Sketches of a Black Cat - Full Color Collector's Edition: Story of a night flying WWII pilot and artist

by Miner, Ron

It is interesting to contemplate where things might have ended up had World War II not intervened, but with a very low draft number, I knew I would soon be in uniform. I had already turned twenty-one when twenty million of us, from my age through age thirty-six, were given a number and a drawing was held in the fall of 1940. More than 7,000 capsules, each with a different number inside of it, were placed in a giant fishbowl, stirred with a spoon made from part of a beam taken from Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and then hand drawn to determine the order our respective draft boards would use to send out induction notices.

  My first experience flying had really impressed me, so earlier during the summer of ‘41, I had worked on letters and an application for the Army Air Corps at Randolph Field in Texas. When I returned to campus in the fall, the Navy Air Force had come up with a recruiting poster that pointed a provocative finger at me daily saying, “Are you good enough?” I was sure I wasn’t. But the concept of flying was so appealing I decided to give it a shot. As the Navy recruiter took my name and personal information, he dismissed my Army flight application with a smile, “Screw ‘em,” and I was soon on my way to the Navy.

  The first hurdle was the physical. When it came to the part where the medic asked, “I don’t suppose you can read the bottom line,” I was able to easily rattle the letters off correctly, quickly adding, “And down in the lower right hand corner it says, ‘Property of the U.S. Navy’.” Apparently, they loved good eyesight. I was informed I could expect my orders after the first of the year, so I finished the term knowing “We were at War!” and that I was really a navy cadet. Counting down to my first day at Naval Air Station Glenview (NAS Glenview), I still couldn’t believe it, but now I was determined to fly.

  The Navy recruiters had arranged a most peculiar swearing-in ceremony, obviously wanting to reap all the publicity they could from this event. A dozen or so of us were treated to a dirt-track auto race and stunt show at the big grandstand at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. Six years earlier, I competed for the second year running in the student category for some pencil drawings of locomotives and horses and was lucky enough to earn blue ribbons both years, giving me free admission every day. I had sneaked into the fringes of this very grandstand to glimpse the chorus girls in their skimpy costumes, a totally new experience for me. Today, the emotions were very different.

  As a child I was very interested in both railroading and aviation. I spent hours and hours playing with toy trains and building model airplanes at our home in Indianapolis, right on the line between Fort Benjamin Harrison and the Motor Speedway. On Memorial Day each year we waited with anticipation for the dirigibles and biplanes to fly almost directly above our house, and I even ventured over to Ohio to watch the USS Macon being built, more than 750 feet long from nose to tail. The blimps were impressive and very captivating to a young enthusiast like myself, and I could almost picture myself at the controls of one of these giant aircraft.

  However, I came from a rather sheltered background and conservative parents, not even owning a bicycle and certainly never attending the Indy 500. Entering the field of aviation was already something of a breach of my protective armor. So here were the race cars, roaring around the track, dust flying everywhere, and the noxious odor of burning oil enveloping us. Cars crashed together, violently, like nothing I’d ever seen. This spectacle was quickly gaining steam and now included an ancient Waco biplane winging low across the infield. He came in lower and lower, and abruptly and deliberately smashed into a newly erected frame building with a horrible impact. A couple of dynamite charges were simultaneously triggered for effect, with smoke and sirens. Rescuers raced onto the scene. They pulled the body of the pilot from the wreckage and, then amazingly, he bounded forward and bowed to the crowd. My nerves were shattered and I was starting to feel nauseous.

  Suddenly our group was ushered onto the racetrack, single file, and lined up as the crowd hushed. The color guard marched in to play the “Star Spangled Banner”. I was talking to my stomach. Now our right hands were raised and we were taking the oath. I was hanging on. Flash bulbs were popping everywhere. The thing was like a bizarre dream.

  As it turned out, one of those flash bulbs belonged to a girl I was not to meet for five years. As luck would have it, we would both stop for hamburgers and somehow begin talking. We went together for many months afterward, and one day she gave me a snapshot she had taken of a line of enlistees as they took the oath. Fortunately, it was a black and white photo, concealing the fact that my face was actually green.

