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

by Miner, Ron

  But our time had come.

  We were the envy of the entire base. My camera had arrived at the last minute and we had all shipped everything nonessential back home. Jack was part of the first nine-plane contingent that was already well on its way, and our PBY was loaded with gear and a crew of ten. For this trip, Mel Goers and I were to be the navigators, putting our celestial expertise to the test as we winged our way toward Palmyra, a small atoll southwest of Hawaii. We found it and landed within two minutes of our projected arrival time, not bad for an all-day flight. Two sun-tanned officers in shorts arrived, crowded us into a command car, then spun out kicking up clouds of coral dust as they whisked us through grove upon grove of coconut trees. I think the stars shined more brilliantly there than anywhere I had ever been.

  The next day, March 4, 1943, the squadron continued on to a surprisingly sandy and dusty Canton Island. There was very little vegetation here and the barracks were named, quite inappropriately, “Waldorf” and “Astoria.” As transient officers, we couldn’t stay in either, and were given cots in a shack down by a sand dune near the water. I was surprised to find an old Williams classmate, Bill Eaton, as part of the reception group when we landed. I saw him several more times on and off throughout the afternoon and evening.

  This place was hot! In an attempt to cool off, we took a short boat ride over to a section once used by Pan American World Airways. Boeing’s Pacific Clipper stopped here on its way from California to New Caledonia when Pearl Harbor was attacked.

  “Howie, it’s hotter than Hell out here, let’s beat it,” Mel complained. He was right, and we headed back to search for the officer’s club. But after a short time, I felt restless and tried a little coaxing.

  “Hey, we’re leaving early, let’s look around some more or take in the show or something,” I suggested.

  “Nah, I’m worn out. Long day,” Mel responded.

  “Me, too. Probably seen the movie anyway,” another agreed.

  I opted to hunt for shells or souvenirs or something indigenous to the island, and after a few minutes of not finding much, decided to see if I could still hit anything with my sidearm, firing a few rounds from my .45 at a tin can and managing to skip it along the beach. My gun now empty, I headed back to my quarters. I was nearly there when a large group of shadowy figures appeared in my path. I continued on nervously and somewhat more slowly, when I was suddenly besieged by the largest several members of the gang and, before I could even blurt out an intelligible “Ugh!” dragged away to a small clearing.

  It was King Neptune’s Court!

  I had heard of this. The hop to Canton had included an equator crossing and because we were almost all “Polywogs” (never crossed before), we had to endure a sacred ritual and were summoned here to face the Royal Barber! With most of my hair now lying at my feet, I was pronounced a true “Son of the Southern Cross” and “Devotee of the Golden Dragon.” If you survived this and several even less friendly but time honored physical hardships, you could then officially assume your new status as “Shellback,” now an equator crossing veteran.

  Bright and early, Bill Eaton gave us a surprise breakfast send off and it was on to Samoa (Wallis Island). This involved crossing the Date Line and becoming “shortsnorters,” requiring a rumpled dollar bill that everyone signed. The strip here was embedded in dense jungles, and a transport was waiting to take us to our lodging. There was a small mess tent that prided itself on its cooking and promptly treated us to a wonderful meal, the best I had eaten since leaving home.

  After lunch, we shaved and showered for the first time in a while. Then, with the hair on our faces very nearly matching our heads, a few of us decided on a walk, hoping to meet up with some of the natives and maybe even do a little trading. Word had it that sleeveless T-shirts were held in high regard, but all I could come up with was a tennis ball, so I sketched a little native design on it and figured I was set.

  Along the way, there were a number of grass huts, and a voice from within one hailed us, “Malolo!” (“How are you?”). Through a big bay window I could see a white-haired native man motioning to us to come in. He had a sizable family, from adult to toddler, sitting around on elaborately woven mats of Tara leaves. It turned out his white hair was somehow dyed. It was fun talking to him with neither of us understanding anything but all enjoying the attempt. I explained where we were from (“Americano”), and that we were leaving tomorrow (“bongi-bongi”). They seemed interested in our cameras, certainly knowing what they were as they ran outside and lined up for a picture. The cigarettes were a hit; every last one of them helped themselves, except a small two-year-old who later discovered a discarded butt and puffed away, inhaling deeply. Her mother reached over and quickly took it away, long enough to re-light another smoke, then returned it!

