by Miner, Ron
Praise for Sketches of a Black Cat
“Miner combines his father’s writings and interviews with WWII veterans to craft a loving tribute to the young men who fought in WWII...He does his father and other WWII veterans proud.”
Publishers Weekly
“An inherently fascinating and impressively informative read from cover to cover. Thoroughly ‘reader friendly’... Sketches of a Black Cat is unreservedly recommended for personal, community, and academic libraries...”
Midwest Book Review
“...This book is sure to prove to be an invaluable glimpse into a pilot’s daily life. Brilliant in its composition and heart-wrenching in its forthrightness, Miner’s compilation is sure to stand the test of time.”
U.S. Review of Books
“Sketches of a Black Cat is a unique and fascinating memoir of a World War II combat aviator ~ with original and previously unpublished sketches and photographs. This artfully crafted book is a must-read for anyone in search of a new and completely different view of war in the Pacific and on the home front during America’s greatest conflict.”
LARKIN SPIVEY
military historian and author
“From boxes of notes and drawings comes a book illuminating a WWII pilot’s experiences as part of the Black Cat Squadron...accounts of support missions, rescues of airmen and interactions with indigenous island peoples told in vivid but unembellished detail...a handsome volume that reads breezily and is punctuated with photos and drawings from Howard’s war years.
MIKE FRANCIS
the Oregonian
“Sketches of a Black Cat is a worthy addition to the fascinating true story of the Navy’s black painted, night-flying Catalinas and the courageous men who flew them into the darkness.”
RICHARD KNOTT
author Black Cat Raiders of WWII
“...A refreshing and insightful look at what it took to be a Navy pilot in the Pacific during WWII...a delightful and easy read... It should be noted that Howard Miner was an excellent artist...Along with these artful depictions are plentiful photographs of Mr. Miner and his Navy friends as they advance through the Pacific Islands during WWII. Many of these stories are left untold. Fortunately Ron Miner has brought forth a least one gem for us to follow and cherish.
RICHARD C. GESCHKE
Vine Voice and Military Writers Society of America
“As a former flight engineer aboard a PBY in WWII... I can truly say I felt as though I was on Howard’s Catalina...so many similarities to my own experiences. I can almost hear the drone of the engines in synchronization. Many episodes were warm and compelling. I highly recommend this book to vets, historians, and students. You won’t put down Sketches of a Black Cat till you’ve read it cover-to-cover!”
WIN STITES, VP-91, VP2-1
served in both Atlantic and Pacific regions during WWII,
Former President PBY Memorial Foundation and Museum
“Wonderful and beautifully real stories such as this are dying every day as we lose our WWII veterans. Kudos to Ron Miner for preserving and sharing with the rest of us the gold of his father’s journals, photos, and drawings to bring us such a compelling look at life during the war. This is not only a valuable and insightful historical document but a dramatic and warm personal story.”
DON KEITH
author of Undersea Warrior
“...Howard Miner’s memoirs are a wonderful view into the world of a patrol squadron at war, showing not only the excitement and terror of war, but also what ordinary men in extraordinary situations did to find inventive ways to combat boredom and stress. Miner sees the war through the eyes of an artist, revealing details of day-to-day life that are often overlooked in war time narratives. A wholly enjoyable story!”
STEWART BAILEY
Curator, Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum
“This account gives the reader insight into the events that accelerated Howard Miner’s transition from a Midwestern student to a seasoned pilot...Howard was a careful observer and chronicler, both in prose and pictures, of a war experience that is at once singular and reflective of thousands of other young men belonging to what Tom Brokaw has famously called the ‘Greatest Generation.’ Every reader will be grateful to Ron Miner for adapting his father’s journals and seeing this material into print.”
JIM HILLS
Professor of Humanities, Corban University
“ ...Of course, the WWII generation didn’t talk much about their exploits. That certainly was true of Howard Miner. Only after his death did Howard’s family discover a treasure trove of his handwritten journals, logs, artwork, and photographs from his time serving in the Pacific Theater. Thanks to Howard’s son, Ron, the legacy of another ‘greatest’ man now is available for all to read, appreciate, and treasure. Enjoy!”
DAVID SANFORD
author, editor, and educator
2017 Gold Medal - National Indie Excellence Awards
2017 Double Medal winner - Next Generation Indie Awards
Sketches of a Black Cat: Story of a night flying WWII pilot and artist
By Ron Miner
Copyright © 2016 Ron and Howard Miner.
All rights reserved.
Riverdale Press
Cover and interior design by Anneli Anderson, www.designanneli.com
ISBN-13: 978-1535054881
ISBN-10: 1535054883
“Sketches of a Black Cat: Story of a night flying WWII pilot and artist” is the product of a long and continuing review of my father’s journals, writings, log entries, and personal interviews. It is, to the best of my knowledge, a representative account of his life and times during WWII. Please see Acknowledgements and Notes section at the end of the book for more information.