  So what were we to make of this? Was I excited, anxious, or just plain scared? The passions young Americans felt about the atrocity at Pearl Harbor gave most of us plenty of motivation, but the anxiety of family and friends was real and difficult to ignore. I was in it now, for better or for worse, so I became determined to do what I could to enjoy the moment and appreciate each day as it came.

  A stagger-wing Beechcraft biplane was landing towards us and it quickly became obvious he had miscalculated.

  Things began with a choice of duty: lighter or heavier than air? While dirigibles had fascinated me back in school, they were brought nearly to termination upon the crash of the Hindenburg at Lakehurst. Only the Navy continued to make use of some for training and eventually a few rigid and non-rigid blimps for patrols. But it didn’t seem the way to go, and by and large these patrols were taken over by the PBY Catalina flying boats I would soon know so intimately.

  By now the number of Indianapolis Naval cadets awaiting flight training had grown to perhaps forty. Our parents organized an “Indianapolis’ Own” Squadron, and they designed and issued each of us a gold pin. The night before we shipped out, they held a first rate “bash” for us at the local Naval Armory on White River. The following day, I was picked up by Jack Evans and his parents, and we drove to NAS Glenview north of Chicago. This seemed appropriate, as the image of his brother, Bob, standing and saluting during the National Anthem at a Wabash-Butler football game had largely persuaded me to go Navy in the first place. It was January 29, 1942.

  Our stint at “Elimination Base” was pretty impressive but no easy task. Boot cadet training started promptly. We were the lowest of the low on the military scale, and a marine sergeant with a squeaky but stern voice gave us the word on making up bunks, tight with forty-five-degree corners and all, or waxing barrack floors slick enough to skate on. He formed us into platoons and barked in shrill, hieroglyphic voice commands, “Hun, who, heep, hoe,” and then for good measure, “to the rye, Har!” Ted Shadinger, my upper bunkmate, found this hysterically funny, and he and I would sneak looks at each other to see if either of us would lose it, which made it all the funnier. “Howie, Harch!” he’d loudly whisper, upping the stakes, and we’d both bite our lips and look away for fear of getting guard duty or worse.

  Our first reveille was as advertised, early, dark, and loud like a stick beating in a bucket. I still don’t know why the Navy calls a washroom the head, but it was a hell of a different experience for a “protected” kid like myself: forty or so young men sitting on johns, standing at urinals, brushing teeth at wash basins, all with different techniques, shapes, sizes, and routines. It was evident there was to be very little privacy. And, of course, there was among us one individual of such considerable size and girth that he was the subject of endless speculation.

  Inspections were held almost daily, and every item of gear had to be in order. Rifles were issued and the Marines showed us the fine art of field stripping them. A few of the rebellious personalities were already marching the ramp with rifles on their shoulders, so it seemed best to play along.

  As ground school got underway, I found the classes in Morse code kind of appealing — “Dit-dah-dit-dit” endlessly, earphones on, right hand on the key. I was engrossed in my tapping, seated by the window of the little frame radio shack during an afternoon class beside the grass airfield, and looked up from the keys for a moment. A stagger-wing Beechcraft biplane was landing towards us and it quickly bec
ame obvious he had miscalculated, bouncing and bobbing along with very little slowing to show for it. He got the thing stopped about one half a plane length from our windows. As the wobbly pilot made his way out of the biplane, the look on his face was enough to get a few of us wondering what we had gotten ourselves into.

  In 1938, when I was still at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., I experienced my first real taste of the approaching conflict. Up until then, I had little interest in foreign affairs, having quite enough on my plate just trying to stay in school. My studies were compromised by a combination of poor grades and gross financial problems and, of course, my expanding awareness of women. This particular evening there was a student bonfire and rally where Adolph Hitler was hung in effigy, a very strange display of passion by a group not all that crazy about a war. After transferring to the more moderate Wabash in Indiana for the ‘39-’40 term, I became interested in Zoology, finally landing a scholarship for a summer of study at Woods Hole (Mass) in 1941. It was a coed group, involving hard work (and play), but by this time, all the men in the group were solidly focused on the growing hostilities and world situation. It was back at Williamstown, however, where I took that first airplane ride, an adventure that persuaded me to pursue the life of a pilot. And now here I was.