  Through a big bay window I could see a white haired native man motioning to us to come in.

  They escorted us to another hut where the trading began in earnest. The undershirt netted someone a fan (“eli”) colored with white feathers. A bed sheet (“lava lava”) was good for a coconut mat with beautifully colored fringe. My tennis ball, on the other hand, was the object of scorn and ridicule, even elders scolding their children for showing any interest in it. This went on for a couple of fascinating hours and then it was time to see what the cooks had come up with back at mess.

  Dinner was, again, tough to beat. Afterward, the movie truck passed along the road, tempting us to see what was showing. The venue was carved out of the side of a hill and crowded to capacity. It was “Kisses for Breakfast,” but considering where we were, it did seem a little out of place.

  The morning of March 7 was upon us, and after managing to get themselves lost for a short time, the navigators (Mel and I) eventually found their way to Fiji (Nadi). Food here would have to be described as a major letdown when compared to the glorious spreads put on by the cooks in Samoa. Here, the Hindu mess boys seemed overwhelmed in the cavernous hall, so after a time we gave up and decided to go look for our quarters.

  There was a Quonset hut about a quarter of a mile from the center of things, and although we were looking forward to mingling again with the natives in town, a hard rain had set in, so we just loafed and waited around to see if we fared any better at the mess hall for dinner.

  We were nibbling on some kind of stew when Mel piped up, “Hey, I think the rain has stopped. Let’s see what’s playing.”

  Several of us stocked up on peanuts, pear juice, and cigarettes and headed over to the show.

  “Look at that line!” I exclaimed. Lines were a way of life in the military, but sometimes they even impressed us.

  “We’ll be over an hour, easy, getting in there.” What else was there to do? We finally wound our way in, got seated, and had made it through the first reel when, as punishment, a terrific barrage of thunder and lightning swallowed up the place. I had never seen it rain like that. It could fill your coffee cup in a matter of minutes and quickly turned everything to mud.

  “Hell, I can’t see a thing,” Mel complained.

  It was pretty comical, really. Here were 500 Navy guys, most without raincoats, squinting through it all and trying to make out what was going on.

  “ ‘Gentleman Jim’. I think it’s called ‘Gentleman Jim’!”

  By now, I didn’t care.

  In the morning we came through some rough weather on the way to Espiritu Santo and Base Button in the New Hebrides, where we caught up with the first formation of our squadron. Jack and most of the others were there to greet us. This was in the middle of the jungle with mammoth trees and ankle deep mud. It turned out to be a brief stay, and a week or so later we finally set down and made camp on the Solomon Island of Guadalcanal. The Marines had secured it about this time and turned it over to the Army for safekeeping. A few of them told us that some of the Japanese prisoners captured during the battle of Guadalcanal were led to believe by their superiors that they had been fighting instead on Catalina Island, just a stone’s throw
from Los Angeles and the U.S. mainland. That gave us something to think about as we pitched our tents in a grove of Palmolive Peat coconut trees on the edge of the jungle. We were “Home.”

  VP-54 gets rude welcoming. Crew members survey bomb crater on runway. Picture provided by John Bickford whose father, Jack Bickford from PATSU 1-1, is pictured in photo center (see notes).

  The northern coast of the island was chosen by the Japanese as an airstrip primarily for its relatively flat grasslands and proximity, nestled a safe distance from the towering Guadalcanal mountain ridge. Legend had it that Solomon gold was up there, somewhere. Henderson Field, or “Cactus,” became our current Allied edition of the airstrip, named for Major Lofton Henderson, the first Marine pilot killed in the battle of Midway.

  I was still getting my bearings that day when the squadron tasted their first air raid. Sirens blared and everyone scattered for the slit trenches. It was over quickly, but two of our PBYs were hit and destroyed, an inauspicious beginning to say the least.

  The tent encampment was, initially, a crude concoction of salvage materials we found scattered around the area and mosquito netting we propped up with it. The tents themselves were Japanese leftovers and many of us used parts of old parachutes to reinforce the tops against the rain. No more island luxury — our meals were served in a large shed and were primarily C-rations like Spam, dehydrated scrambled eggs, and potatoes. Shower baths were rigged under fifty-gallon drums of water, drinking water was provided in hanging canvas bags with spigots, and heads were constructed over holes in the ground in which there would often be a smoldering flame that emitted a stifling odor of kerosene and hot feces. With every rainfall, sometimes daily, the vicinity became gooey black mud and mosquito habitat, hence our name for it: “The Swamp.”

  Perforated metal ramps were placed all around camp but often became submerged in the gunk and were slightly better than nothing.

  Malaria and dengue fever were a real concern, so we needed to take yellow Atabrine pills daily and wash them down with the local water, which had a peculiar walnut flavor. In spite of our efforts, there was a significant attrition due to illness. Almost everyone, including me, came down with at least a light case, but many of the guys became seriously ill and had to be shipped stateside.

  As it turned out, Jack and I were sick at the same time. We spent a week at the hospital, Jack on one side of me and Major* James Roosevelt, the President’s son, on the other. The major commanded the Marine Raider Battalion and had distinguished himself about a year earlier at the raid on Makin and later took part in the Guadalcanal campaign. After all that, here he was in the hospital with a throat infection, among other things, and he and several of our malaria cases were sent back to the states about the same time that Jack and I were returned to duty.

  There was very little in the way of equipment, so we set about inventing the various necessities and little indulgences as the need arose. I quickly put together a canvas lounge chair from a few boards and a discarded army cot. Frustratingly, it seemed every time I would return to my tent, someone else would be in it. So I built another ... and yet another.

  Every gadget and implement in the Navy is given a certain “Mark” according to its modification or the number of other similar articles preceding it. For instance, the second type of mousetrap accepted by the Navy would be a Mark II mousetrap. Since mice were a constant challenge for us around camp, it seemed it was time for a better one. We took turns fashioning them from spare parts. One involved a teeter-totter perched on the edge of a fifty-gallon drum of water to form a critter dunk tank. Another used a ruler, set along its edge with bait, to support an upside down bucket. Within a month, I was sure we were getting closer to a Mark 10. We caught lots, but there were always more.

  How time could fly so fast and pass so slowly was puzzling. Our activity for a good part of March was around camp working to improve it and we began to make significant progress. Food began to improve, too. Instead of simply “Spam of the Day,” some meat and a few fresh vegetables and even occasional Cokes were finding their way into the mess tent or O.C. It was still primitive, but workable.

  Consequently, we weren’t spending much time in the air, mostly shuttling back and forth between Henderson and the original camp at Base Buttons. I shared a tent with Richard Jicka (his parents were Czechoslovakian), Whitney Bridges, and Jack. Each of us had covered our dirt floors with floor mats made from coconut palm fronds, some of them eight feet long, and we had learned to construct a whole variety of items to help with the quality of life from this extremely useful plant.

  During the day, regardless of the camp, it was often severely hot and mosquitos liked to join us in the shady spots. When an occasionally cooler, cloudy morning happened along, it was an opportunity to catch up on writing or even a little artwork. A couple of us would don our green flying coveralls, also known as Pacific Zoot Suits or “skeeter beaters,” that fit snugly about the wrists and ankles. I might see Bridges leaning against a coconut tree, smiling as he read a book, and Jack nearby in one of our homemade chairs, also writing letters. Jicka could regularly be found seated with several of the others at a little square table with a white candle on each corner, engaged in a spirited game of bridge. Pete and Willie, who ran into a little trouble and were a month behind us arriving, were just now getting acclimated as they set up nearby. In the distance, an ambitious someone might just fire up the gasoline washing machine and take on the week’s laundry.

  At night, along with more mosquitos, we would get regular visits from Japan’s “Washing Machine Charlie” and the annoying sound of his out-of-synch engine slowly chugging overhead before dropping an errant bomb or two. He was hated and the subject of a poem that expressed our feelings:

  We turn into our nice, soft cots

  To know we’re safe sure helps a lot.

  As Charlie sows so shall we reap

  Now I lay me down to sleep.

  Awakened by the siren’s wail

  For once the damn thing didn’t fail.

  Half asleep you leap from bed

  Jam a helmet of water on your head.

  Dammit now I’m soaking wet

  Tangled in mosquito net.

  Skin your head upon a nail

  Step into an empty pail.

  Crack your shins, fall with a crash

  Arise and make a frantic dash.