This book may not be reproduced or otherwise transmitted without the expressed written consent of the author except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews.
You can write to the author at [email protected]
Additional copies of this book are available for sale online at
www.Amazon.com
www.BarnesandNoble.com
www.BooksaMillion.com
and other popular online retailers
as well as SketchesOfABlackCat.com
Thank you, Dad,
for this unexpected gift
Contents
Author’s Note
Introduction
Chapter One
The Discovery
School Days
The First Tour
Fantasy Islands
Give me a break
First at something
The Second Tour
A Special Task
Leap Frog
How’s the fishing?
Thirteen and Three?
Mac Attack
Epilogue
Glossary
Acknowledgements and Notes
Author’s Note
I think it is fair to say that in the three years since this Introduction was written, I have learned a great deal more about the Black Cat story. Since that time, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing quite a few “Cats,” some of them members of Dad’s squadron. One of them has even forgiven me for mistakenly implying in the Epilogue that he was no longer with us when I said, “Dad was the last of the ‘Seven’ to pass away.” I am now proud to count ninety-five-year-old Del Fager as one of my friends.
It seemed nonfiction was becoming a living, growi
ng entity, and while I felt tremendous pride as copies of the book circulated among family and friends, something still gnawed at me. I wondered how much I still didn’t know?
When we first visited my father’s house in Massachusetts, there wasn’t enough time to thoroughly work through all the boxes, drawers, and storage areas, and it required a follow-up trip a year later, together with my brother, Mike, to really feel we had completed the task. This episode was again full of surprises.
We unearthed four years worth of letters — over a hundred of them — that my dad had written home from locations throughout the United States and the South Pacific area. The letters were all in mint condition and lend wonderful specifics to portions of the story that were previously more anecdotal. Yes, even then my father was a prolific writer.
A fantastic but tiny flight notebook turned up deep in the recesses of a large envelope of papers. He carried it with him on every flight during the war. In it were complete sets of notes describing everything from semaphore signals and Morse code to how to start a Corsair. There were detailed drawings of celestial skies for navigation and a “Recognition” section with hand drawn images of all enemy and friendly ships, as they would appear from a flying PBY. Other art pieces and souvenirs have surfaced as well.
Chapter Two, The Discovery, now elaborates on the scant details of the Introduction and gives what I’ve come to feel is a necessary explanation of the circumstances leading to the writing of the original book. The insights I’ve acquired during the interviews with these veterans coupled with the surprising amount of new material that we had yet to discover made me realize that Sketches of a Black Cat could offer readers much more detail and supplemental storytelling than it had in version one. Given what I know now, the book felt incomplete. Here was a chance to tell readers more about some of Dad’s friends and colleagues, visit unknown locations, and share many additional experiences. This contributed fresh content to every chapter, changed many substantially, and provided a couple of new ones.
I am still hitting the road in search of other squadron members, but of course, this becomes more difficult with each passing day. Dad’s story probably still has a few unexpected twists and turns to it, but I feel the Black Cats have, in large part, spoken and these pages accurately reveal their story, as told to me through their collective voices. I hope you enjoy the flight.
I would like to thank Del Fager, Elliot Schreider, Bob Pinckney, and Harold Koenig —all members of VP-54 — Win Stites of VP-91, and John Love’s son, Andy Love, for their valuable contributions. And special thanks to VPB-54’s Alex Catlow, who was the first to introduce himself and has pointed me in the right direction so many times. He and his wife, Margaret, were instrumental in locating other squadron members, and they continue to be dear friends and supporters.
Introduction
It’s Veterans Day. We’ve been working on a little project at a local, country cemetery, and throughout the day we see them come and go — the families, the spouses, sometimes the veterans themselves who pay their respects. A cemetery is an appropriate place for us to be on this day, a place of observance and reflection.
A few weeks back, I found myself in another cemetery in Otis, Mass., along with members of our family, celebrating my father’s life. Dad had passed away unexpectedly in 2011 at age ninety-two, so this was, similarly, a time of reflection for us and we found ourselves immersed into his life through the stories of friends and coworkers who knew him from the Norman Rockwell Museum where he volunteered, or the Berkshire Scenic Railway, where he had achieved a lifelong dream of being an engineer. There was much to learn, and my lesson was just beginning.
Dad never talked much about the war. I guess that was typical of many WWII vets, but I had memories from my childhood of occasional glimpses of souvenirs, or sometimes a carefully worded anecdote with an upbeat ending. I also had more vivid memories of the file cabinet downstairs where — as I followed him around like a puppy — he, at once, showed me a large, manila folder containing a variety of odd sized sheets of very worn paper. To my surprise, the pages were actually drawings, sketches of planes, ships, jungles, and soldiers. I can remember smiling widely and wanting to touch them and being very proud. Over the years, I would continue to sneak downstairs with friends and show them the cabinet with the sketches, and we would carefully pore over them, imagining what stories they were begging to tell. Then one day, when I tiptoed into his office to take a look, the cabinet was locked. It would be many years before I saw them again.
Dad came out to Oregon for a visit in 1992. I hadn’t seen him for quite some time, and we explored the Willamette Valley, checked out some waterfalls, and reminisced. We met up with my brother and his wife in Multnomah the morning he was to fly out of Portland. As we sat around talking, the subject of the war came up, more or less out of nowhere, and slowly he revealed some elaborate tales of his exploits in the South Pacific. It wasn’t as if he had been quietly suffering and harboring secrets, it just seemed like it was time. He spoke easily and frankly, as if he knew the stories well, and we were fixated on every word. I desperately wanted to capture these narratives.
Over the years, we would get together as travel would allow, sometimes at reunions at the family house in Northern Georgia. I now came armed with a recorder, and in the evening over my wine and Dad’s Scotch, I would try to steer the conversation a bit to see if he would bite. He usually did, and I slowly compiled revealing reflections of his experiences through college and the war. But he also was a product of the Depression era, growing up in austere conditions with a habit of collecting and keeping almost everything. His professed difficulties in retaining information at the college level caused him to become a prolific note taker and, ultimately, writer. During his long career in aviation, he developed a pattern of keeping journals and accurate records for every trip and encounter. He was an enthusiastic family history buff and had quite a remarkable memory. Recently, as we went through some of his things, we found out just how extensive this collection of writing, artwork, documents, and personal photos was.
He was a Navy pilot, a member of VP-54, one of the Black Cat squadron of PBY amphibious aircraft that flew their missions at night, without lights, in lumbering planes painted entirely black. The “Dumbos,” as they were lovingly called, flew sorties that would take them on reconnaissance, rescue, and limited bombing runs (only four bombs apiece), frequently scouting enemy positions and communicating what they would find to nearby fighters and bombers, and sometimes illuminating these targets with flares. Later, during his second tour, the unit was reformed and used primarily for rescue and recon patrols.
His story gives us a behind-the-scenes look at one soldier’s evolution from enlistment and training to the military camps and missions during the combat years. For me, this overview of life in the Pacific while on-and-off duty was sometimes blunt, awkwardly romantic, and not always politically correct, but it remains a study of the love of flying and the friendships gained during turbulent, unpredictable times — relationships that would continue on at reunions until each of them were finally gone. The tales, sometimes heroic and often laughable, made this an adventure to uncover and explore.
This is a story of heroes, not in the sense of an Audie Murphy or a Congressional Medal of Honor winner, but rather of countless, otherwise average people plunged into an impossible situation. “Pearl” evokes the memory of where each one was when they first heard the news, as “9-11” does today. Like members of our armed forces thrust into multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, the soldier’s struggle with the danger, weather, loneliness, and yearning for family is a shared burden all military heroes somehow endure, many throughout their lives.
Dad captured so much of WWII’s Pacific Theater in his own hand, both as an artist and a writer. As I thumb through the tattered manila pages, often struggling to make out his words in now faint pencil, I feel honored. And looking at pencil sketches and watercolors that were conceived in tents and Quonset huts on a P
acific island somewhere, I feel blessed. My task was to piece it all together — the notes, letters, and log entries with abundant, detailed first-hand accounts — into a chronicle that is both enjoyable and worthy. Through these “sketches” of his life, I hope to introduce you, as I have been introduced, to my dad in his twenties.
Chapter One
Using the fuselage frame, I tried to steady myself and struggled to stay slightly out of the blustery airstream racing by the open blister hatch as I took my last sighting. Our airspeed was just over one-hundred knots, but the ride was remarkably smooth. There was only a sliver of a moon visible behind me through the port side blister, the other bubble shaped glass hatch that housed our .50 caliber machine guns and served as a doorway for supplies or passengers. The two of them together appeared something like insect eyes protruding from the plane’s waist, part of what gave the old PBYs their unmistakable profile.
Tonight the Navigator’s table was my office, located in an adjacent compartment behind and somewhat below the pilot’s seat, and on it were all the tools necessary to plot our location using charts, hazy radar images, and sometimes star sightings at this exact time of night. I had spent considerable effort in flight school learning the intricacies of celestial navigation, and these ten-hour flights gave me ample time to sharpen my skills. A thousand miles to the south was the Great Barrier Reef’s coast of Australia and due west it was about a five-hour flight to New Guinea. We had slinked our way up the “Slot,” the long water passageway that stretched northwest from Guadalcanal to Bougainville Island, the largest island of a group dotted with 10,000-foot mountains and active volcanoes. For something over four hundred miles, this corridor passed between Japanese held islands, large and small, forming a gauntlet of sorts but also providing prime hunting ground for enemy activity and shipping. According to my octant, the southern-most islands of Choiseul lay just ahead.
At first I thought I had spotted a ship or two, but they had apparently gone dead in the water...
