Renegade Ace Pilots Took Off Without Orders, Shooting Down Six Japanese Planes: But No MOH
By Tom Budzyna, Air Force News Service
7 December 1941: The Air Force Story” compiled by the Pacific Air Forces Office of History
Pvt. Wilfred D. Burke, 72d Pursuit Squadron described what started out to be a quiet, lazy Sunday morning in paradise.
My boss, Sgt. Forest Wills woke me up around 7 a.m. This was the one morning of the week I could sleep late and I wanted to stay in bed, but I did tell Wills that I would go to church with him.
Wills had become a good friend of mine and was concerned with my spiritual welfare, having observed that I was a worthless fellow given to drinking beer.
We ate breakfast in an unusually empty mess hall then, since we had time before church started, joined a group of men in the middle of the tent area to shoot the bull for a while.
We watched a flight of planes pass to the west of Wheeler heading towards Pearl Harbor. Someone said that it was the Navy, but then we were surprised as black puffs of anti-aircraft fire filled the sky.
Our surprise turned into terror when a Japanese aircraft from overhead began diving directly towards us. The diving planes released their bombs from one end of the hangar line to the other. No one was in sight at first except weary guards who had maintained an all-night vigil against possible sabotage, but others quickly began arriving on the scene.
Officers and enlisted alike were battling fires, tending to the wounded and dying, dragging equipment and supplies from burning hangers, and pushing or towing undamaged aircraft toward dispersal bunkers. Even Gen. Davidson was in the midst of his Airmen pushing planes around.
We fled from the strafing attack on the flight line area, scattering in all directions. I fled toward a housing area thinking it was a safer place when a bomb struck the pavement behind me and killed several fleeing Airmen.
When I found a place to rest against a building wall, I looked back on the carnage and devastation. The dive bombers had dropped all their bombs and had regrouped and were methodically strafing planes lined-up by squadron, wingtip to wingtip, in precise rows. The thick black smoke from the exploding planes served as a screen for a row of P-36 planes on the west end of Wheeler’s flight line.
After the firing ceased I went back to my tent, horrified to find dead bodies lying around. I picked-up my helmet as did others and we all had to stop and lace together the helmet linings of the old-fashioned World War I tin hats. That’s how unprepared we were.
I was helping casualties when I heard the alarm that the Japanese were attacking again. I ran to the housing area again and got a clear view of the enemy planes firing their machine guns at aircraft on the ramp. I couldn’t help from being impressed with their skill. They had been portrayed as little near-sighted men wearing glasses and this arrogance led to this debacle. The enemy was not to be considered lightly.
The attack that crippled the U.S. Pacific Naval Fleet also left approximately 700 U.S Airmen killed or wounded and 66 percent of U.S. air forces assets in Hawaii decimated. The Japanese lost only 29 pilots from more than 350 planes launched from aircraft carriers north of Hawaii.
The Japanese knew their attack on the Pacific Fleet would be imperiled if they didn’t cripple the air forces. Historical records describe the U.S. response as mostly uncoordinated and stunned by the surprise.
What Airmen saw on the ground didn’t match what the newspapers said 71 years ago, either.
“All the publicity is ‘Remember Pearl Harbor.’ They should take a look at Hickam Field or what was Hickam Field,” said Army Air Force Maj. Charles P. Eckhert, Dec. 10, 1941. “They dropped about 100 bombs on Hickam, practically all hits. The papers say they are poor bombardiers! They were perfect on nearly all their releases.”
But the accounts of aircraft destroyed and numbers of Airmen killed tell only a small part of the Pearl Harbor story. It’s the individual heroism of countless and sometimes forgotten Airmen that paint the true picture of the attack, and “7 December 1941 – The Air Force Story” reveals these lessor known accounts.
The Air Force story explains as the flight lines were engulfed in flames that the order to disperse the planes inspired scores of men to rush around the Hickam flight line heedless of the rain of bullets and goes on to detail how a general’s aide was trying to taxi one of the B-18s when strafers put an engine out of commission.
It was no easy job to taxi such a heavy plane with only one engine, but the aide raced the one engine until it pulled its side of the plane forward, then slammed that brake on hard, which forced the other wing up. By waddling along this way, all the time under enemy fire, he finally brought the plane across the landing mat to comparative safety. While fire department personnel fought flames at the tail end of some of the planes, daring crew members jumped upon the wings, disconnected the engines, and pulled their 800- or 900-pound weight to the edge of the apron. Their quick thinking and action saved the expensive engines.
Hickam and Wheeler Air Force Base, and Bellows Air Force Station were priority targets for the Japanese bombers and U.S. assumptions, attitudes and maintenance routines of the day made it difficult, if not impossible, to react to the pounding they delivered.
“We’re going to be all right even though we took a beating,” Gen. Howard C. Davidson, 14th Pursuit Wing commander said to Airmen at Bellows Air Field following the attack .
Davidson was visiting airfields to calm the nerves of Airmen, many of whom were in shock following the attack. Three pilots accompanied him to answer questions about how they were able to get off the ground to attempt a courageous counterattack and the telling of their stories seemed to calm them.
The three pilots were Lts. Kenneth M. Taylor, George S. Welch and Philip Rasmussen. Here are the stories of Taylor and Welcy:
George S. Welch was assigned to the 47th Fighter Squadron, 18th Fighter Group flying P-40 Kittyhawks at Wheeler Field
A fellow fighter pilot of the 18th Group, Francis S. Gabreski (who would later go on to become the top American Ace in the European Theater in World War II) described Welch:
“He was a rich kid, heir to the grape juice family, and we couldn’t figure out why he was there since he probably could have avoided military service altogether if he wanted to.” Many Japanese military aviators would regret that he hadn’t an ace pilots.com account wrote. The following are excerpts from the feature:
Welch and 2nd Lt. Kenneth Taylor had moved their P-40s away from the main airfield at Wheeler to a nearby auxiliary field at Haleiwa as part of a gunnery exercise early December where many of the Army Air Force fighters at Wheeler were parked in neat rows on the main flight-line; When the Japanese carrier-based sneak attack against Pearl Harbor and Wheeler and Hickam Fields the majority of the Army Air Force fighter force was easily destroyed on the ground. The first P-40 pilot attempting to take off to fight was hit and killed on his takeoff roll and his fighter went crashing down the flight-line at Wheeler.
Dive bombers blew up the parked planes. Welch ran for a telephone and called Haleiwa as bullets sprayed around him.
“Get two P-40s ready!” Welch yelled. “It’s not a gag–the Japs are here.”
Japanese Zeros strafed Welch and Taylor three times as they drove to Haleiwa. Without waiting for orders, they took off in the awaiting P-40s
As they climbed for altitude they ran into twelve Japanese Val dive bombers over the Marine air base at Ewa. Welch and Taylor on their first pass each shot down a bomber. As Taylor zoomed up and over in his Tomahawk, he saw an enemy bomber heading out to sea. He gave his P-40 full throttle and roared after it. Again his aim was good and the Val broke up before his eyes. In the meantime Welch’s plane had been hit and he dived into a protective cloud bank. The damage didn’t seem too serious so he flew out again–only to find himself on the tail of another Val. With only one gun now working he nevertheless managed to send the bomber flaming into the sea.
When the pilots returned to Wheeler Field for more ammunition and gas, they found that the extra cartridge belts for the P-40s were in a hangar which was on fire. Two mechanics ran bravely into the dangerous inferno and returned with the ammunition.
Perhaps twenty American fighter planes managed to get into the air that morning–including five obsolete Republic P-35s. Most of them were shot down, but their bravery and initiative accounted for six victories in the one-sided aerial battle
Welch remained in the Pacific Theater of Operations and went on to score 12 more kills against Japanese aircraft (16 in total).
Both Welch and Taylor were awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for their actions, but despite nominations were not awarded the Medal of Honor because they had taken off without orders.
After Pearl Harbor, Welch returned to the continental U.S. to give war bond speeches until being assigned to the 36th Fighter Squadron of the 8th Fighter Group in New Guinea. Dissatisfied with the considerably older Bell P-39 Airacobra, Welch repeatedly appealed to be transferred to the 80th Fighter Squadron which flew the P-38 Lightning until he was granted a transfer. Welch continued his record of success, flying a total of 348 combat missions with 16 confirmed kills before a bad case of malaria retired him from the war.
Army Air Corps Second Lieutenant Taylor
SHERYL KORNMAN Arlingtoncemetary.net
Courtesy of the Tucson Citizen
The Army Air Corps Second Lieutenant was “comfortably asleep” in borrowed officers’ quarters on a Hawaiian island one Sunday morning in 1941 after a “very entertaining” Saturday night out.
The 21-year-old pilot, who’d never seen combat, awoke suddenly to the sound of the Japanese attack on U.S. military forces in Hawaii.
Japanese pilots were strafing the officers’ quarters where Taylor and 24-year-old pilot George S. Welch slept.
The first wave of Japanese fighter planes had wrecked most of the Army’s air fleet on Oahu, dropping high explosives on two-thirds of the fleet of 140 P-40s and P-36s. And the U.S. Navy fleet in Pearl Harbor was under attack.
Taylor and the 47th Fighter Squadron of the 18th Fighter Group were based at Wheeler Army Air Field in central Oahu for gunnery practice. The Curtiss P-40 Warhawks he and Welch flew weren’t armed or fueled.
Taylor’s son said that was because the Army had been more afraid of sabotage than an attack by the Japanese.
Taylor, dressed in tuxedo trousers from the night before, jumped out of bed to call the ground crew and asked it to arm and fuel their planes.
“While the crew got their two planes ready to go, George Welch and my dad got into my dad’s Buick convertible and drove out to the airfield” at up to 100 mph.
Haleiwa Air Field was barely an airfield and more like “a strip of sod right off the beach,” he said.
Welch and Taylor got into their aircraft “while a major jumped all over both of them for taking off without orders. He was busy chewing them out while crews put the ammo on board.”
Taylor’s P-40 “knocked over the ammunition dolly as he taxied out. My dad was firing his guns before he was off the ground. He took off into the tail of the Japanese airplanes.”
“This is a fighter pilot’s dream,” his son said. “Pearl Harbor’s been attacked, and everything out there is a target.”
Taylor found himself “in the middle of an attack. Someone in the rear was attacking him, and he was wounded in the arm by a shell fragment. His squadron mate shot down the guy who was on his tail, otherwise he might not have survived that moment,” the younger Taylor said.
Taylor went back up in the air after getting first aid. He and Welch are credited with a total of six downed Japanese aircraft.
“It was what he was supposed to do, what he was trained to do, what he had the temperament to do,” his son said. Two weeks later, he turned 22.
“He didn’t feel particularly heroic,” his son said.
Taylor is credited with shooting down two Japanese fighter planes and with two unconfirmed hits. Welch is credited with four hits. The men received the Distinguished Service Cross for their valor but were denied the Medal of Honor because they went into combat without orders. Their actions were portrayed in the 1970 film “Tora! Tora! Tora!”