after we came ashore on the island of Espiritu Santo in the New Hebrides Group.  I was in the 98th Squadron.

Jan. 20, 1943

Spent the day looking around our new home.  It sure is rough.  Right in the middle of a jungle, and very hot and humid in the day time.  Although not bad in the evening and night time.  In the evening you can see big flying foxes go by.  They are a large fruit bat.

Jan. 21, 1943

2:10 am.  Woke up with sound of bombs exploding.  Layed in bed and listened to them walk away from us as I didn't know enough to hit the ground.  Built a fox hole right alongside of my bed so the next time I would fall out into the fox hole.

Jan 23, 1943

12:10 am.  Woke up with the sound of bomb exploding some distance away.  I tumbled out of bed and into fox hole and listened to the rest of them explode, each coming nearer until last one exploded still quite a distance away.  Went back to bed then.
       Spent day working on our tent.  Raising it up about three feet for more room around us.  Lt. Schneir cut his knee with the machete when we went out into the jungle for bamboo.

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