  Give your head just one more bump

  Slide in a foxhole on your rump.

  Hell, I didn’t have to run

  Let’s go out and watch the fun.

  No reason for my foolish flight

  We’ve got a fighter up tonight.

  (continues nine more stanzas)

  This biplane or whatever it was became the inspiration for us to respond in kind during our routine night missions. If we didn’t find a suitable target that night, then we felt a few hours of leisurely flight above some sleeping Japanese might give them a taste of their own medicine. Hell, we were awake anyway! A bomb, kitchen scraps, beer bottles, whatever we had — delivered every hour or so — made for a far less restful night and I’m sure led to some cranky brass and foot soldiers the next morning.

  Initially, we shared flying duties with VP-12, the first squadron to arrive here, and benefitted from their experience at night search and attack operations. Since the middle of December, out of necessity they had been developing what became the early strategy subsequent squadrons would use and spent the winter refining it. They also gave us our name. Our missions were a combination of search, harassment, and bombing at night. We would take off shortly before sundown and proceed up “the Slot” in the middle of the Solomons to arrive near the enemy held islands after dark. Our plane, “Black Magic,” generally cruised at around 6,000 to 8,000 feet all night long, searching. Usually, ships could be readily located by their wakes, slightly luminescent from the plankton living in the water. The radioman would key a coded message back to base, giving position, number, and types of ships and other pertinent
information. Often an attack force of SBD dive bombers or the new TBF torpedo bombers would be dispatched using our guidance to first hone them in and then illuminate the target by dropping flares. It continued this way for the duration of the night until we finally would drop our own four small bombs and get out as the anti-aircraft guns opened up.

  The TBF bombers, which were used a lot around Guadalcanal, had the misplaced honor of being dedicated and shown off to the public about the same time on December 7th that Pearl Harbor was being bombed. The plant was quickly secured to protect this new generation of torpedo bomber. The PBY, on the other hand, was already obsolete and certainly anything but a combat aircraft. It just happened to be around at the outbreak of the war and so it was used. At that time, there were about thirty of them in this part of the world representing almost the entirety of the Naval Air Force here. By February 1942, that number was down to a dozen, only five of which were in flying condition. To survive, night tactics and stealth became essential.

  In many ways, it was extremely versatile. Ninety to a hundred knots was the “ball park” speed for its operation, whether climbing, cruising, or descending. It was sturdy enough to land at sea, yet light enough to be able to get off again, sometimes along the crest of a wave or swell, so it was valuable for rescue work. It could carry depth charges, bombs, torpedoes, flares, and spotlights; hence it was used for any mission that the Navy could dream up. Though originally built as a flying boat, it had evolved into an amphibian with thousands of pounds of tricycle landing gear.

  PBY cockpit controls - see notes

  Behind the cockpit and pilots were the Navigator and Radioman’s stations. The Navigator studied charts and calculations on a large plotting board and could use a variety of techniques to determine our position. The Radioman not only listened to and transmitted messages, he also monitored a ponderous radar unit looking at a few blips on a tiny screen that might give us some hint of what was around us, from planes to mountains. A Galley came next, with a hot plate and two stainless drums of water on one side and a few bunks for sleeping tucked in here and there. Above it in the pylon on a seat between the two engines was the small Flight Engineer’s compartment.* Many of the controls for the plane, like for raising and lowering the wing floats or monitoring fuel consumption and other engine instrumentation, were operated from here. In the waist section were the two egg shaped blisters, each housing a flexible .50 caliber machine gun. Flexible guns allowed for movement to better follow a target, as opposed to fixed guns which only pointed straight ahead in the direction the plane was flying, as was typical of fighters. The small tail “tunnel” compartment contained a hatch for viewing and allowed for another .50 caliber and gunner. It was also where the life raft was stored because, as on a patrol plane, the tail is the last section to sink. Up in the nose was a bombay hatch and above it, a crude rotating turret accommodating a gunner with twin .30 caliber machine guns. In the early version of the non-amphibious PBY-5, a hatch was located here allowing a crewman to stand up and look around in flight or assist in mooring the plane when back on the water. Each of the various compartments was connected by way of submarine-like bulkhead hatches that could be sealed shut with the spin of an operator wheel.