  It was the dead of winter on the edge of Lake Michigan, perfect weather for flight training, according to the Navy. Straightaway, upon our arrival at the base, we were lined up at muster and issued winter coats. Some were given leather sheepskin-lined flight jackets, but at this early stage of the war, supplies were limited and there were too few to go around. The rest of us were handed blue Navy submarine pea coats with an apologetic “Lots of luck.” Standing and shivering at morning muster while trying to convince our bodies that we were warm was one thing, but for flying in the open cockpit of our trainer, a Spartan NP-1 biplane, there was no choice. The subzero temperatures required the complete sheepskin flying suits with helmets, goggles, scarfs, and fur mittens. The planes had to be warmed up for thirty minutes or longer before they were safe to fly, and from the ready room we would take turns performing this chore, ten minutes on and ten minutes off. We hated it.

  The flying itself was a combination of terror and incredible excitement! The instructor sat in the forward cockpit, the student in the aft. On my first flight with an instructor in the open cockpit, the temperature was way below zero and my goggles fogged up and froze from nervous sweat. I couldn’t understand the one-way conversations through the Gosport, a system of rubber tubes fastened near our ears. Everything was strange, the smell of the aircraft, the engine “blatt,” the stomach sensations and nausea, the sights (when airborne, we were instantly, totally lost). The instructor tried to point out the importance of the sound of the airflow on the guy wires to determine speed and of keeping our eyes out of the cockpit.

  And the landing. Harrowing seems the word. At the end of one period, our hotshot instructor decided to land on the only short paved landing strip on the base, which happened to be somewhat out of the wind. He probably hadn’t had much more flying time than I did because as he rolled to a stop, the crosswind got the better of him and he spun around in a wild, dust-spewing skid. To his credit, his composure now back in hand, he announced into the Gosport, “This is known as a ground loop. We don’t do this here!”

  After a few periods, I was “kicked off the perch” to solo in the NP-1. High winds had interfered for a couple of days, but today it was still — perfectly clear, spring-like weather. After a half hour warm up with my instructor, I went up with a different one for a check. He had me make a couple of landings, gave me a few cut throttles (forced landings) and generally found plenty to gripe about. I was getting worried about a “down check” as we taxied into the ramp, then I realized he was singing.

  He paused, and then got out. “Take her around the field once.” I was on my own.

  It was both a thrill and no different at the same time, with too much to think about to be scared. Five of us soloed that day and all got the traditional shower bath afterwards.

  The ensuing sessions were used to build up experience on our own. Usually we practiced during the noon hour as the instructors were at chow and the field was uncrowded. On one of my early flights, I guess the wind had shifted and no one had reset the tetrahedron. My take off seemed awfully slow and dragged out, and before I knew it, the hangar building was dead ahead and I was barely airborne. On the roof was a pole with a red obstruction light on it. Since it was obvious that my wing would clip it, I simply raised the wing till I cleared it and then put it back on level. It seemed quite the logical thing to do. It was after I landed that I got the shaky knees, and quickly taxied back to the line and called it a day. Somehow, though, I felt like a pilot.

  Imagine for a moment the feeling you may have had as a child dangling upside down from playground bars or trying to stand on your head. Blood rushes down and eyes bulge, a combination of unpleasant disorientation, dizziness, and maybe even a little humor. This was what was in store for us the day we were upgraded into the Navy’s traditional acrobatic biplane trainer, the N3N, or the “Yellow Peril,” a name that suited it for more than one reason. Since Ted had already accomplished his airline flight training, he had soloed easily in a couple of hours. He was idly waiting for us to catch up at every milestone, and his coaching became invaluable as our difficulty intensified. My squeamish stomach was becoming an issue again, but he had a plan. “Howie, let’s get you doing a series, instead of one move. We start out at 6,000 feet, right? Dive into the loop, then follow it right away with a snap roll, a couple of ‘em, then go for the big ending. A two-turn spin and now you’re down to 2,000 feet. It’s so fast you’ll forget to puke!” Sure enough — shaken but intact.

  By far the most insidious and revolting maneuver of all was the inverted spin. This was essential, they told us, because in some higher performance aircraft, during a loop, it was possible to end up in a stall while on our backs. Recovering from this predicament took an inverted spin; all control functions were reversed, you pulled back on the “joy stick” instead of pushing forward, as in a normal spin. During a particular training session, as I made a half loop and kicked into an inverted spin, debris was falling from the bilges of the aircraft past my goggles, I was hanging from my seat belt, and my head was reeling as I looked down at the approaching ground “above” my head.

  There was a monastery. I could even see the monks walking about with their Bibles in the gardens, and I thought, “What a pity, crashing into such a peaceful setting.” Then I rallied myself and hit the opposite rudder, pulled back on the stick, and was able to recover into normal level flight. I wondered what they thought.

  During my free time, I would occasionally stroll down to the flight line and admire the transient combat planes. Sometimes it was fun to sit and sketch the F4F carrier fighters and larger, newer attack aircraft with their sophisticated flush rivets. On occasion, for liberty weekends I would take the train to Chicago with Ted and another buddy, Robin Sims, and stay at a German hotel in the Loop. Ted’s dad was a chemistry professor at Butler University, and he and Sims were both Chemistry majors who attended school there until joining the Navy — two very sharp fellows indeed. Ted was charismatic and handsome with a luminous smile and magnetic personality, charming to women and a solid friend to men. Robin left school during his junior year and was a Sigma Chi. He was a bit shorter than the other two of us, and I found I got kind of a kick out of him. We all had been part of Indianapolis’ Own and had family who kept close tabs on what we were up to and how our training progressed, but when it came to these liberty weekends, all we wanted to do was forget about training for a while. Granted, our lowly cadet “tans” were even below the “boots” of the Lake Michigan Naval Training Base, but still, the United States was at war and military men were on stage. At this point, I was still not drinking, so we would hit the strip joints and light up a cigarette over a Coke and look around, hoping for some action.

&nb
sp; On a Sunday night, I met a feisty little brunette and things seemed to be going well enough, until I discovered midnight had come and gone and I had missed my train back to the base. When I finally arrived at the gate, the Marines opted to ignore my tardy return. Making my way into the barracks and back to my bunk, I thought I was home free until Ted sleepily advised me, “Hey, man, they made bed check and you are AWOL.” To prevent the kindly Marines from being fingered, I walked all the way back to the gate and told them to log me in late. I paid dearly for my indiscretion with ten hours of marching with a shoulder rifle on the hangar ramp.

  Ground school continued with semaphore flag and blinker light communications and more Navy regs. Flight training advanced into cross country runs up to Milwaukee and wherever, and before long it was possible to find Glenview in the blinding snow squalls of February: just fly down the shore of Lake Michigan to the “Temple,” turn west, and there it was.

  So after six weeks, Elimination Training was complete, and the cadet-fliers all boarded a train and headed south. I had 10.4 hours dual, 6.7 hours solo, and we were now pilots, or so we thought. The trip was a chance to relax a little, maybe with a bit of new swagger, and I watched Ted operate with every female on the train, white teeth shining behind that totally confident grin. Sims was doing OK, too. But, still encumbered with my conservative and insecure social background, I was getting nowhere.

  Dallas “Pool” Base — an entire month devoted to waiting for space at Corpus Christi. Our weeks were filled with ground school — aerodynamics, aerology, enemy aircraft and ship identification, engines, weapons, and celestial navigation. No flying and the celestial navigation was tough and boring. At least there was downtown Dallas with its reputation for lovely ladies, and Ted continued his winning ways with them; I so envied him. It was also the occasion of my first (and then second) beer, a breakthrough of sorts, I suppose.