Aviation History March 2022

dc-8 high dive: first airliner to break the sound barrier

warning star shootdown

in 1969 north korea killed 31 American naval aviators—and got away with it riders on the storm: a navy typhoon tracker’s perilous pacific service tbd devastator: does the douglas torpedo bomber deserve its bad rap?

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DEPARTMENTS

5 MAILBAG 6 BRIEFING 10 AVIATORS

Brash and bold Australian innovator Sidney Cotton helped develop effective photoreconnaissance techniques early in World War II.

By Stephan Wilkinson

14 RESTORED

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A Douglas TBD-1 Devastator warms up onboard the aircraft carrier Enterprise.

A 1950s U.S. Air Force “parasite” jet fighter gets a new lease on life at Denver’s Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space Museum.

By Douglas G. Adler

features 26 Downing of Deep Sea 129

36 Navy Typhoon Hunter

36 The interior of a Lockheed WC-121N Warning Star, looking aft, shows its jampacked working spaces.

The Douglas TBD Devastator, a groundbreaking torpedo bomber when it first flew in 1935, is mostly remembered for its dismal performance at the 1942 Battle of Midway.

By Barrett Tillman

52 Rise and Decline of a USAF Base

16 EXTREMES

A Vietnam-era U.S. Navy enlisted man describes his wild weather recon flights in Lockheed Warning Stars into the teeth of Pacific typhoons.

By Michael A. “Mick” Roy

44 Soon To Be Discontinued

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When a North Korean MiG-21 brazenly shot down an unarmed Lockheed EC-121M reconnaissance plane over international waters in 1969, all 31 American crewmen onboard were killed.

By Barry Levine

A one-time CAP cadet at Massachusett’s Westover AFB, home of the legendary Eighth Air Force and top-secret Cold War installations, recalls the base’s heyday.

By David T. Zabecki

Despite promising innovations, the Great Lakes XTBG-1 biplane torpedo bomber couldn’t compete with the new monoplanes.

By Jon Guttman

18 STYLE

A tribute to retiring Aviation History editor Carl von Wodtke.

24 LETTER FROM AVIATION HISTORY 66 REVIEWS 70 FLIGHT TEST 72 AERO ARTIFACT

60 The First SST

In August 1961, Douglas test pilots successfully dove the new DC-8 past Mach 1, making it the first airliner to exceed the speed of sound.

By Don Hollway

ON THE COVER: A Lockheed EC-121M Warning Star from Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron 1 goes down on April 15, 1969, after being hit by a missile from a North Korean MiG-21. All onboard were killed. Cover illustration: ©2021 Jack Fellows, ASAA.

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MARCH 2022

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: CARL MYDANS/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/SHUTTERSTOCK; DAN LEETH/ALAMY; NATIONAL NAVAL AVIATION MUSEUM COLLECTION; MICHAEL A. ROY VIA HANK CARUSO

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MICHAEL A. REINSTEIN CHAIRMAN & PUBLISHER DAVID STEINHAFEL PUBLISHER ALEX NEILL EDITOR IN CHIEF

Douglas SBD-5s fly over the Caribbean late in World War II.

Aviation History

Online

You’ll find much more from Aviation History on the web’s leading history resource: historynet.com

Dauntless Forever

The Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bomber did more to win the Pacific War than any other bomber type in World War II, sinking five of Japan’s eight fleet aircraft carriers and becoming the hero of the Battle of Midway. Yet of the 35 U.S. types that flew major combat in the war, none was as oldfashioned and low-tech as the SBD.

Cold Warrior

On June 16, 1959, a North Korean MiG-17 fired on a U.S. Navy Martin P4M-1Q Mercator performing electronic reconnaissance over international waters in the Sea of Japan. The attack seriously wounded the Mercator’s tail gunner, though the pilot was able to land the damaged aircraft in Japan. It was one in a series of wanton attacks by Communist forces that underscored the risks Cold War spyplanes faced while gathering intelligence on adversaries.

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MARCH 2022 / VOL. 32, NO. 4 CARL VON WODTKE EDITOR LARRY PORGES SENIOR EDITOR JON GUTTMAN RESEARCH DIRECTOR STEPHAN WILKINSON CONTRIBUTING EDITOR ARTHUR H. SANFELICI EDITOR EMERITUS BRIAN WALKER GROUP ART DIRECTOR MELISSA A. WINN DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY PAUL FISHER ART DIRECTOR GUY ACETO PHOTO EDITOR

ROB WILKINS DIRECTOR OF PARTNERSHIP MARKETING STEPHEN KAMIFUJI CREATIVE DIRECTOR TOM GRIFFITHS CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT GRAYDON SHEINBERG CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT SHAWN BYERS VP AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT JAMIE ELLIOTT PRODUCTION DIRECTOR

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Supersonic Gamble

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PROUDLY MADE IN THE USA U.S. NAVY

Echoing his challenge the year before to send a man to the moon, in June 1963 President John F. Kennedy called for the United States to produce a supersonic airliner to rival or beat what the British and French were then designing with their Concorde. But the technological, budgetary and environmental strains of producing an aircraft capable of cruising at 60,000 feet at nearly 2,000 mph proved to be one challenge too many.

MARCH 2022

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Mailbag

ANOTHER UNSUNG HERO

COURTESY OF JOHN B. MIER

Your January 2022 article “Bringing Charles Home,”

by Nina Lee Soltwedel, was a great story that reflects what many families had to deal with in World War II and reminds me of my uncle, Roman Mierzejewski.

Uncle Ray turned 18 a few days before Pearl Harbor was attacked and like many others joined the Army Air Forces. A few months later he was promoted to aviation cadet at Fort Dix, N.J., where I did my basic training 39 years later. He spent the rest of 1942 in Texas in flight training and was awarded his wings a few days after turning 19, becoming one of the youngest pilots in the AAF. Like Charles, he did his transition training at Tallahassee—just a year earlier. He was sent to North Africa and flew Curtiss P-40s with the 325th Fighter Group. > > Uncle Ray was lost on June 28, 1943, while protecting bombers of the 17th Bombardment Group over Sardinia. He and the 325th did their job—all the bombers came back—but tragically he did not. At the time the AAF simply said, “Failed to return, cause unknown.” He was listed as missing for about a year before his grave was located with the help of an Italian air force chaplain. The chaplain said he identified my uncle’s body the day he died and buried him the next morning, giving him a Catholic funeral with full military honors. For unknown reasons word of his death did not reach the Red Cross in the U.S. My grandmother wrote several letters asking what had happened, but like Charles’ dad, received very little information. After the war she was given the choice to bring Uncle Ray home. Since she had already lost two of her five boys, she decided to let her son stay overseas “with his buddies.”

About 25 years ago I started looking for information about Uncle Ray. By

accident I found a family on Sardinia whose father, then age 13, had watched the air battle in which Uncle Ray’s plane was shot down.

He said my uncle got into a one-on-one dogfight with an Italian pilot flying a Macchi MC.205. From what I was told, Uncle Ray tried to break contact and return to his group, but the Italian pilot got off one last long-range burst and his P-40 started burning. He was able to bail out, but was so low his parachute didn’t open and he was killed. His parents never knew what happened to their son.

From my research, I have gotten involved with the Checkertail Clan, the veteran organization for the WWII 325th Fighter Group, and I’ve had the honor to attend several reunions and now serve on its board. I’ve twice traveled to Italy and Sardinia to visit Uncle Ray’s grave at the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery in Nettuno. I’ve attached a photo of him [above], age 18, during flight training in Texas.

John B. Mier Belleville, Ill.

COLIN KELLY CREWMAN

I enjoyed the Colin Kelly story [“An American Martyr”] in the January 2022 issue. It may interest you to know that his bombardier, Meyer Levin, had a NYC public school named in his honor in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East Flatbush, where he and I grew up. It was Meyer Levin Junior High School when I attended back in the mid1960s. Since redefined as Intermediate School 285, it is now home to the Meyer Levin School for the Performing Arts.

Your article prompted me to learn a little more about Levin. I discovered that he and I both attended Brooklyn Technical High School.

There’s something wonderfully American about the story of the Irish American pilot saving the life of his crew, including his Jewish bombardier. Levin paid it forward, flying a lot of combat missions before making the ultimate sacrifice himself while helping other crewmen escape their bomber after a water ditching in January 1943. He earned the Distinguished Flying Cross and a Silver Star for his heroism.

I read every issue cover to cover. Keep ’em coming!

Bob Burnston Mercerville, N.J.

D.B. COOPER CONNECTION

Wow, when l opened your November issue and saw “The Legend of D.B. Cooper” it was déjà vu all over

again! I had a small role in that drama I’d like to share.

I was an Air Force navigator working in the combat tactics (air drop) office of the 62nd Airlift Wing at McChord AFB when the D.B. Cooper incident happened. In a previous tour in Lockheed C-130s l had spent numerous TDYs at the Yuma Proving Ground in the Arizona desert. We air-dropped many diverse objects from the C-130 and my job was to figure out ballistics to get the test objects near the target and the range cameras. So, based on my experience with parachute ballistics, when an FBI agent came calling for help in the Cooper case, I was assigned the case. The agent stated that the Seattle FBI office was running out of time and funding and needed to solve the case and find Cooper. I was given a classified folder with weather, flight data, radar plots and pilot testimony re: when they felt he left the plane.

I provided a “footprint” of all available options from the parachute not opening to free-falling to a low altitude and charted them for the agent. As l recall, the center of all plots fell south of Mount St. Helens and near the Columbia River in a heavily wooded area. The finding of ransom money in the Columbia River falls within the outlines that I provided to the FBI agent back in the early 1970s. I hope this adds a piece to the puzzle of D.B. Cooper.

Major Gary Larson U.S. Air Force (ret.)

SEND LETTERS TO:

Aviation History Editor, HISTORYNET 901 North Glebe Road, 5th Floor, Arlington, VA 22203 OR EMAIL TO aviationhistory@historynet.com (Letters may be edited)

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briefing

On Mark Marketeer Rare bird Above: The On Mark Marketeer recently restored

by MeierMotors, a former Douglas A-26B luxuriously appointed for business travelers, reflects its warbird heritage with pinup nose art and faux guns. Inset: The refurbished cockpit includes modernized avionics.

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ome restorers confronted with a warbird modified to fill a civilian mission—borate bomber, bizplane, Reno racer—will reverse the mods and return the airplane to its original condi­ tion. The German company MeierMotors, however, chose a different course for this former Douglas A-26B Invader that had been given an executive interior and

other upgrades to turn it into an On Mark Marketeer: They restored it as a Mar­ keteer, not an A-26.

That makes sense. Meier­ Motors says there may be 20 flyable A-26s worldwide but only three operating Marketeers. And you’d have

to be seriously hardcore to turn a luxurious six-passen­ ger (plus two crew) executive twin back into a bare-bones light attack bomber.

Starting in the mid-1950s, On Mark Engineering began demilitarizing and refitting surplus A-26s with a hand­

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OPPOSITE PHOTOS: MEIERMOTORS; TOP & INSET: OTTO AVIATION; BOTTOM: U.S. AIR FORCE

somely trimmed cabin, fuselage windows, sealed bomb bay with a new cabin floor, a powered airstair door and various other mods aimed at the small group of businesspeople who considered it a treat to ride to work between two raging R-2800 Pratts.

The most meaningful of the On Mark mods (originally fitted to the military A-26K Counter Invaders that the company also produced) was a pair of ring spars to replace the straight carrythrough main and rear wing spars. Not only were the oval spar center sections stronger—wing-shedding Invaders had become a problem—but they freed up lots of usable room in what had been crawl space.

MeierMotors and its subcontractors spent 22,000 man-hours on the project, stripping paint, modernizing the cockpit and avionics, renewing all the cosseting leather and other cabin furnishings, and hanging zerotimed R-2800s and cut-down DC-6 props.

The airplane is owned by a firm named Tina Fly that acts as a one-stop-shopping resource for rich European fans of historic aircraft.

Tina Fly buys, sells and brokers aircraft; hangars and maintains aircraft for busy owners; and arranges and oversees restorations as partners with MeierMotors and the famous American warbird- and raceplaneengine overhauler Vintage V12s. Racing, in fact, was a small part of this Marketeer’s history: Lloyd Hamilton flew it in full executive trim in the 1970 Reno and ’71 Mojave air races.

Stephan Wilkinson

Eco-friendly The diesel-powered Otto Celera 500L has completed its initial testing phase. Inset: The cabin accommodates six passengers comfortably.

Air Quotes

“I MIGHT HAVE BEEN BORN IN A HOVEL, BUT I DETERMINED TO TRAVEL WITH THE WIND AND THE STARS.” –JACQUELINE COCHRAN

Aerodynamic Celera 500L Tested

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n November 2021 an unusual torpedo-shaped airplane completed phase one of its test program, encompassing 55 flights totaling 51 hours since July. Although it doesn’t fly particularly fast or high, the Otto Celera 500L has taken its place among history’s most aerodynamically efficient aircraft.

First flying in 2018, the Celera takes full advantage of smooth laminar airflow that the North American P-51 Mustang’s wing was originally designed to capitalize on.

Applying this to both fuselage and wings, all constructed of composite materials, produced an airplane that generates 59 percent less drag than comparable-sized aircraft.

In a CNN interview, CEO William Otto Jr., who founded Otto Aviation in 2008, stated: “To maintain laminar flow you have to create structures that don’t flex or distort the shape. You could never do this with metal; composites are really the only way.” Its pusher propeller is powered by a German-made RED V-12 diesel engine using sustainable aviation fuels at 18 to 25 miles per gallon, 80 percent less fuel consumption than its comparable contemporaries.

During testing the airplane, which can carry six passengers, reached a maximum speed of 251 mph at up to 17,000 feet.

“The data from our first phase of test flights shows that we are on the path to achieving our goals for the aircraft,” said Otto, who expects to have a production business plane available by 2025. Future, larger aircraft are projected to achieve 460 mph at 50,000 feet and use electric or hydrogen power, potentially representing a radical advance in eco-friendly commercial aviation, not to mention economy and affordability.

Jon Guttman

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BRIEFING

Norwegian Spitfire Flies Over Australia

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s most aviation enthusiasts will testify, there can never be too many Supermarine Spitfires.

Adherents to that philosophy got gratifying news on December 11, 2021, when a bona fide World War II veteran Spitfire in Australia took off for the first time since 1955.

The fruit of 11 years of work by Vintage Fighter Restorations in Scone, New South Wales, Spitfire Mark IX MH603 went up for its first 20-minute test flight with Stephen Death at the control column. After a few checkups, tweaks and further flights, Death signed off on its airworthiness certificate.

Delivered to the Royal Air Force in October 1943, MH603 entered World War II in earnest on January 3, 1944, when it was delivered to No. 331 (Norwegian) Squadron at North Weald,

Spit in the wind Supermarine Spitfire MH603 sports the markings of No. 331 (Norwegian) Squadron in December on its first flight in more than 65 years (above).

usually flown by five-victory ace Captain Bjorn Bjorn­ stad. On June 1 it was transferred to No. 274 Squadron at Hornchurch, recoded JJ-K and with Warrant Officer S.G. Barker as its usual pilot flew over northern France in support of the D-Day landings. In August 274 Squadron was reassigned to defense against V-1 pulsejet guided bombs and replaced its Spitfires with Hawker

MILESTONES

Finishing Amelia’s Flight

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n March 17, 1997, 46-year-old Linda Finch took off from California’s Oak­ land International Airport to try to re-create and complete one of aviation history’s most fabled flights: Amelia Earhart’s 1937 attempt to circumnavigate the globe. Finch, a successful Texas businesswoman whose interest in vintage aircraft took her to airshows and flying competitions around America, made her “World Flight 1997” in a restored 1935 Lockheed 10-E Electra, the same type Earhart used in her unfinished attempt exactly 60 years earlier.

Aided by sponsorship and two new 9-cylinder Wasp radial engines from Pratt & Whitney, Finch restored the Lockheed as closely as possible to Earhart’s, maintaining the unpressurized cabin and heavy add-on fuel tanks—though with safety modifications such as a GPS system, weather radars and even a fax machine. A support team with spare parts followed in a Grumman Albatross flying boat.

Following Earhart’s route as closely as possible at an average cruising speed of 90 mph, Finch crossed the United States

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Tempest Mark Vs, which eventually destroyed 15 of the “buzz bombs.” Spitfire MH603 spent the rest of the war as a trainer, and from 1949 to 1955 it served in the South African air force.

It was then sold for scrap to the South African Metal and Machine Company in Cape Town, but in 1977 the SAAF reacquired its dismantled remains. In 1989 English warbird enthusiast

Steve Atkins purchased the aircraft and transported it to Rye, Sussex. Over the next 30 years it saw a succession of owners until finally bought in October 2009 by Pay’s Air Service in Scone, Australia.

There it was fully restored in its original 331 Squadron markings. Registered as VH-IXF since July 28, 2011, the Spitfire is currently for sale via Platinum Fighter Sales for £3.5 million.

going the distance Pilot Linda Finch waves from her Lockheed 10-E Electra in Oakland, Calif., on May 28, 1997, after completing her around-the-world flight.

before continuing east over the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and into Asia. While flying over Howland Island in the Pacific, Earhart’s destination when she disappeared, Finch dropped several wreaths to honor the aviator’s memory.

Finch tied a state-of-the-art innovation to her trip: the “You Can Soar” multimedia educational program. At a time when only one percent of the world had access to the Internet, nearly 200,000 middle-school classrooms around the globe monitored her daily progress and joined in an aspirational science, arts and culture curriculum developed for the journey. The flight was a success: After 73 days and 19 countries, Finch landed back in Oakland on May 28 to her family, an ecstatic crowd and a congratulatory phone call from Vice President Al Gore.

The Electra that Finch used on her 26,000-mile milestone flight—25 years ago this spring—is on permanent display in the Great Gallery at Seattle’s Museum of Flight.

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C-53 Skytrooper to soar Again

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t Venango Regional Airport near Franklin, Pa., a new addition to the ranks of restored World War II transport aircraft is working toward its airworthiness certification from the FAA. A long-standing labor of love for Jason Capra and volunteers at his Vintage Wings company, the twin-engine transport looks at first glance to be yet another of the Douglas DC-3s or C-47s still flying all over the world. A closer look, however, reveals this to be a somewhat rarer bird.

While the C-47 Skytrain was a militarized adaptation of the DC-3, Vintage Wings’ C-53 Skytrooper was produced from the outset as a paratroop dropper, a glider tow and a medical evacuation plane. Built without the

C-47’s big cargo doors, hoist attachment and reinforced floor, it is recognizable by an oval entry door on the left side, a small baggage compartment door and skinnier propellers than the C-47’s paddleblades. The C-53’s arrangement made it less versatile than the original, and of the 10,174 DC-3 variants produced, only 380 of them were Skytroopers.

C-53-DO serial no.

41-20095 was assembled in Douglas’ Santa Monica, Calif., factory about the same time that Japanese carrier planes were raiding Pearl Harbor. Accepted by the U.S. Army Air Forces on January 29, 1942, it was assigned to Ferry Command and surveyed the North Atlantic routes to and from Britain.

In November 1942 it joined

Air Transport Command in North Africa and supported the campaigns in Sicily and Italy. After the war the retired warrior saw civil use, most notably as Buckeye One, the Ohio governor’s official state transport from 1963 to 1983.

After Capra noticed the C-53 abandoned in a field in Beach City, Ohio, in 2015, he mobilized the funds and volunteers to completely

Super Trouper Jason Capra’s restored Douglas C-53 is awaiting its airworthiness certificate.

rebuild it, and on October 6, 2018, the newly christened Beach City Baby made its first flight from Beach City to its current residence in Franklin.

There, Capra expects it to get its FAA approval in February or March.

Electrifying Rolls-Royce Airplane

OPPOSITE TOP PHOTOS: DARREN MOTTRAM, AVIATION SPOTTERS ONLINE; LEFT: JOHN G. MABANGLO/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES; TOP: JASON CAPRA/VINTAGE WINGS INC.; MIDDLE & BOTTOM: ROLLS-ROYCE

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rom Otto Lilienthal to Orville Wright and beyond, a single-seat airplane setting a speed, climb or altitude record has set the precedent for more utilitarian advances in aviation. Rolls-Royce took part in that tradition in 1931, when its V-12 engine propelled the Supermarine S-6B floatplane to 340 mph to win the last Schneider Trophy race—and then evolved into one of history’s greatest piston-engine power plants.

On September 15, 2021, Rolls-Royce powered a radically new motor into the public eye when what looked like a sleek single-seat racer, dubbed Spirit of Innovation, took off on its first flight.

Two months later, at the UK’s Boscombe Down test site, Rolls-Royce director of flight operations Phil O’Dell piloted the airplane on several record-setting runs. Its joint builders—Rolls-Royce, electric motor manufacturer YASA and startup company Electroflight—contacted the

Fédération Aéronautique International to certify three new records: an average speed of 555.9 kph (345.5 mph) over three kilometers, 532.1 kph (330 mph) over 15 kilometers and a climb rate of 3,000 meters (9,843 feet) in 202 seconds. Combined with a brief peak speed of 387.4 mph, Spirit of Innovation had officially become the world’s fastest electric airplane.

The product of a project called ACCEL (accelerating the electrification of flight), Spirit of Innovation is powered by three batteries with 6,000 cells total, described

by Rolls-Royce as “the world’s most energy-dense flying battery pack.” The batteries drive three motors that supply 400 kilowatts (roughly equivalent to 500 hp) to the propeller.

With the precedent set, Rolls-Royce is setting its sights on selling electric pro-

record-setter Rolls-Royce’s speedy Spirit of Innovation flies for the first time (top) and displays its electric powertrain (above).

pulsion systems in addition to its jet engines, possibly

starting with a line of air taxis. The company is already working with airframer Tecnam and Scandinavian regional airline Wideroe on an electric passenger aircraft, expected to be ready for commuter use by 2026.

As Tim Woolmer, YASA’s chief technology officer and founder, declared, “Electric flight is set to be as transformative for mobility as the jet engine was 70 years ago.”

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AvIATORS

Sid Cotton’s Air Force

USING HIGH-FLYING SPITFIRES AND A LOCKHEED ELECTRA, AN OUTSPOKEN AUSTRALIAN HELPED DEVELOP PHOTORECONNAISSANCE TECHNIQUES EARLY IN WORLD WAR II

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enerations of Blue Angels and Thunderbirds owe their ability to stroll airshow ramps in smart, sexy flight suits to a wealthy, irascible Australian World War I pilot named Sidney Cotton. For Sid Cotton invented the flight suit in 1917. He named it the Sidcot, and it soon became standard for British Royal Flying Corps and Naval Air Service pilots. It’s said that “Red Baron” Manfred von Richthofen was wearing a Sidcot when he was shot down, though there’s no word on whether he bought it or copped it from a Brit victim.

Cotton’s flight suit was quite different than the modern-day military pilot’s tight jumpers, but it was a considerable advance over the standard aviator’s garb of the day, which was simply whatever overcoat or leather jacket was at hand, thrown over one’s uniform. Cotton designed a warm, single-piece coverall lined with fur under a layer of silk. It had pockets on the thighs for maps and papers, and eventually lots more pockets, lots

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Aussie Innovator Top: Sidney Cotton (standing, at the 1936 Vanderbilt Cup auto race) pioneered modern photoreconnaissance methods in the late 1930s.

Inset: RAF airmen wear insulated Sidcot flight suits that Cotton invented in 1917.

more zippers. If you wanted people to know you were a pilot, you wore a Sidcot.

But Cotton’s real contribution to military aviation was that he also developed

modern aerial photoreconnaissance, although the Royal Air Force couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. Cotton was outspoken, had little regard for rank, and was rich and smart—everything a military officer loathed.

During the 1920s and ’30s, Cotton speculated in stocks and real estate, made headlines by air-rescuing a team of explorers stranded on the Greenland ice sheet and flew missions following migrating seals for Newfoundland fish-

TOP: TOM WATSON/NY DAILY NEWS VIA GETTY IMAGES; INSET: IWM CH 2374

BY STEPHAN WILKINSON

MARCH 2022

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12/20/21 11:21 AM

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AvIATORS

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shot thousands of photos of everything from the Siegfried Line to the German fleet at Wilhelmshaven. He cut it close: His Electra was the last civilian aircraft to leave Germany before the Wehrmacht invaded Poland.

Cotton fabricated two simple innovations that benefitted aerial photography. He ducted hot air from an engine exhaust muff to warm the camera lenses, keeping them free of condensation. And he created cockpit side windows with big blisters, so the pilot no longer had to bank to identify what he needed to photograph directly below.

Cotton’s real contribution, however, was a total rethink of aerial photography methodology. When he returned to England, the RAF was using Bristol Blenheims and Westland Lysanders for photo flights, the theory being that one wanted to get reasonably close to the area being photographed—10,000 feet was optimal—and to fly over it slowly enough that the film could capture high-resolution images. The Lysanders were at least maneuverable enough to get away from Messerschmitts, but the outmoded Blenheims suffered dreadful losses.

To the dismay of many entrenched RAF officers, Cotton formed what came to be known as Sid Cotton’s Air Force. Sid flew photorecon using the fastest aircraft available at the time—gun-

less Supermarine Spitfires lightened to fly at 30,000 feet, where they would survive on speed. But the RAF said the details in his images were too small to be of any help to photo interpreters.

Cotton consulted a friend from his Newfoundland photomapping days, Harold Hemming, who had formed the Aircraft Operating Company, a pioneer in photomapping for oil- and mineral-prospecting operations during the 1930s. AOC had a stereoscopic photoviewing system—a multi-ton Swiss machine called a stereo plotter—that extracted considerably greater detail from Cotton’s six-mile-high photos. It became the heart of the process called photogrammetry, which allowed photo interpreters to see details down to the size of barbed wire fortifications.

In May 1940, a Spitfire from Cotton’s unit photographed from 30,000 feet 400 German tanks parked under trees and other camouflage, preparing to break west through the Ardennes forest. The RAF ignored the warning signs. The Germans invaded the Low Countries and France only days later with those very same tanks.

Cotton’s little squadron— four Spitfires and the faithful Electra—was originally based at a civilian airfield, Heston, and was considered to be an experimental unit free of the RAF’s formal structure. It was called Heston Flight and

Cotton was given the acting rank of wing commander.

During the first four months of the war, the RAF had photographed 2,500 square miles of Europe at the cost of 40 airplanes, many of them Blenheims. Heston Flight’s high-altitude Spitfires had surveyed 5,000 square miles without a single loss.

Cotton’s air force briefly operated from France, but the speed of the German advance sent Heston Flight fleeing back to England.

When he landed back at Heston in the Electra, Cotton was informed that his unit was now a full-blown part of the RAF and his services were no longer required.

In his excellent book Spies in the Sky, Taylor Downing wrote that “Cotton laid the foundations for…photo reconnaissance and photo interpretation. This was a huge achievement. But he was absolutely not the right person to lead a military unit in war. The eccentricities that enabled him to rattle the cage of the RAF during the phony war were the very characteristics that made him unsuitable to command....The Air Ministry had been absolutely right to dump him after the Battle of France.”

Eye in the sky In the guise of a film sales executive, Cotton flew his Lockheed 12A Electra Junior over German military positions in 1939, collecting photo intelligence for the Allies.

LOCKHEED MARTIN

eries. He also got involved in aerial photomapping in Newfoundland and learned of a new color film called Dufaycolor, marketed to the motion-picture industry by a British company. Cotton became a Dufaycolor sales manager and flew throughout Europe pitching the film.

In 1938 Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service became aware that businessman Cotton was flying daily over German sites the RAF wished it could visit. So Cotton quietly joined the SIS and got the agency to buy a Lockheed 12A Electra Junior—big enough to carry several cameras but ordinary enough to not attract attention. Starting in February 1939, Cotton flew “business trips” over France’s Maginot Line and nearby German positions.

French military intelligence controlled the flights and supplied the cameras. Flying with French cameras over the hither-and-yon patterns the French specified resulted in poor photos. Cotton came up with new flight paths and installed better RAF cameras, one pointing down and two shooting obliquely, but the French nixed the idea.

Cotton quit the project, saying, “If worthwhile results were to be obtained, I must have my own aircraft and operate in my own way.”

Sid went back to Germany with his Electra, again posing as a Dufaycolor salesman. During the last weeks before the war began, he

12/21/21 10:17 AM

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12/7/21 6:53 PM

RESTORED

Rare “Parasite” Restored

A UNIQUE COLD WAR RELIC THAT PARTICIPATED IN ONE OF THE USAF’S MOST UNUSUAL PROJECTS GETS A NEW LEASE ON LIFE AT A DENVER MUSEUM

BY DOUGLAS G. ADLER

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n the mid-1950s the U.S. Air Force saw a need for jet fighters capable of accompanying bombers on longrange missions. These fighters could perform strike missions and even deliver nuclear warheads or, outfitted with photo gear, be used for aerial observation and photography. Given the much greater range of bombers of the era, the Air Force experimented with the notion of a “parasite” fighter ferried by a bomber mother ship.

The resulting application of this concept, known as the FICON (Fighter Conveyor) project, ultimately paired Repub­ lic RF-84F Thunderflash reconnaissance planes that had been converted to RF-84K configuration with Convair GRB-36 bombers. The RF-84K was carried aloft in the B-36’s bomb bay and lowered and released in flight. After its mission was complete, the RF-84K could link up with the B-36 via a large hook just in front of the canopy and be brought back into the bomb bay.

Only 25 Thunderflashes were converted to RF-84K FICON versions. One of these, at the Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space Museum in Denver, Colo., has undergone a remarkable restoration.

Originally manufactured as an RF-84F at Republic Avia­

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tion’s plant in Farming­dale, N.Y., the museum’s RF-84K, serial no. 52-7266, was delivered to the Air Force in September 1955. Initially assigned to the 71st Strategic Reconnaissance (Fighter) Wing at Washington’s Larson Air Force Base, the aircraft underwent conversion to RF-84K configuration in January 1956 by Beechcraft on behalf of Republic.

Although the FICON proj-

Hooking up The Republic RF-84K stands on display at Denver’s Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space Museum (top) and connects with a GRB-36 during the FICON project (above).

ect only lasted from 1955 to 1956, we know that 52-7266 made several midair hookups with a B-36 based on at least one surviving photograph and visible scratches on the

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ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE WINGS OVER THE ROCKIES AIR & SPACE MUSEUM; OPPOSITE TOP & BOTTOM RIGHT: DAVID TOMECEK; OPPOSITE BOTTOM: U.S. AIR FORCE

nose and airframe consistent with actual use.

When FICON wrapped up, many of the RF-84Ks were converted back to their original configuration and returned to service with existing RF-84F squadrons.

In 1958, however, 52-7266 was transferred to Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State University (now Ten­ nessee State University) in Nashville. Exactly why the aircraft was donated to this particular school is unclear, but it’s possible it was to promote the association between the school and the Tennessee Air National Guard, whose 105th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron operated RF-84Fs out of Berry Field, also in Nashville.

The Lowry Heritage Center (forerunner to Wings Over the Rockies) acquired the RF-84K from the Air Force in 1989 after it had sat outdoors in Tennessee for more than three decades.

Painted gray, 52-7266 was received in Colorado in what can only be described as poor condition. Arriving with wings removed on a flatbed truck, the aircraft was marred by extensive corrosion, chipped paint, holes in the airframe and a cracked interior cockpit glass. The cockpit itself was filthy and missing most of its instruments, but with the ejection seat intact.

While many individuals have worked as part of the restoration team, key members include David Tomecek, Steve Groth, Mike

Smaling, Jim Kirkham, Todd McIntyre and Brian Jordan.

According to Tomecek, “Just about everything on it that was hydraulic or electrically operated had seized.” The engine had long since been removed and a “bird-proof ” cap had been placed over the exhaust port, but the fuselage was nonetheless home to nests for both birds and rats, all of which had to be cleared out before the aircraft was again bird-proofed. Following this very limited restoration, the airplane was displayed outdoors at the museum until 1994, when it was moved indoors. Since then it has been worked on in an intermittent fashion, as funds and manpower have allowed, for the last 27 years.

In 2005 the restoration team went to an aircraft boneyard in Socorro, N.M., where F-84Fs were “stacked up like cordwood,” according to Groth. Since the RF-84K is essentially a modified F-84F, the team was able to obtain many missing parts, including a replacement canopy and drop tanks.

In 2018 the RF-84K restoration accelerated as other projects that had absorbed the museum’s resources were completed. An enormous amount of effort has gone into restoring the aircraft’s outer appearance, and it now sports authentic markings of the 91st Strategic Reconnaissance Squadron, which conducted the FICON experiments. The original markings had been “ghosted” onto the aluminum frame,

so new markings could be repainted exactly as they appeared in the 1950s. The team even discovered that a peace sign had been graffitied onto the airframe at one point, likely by a student at the college during the Vietnam era.

Other restoration work included repairing the landing gear, removing all the old bird-proofing, extending the refueling port and restoring the rear attachment pistons that allowed the aircraft to be hoisted back into its mother ship. Two team members are dedicated to restoring the cockpit, which involves some part fabrication. Other RF-84Ks on display have generic RF-84F cockpits, but the team has labored to make the cockpit adhere to its actual working configuration during the FICON project. The aircraft even has the original launch- and capture-sequence placards in their correct positions inside the canopy.

Although the RF-84K is currently on display, the

decades-long project Top photos: The aircraft arrived at the Lowry Heritage Center on a flatbed truck in 1989 and was stored outside until 1994. Above: The nearly completed RF-84K is painted with its anti-glare panel and Strategic Air Command insignia in October 2021.

restoration effort is still ongoing. Beyond the cockpit work, metal polishing and corrosion removal have continued, and detail paint is still being applied. Original cameras specific to RF-84Ks (of which there were seven on each aircraft) are being obtained and will be installed in the future.

The museum’s example remains the only true RF-84K on display, with others being RF-84Fs “dressed up” as RF-84Ks or made from RF-84Ks that had been converted back to RF-84Fs when FICON ended. Overall, the Wings Over the Rockies exhibit is a striking display of a truly rare and remarkable aircraft.

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EXTREMES

Caught in Transition

GREAT LAKES’ NOT-SO-GREAT XTBG-1 BIPLANE TORPEDO BOMBER FELL VICTIM TO RAPID TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES IN THE RUN-UP TO WORLD WAR II

BY JON GUTTMAN

D

uring the 1920s, the navies of Britain, the United States and Japan built a series of rapidly improved aircraft carriers. At the same time, however, development of the warplanes they carried was limited by the essential require­ment to alight from and subsequently land on a heaving flight deck at sea. Consequently, carrier aircraft were almost invariably biplanes with the added weight of tail hooks and other modifications required for deck landings. Given those factors, the naval powers resigned themselves to fielding car­ rier planes that were inferior to their land-based counterparts.

During the 1930s, however, the availability of more powerful engines encouraged the navies to embark on a dramatic effort to modernize their equipment. Amid that general trend, in 1934 the U.S. Navy held a competition to produce an upto-date torpedo bomber. One of the contenders reflected the transitional nature of the years leading up to World War II, although in its case, it represented one refinement too few.

Founded in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1928 and soon handicapped by the Great Depression, the Great Lakes Aircraft Corporation built compact civilian two-seat biplanes, the best known of which was the 2T, also called the Sport Trainer,

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introduced in 1929. When early versions had trouble recovering from a flat spin, the company revised the upper wing with a slight sweepback that made it one of the best aerobatic planes in the U.S. right up to the 1960s.

Although only 264 Sport Trainers were originally built, using both inline and radial engines, many are still kept flying as bona fide air classics.

When the U.S. Navy issued a specification for a new carrier-based dive bomber in 1932, Great Lakes scored again with its XBG-1. An open-cockpit biplane tested in mid-1933, it managed to outperform

Great Expectations The XTBG-1 (top) was Great Lakes’ hope for a U.S. Navy torpedo bomber to match the modest success of its BG-1 dive bomber (above).

Consolidated Aircraft’s more expensive XB2Y-1 biplane.

In November the first of 60 BG-1s, featuring a glazed canopy over both crewmen, entered production. The Navy operated them from the carriers Ranger and Lexington until 1938, but the Marines were still operating BG-1s in 1940.

By 1936, Great Lakes was experimenting with a variant designated the XB2G-1,

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OPPOSITE TOP & TOP RIGHT: SAN DIEGO AIR & SPACE MUSEUM; OPPOSITE INSET & TOP LEFT: NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND; BOTTOM RIGHT: WACO AIRCRAFT CORPORATION

featuring a more corpulent fuselage accommodating an internal bomb bay and landing gear that mechanically retracted into circular recesses in the fuselage side. It was not accepted for production, but the sole prototype saw some service with both the Navy and Marines. Waste not, want not.

Encouraged by its dive bomber’s modest success, Great Lakes was equally game to satisfy the Navy’s call for a torpedo bomber in 1934. Its contender, the XTBG-1, was once more a large biplane that reflected the latest refinements of the time. Like the XB2G-1, it had an internal weapons bay, enlarged to accommodate a torpedo, as well as retractable undercarriage. The most unusual feature of the prototype XTBG-1, Bu.No. 9723, was an added position for a torpedo aimer in a small enclosed cockpit just forward of the upper wing, well ahead of the pilot and observer-gunner, who sat under a two-seat canopy similar to the BG-1’s.

Powered by an 800-hp Pratt & Whitney R-183060 Twin Wasp 14-cylinder radial engine, the XTBG-1 had a maximum speed of 185 mph, a 15,600-foot ceiling and a gross weight of 9,313 pounds. Besides its torpedo, the aircraft would undoubtedly have carried the nose-mounted synchronized machine gun and flexibly mounted rear machine gun that were standard defensive armament for the time, but neither weapon was fitted to the prototype.

Completed in 1935, the XTBG-1 underwent testing at Naval Air Station Anacostia in Washington, D.C., and the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in Hampton, Va., from April 24 to November 26 of that year. During that time it exhibited stability problems, but a far more fundamental obstacle to acceptance was the competition: the Douglas XTBD-1, a monoplane whose 900-hp Pratt & Whitney R-1830-64 Twin Wasp showed just how rapidly the state of the art was advancing. Even with an externally mounted torpedo, the XTBD-1 handily outperformed the Great Lakes biplane in every category, starting with a top speed of 206 mph. In contrast to its attitude when it accepted the BG-1 just a year earlier, the Navy had become less conservative and more open to the sort of game-changing advances embodied in the Douglas torpedo plane, 129 of which would be manufactured as the TBD-1

Devastator (story, P. 44).

When it entered service in 1937, the TBD was unquestionably the best torpedo bomber available to the Navy and arguably the best in the world. That same year, however, saw the first flight of Japan’s Nakajima B5N1, destined to outperform it in the early months of World War II in the Pacific. The Navy acknowledged the TBD-1’s obsolescence in 1939 as the last one left the production line when it held a second torpedo bomber competition.

The winner on that occasion was the Grumman XTBF-1, which among other things incorporated the internal torpedo bay pioneered by the XTBG-1 along with a three-man crew (see “Tough Turkey,” September 2021).

Ultimately failing more often than it succeeded, Great Lakes Aircraft finally succumbed to the Depression and went out of business in 1936. In 1963, however, Harvey Swack of Cleveland, Ohio, bought the rights to the Sport Trainer design

early advances Great Lakes’ XB2G-1 (top left) introduced retractable landing gear and an internal bomb bay, features carried over to the XTBG-1 (top right). Above: A WACO 2T-1A-2 upholds the heritage of Great Lakes’ glory days.

and began selling plans for homebuilders. In 1973 Doug Champlin brought the plane back into production in Oklahoma. With slight modifications, the basic design has been in and out of production ever since. John Duncan of Palmer Lake, Colo., bought the type certificate in 2000 and announced in 2006 that the Great Lakes Aircraft Company LLC would resume building Sport Trainers as soon as it got 10 orders. But the orders never materialized and he sold the certificate to the WACO Aircraft Corporation, whose Great Lakes Division in Battle Creek, Mich., currently produces new 2T-1A-2 Sport Trainers and restores old ones.

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12/20/21 11:23 AM

The Historynet team created this tribute cover as a retirement present for von Wodtke.

Opposite: The editor hoists a glass during a toast at the 2009 company holiday party.

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STYLE After more than 26 years

with Aviation History, editor Carl von Wodtke is retiring.

We take a memorable look back at his successful career through Carl’s personal photographs.

PHOTOS: GUY ACETO, JENNIFER BERRY & CARL VON WODTKE

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12/20/21 11:24 AM

STYLE STYLE

Clockwise from top left: Von Wodtke interviews F-35 pilot Colonel Chris Niemi at the 2015 EAA AirVenture; participates in a 2012 ping-pong tournament at the Weider History Group offices in Lansdowne, Va.; enjoys a pizza lunch with fellow WHG employees in 2012; laughs with coworkers during a 2011 bowling outing; joins the Historynet staff for a retirement party on December 1, 2021; poses with the B-29 Fifi at AirVenture; sports matching attire with WHG CMO Pam Dunaway (left) and World War II editor Karen Jensen; takes a flight in the EAA’s B-17G Aluminum Overcast; and shows off the magazine during a 2012 staff outing to Washington, D.C.

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12/20/21 11:25 AM

STYLE

Clockwise from top left: The editor mugs with a Lincoln portrait at the White House during a staff tour in 2012; photo editor Guy Aceto and von Wodtke (with upraised arms) are reflected in the spinner of an airplane at AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisc.; actor and veterans advocate Gary Sinise graciously takes time for a photo at Oshkosh; the Weider History Group assembles for staff photos at Lansdowne in 2014. Below: Among those shown are Aviation History’s former art director Mark Drefs (second from left), former editorial director Roger Vance (fourth from left), WHG president & CEO Eric Weider (center, in sports jacket), research director Jon Guttman (second from left behind Weider), former associate editor Nan Siegel (front row right, in black vest); and Aceto (third from right).

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12/20/21 11:25 AM

Clockwise from top left: Von Wodtke shoots a selfie in the reflection of the B-29 Doc’s polished fuselage; chats with B-17 crewman Merle Hancock before the Aluminum Overcast flight; jokes with (from left) Vietnam editor Chuck Springston, former Aviation History art director Dit Rutland and Sarah Mock at a 2015 staff meeting; receives a bonus award in 2011; poses with Wild West editor Greg Lalire at the retirement party; joins in a group photo at the White House; and listens to a veteran’s story at the 2015 Udvar-Hazy Center open house.

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MARCH 2022

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12/20/21 11:25 AM

STYLE

Clockwise from top left: The longtime “Star Trek” fan stands with the original starship Enterprise model at the Udvar-Hazy Center restoration facility in Chantilly, Va.; another selfie in polished aluminum; an official portrait; record-setting SR-71 Blackbird pilot Brig. Gen. Buck Adams visits the WHG offices in 2014; talking with an airplane owner in the antique area at Oshkosh; goofing around with WHG contributor and special issue editor Gene Santoro; the WHG staff gathers for a group photo outside the History Group offices in Leesburg, Va., before the move to Lansdowne in 2008.

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12/20/21 4:09 PM

LETTER FROM AvIATION HISTORY

TEAMWORK National Air and Space Museum curator Jeremy Kinney (left) describes the restoration of the B-26 Flak-Bait to (from left) editor Carl von Wodtke, art director Paul Fisher, senior editor Larry Porges and editor emeritus Arthur Sanfelici.

Not shown: photo editor Guy Aceto, who shot the image, and research director Jon Guttman.

IT TAKES A VILLAGE

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n the 86 “Letters” I’ve written since my first issue as editor of Aviation History in January 2008, I’ve never used the first person singular until now. That’s because every issue of this magazine is a team effort, and “we” couldn’t produce the high-quality publication you’ve come to expect without the dedicated efforts of our small staff and outstanding contributors. So, this being my last issue as editor before I fly off to retirement, forgive me if I break the mold to give some credit to the many professionals who have worked behind the scenes to bring you compelling stories from aviation history in each and every issue.

At its core Aviation History is produced by just four people besides me: senior editor Larry Porges, art director Paul Fisher, photo editor Guy Aceto and research director Jon Guttman. All labor mightily together to ensure our articles are well-written, beautifully presented, full of stunning photos and illustrations, and as accurate as we can make them. On the design side I’d also like to acknowledge the contributions of creative director Stephen Kamifuji, who produces our “Style” section, and group art director Brian Walker.

In the 26-plus years I’ve worked on the magazine, we’ve of course seen some turnover, so I would be remiss if I didn’t give a shout-out to former employees such as longtime associate editor Nan Siegel; senior editors Paraag Shukla, Marty Bartels, Stephen Mauro and Ann Thompson; art directors Dit Rut­land, Mark Drefs, Wendy Palitz and Jennifer Vann; photo editor Gina McNeely; editorial coordinator Shirley Bailey; copy editor Alan Webber; and editorial director Roger Vance, who hired me as group managing editor back in 1995. Paraag and Jennifer, whose lives were tragically cut short by cancer, and Al, a veteran of the 1944 Normandy invasion, are no longer with us—may they rest in peace.

Many longtime readers will recognize the name of our founding editor and current editor emeritus, Arthur Sanfelici. Art set the standards for the magazine when it debuted in 1990 and

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has graciously served as adviser and mentor since he passed the control stick to me. Early in my tenure, he introduced me to two of the most respected chroniclers of aviation history, the late contributing editors Walter J. Boyne and C.V. Glines, for which I am eternally grateful.

Of course this magazine would not be possible without the contributions of freelance writers, illustrators and historians too numerous to name here. But this issue serves as a sampler of sorts, featuring longtime contributors such as Stephan Wilkinson, Barrett Tillman, Don Hollway, Dave Zabecki, Doug Adler, Philip Handleman, our own Jon Guttman and his prolific brother, Robert (both of whom have contributed to Aviation History since its inception). In particular I would like to extend my thanks to contributing editor Wilkinson for his endlessly witty and engaging articles and to artist Jack Fellows for his many outstanding and unfailingly accurate cover illustrations, including this issue’s.

Lastly, I want to thank the most important contributors of all to our success: you, the readers. None of this would be possible without the support of subscribers and newsstand purchasers. It has been my greatest pleasure to correspond with many of you over the years—including those who wrote to tell us we screwed up!—and especially to make acquaintances with veterans who have served our nation and lived the history we chronicle. I have been amazed (and sometimes a bit intimidated) by the deep knowledge you readers have displayed, and it has certainly kept us on our toes over the years.

For me this represents a new beginning, and in a sense it does for the magazine as well. Rest assured, though, that our new editor, Tom Huntington, will continue the tradition of excellence that all the individuals credited here have established over the years. Tom is a seasoned magazine editor with a broad knowledge of aviation history, having served as managing editor for Air & Space Smithsonian for a decade, so I leave you in good hands.

Thank you all. It’s been an honor and a privilege.

GUY ACETO

BY CARL VON WODTKE

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sitting duck On April 15, 1969, a North Korean MiG-21 “Fishbed-F” shoots down an unarmed U.S. Navy Lockheed EC-121M reconnaissance plane over international waters, in a Jack Fellows illustration. All 31 onboard the Warning Star were killed.

DOWNING OF DEEP SEA 129 QUESTIONS STILL SURROUND THE SHOOTDOWN OF AN AMERICAN EC-121 WARNING STAR ELECTRONIC RECONNAISSANCE PLANE BY A NORTH KOREAN MIG IN 1969 BY BARRY LEVINE

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endless conflict Top: EC-121 Bu.No. 135749, the Warning Star involved in the incident, lands at Naval Air Station Atsugi, Japan. Inset: A North Korean pilot waves triumphantly from his MiG-21. The fighter carries AA-2 Atoll air-to-air missiles and is decorated with a red victory star and “4.15”—likely referring to the April 15 Warning Star shootdown.

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All 31 on board—30 sailors and one Marine—perished, the largest single loss of American aircrewmen during the Cold War. Only two bodies were ever recovered.

President Richard M. Nixon considered and ultimately rejected a military response. Over time, understanding of what the mission entailed evolved with the gradual release of classified documents. What has never changed, however, was the tragic loss of American lives and the enormous toll it had on the crew’s families.

The shootdown occurred during the height of the Cold War, when tensions between the United States and North Korea were at a peak.

The Korean War had ended 16 years earlier with 37,000 U.S. personnel killed in action and both countries signing an armistice, not a peace treaty.

After that 1953 armistice, violent incidents continued, such as the North trying to assassinate South Korean President Park Chung-hee in 1968.

In January 1968, North Korea seized the Navy intelligence ship USS Pueblo. President Lyndon B. Johnson and his advisers concluded that diplomacy was the best way to resolve the situation, which ultimately led to the crew’s release in December. Some historians refer to the perilous 1966-69 period as the “Second Korean War.” Both the Navy and the Air Force had active aerial surveillance and electronic intelligence gathering capabilities in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Electronic Countermeasures Squadron 1 (VQ-1) was established in June 1955 at Naval Air Station (NAS) Iwakuni in Japan. Electronic reconnaissance was performed by highly trained

PREVIOUS SPREAD: ©2021 JACK FELLOWS, ASAA; TOP & RIGHT: U.S. NAVY; INSET: HISTORYNET ARCHIVES; OPPOSITE TOP: CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

IT WAS OVER QUICKLY. ON APRIL 15, 1969, A NORTH KOREAN MIG-21 SHOT DOWN AN UNARMED U.S. NAVY LOCKHEED EC-121M RECONNAISSANCE PLANE OVER INTERNATIONAL WATERS.

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dangerous waters Above: A CIA map shows the EC-121’s flight path and site where the North Korean navy seized USS Pueblo in 1968.

Below: A sister EC-121M from VQ-1, the same electronic countermeasures unit as 135749, sits in a revetment at Atsugi.

PREVIOUS SPREAD: ©2021 JACK FELLOWS, ASAA; TOP & RIGHT: U.S. NAVY; INSET: HISTORYNET ARCHIVES; OPPOSITE TOP: CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

personnel who conducted their missions in sophisticated aircraft.

VQ-1 operations were shifted to NAS Atsugi, Japan, in 1960 and the squadron was renamed Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron 1 (though the VQ-1 designation remained). The squadron had responsibility for territory throughout Asia and the Pacific, operating from bases in South Vietnam, the Philippines and Thailand, as well as

from aircraft carriers. During the Vietnam War, the Atsugi base contingent grew to 1,000 Ameri­ can servicemen.

Risk was a constant companion for the airmen of VQ-1 and other intelligence units. In June 1959, North Korean MiG-17s attacked a Martin P4M Mercator reconnaissance plane about 50 miles east of the Demilitarized Zone. The pilot was able to land the damaged aircraft, though the tail gunner suffered serious wounds. Six years later, MiG-17s severely damaged an Air Force Boeing RB-47 (the reconnaissance version of the Strato­ jet) about 80 miles off the North Korean coast.

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ith the 1954 introduction of the WV-2 Warning Star—a military variant of Lockheed’s L-1049 Super Constellation airliner—the Navy possessed a powerful new electronic reconnaissance platform. Nicknamed “Willy Victor,” the Navy’s military Connie was redesignated EC-121 in 1962 as part of the Tri-Service aircraft designation system. The Warning Star typically had a flight crew of five men—two pilots, two navigators and an observer—as well as crew chiefs, maintenance, radar and electronics personnel onboard.

It was a big airplane: more than 116 feet long, with a wingspan over 126 feet and weighing almost 70,000 pounds empty. Four Wright R-3350-42 18-cylinder radial engines provided the power.

Range was about 4,200 miles, with a service ceiling of 25,000 feet.

In 1959-60 Warning Star Bu.No. 135749 was

modified by the Martin Company with radars installed in upper and lower radomes. Redesig­ nated an EC-121M in 1962, the aircraft utilized AN/APS-20 radar technology originally developed during World War II by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A small team of military and civilian technicians, known as the “Bicycle Shop,” helped VQ-1 make ongoing modifications and upgrades to the electronics equipment.

Atsugi-based EC-121M crewmen had a heavy workload. Crews would fly to Danang, South Vietnam, to conduct surveillance for Navy, Air Force and Marine missions and alert aircrews about surface-to-air missiles. After returning to Atsugi for maintenance, they would fly missions surveilling the Soviet Union, China and North Korea. The threat of hostile fighters intercepting the flights was ever-present, though not an overwhelming concern. Naval Security Group (NSG)

TOP & BOTTOM RIGHT: U.S. AIR FORCE/KEN LAROCK; BOTTOM LEFT: U.S. NAVY

snooping gear Top: The interior of an EC-121D looking aft gives an idea of the cramped conditions in which “Super Connie” crews worked.

Above: The ventral radome bulges below a VQ-1 Warning Star.

Above right: The crewman manning this EC-121D tracking station focused on his radar screen.

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TOP & INSET: U.S. NAVY; BOTTOM: HISTORYNET ARCHIVES

TOP & BOTTOM RIGHT: U.S. AIR FORCE/KEN LAROCK; BOTTOM LEFT: U.S. NAVY

personnel supporting these missions were at the nearby Kamiseya base.

Risks to the missions increased with the addition of the electronics equipment, as the added drag and weight limited the EC-121M’s top speed to about 220 knots. Furthermore, EC-121Ms were unarmed and had no electronic countermeasure equipment onboard, making them easy targets. Given the aircraft’s inability to defend itself, Senator Strom Thurmond on the Armed Services Committee characterized it as a “flying Pueblo.”

Crews on these missions were all naval personnel or Marines, some on assignment to the NSG. Work included collecting nonMorse communications, analyzing radar and disseminating signal intelligence information.

A teletype station was connected to Kamiseya. Because satellite communications were not widely available, some crew members were trained in the still predominately used Morse code.

Linguists fluent in languages such as Korean and Russian were on board to translate and interpret intercepted voice communications from aircraft, ships or ground bases.

The overall umbrella name for recon missions was the Peacetime Aerial Reconnaissance Program (PARPRO), which in turn had naval (“Beggar Shadow”) and Air Force (“Commando Clinch”) components. Beggar Shadow missions monitored aspects of the North’s air defense capabilities and communications. The extreme northeastern corner of North Korea that borders China and the Soviet Union was an area of particular interest for the military and intelligence communities. Typically, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency approved individual missions.

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n April 11, 1969, General Charles Bone­ steel III, commander of U.S. forces in Korea, sent a message to commander in chief, Pacific Command (CINCPAC) Admiral John McCain Sr. about the increasing tensions with the North. Bonesteel noted that during recent military armistice commission meetings, the North Koreans had been particularly vehement about “provocative actions” by United Nations forces. Bonesteel suggested “aircrews be especially alert and prepared to abort at the first indication of any North Korean reaction.”

CINCPAC then advised the Pacific and Seventh fleet commands about these concerns and told them to use extra caution near North Korean territory. Navy Lt. Cmdr. James Overstreet, who

commanded the April 15 flight, was briefed of these warnings in advance.

The mission was officially characterized as “lowrisk.” From November 1968 to April 1969, 14 recon sorties had been flown near North Korean territory with little issue. Adding to General Bonesteel’s concerns, however, the North Korean air force deployed two of their advanced MiG-21 “Fishbed-F” fighters to Hoemun Airfield in late March 1969. Although Hoemun was primarily a training base, it was the closest launch point to Beggar Shadow mission tracks, which usually followed the same route.

Mission preparations were routine. Aviation Structural Mechanic (Safety Equipment) 2nd Class (AME2) Greg Andrews of VQ-1 helped prepare the aircraft, including packing life rafts for this largely overwater effort. Navy ground support personnel signed out the cryptologic equipment early on the 15th to Lt. (j.g.) Robert Sykora, who would be onboard the EC-121. Fourteen hours later, after the shootdown, these same ground personnel

Spycraft Top: Naval personnel monitor radar scopes and sensors in a Warning Star. Inset: Pilot Lt. Cmdr. James Overstreet served as commander on the April 15 flight. Above: Atoll-armed MiG-21s operate out of a North Korean airbase.

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would send out a top-secret message indicating the codes were likely compromised.

Warning Star 135749 (PR-21), call sign “Deep Sea 129,” took off at 0700 hours with eight officers and 23 enlisted personnel on board. (This complement was larger than for a typical mission as it included Navy personnel in training.) The planned flight path would keep the EC-121 at least 50 miles outside the North Korean border and it would then fly to Osan Air Base, about 40 miles south of Seoul, South Korea. Flight time was estimated at 8½ hours—including 2½ times around a “racetrack loop” essentially parallel to the North Korean shore—before the aircraft headed to Osan.

A very condensed timeline for the April 15 mission follows, all local Atsugi times:

TOP & BOTTOM LEFT: AP PHOTO/USAF; TOP RIGHT: THE WASHINGTON POST/PARS; BOTTOM RIGHT: THE ASAHI SHIMBUN VIA GETTY IMAGES

unusual allies Clockwise from top left: On April 16, two Soviet destroyers search the Sea of Japan for wreckage from the EC-121; the tragedy was frontpage news that day; a motor launch from USS Henry W. Tucker (in the background) looks for debris on April 17; a Soviet destroyer sends out one of its small boats.

• 13:00—Kamiseya received a routine communications check from Deep Sea 129, which was to be the aircraft’s last transmission.

• 13:30—The EC-121 approached the north end of the loop and began turning east.

• 13:40—A warning was sent to the EC-121 crew that North Korean air force activity was being tracked. The two MiG-21s at Hoemun had taken off and appeared to be on a course to intercept Deep Sea 129. (Since the EC-121 lacked the communications equipment to participate in an advisory warning system set up by the National Security Agency, it is unclear if Deep Sea 129 received this or a subsequent warning.)

• 13:45—The commander of the 314th Air Division at Osan ordered two Convair F-102 Delta Daggers launched on a combat air patrol to a position where they could assist the EC-121.

• 13:46—An additional warning of the MiGs’ approach was issued to the EC-121 (one flew a defensive patrol 65 miles from Deep Sea 129 while the other made the attack).

• 13:47—Estimated time of the shootdown, when the EC-121 disappeared from radar. No distress call was received. EC-121 emergency proce-

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dures were to dive to a low altitude if attacked; thus the disappearance of the EC-121 from radar did not immediately indicate that a tragedy had occurred.

• 14:00—Kamiseya attempted a routine hourly communications check with the aircraft, but no reply was received. Concern escalated and all subsequent communication efforts failed.

At this time, Captain Frank Wilson, who was responsible for command center communications, noted that the base deputy commander immediately ordered two Convair F-106 Delta Darts into action at 14:53. Tragically, it was too late.

TOP: CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES; BOTTOM: AP PHOTO

TOP & BOTTOM LEFT: AP PHOTO/USAF; TOP RIGHT: THE WASHINGTON POST/PARS; BOTTOM RIGHT: THE ASAHI SHIMBUN VIA GETTY IMAGES

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he first confirmation that the EC-121 had been shot down came the next morning when the crew of a Navy Lockheed P-3 Orion spotted debris—uninflated life rafts, paper and dye markers—two nautical miles northeast of the presumed downing location. At the Navy’s request, the Soviets’ Vladivostok-based Pacific Fleet, which was closest to the scene, was first on site to render support. The Soviets provided two destroyers and an anti-submarine ship, likely for goodwill plus the opportunity to monitor the U.S. fleet and obtain intelligence information.

The search-and-rescue operation marked the first cooperative meeting of naval ships between the two Cold War antagonists since World War II. American aircraft arriving in the search area established contact with the Soviet anti-sub ship, which revealed that it had picked up debris from the plane but spotted no survivors. One of the destroyers sent small boats to collect debris marked by a smoke signal dropped by a U.S. aircraft. The Soviets subsequently recovered the bodies of two crew members, Lt. (j.g.) Joseph Ribar and Aviation Electronics Technician 1st Class (AT1) Richard Sweeney, and turned them over to the destroyer USS Henry W. Tucker when it arrived on the scene.

There were reports of flare sightings and beepers, thus hope for the survival of some crew, but these were never confirmed. The search effort was suspended on April 19 and the remaining 29 men were listed as missing in action. They were declared as killed in action on May 2.

The North Koreans alleged the flight was over their territory, while the U.S. has consistently maintained it was over international waters. Whereas North Korea claimed sovereignty up to 12 miles offshore, the shootdown occurred approximately 80 miles off the coast.

A North Korean radio broadcast portrayed the downing of the alleged intruder as “a brilliant battle success…with a single shot at a high altitude....”

The MiG pilot credited with downing the EC-121 was Kim Gin-ok, an 11-victory Korean War ace recognized as the nation’s top fighter pilot. Based on wreckage recovered from the Sea of Japan, a

joint Navy–Air Force investigation later concluded that the Warning Star had sustained major damage from at least one air-to-air missile, likely an AA-2 Atoll (a Soviet copy of the AIM-9 Sidewinder).

Back at Atsugi, casualty assistance calls officers went to work in the difficult days following the shootdown. Many crew members had families on base who were dealing with the emotional, financial and logistical impact of the tragedy thousands of miles from home (see sidebar, P. 35).

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resident Nixon was tempted to order a military response. Options included conducting Boeing B-52 Stratofortress or carrier-based Grumman A-6 Intruder attacks and ordering the battleship New Jersey to fire on North Korean targets.

Admiral McCain recommended a military attack: “If we operate again in the Sea of Japan only as a show of force, and without positive action, I believe that we continue to provide justification to their judgment of us as ‘Paper tigers.’” General Bonesteel, however, believed a U.S. military

opposite numbers Top: President Richard M. Nixon answers questions about the incident at a press conference. Above: The North Korean military may have ordered the attack as a birthday present for dictator Kim Il-Sung.

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response would provoke a costly retaliatory strike against South Korea, resulting in heavy U.S. and South Korean casualties.

VQ-1 personnel were understandably outraged and wanted to retaliate. As President Johnson had decided with the Pueblo incident, however, Nixon considered the military options too risky. With the Vietnam War raging, a second Asian land war was politically perilous and military resources were already stretched thin. Instead, the U.S. activated Task Force 71—consisting of four aircraft carriers, New Jersey and a screen of cruisers and

TOP: BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES; BOTTOM: AP PHOTO/Y. JACKSON ISHIZAKI

recovered remains Sailors on Henry W. Tucker bring ashore the body of one of the EC-121 crewmen (top) and a piece of aircraft wreckage (above).

destroyers—to protect future intelligence flights, and a week later resumed the flights at a reduced frequency and farther away from the North Korean shore.

Nixon told National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, “They got away with it this time, but they’ll never get away with it again.” Kissinger wrote in his memoirs: “I judge our conduct in the EC-121 crisis as weak, indecisive, and disorganized....I believe we paid in many intangible ways, in demoralized friends and emboldened enemies.”

While considering the diplomatic and military options, the Navy conducted a detailed review of the incident. A naval board of inquiry confirmed that the EC-121M never entered North Korean airspace, nor did the crew send out a distress call.

Navy officers, intelligence officials and sailors who testified said that EC-121 flight crews normally only put on their parachutes in a bailout maneuver and under the circumstances wouldn’t have been able to jump.

Following the investigation, the board’s primary recommendation was to improve the procedures for assessing threat levels, leading to more timely warning to reconnaissance aircraft. Additionally, the Navy prioritized upgrading the aircraft used on these missions, with EC-121s phased out of military service in the 1970s and replaced by Lockheed EP-3s, the electronic intelligence versions of the P-3 Orion. These improvements in managing PARPRO missions helped avoid further losses

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of aircraft despite numerous intercepts of intelligence-collection flights, until the Chinese military forced down a U.S. aircraft in 2001.

The reasons for the North Korean attack remain elusive. Some note that April 15 was dic­tator Kim Il-Sung’s birthday, which was a widely celebrated national holiday in the North. Nixon had referred to North Korea as a “fourth rate power” in the 1968 presidential campaign; Kim may have wanted to prove otherwise. What is certain is that North Korea has remained a very difficult military and diplomatic problem for the U.S., right up to the present day.

Michigan-based writer Barry Levine works at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn and volunteers at the Yankee Air Museum in Belleville. His most recent book is Michigan Aviation: People and Places that Changed History. Additional reading: Flash Point North Korea: The Pueblo and EC-121 Crises,

by Richard A. Mobley; By Any Means Necessary: America’s Secret Air War in the Cold War, by William E. Burrows; and The National Security Agency and the EC-121 Shootdown, prepared by the National Security Agency.

fallen heroes As the United States sought to minimize the impact of the tragedy amid the Vietnam War, the crewmen of Deep Sea 129 were all but forgotten except by their families, friends and fellow sailors.

PHOTOS: U.S. NAVY

TOP: BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES; BOTTOM: AP PHOTO/Y. JACKSON ISHIZAKI

“A TERRIBLE TIME” It is beyond the scope of this article to profile each of the 31 crewmen aboard Deep Sea 129 and describe the impact their loss had on families, friends and fellow sailors and Marines.

A few notes about some of the crew follow: Dennis Gleason Gene Graham John Singer Nicknamed “Gentleman Jim,” mission commander Overstreet was highly regarded by other officers and enlisted men. Overstreet may Lieutenant John Singer loved his Navy work but was have had a premonition about his last flight, telling uncertain if he wanted to make a career of it. Singer’s his wife early on the morning of April 15 what to do wife, Janice Gruendel, is now working toward placing a if he did not make it home. In his view, the EC-121 memorial at Arlington National Cemetery with the was a “sitting duck” if North Korean fighters attacked. names of the 31 crewmen.

Communications Technician (Collection) 3rd Class The loss of these men was a devastating blow. AME2 (CTR3) John Miller III’s enlistment was due to expire in Greg Andrews, who had prepped the aircraft before its a few months; he dismissed suggestions to “take it easy final mission, described it as “a terrible time” on base. and enjoy Japan” even though he had flown more than VQ-1’s commanding officer, Captain Robert De Lorenzi, his share of missions. recommended each crew member posthumously for a CTR3 Gary DuCharme’s father was World War II Silver Star, with a Navy Cross for Overstreet. Senior veteran Ray DuCharme, who heard a radio bulletin officials rejected the request, saying the award criteria about an aircraft loss near Korea and “had a bad were not met. feeling.” When he saw two Navy officers coming up The memory of this tragedy has not faded for anyone to his home, he knew something bad had occurred. involved. Atsugi began holding memorial services in Diane Lybarger, the younger sister of Aviation 1969. At a 2014 ceremony in Misawa, Japan, marking Electronics Technician (Radio & Radio Navigation the 45th anniversary of the shootdown, Joe Overstreet, Equipment) 3rd Class Gene Graham, returned home the mission commander’s son, spoke about his father from school shortly after the shootdown. Lybarger and the importance of his work in keeping the peace. A remembers two Navy men arriving at her house and two-bell ceremony at the air base chapel chimed when her mom explaining with a stricken look that the entire announcing the names of each of the 31 fallen crewmen. crew had been listed as missing in action.

In addition to the efforts to obtain a memorial at Staff Sergeant Hugh Lynch, the sole Marine on the Arlington, others have commemorated the crew. flight, possessed Russian and Korean language skills.

VQ-1’s Darrell Widman lost several friends that day Lynch was not scheduled for the flight but the base and arranged for a memorial to the crewmen near his dispatcher called him early on April 15 and told him he Nebraska home. The Defense Language Institute in would be flying. His wife was expecting twin boys in Monterey, Calif., named Taylor Hall in honor of addition to having two older daughters. communications evaluator Lieutenant Robert Taylor.

The National Cryptologic Museum in Maryland has a Originally assigned to aviation, Lieutenant Dennis “They Served in Silence” marker to all those who lost Gleason went to work in intelligence after his poor their lives on intelligence-gathering missions, including vision ruled out flying. His tour was scheduled to end a the crew of Deep Sea 129. few months after April 15 and he had been planning to return to the civilian world and study oceanography.

B.L.

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NAVY TYPHOON HUNTER AN AVIATION ELECTRONICS TECHNICIAN DESCRIBES HIS EXPERIENCES ABOARD LOCKHEED WARNING STARS THAT FLEW INTO THE HEART OF TYPHOONS DURING THE VIETNAM WAR BY MICHAEL A. “MICK” ROY

weather tracker The Lockheed WC-121N Warning Star call sign “Rainproof 7” of U.S. Navy airborne early warning squadron VW-1 sits on the tarmac at South Vietnam’s Marine Air Base Chu Lai in 1968.

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apprentice airman Above: Author Mick Roy takes a break from aircraft maintenance while serving at the Detachment Charlie duty station in Chu Lai. Top: Rainproof 7 awaits servicing in VW-1’s hangar at Naval Air Station Agana, Guam.

Opposite: “Rainproof 8” stands ready for its next mission.

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My first stop was boot camp at Naval Station Great Lakes in Illinois. I remember using pieces of rope to hang out my laundry, standing inspection every morning, competing in group activities and learning to be an independent, responsible per­ son. After boot camp concluded in late October, I became an “Airdale” (aka brownshoe), with my first set of orders sending me to the Naval Air Tech­ nical Training Center at Naval Air Station (NAS) Memphis, Tenn., for a 26-week electronics tech­ nician curriculum. Following completion of the course in June 1967, I took a couple weeks of leave and then departed on July 18 for three weeks of counterinsurgency training in Little Creek, Va.

As part of the Little Creek training, we endured a week surviving in the rugged outdoors during a very hot August. We ate whatever we could find (snapping turtle soup and smoked copperhead snake) while being hunted by an enemy (group of Marines) who eventually “captured” us (smoking the copperhead was a big mistake) and put our squad in a concentration camp for interrogation.

At the end of concentration camp we were given some C-rations, which never tasted so good. After that I received my orders to report to Airborne Early Warning Squadron 1 (VW-1) in Agana, Guam. This is where my story really begins.

I departed Travis Air Force Base, northeast of

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF MICHAEL A. ROY VIA HANK CARUSO

IN AUGUST 1966, WITH THE VIETNAM WAR RAGING, I ENLISTED IN THE U.S. NAVY. I DID NOT KNOW WHERE THIS WOULD LEAD ME, BUT IT WAS A CHANCE TO EXPLORE MY CAPABILITIES AND AN OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN A SKILL.

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road runners Top: Crewmen load Rainproof 7 prior to its departure from Chu Lai. Above: The Warning Star’s “Road Runner” cartoon nose art is reflected in this hang-up bag patch.

Above left: Roy poses with “Rainproof 4” as the lead petty officer in the plane’s combat information center.

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF MICHAEL A. ROY VIA HANK CARUSO

San Francisco, in August 1967 on a chartered Boe­ing 707 jam-packed with military personnel for a 17-hour flight to Andersen AFB on Guam.

It was like a can of sardines. Ventilation was not great and by the time I arrived at Andersen my legs felt like I was just learning to walk again. I was bused down to NAS Agana, where I checked in and was assigned to a barracks about a quartermile from the VW-1 hangar and airstrip.

When I arrived on Guam, I was an E-3 Airdale, therefore I started out as part of the flightline crew.

We towed the Lockheed WC-121N Warning Stars that VW-1 flew and also directed the aircraft to a parking area upon their return from a mission.

My first experience at nighttime was memorable.

It was about 2 a.m. and the barracks duty officer woke me and told me to get to the hangar as quickly as possible. Two other Airdales and I met the “Super Connie” as it taxied off the landing

strip toward the parking pad. My two buddies had the chocks for the wheels and I had the light wands to direct the pilot’s taxiing moves. Fortunately it was a clear night, so I could see reasonably well as I guided the aircraft to its designated spot between two other Super Connies, with room to spare on each side.

As a member of the flightline crew, I obtained all the necessary signoffs for the “practical factors” required before taking the E-4 Airdale exam. I was successful on my first E-4 exam, which put me on the waiting list to join an aircrew. A short time later, in December 1967, I was initially assigned to flight crew no. 7 as an aviation electronics technician (AT) petty officer 3rd class.

Flight crew 7’s Warning Star had a roadrunner as its aircraft logo and our call sign was “Rainproof 7.”

As part of my training on the aircraft we flew many missions to track typhoons. As an AT, I supported, but was not limited to, avionics repairs.

Since I was a junior aircrew member I also helped fuel the aircraft. We would remove the wing escape hatch and walk out approximately 15 feet or so from the tip tank, open up the fuel port, use a dipstick to measure the fuel level and then attach the

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stars of the show Top: Three Warning Stars await deployment on VW-1’s parking pad at NAS Agana. Above: Roy stands outside a bunker at VW-1’s barracks in Chu Lai. Below: A photo sequence taken by Roy shows a typical VW-1 typhoon penetration: Weather bands increase in intensity until the aircraft passes through the storm’s circular eye wall and climbs out.

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fuel hose to the fuel port.

Inside the aircraft, I maintained the radar consoles (four individual and one at the radar station) in the combat information center, my main responsibility. As CIC crew members, our responsibility was to monitor radar returns and identify any weather and aircraft that were in our vicinity, keeping our pilot aware of the details. This was back in the day when there were large cathode ray tube radar consoles and we used colored grease pencils to mark locations and objects on the CRT face. We also communicated with other aircraft and monitored their VHF radio transmissions, which came across as a high-pitched, echoing type of conversation. Pretty cool sounding.

Each VW-1 squadron aircraft had a primary search radar, the APS-20 (lower radome, range approximately 150-180 miles, depending on altitude); an electronic countermeasures station to monitor external radio frequency signals; and a height-finding APS-45 radar (upper radome).

Every time the aircraft’s radial engines fired up, you would see a puff of bluish smoke and then they just purred like kittens. Seeing the smoke, smelling the fumes and hearing the engines roar just gave me goose bumps. It was exciting and got my adrenaline flowing!

VW-1 had a total of 10 Warning Stars. About half were at Agana and the remainder were either on deployment or back on the mainland for periodic scheduled maintenance and refurbishment.

The APS-20 was a real workhorse and rarely had maintenance issues. I do recall one time when we

had to remove the maintenance cover over the magnetron for troubleshooting and a visual examination. The magnetron was a large glass vacuum tube and when that baby lit off it hummed and glowed the prettiest iridescent purple color you can imagine. On our airplane most of the electronic equipment backlighting was red and some light blue. (I have a Subaru Outback that has red backlighting for all the dash instrumentation and door controls. It is so reminiscent of the radar consoles that it brings back memories.)

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ur squadron’s 10- to 18-hour typhoon reconnaissance missions encompassed the areas surrounding Guam, the Phil­ ippines, Taiwan, Okinawa and Japan. It was essentially a large triangular pattern, as the typhoons typically move westward over or around Guam and toward the Philippines, and then either straight into Vietnam or, later in the typhoon season, turn northward through Taiwan, Okinawa and Japan. Our deployment air bases were Naval Station Sangley Point in the Philippines (across the bay from Manila), Kadena AFB in Okinawa and NAS Atsugi in Japan.

Our crew typically consisted of six officers and 16 enlisted men, and in some cases there were individuals on board for various rating training.

Once assigned to track a typhoon, we followed its westward course across the Pacific Ocean, gathering weather characteristics data using a dropsonde. The dropsonde was ejected from the aircraft’s weather station through a chute, then deployed a parachute to stabilize its descent and transmitted data to the aircraft weather station until it splashed down. The weather station was at

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the rear port side of the fuselage next to one of the “bubble” windows.

In the fall of 1968, I passed my E-5 exam, acquired my aircrew wings and became the CIC lead petty officer (LPO) for aircrew no. 4—a more pivotal role. Our typhoon reconnaissance missions in “Rainproof 4” became more frequent in the middle of the storm season. One mission, on October 3, involved a typhoon that originated about 1,000 miles east of Guam. As the typhoon headed toward Guam we were sent to evaluate its weather characteristics. It was just starting to grow in size and we did not know what was in store for us that day.

Our typhoon penetrations were typically “fasten your seat belt” bumpy rides that began with us flying just below the cloud cover to minimize turbulence. As we entered the typhoon’s weather bands, visibility started to degrade significantly, so pilot Lieutenant Melvin Thompson and copilot Lt. (j.g.) John Crossman resorted to flying via instrument flight rules (IFR), as the autopilot was no longer an option. Cockpit windshield wipers did their best to provide visibility, but the wind and rain overwhelmed them.

The key personnel during the typhoon penetration were the pilots, CIC officer and the CIC/ LPO. With IFR instituted, the radar return was of extreme importance for determining the entry flight path. The CIC officer continuously communicated with the pilots via intercom during the penetration, with the CIC/LPO serving as his backup. The size of the typhoon determined the time needed to enter its eye, which was usually from 30 to 45 minutes. Once we entered the typhoon’s eye, there was always a sense of relief.

This particular mission started out as usual but went downhill from there. We were on station about 600 miles east-northeast of Guam, cruising at approximately 220 knots. When the typhoon was within range, we deployed a dropsonde to record its initial weather characteristics. It was standard procedure to deploy multiple drop­sondes as we penetrated the typhoon. The CIC officer manned the main radar station while I backed him up on one of the CIC radar consoles. It was nearing dusk, which added some complexity to the

mission as it was not the best time of day to penetrate a typhoon. Everyone was buckled in for what promised to be a very turbulent ride.

As we started our penetration, the typhoon’s outer bands were evaluated for the best flight path to minimize turbulence and risk to aircrew and aircraft. By viewing the radar image of the counter­ clockwise-moving outer bands, the CIC officer selected a path between two of the bands as our best route to enter the typhoon eye and gave the pilot a heading. We started our penetration nominally at 1,000 feet altitude, which kept us below the typhoon’s more deadly weather conditions.

Unfortunately, the spiraling feeder bands became too tightly wound, creating an increasingly larger wall cloud for us to penetrate. The penetration path quickly became a high-risk situation.

bird’s-eye view Top: VW-1’s base on Guam emerges from the clouds during a training mission flyover.

Above: Typhoons are tracked at the Kadena Air Force Base weather command center on Okinawa.

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the starboard fuel tip tank was empty. When the wing floodlights were turned on, he discovered the tip tank and approximately five feet of the starboard wing were gone! Lieutenant Thompson immediately declared a “mayday” and Andersen AFB sent out a Lockheed C-130 to escort us back to Guam. The physical damage to the airplane fortunately did not handicap our pilots’ ability to get us home safely.

As a result of the aircraft damage, a Captain’s Mast was held for this incident. As the CIC/LPO backing up the CIC officer, I testified during the Captain’s Mast and explained what I saw and my thoughts about the series of events. No one was punished as a result of the investigation, though I heard afterward that the CIC officer had a rough time of it.

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risky business Top: A VW-1 Warning Star undergoes maintenance at Chu Lai. Above: Rainproof 4 lost its starboard tip tank and five feet of wing during a rough typhoon penetration mission on October 3, 1968. Below: A rear view of one of the squadron’s WC-121Ns.

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When we were about a mile from the typhoon’s eye wall, we flew through a very turbulent cell cloud with a downdraft that almost pushed us into the ocean. The aircraft dropped several hundred feet in seconds before we stabilized, ending up approximately 300 feet above the water. As soon as we hit that cell cloud the pilots instinctively firewalled the throttles, which saved us. With the help of the 1st flight engineer, Chief Petty Officer Leroy White, they managed to stabilize our altitude so that we could enter the typhoon’s eye and circle up and out.

There was no visible damage within the aircraft, but White noted the instruments indicated

n tracking a typhoon’s westward movement, we used various naval air stations and Air Force bases as our replenishment points.

NAS Sangley Point was typically our first stop.

Sangley’s runway was so short that upon landing the propellers had to be reversed at full throttle and brakes aggressively applied. A typhoon’s speed dictated when we had to leave so we could stay ahead of it.

Later in the season, typhoon paths curved northward rather than hitting the Philippines and then Vietnam. We would then use Okinawa’s Kadena AFB as our next deployment location. It was always quite a view because the B-52s were based there and once in a while we glimpsed an SR-71 Blackbird taking off. The Air Force had a weather command center at Kadena for tracking all the typhoons in the western Pacific.

On one of our missions in Rainproof 7, we flew directly to Kadena from Guam. I mentioned to our aircraft commander about having flown with my father when he piloted a Piper Cub back in the 1950s. After we had been airborne a couple hours, he called me up to the cockpit and asked if I wanted to sit in the copilot seat as we flew to Okinawa. I did not hesitate to say “yes.”

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We chatted a bit and then he asked if I wanted to take the stick for a while. I was flabbergasted.

He took the airplane out of autopilot and told me to grab the yoke. He coached me a bit and then I actually piloted (steered and maintained altitude) this beast for about 45 minutes. As soon as he let go of the yoke, the aircraft dropped a couple hundred feet until I pulled the yoke up to get it back at the correct altitude. Initially it took me several minutes to learn how to maintain altitude and trim. It was a great officer-to-enlisted-man gesture. After the copilot relieved me, I walked aft to the CIC area and everyone asked me if I was the one who gave them the roller coaster ride. That got a big chuckle.

Kadena AFB had many shops just outside the base that served military personnel. One of them made hang-up bags, so I bought one and had some of my squadron patches sewn on it. I added another patch that said “4th P,” which meant I was the crew’s “fourth pilot.” When the junior lieutenant who was our third pilot saw it and complained to our aircraft commander that I should not be allowed to have that patch, he just laughed it off. I guess the lieutenant felt slighted that an enlisted man was allowed to do that, but my 4th P patch stayed on my hang-up bag!

When the typhoons continued on a northward path (an infrequent occurrence), our next deployment location was NAS Atsugi. While visiting the base, some of us made a train trip into Tokyo, which was quite an experience since we did not know any Japanese. We just knew how many stops we had to make before getting off. In Tokyo I bought an Asahi Pentax 35mm camera that I used to shoot all my pictures.

It was not until years later that I learned Atsugibased EC-121 Warning Stars routinely flew recon­naissance missions gathering electronics intelligence emanating from the North Korean peninsula. This had been going on for many years without incident. But in 1969 a MiG-21 intercepted a Warning Star over international waters and shot it down (story, P. 26).

During my time with VW-1 I logged 1,451 total

flight hours, of which 803 were combat flight hours over the Gulf of Tonkin. I was awarded three Air Medals. Every day was a new day and there was never a dull moment.

I had approximately 15 months remaining on my enlistment when I received orders to join a replacement air group, or RAG, at NAS Alameda in California. I was pleasantly surprised to get more shore duty with a training squadron, but then my orders were changed. The next set of orders told me to report to a Douglas A-4 attack squadron on USS Kitty Hawk. But that aircraft carrier was returning to the mainland after having just completed a deployment to the Gulf of Tonkin, so personnel said my orders were going to be changed a third time. Then I was sent to A-4 squadron VA-55 in Lemoore, Calif. The “Warhorses” were preparing for deployment to the Gulf of Tonkin.

Come to find out the commanding officer of NAS Agana had a policy that when you left VW-1 you would definitely have some sea duty. He was a firm believer that that was why you joined the Navy. I took some leave and in late April 1969 reported to NAS Lemoore.

As an aviation electronics technician (radar & radar navigation equipment) 2nd class, I familiarized myself with the A-4F aircraft electronics suite in preparation for deployment to Vietnam on the carrier Hancock. During our deployment I was responsible for the night shift electronics support of the VA-55 aircraft. I can say that there’s nothing better than nighttime launch and recovery operations aboard an aircraft carrier.

Upon being honorably discharged in June 1970, Mick Roy enrolled at Purdue University and earned his B.S. in electrical engineering technology in 1974. He worked for 40 years at Westinghouse (now part of Northrop Grumman) before retiring in 2014. Additional reading: College Eye: Lockheed EC-121 Warning Star and Related Technology in the Vietnam War, 1967-1972, by Sergio Santana; and Lockheed Constellation, by Curtis K. Stringfellow and Peter M. Bowers.

biding time Rainproof 7 is prepped for its next mission: a “barrier run” on station 50 miles southeast of Hanoi. Note the F-4 Phantom “farm area” in the background.

WHEN THE WING FLOODLIGHTS WERE TURNED ON, HE SAW THE TIP TANK AND FIVE FEET OF THE STARBOARD WING WERE GONE! MARCH 2022

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SOON TO BE DISCONTINUED HISTORICALLY VIEWED AS DEVASTATINGLY BAD, THE DOUGLAS TBD WAS NEVERTHELESS A GROUNDBREAKING TORPEDO BOMBER WHEN IT FIRST FLEW IN 1935 BY BARRETT TILLMAN

before the date of infamy Douglas TBD-1 Devastators from the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise fly off Diamond Head on Oahu, Hawaii, in March 1941. The torpedo bombers sported their colorful livery until late that year, when the expediencies of war required a more muted scheme.

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first of a kind Above: A Douglas TBD-1 (left) of Torpedo Squadron 6 (VT-6) joins a Grumman F3F-2 fighter (center) of VF-6 and a Curtiss SBC-3 Helldiver of Scouting Squadron VS-6—all part of Enterprise’s Air Group 6—in a flight over the Virginia countryside. Inset: The XTBD-1 prototype, the Navy’s first carrierbased monoplane, was introduced in 1935.

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Almost none were accepted, and a final list was issued in October. In those four months Grum­ man’s F4F went from Comet to Wildcat, the Doug­las SBD from Mohave to Dauntless and Consolidated’s PBY from Clemente to Catalina.

Meanwhile, the Douglas TBD entered history and legend not as the Scorpion but as the Devas­ tator. It became one of the most ironic names in aviation history.

In the 1930s U.S. naval aviation recognized that technological progress was accelerating. Torpedo squadrons flew Great Lakes and Martin biplanes with top speeds under 125 mph. Consequently, in June 1934 the Bureau of Aeronautics sought torpedo bomber proposals from three companies: Great Lakes, Hall and Douglas. Great Lakes (story, P. 16) and Hall took themselves out of contention with obsolete concepts, leaving the field to Douglas.

In Santa Monica, Donald Douglas’ design team got to work. The result was the XTBD-1 (Experi­ mental Torpedo Bomber, Douglas), a three-seat, all-metal monoplane with hydraulic folding wings and semi-retractable landing gear behind an 800hp Pratt & Whitney radial engine.

Douglas delivered the prototype in less than 11 months, with the first flight in April 1935. Navy testing proceeded at Naval Air Station Anacostia in Washington, D.C., and at Norfolk, Va. Following

ordnance compatibility tests, the big Douglas returned to the West Coast for carrier suitability trials aboard USS Lexington by year end. Three pilots logged 13 launches and landings without sig­ nificant problems. The TBD’s huge 420-squarefoot wing area yielded a solid, stable platform in landing configuration.

The production TBD-1’s engine was upgraded to 900 hp, yielding a stated top speed of 205 mph.

Visible modifications were relatively minor, mostly to canopy and engine cowling.

The 129 fleet aircraft began arriving in 1937, equipping “TorpRons” on Lexington and Saratoga, followed by Yorktown, Enterprise and Hornet through 1941. Ranger, commissioned in 1934, and Wasp, in 1940, had been built without torpedo storage but received some capability in 1941.

Along with Vought’s SB2U scout bomber (later dubbed Vindicator), the TBD brought the mono­ plane era to U.S. carrier aviation. The TBD was a generational jump for naval aviation, and squad­ rons often struggled to master “all these new gad­ gets” that were previously unknown. Retractable wheels and power-folding wings were particularly noteworthy. According to legend, when the first TBD landed aboard a Pacific Fleet carrier, fold­ ing its wings while taxiing, a nervous sailor hit the crash alarm.

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WHAT’S IN A NAME? IN JUNE 1941 THE U.S. NAVY PROPOSED A LIST OF POPULAR NAMES FOR ITS AIRCRAFT.

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efore the war, economic measures limited realistic training. Torpedo pilots were supposed to make one live drop annually but that goal was seldom achieved. The interest on that debt would be paid in combat during 1942, a year before the ordnance bureaucracy finally admitted to a long, dolorous list of defects in torpedoes for ships, submarines and aircraft.

Throughout the war, nearly all the advances in torpedo technology came from industry rather than the Navy.

Machinist Mate Thomas F. Cheek, an experienced enlisted aviator with Torpedo Squadron 2 (VT-2) on Lexington, recalled: “The torpedo units spent a negligible time on gunnery training—horizontal bombing was the major practice, with the NAP [naval aviation pilot] copilot performing the role of bombardier in the second seat. Lack of gunnery training by all rear-seat men was very evident.

IN the fold Devastators of VT-5 (above) park on USS Yorktown’s after flight deck at Naval Air Station North Island, San Diego, in June 1940, taking full advantage of their folding wings (left).

Below: TBDs from Enterprise display prewar regalia off the Hawaiian coast in September 1940.

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TOP & MIDDLE: NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND; BOTTOM: CARL MYDANS/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/SHUTTERSTOCK (12064471A)

The new Douglas torpedo bomber was impressive with its streamlined profile, polished aluminum fuselage emblazoned with tail and unit markings plus chrome-yellow wings. A noncommissioned aviator, Aviation Pilot Wilhelm “Bill” Esders, recalled upon reporting to Saratoga at San Diego in 1938: “I observed several beautiful shiny monoplanes landing and I thought, ‘That is the most beautiful aircraft I have ever seen.’ I just wished that someday I would have the opportunity to fly it, not aware that they belonged to the squadron to which I was ordered. I was overwhelmed upon reporting to learn that the planes I saw were VT-3 aircraft. Such beauties!”

Even with modern aircraft arriving, the Navy showed a technological deficit when Europe went to general quarters again in 1939. That year 55 percent of U.S. carrier aircraft were biplanes, with full monoplane replacement extending into the next year.

Meanwhile, far beyond the International Date Line, in 1937 the Imperial Japanese Navy fielded the Nakajima B5N, the Type 97 carrier attack bomber later dubbed Kate by the Allies. The wartime B5N2 was capable of 230 mph at 12,000 feet and routinely flew 300-mile-radius missions.

Thus, it was 25 mph faster than the TBD and longer ranged. But, more significant, while U.S. torpedoes were woefully erratic, Japanese “fish” worked just fine.

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TECH NOTES DOUGLAS TBD-1 DEVASTATOR

Zeppelin-Lindau D.I

SPECIFICATIONS

CREW

HEIGHT

RANGE

Three

15 feet 1 inch

ENGINE

WEIGHT

435 miles (with Mark 13 torpedo)

900-hp Pratt & Whitney R-1830-64 Twin Wasp 14-cylinder air-cooled radial driving threebladed variable-pitch propeller

6,182 lbs. (empty) 9,862 lbs. (gross) 10,194 lbs. (maximum takeoff)

50 feet

128 mph (cruise) 206 mph at 8,000 feet (maximum)

LENGTH

CEILING

35 feet

19,700 feet

WINGSPAN

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SPEED

716 miles (with 1,000 lbs. of bombs) ARMAMENT One fixed forward-firing .30- or .50-caliber machine gun in the right nose and one flexibly mounted .30-caliber machine gun in rear cockpit, plus one Mark 13 torpedo or 1,200 pounds of bombs

“As demonstrated by the Army Air Forces at Mid­way, horizontal bombing was a lost cause from the beginning. Hits were fairly easy if the target was unmoving on land, or a towed sled or vessel that maintained a fixed course and speed. We tried a variety of formations and patterns, with sorry results, but the powers that be kept us trying.

“Simulated torpedo runs were seldom carried out, other than during fleet problems or local maneuvers. Once a year each pilot was to make a live drop with a dummy head on a real torpedo.

We made no drops in 1939. In 1940 we made two dry runs on a target towed by a minesweeper or tug. Then the big day, taking off from North Lands, San Diego, with a Mark 13 hanging out of the bomb bay!”

Describing his first live drop, flying with A.C. Weddel, Cheek said the Mark 13 released within limits of 90 knots at 100 feet. (In combat most squadrons observed drop parameters of 110 knots at 50 feet or less.) “It ran true for the first 100-150 yards,” Cheek recalled, adding that the torpedo “then veered 60 degrees to port and took off over the surface like a happy trout.

“My drop emulated Weddel’s at the start, then veered slightly starboard with a dead bead on the minesweeper. Thankfully, instead of frolicking over the surface, it ran true to depth and passed under the tug.

“From the scuttlebutt going around at Pearl, ours was not an isolated incident.”

Despite these torpedo problems, the Navy developed optimistic tactics for carrier air groups.

The ideal scenario was a coordinated attack on an enemy fleet, with scout bombers laying smoke screens to cover the torpedo bombers’ low and slow approach while dive bombers rolled in from overhead and fighters engaged defending interceptors.

It never happened in combat, and some realists recognized the facts. “Our peacetime torpedo training procedure was far more theatrical than practical,” wrote Torpedo 3’s leader, Lt. Cmdr.

Lance E. Massey. He predicted with chilling prescience that an unescorted torpedo attack against an alerted task force would prove disastrous.

In all, 12 Navy squadrons flew TBDs, including a handful in Atlantic Fleet bombing and scouting units. In the 3½ years before Pearl Harbor, the Navy lost 30 TBDs to accidents and two more in January 1942. Thus the fleet entered the war with 97 torpedo planes in deployable squadrons and a small fleet replacement pool.

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n the morning of December 7, 1941, the Enterprise task group was returning to Hawaii after delivering aircraft to Wake Island. Operating on a war footing, Vice Adm. William F. Halsey sent 17 SBDs to scout ahead of the force as a precaution. They were caught by planes from six Japanese carriers, sus-

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OPPOSITE ILLUSTRATION: KABOLDY; CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE LEFT: NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND; NATIONAL ARCHIVES; NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NAVAL AVIATION

taining seven losses. America was at war.

With tentative information, the “Big E” launched a combined strike group, including all 18 of Torpedo 6’s TBDs. Finding nothing, the bombers returned to the ship while the fighters diverted to Pearl, where four of six were shot down.

Thus began the early phase of the Pacific War, a series of hit-and-run raids on far-flung Japanese bases. On February 1, 1942, Enterprise raided the Marshall Islands, sinking three Japanese ships.

Lieutenant Commander Eugene Lindsey’s VT-6 lofted nine bombers against Wotje Atoll and nine more against Kwajalein in the first aerial torpedo attack in U.S. history. Lacking fighter opposition, the Devastators escaped almost untouched, but the squadron report noted, “Fighter protection for VT is mandatory.”

That same day Yorktown struck the Gilberts with marginal results and serious losses. Miserable weather apparently cost VT-5 six planes and several aircrews in exchange for two Japanese vessels damaged by the air group.

On February 24 Enterprise returned to Wake Island, where it had delivered Marine fighters in late November. The TBDs bombed from 12,000 feet, inflicting little damage but sustaining no losses. Barely a week later the Big E struck Marcus Island, 1,150 miles from Tokyo, without launching torpedo planes.

Certainly the most ambitious Devastator operation was the joint Lexington-Yorktown strike in New Guinea. On March 10 Vice Adm. Wilson Brown’s two air groups coordinated simultaneous attacks on Lae and Salamua on the east coast. Both ships put up 52 aircraft, including 13 of “Lex’s” Torpedo 2 and 12 from “Yorky’s” Torpedo 5.

Lieutenant Commander James Brett’s VT-2 carried Mark 13 torpedoes while Lt. Cmdr. Joseph Taylor’s VT-5 packed 500-pound bombs. The Owen Stanley Mountains’ craggy verdancy posed a problem for the heavily laden Lexington aircraft toting the one-ton Mark 13s, but Brett shrewdly read the geography and used rising thermals to clear the 7,500-foot pass. He found 14 Japanese

ships offshore and attacked with the dive bombers, torpedoing a transport in shallow water. However, other fish malfunctioned.

Shortly thereafter, Taylor led his squadron overhead at 13,000 feet for a conventional bombing run. At least one of the 24 bombs struck a seaplane tender, flooding the engine room. As the TBDs pulled off, a Nakajima E8N2 floatplane made a gunnery pass, meeting a hail of return fire. Post­war evaluation showed the Japanese biplane landed and sank.

Combined with U.S. Army and Australian efforts, the Lae-Salamua strike garnered headlines in the U.S. The Pacific command claimed 10 ships sunk, including three cruisers (actually three transport ships), for the loss of an SBD-2.

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he Devastator appeared to be earning its name, but the first week in May set the TBD on its way to retirement. Dev­ astators from Yorktown participated in two strikes against the new Japanese base at Tulagi near Guadalcanal. Neither mission accomplished much. The first scored one hit on a destroyer from 11 torpedo drops while another failed to release.

On the next mission another destroyer dodged all 11 fish, and though some floatplanes intercepted, they did no harm. However, a VT-5 crew ditched offshore after getting lost in weather and experienced a two-month odyssey returning to safety.

Then, on May 7, millennia of naval warfare abruptly ended at the Battle of the Coral Sea. U.S. intelligence had learned of Japan’s plan to seize Port Moresby on New Guinea’s south coast, and the Pacific Fleet positioned Lexington and Yorktown task forces to repel the enemy invasion force. On the opening day the Americans had

Striking back Above left: A TBD from Enterprise joins in the attack on Japanese-held Wake Island on February 1, 1942. Note the black smoke billowing from fires on the island. Top right: A TBD of VT-6 drops a notoriously unreliable Mark 13 torpedo during a training exercise in October 1941. Above: A prewar closeup of the torpedo mounting suggests how the Devastator earned its “torpecker” nickname.

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give and take Top: Devastators and F4F-3 Wildcats on Enterprise’s flight deck in April 1942 display variations in aircraft fuselage markings and national insignia sizes.

Above: A photo taken two miles below the surface in March 2018 shows remarkably preserved TBDs from Lexington, sunk in the Battle of the Coral Sea. Below: The light carrier Shōhō burns on the morning of May 7, 1942, during the Coral Sea battle. Note the TBD making a torpedo run at lower right.

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things entirely their way. Lex and Yorky launched 93 planes against the Japanese covering force built around the light carrier Shōhō. It was a huge over­ match: The 22 “torpeckers” added their weight to 71 scout bombers and fighters.

Arriving first, Jimmy Brett’s TBDs skirted the screen of four Japanese cruisers and executed a peacetime coordinated attack with the SBDs. In a textbook “anvil” tactic, Lex’s Devastators hemmed in Shōhō from both bows, claiming nine hits; they probably got at least five.

Japanese fighters were largely tied up by Wild­ cats, leaving the strikers to finish the job. Minutes behind came Joe Taylor’s 10 Yorktowners, who pressed in close, as they reported, “to make it almost impossible to miss.” The squadron claimed 100 percent hits and likely gained two. Little Shōhō succumbed to perhaps 20 bombs and seven tor­ pedoes at a cost of three F4F-3s.

Aboard the U.S. carriers, ready rooms were filled with jubilant aircrews celebrating the news of the historic victory.

The next day, as before, scouting determined the course of the battle. Both sides found the other

at about the same time, but the Japanese heavyweights were faster into action: Shōkaku and Zuikaku lofted 69 planes, inflicting mortal wounds on Lexington and damaging Yorktown.

The U.S. air groups were airborne at the time with 75 planes, including 21 torpeckers. Like the previous day, the outbound leg was about 170 miles—a bit of a stretch for TBDs. When Yorktown’s SBDs sighted the Japanese flattops, the strike leader orbited to allow the TBDs to catch up, hoping for a coordinated attack.

The intended victim was Shōkaku, visible under clear skies, and the Japanese carrier absorbed two bombs. Torpedo 5’s fish all missed but the Devastators got away clean.

Half an hour later Lexington’s squadrons piled on. Dauntlesses hit Shōkaku again—nonfatally— while Zuikaku evaded damage. Torpedo 2’s 11 Mark 13s all missed or malfunctioned—as a Japa­ nese report summarized, “slow torpedoes and long range.” One plane ditched out of fuel with the crew lost. When Lady Lex succumbed to fuel fires that evening, however, she took all of VT-2’s remaining aircraft to the bottom.

Tactically the Battle of the Coral Sea was a Japanese victory, as Lexington was far more valu­ able than Shōhō. But strategically a major Japa­ nese operation was frustrated, and Port Morseby remained in Allied hands.

Coral Sea was the first naval battle in which neither fleet saw the other. It set the pattern for carrier warfare throughout the rest of the conflict.

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n late May U.S. intelligence provided Admiral Chester Nimitz with a priceless advan­ tage: detailed information on the Japanese plan to seize Midway Atoll. He dispatched his three carriers to spring one of history’s great ambushes: Enterprise and Hornet in Task Force 16 and Yorktown, still bearing Coral Sea damage, with Task Force 17. They were opposed by four veteran Imperial navy flattops.

On May 30 Torpedo 6’s CO, Lt. Cmdr. Eugene Lindsey, spun in while landing aboard Enterprise.

He was recovered with a badly sprained back but pronounced himself fit for duty.

At dawn on June 4, the three Pacific Fleet car­ riers steamed northeast of Midway, opposing a Japanese effort to seize the atoll. Around 0700 they began launching 41 TBDs. Three hours later four Devastators had returned.

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In five months of combat through Coral Sea, TBDs had suffered no inflight losses to enemy action. Escorting fighters were assigned to each TorpRon, which increased the torpedo bombers’ odds of survival. But at Midway almost nothing went according to plan.

Outbound from TF-16, Hornet’s martinet air group commander, Stanhope C. Ring, led the “mission to nowhere” due west, running 10 Wildcats out of fuel with a couple of SBD-3s. Torpedo 8’s independent-minded CO, Lt. Cmdr. John Waldron, had a sense of the battle’s geometry and broke off, leading his 15 planes southwest. He had told his men, “If only one of us is left to make a run, I want that man to go in and get a hit.”

Fourteen TBDs splashed from heavy flak and fighters, leaving Ensign George Gay to fulfill the skipper’s order. Gay dropped his torpedo against Sōryū, missed and almost immediately went into the water. His gunner went down with the plane but Gay was rescued to tell different versions of his survival for 50 years (see “Aero Artifact,” P. 72).

Next up was the injured Gene Lindsey with 14 Devastators from VT-6. He was supposed to have escorts but the VF-6 Wildcats at first apparently mistook VT-8’s TBDs for their own and missed the rendezvous. Attacking Kaga, Torpedo 6 met a wall of flak and a sky full of slashing Zeros. Four returned to the Big E. Finally, about an hour after VT-8, the Yorktowners arrived. Most were replacements from Saratoga’s air group, beached while “Sara” was repaired. Benefitting from recent combat reports, Yorktown’s staff did it right—a gas-saving “running rendezvous” rather than circling to join up over the task force.

With Lt. Cmdr. Lance Massey navigating, Yorktown’s fliers found their target and concentrated on Hiryū. Lieutenant Commander John Thach’s six Wildcats were far too few to oppose some 40 Zeros, and Massey’s squadron was shredded. He died with nine of his crews while two ditched near the task force. One was flown by Bill Esders, who pulled his fatally wounded gunner, Radioman Robert B. Brazier, into their raft. “He bled to death,” Esders said. “Yet this young man was still able to talk, expressing how badly he felt that he wasn’t able to perform better or longer.

“That was the kind of men we had in Tor­ pedo Three.”

While the TBDs were slaughtered, the Japanese fighters were drawn down near sea level. That left the approach clear for three squadrons of SBDs, and the sky rained Dauntlesses. In minutes Akagi, Kaga and Sōryū were fatally stricken. That afternoon the SBDs returned, slaying Hiryū. The battle ended early on June 7 with Yorktown, weakened by bomb and torpedo damage, finished off by submarine I-168.

The Devastator’s combat log ended that day with a total of 176 sorties resulting in action against enemy forces. In those six months TBDs averaged just under two missions per wartime airframe: 131 with torpedoes and 45 with bombs or depth charges.

After Midway the remaining 39 Devastators were withdrawn from fleet service, quickly replaced by TBF-1 Avengers. The TBDs went to training and utility units or became instructional platforms. The last were scrapped in 1944.

The notion that TBDs were “suicide coffins” loses some credibility when the airplane is compared with its contemporaries. In the first action by a TBF squadron, VT-8 flew six Avengers from Midway and only one returned.

At Coral Sea and Midway, Devastators sustained 42 percent inflight losses to enemy action.

The TBD’s rival, the B5N Kate—clearly superior with excellent torpedoes—was close behind with 37 percent. Devastators certainly devastated little Shōhō at Coral Sea but scored no hits in the next five attacks in both battles. Kates, however, contributed to Lexington’s demise at Coral Sea and Yorktown’s at Midway.

And so the TBD Devastator passed into history.

The U.S. Navy cared too little to keep or retrieve one.

Final hurrah Top left: Deck crews prepare VT-6 TBDs for launch from Enterprise at the outset of the pivotal Battle of Midway on June 4, 1942. Ten of 14 VT-6 Devastators would be downed in the attack on the carrier Kaga about two hours later.

Top right: A VT-8 TBD taxis up on Hornet’s flight deck. This Devastator and its crew were lost at Midway. Above: VT-8’s commander, Lt. Cmdr.

John Waldron, was also among those killed in the costly June 4 TBD attack.

Frequent contributor Barrett Tillman is the author of nearly 900 articles and more than 40 books, including TBD Devastator Units of the US Navy, which is recommended for further reading. Also see Douglas TBD Devastator: America’s First World War II Torpedo Bomber, by David Doyle; and Douglas TBD-1 Devastator, by Steve Ginter.

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Deterrence on display Visitors examine a Convair B-36 bomber of Strategic Air Command during an open house at Westover Air Force Base in Chicopee, Mass., in the mid-1950s. Westover played a major role coordinating America’s air defenses from World War II through the Vietnam era.

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RISE AND DECLINE OF A USAF BASE WESTOVER AIR FORCE BASE’S HISTORY MIRRORS THAT OF AIR BASES ACROSS AMERICA AS THEY ADAPTED TO NEW MISSIONS AND EVOLVING MILITARY REQUIREMENTS BY DAVID T. ZABECKI

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Changing mission Top: A Martin B-57 parks at Westover in 1975, a year after the the last regular Air Force unit assigned to the base was inactivated and Westover was redesignated an air reserve base. Inset: The SAC patch.

Opposite: A WAC and two air reservists pose with Oldsmobiles and a Douglas C-54 at a “Community Day” in the late 1940s.

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Access to the base was more restricted than usual, but not completely locked down. That evening, the Civil Air Patrol’s Westover Squadron held its usual Tuesday night meeting in Building S-6, directly across from the base water tower, and close to the fence line, behind which ran Westover’s line of massive hangars. That night seemed far darker than usual, although the base was not quite totally blacked out.

Everyone knew what was going on, with fully armed B-52s sitting on alert at the end of the runway and the crews billeted close by. Yet almost everyone came to the CAP squadron meeting that night. About half the cadets were Air Force brats and the rest of us were local kids from the area.

Many of the squadron’s senior members were active Air Force as well, yet most of them were there that night too. The ones who didn’t make it were on alert. Some of the senior members who did show up were wearing flight suits. There was very little discussion about the situation, yet the tension

was thick in the air. The following day, Strategic Air Command went to DEFCON 2 for the first time in American history, and the B-52s went from ground alert to airborne alert status.

That Tuesday had been a strange, strange night. A week later, our normal squadron meeting on October 30 was business as usual—almost as if nothing had happened. Nonetheless, there had never been any doubt about what was at stake among the base personnel and the civilian populations of the three nearby western Massachusetts cities of Springfield, Holyoke and Chicopee.

Everyone knew that Westover would be one of the primary ground zeros in the event of a global nuclear war.

Westover was not just any SAC base; it was the headquarters of the legendary Eighth Air Force that had blasted large portions of Germany into rubble during World War II. Directly under the Eighth, and also based at Westover, the 57th Air Division was the command-and-control head-

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THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS WAS JUST ABOUT AT ITS PEAK ON OCTOBER 23, 1962, AND WESTOVER AIR FORCE BASE IN CHICOPEE, MASS., WAS ON ALERT.

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the general target area even more lucrative, the fabled Springfield Armory was only three miles down the Connecticut River. Another 30 miles downriver was Colt Firearms in Hartford, Conn. The overall target area contained a lot of bucks for one well-placed and large enough bang.

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riginally called Northeast Air Base, Westover was later named for Maj. Gen. Oscar Westover, the chief of the U.S. Army Air Corps who was killed when the Northrop A-17 he was piloting crashed in Burbank, Calif., in September 1938. He was succeeded in office by Maj. Gen. (later General of the Air Force) Henry H. Arnold.

The initial authorization to establish several major, modern air bases, including one in the Northeast, came from the Wilcox Air Base Act, passed by Con­­gress in 1935. But then the initiative stalled until three years later when “Hap” Arnold pushed the War Department to establish a board to select sites for the new bases.

Chicopee Mayor Anthony J. Stonina immediately started promoting his city for the site of the

Early Days Top: Westover Field in its infancy, circa 1940.

Above: The base was named for Army Air Corps chief Maj. Gen. Oscar Westover, who was killed in the crash of a Northrop A-17 in September 1938.

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quarters of the 99th Bombardment Wing and 499th Air Refueling Wing, as well as the 68th Bombardment Wing at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina. My house, my grade school and my high school were all in a direct line and not more than two to three miles from the end of Westover’s main runway. As I was growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s, Boeing B-47s and KC-97s initially, and then B-52s and KC-135s, roared low overhead as they took off.

There was more at Westover—much more— in 1962, making it an even more lucrative target. Immediately adjacent to the base was the ultra-high-security Stony Brook Air Force Station, one of SAC’s five nuclear weapons storage sites in the continental U.S. Just off the base, and burrowed deep into Bare Mountain in Hadley, Mass., was “The Notch.” Officially it was named the PostAttack Command and Control System Facility—a nuclear-hardened, two-story, subterranean bunker with 40,000 square feet of floor space jammed full of communications equipment. It could house 135 airmen who would operate the command post and live there day and night.

The one classified facility on Westover that almost none of the local populace knew anything about at the time—but which the Soviets certainly did—was the Air Force Special Projects Production Facility. Located right next to Eighth Air Force headquarters, the installation developed aerial recon photographs taken by Lockheed U-2 spyplanes and converted the images into accurate targeting maps. The earliest aerial imagery of the Cuban missiles was processed at Westover.

Thus, Westover would have been a key first strike node on any Soviet targeting list. Making

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new Northeast base. By the 1930s, Chicopee had a very large Polish immigrant population, and Stonina himself had originally come to America from Poland in 1909. The mayor argued that the large, flat tobacco fields on the city’s northern edge were the perfect site for an air base. The War Department agreed, and officially announced the selection of Chicopee on September 15, 1939—just 15 days after Germany started World War II by invading Stonina’s native Poland. The government initially allocated $2 million to compensate the farmers for the loss of their land, but they were not happy about it. Many of those farmers were Stonina’s fellow Polish immigrants.

That November, Chicopee’s first Polish American mayor was voted out of office.

The initial construction cost for Westover was $3.6 million. Work on the first runway started in May 1940 and the first aircraft to land at the base was a Martin B-10 bomber, in October 1940. On June 10, 1941, the first Boeing B-17s landed at Westover, the lead elements of the 4th Bombardment Wing, with Major Curtis LeMay serving as one of the copilots. By that July Westover had become a primary ferry point for LendLease aircraft headed for Britain. General Arnold

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uring the immediate postwar period West­ over was an Air Transport Command base, serving as the primary port of embarkation and debarkation for all of ATC’s North Atlantic operations to Europe, Africa and the Middle East. When the Soviets established the Berlin Blockade on June 24, 1948, the Allies started the Berlin Airlift, known as “Operation Vittles,” three days later. Douglas C-47s and C-54s flew supplies into West Berlin around the clock from West German bases. But the aerial supply line stretched all the way across the Atlantic, with West­over as one of the major American jumpingoff points for the airlift.

Shortly after the airlift’s start, Lieutenant Gail Halvorsen, a former Westover pilot then flying transports in and out of Berlin, started dropping

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life on base Top: The Westover Base Exchange displays a variety of sundries and gifts in the early 1950s.

Above: A classic postcard shows Westover’s utilitarian layout. The base’s Civil Air Patrol squadron met in the single-story Building S-6, directly across the parking lot from the water tower.

Opposite: North American F-86D “Sabre Dogs” of the 324th Fighter Interceptor Squadron line up at Westover in the mid-1950s.

declared Westover “the strongest base in the east.”

In November 1941, the first Consolidated B-24 bombers were assigned to Westover to fly antisubmarine patrols off the Northeast coast. Cap­ tain Ben Mathis, a Westover B-24 pilot, described the typical mission profile: “Eventually these missions became quite lengthy. Some of them were 15 hours, so there was a lot of night flying, a lot of weather flying, a lot of instrument flying.” The B-24s carried 500-pound “depth bombs” with quarter-second-delay fuzes that ensured they detonated about 30 feet beneath the surface. West­ over B-24s dropped many such bombs, but they were never credited with a confirmed kill.

Westover relinquished the coastal defense mission in September 1943. By that point it also had become a major training base. Westover’s specialty was the advanced and final training phase for B-17 and B-24 crews, prior to their deployment overseas as complete teams. Several fighter units also trained at Westover in Republic P-47s, including the 352nd and 359th Fighter groups.

Westover trained more than 2,000 bomber crews during the war, and in April 1945 there were still 289 fully trained crews on the base awaiting deployment overseas.

Westover also served as a POW camp, with the first 250 German prisoners arriving in October 1944. They were soon subcontracted out to local farmers to help with the harvest. They proved to be such good workers that the farmers clamored for more. At its peak, the Westover camp held 700 prisoners. When the war ended, Westover quickly transitioned to an out-processing and discharge station for GIs returning from overseas.

On July 9, 1946, a B-17 carrying 25 returning military and civilian support personnel was cleared to land at Westover at about 2230 hours, but the Flying Fortress never made it. A few miles from the runway it crashed into 1,200-foot Mount Tom, a former volcano that is the highest peak in the area.

There were no survivors.

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candy tied to makeshift parachutes to the Ger­man children near the end of the runway at Berlin’s Tempelhof airport. Halvorsen quickly acquired the nickname “Candy Bomber.”

U.S. military authorities recognized the goodwill value of his gesture and formally established “Operation Little Vittles,” with Halvorsen as its public face. The American Confectioners Association donated tons of candy, which were shipped to Westover. The candy was then transferred to a former fire station in Chicopee. There, local schoolchildren volunteers tied the candy to the tiny parachutes and it was then sent back to Westover and flown on to Rhein-Main Air Base near Frankfurt. By January 1949, 36,000 pounds of candy had been flown to Germany from West­ over, resulting in a quarter million candy parachutes dropped over Berlin.

Westover officially came under the control of Strategic Air Command on April 1, 1955, with the activation of the 4050th Air Refueling Wing, flying the KC-97 Stratotanker, which was based on a modified B-29 bomber. Almost immediately construction started on Stony Brook and The Notch, both of which became operational in 1956.

In September of that year the 99th Bombardment Wing moved to Westover, initially flying the sixengine B-47 Stratojet. In short order, the 99th was upgraded to the B-52C Stratofortress.

The Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world closer to a nuclear conflagration than it has ever been. Major Harry Wolfe, a navigator and target intelligence officer at Eighth Air Force HQ , was involved in processing the earliest aerial photographs revealing the missiles in Cuba. When SAC went on alert status, Wolfe was part of the Eighth intelligence section that moved into The Notch.

His particular job was monitoring the movements of the Soviet ships. “We had aircraft observations…we were getting immediate reports from aircraft,” Wolfe said. “We had constant reconnaissance coverage of all the vessels in that area.” But

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he also remembered, “We began to wonder when we went to work in the morning whether or not we would have a residence to come back to....”

After the Cuban crisis ratchetted down, the routine at Westover returned to normal—that is, normal for a SAC base. “At the time, fly, fly, fly was the name of the game,” recalled Wolfe. “Being in SAC in those days was like being inside a pencil sharpener. You constantly had a sharp edge, but you were being worn down, because it was very demanding physically.”

Captain Michael Daly, a 99th Bomb Wing B-52 navigator stationed at Westover in 1964-68, remembered: “Our schedule as a bomber crew was such that we didn’t have a typical day. We ran in cycles of about three weeks’ duration, where you would have one full week on alert—which meant for seven days, 24 hours a day, you lived in the Molehole with your crew.”

The “Molehole” was a secure facility directly on the edge of the runway where the aircrews lived, ate and slept while on alert status. