Pearl Harbor
Another 12-hour hop today. Got in two hours ago and my ears are still ringing. Despite the fact you sit down most of the time, they are very tiring.
Today’s flight was typical, so I may as well describe it, from beginning to end:
A usually muddle-minded callboy (colored) wakes us as near as possible to the proper time (he invariably wakes one or two wrong people and also fails to awaken one or two other “right” people.) We stumble around in the blackout (5 a.m.) and finally managed to dress and get below (shaving is usually done the previous night). A truck takes us to the squadron, where we grab our necessary papers and stumble into the planes. The As with wheels take off from the field. The As (PBY-5As) awaiting wheels are launched in the harbor and take off from there. We are soon scattering to all points of the compass. Took in 700 miles of the Pacific, southwest of here today. We eat breakfast — fried eggs, bacon, coffee, bread-and-butter and lunch — steak, vegetables, fruit, fruit juice, soup, bread & butter — in the plane. It’s all cooked there in our pressure cookers and hot plates. Pilots and crew all usually get at least an hours nap during the course of the flight.
At the turn of one of our legs we dropped a smoke float and made several machine-gun runs on it. Managed to plaster it very thoroughly with the bow gun today. Pretty good, seeing that I haven’t fired a machine gun since Pensacola. These damn bow gun positions in the PBY certainly weren’t built for anyone with legs the length of mine. Also have one hell of a time getting up to the bombsight to take drift readings. These PBY-5As have a good deal of the old bow space given over to the nose-wheel housing.
Was talking to Joe Hall the other day and he told me that Al Bates and Kuehnle disappeared at sea in one of VP-82’s Hudsons a few months ago. Was especially sorry to hear of Bates going, as he was one of my best friends, and certainly one of the few really swell fellows in VP-82 — also, he was undoubtedly the finest pilot in the squadron. Perhaps he wasn’t at the wheel when it happened. Kuenhle left a wife and child and Bates left a wife expecting a child — pretty rough. I remember the day Al Bates got married in San Diego. He brought Janet around to see McDill and myself, as we had been the first to know of it. I still remember, only the previous week, When Al, Mac, and I were sitting in our JOP quarters after a swim, and suddenly Bates says, “Well, I think I’ll get married” — right out of the blue, with no advance warning or indications. And to top it all off, he hadn’t even asked Janet yet! But that didn’t faze him — he got a few days leave, flew to Seattle, grabbed Janet and flew back and got married in Yuma. He never seemed the marrying type — and yet, perhaps, subconsciously, he felt that his end was coming, and made a final grasp at happiness. I wonder if I shall go too in this year — I feel somehow that I shall last it out. Let’s hope so.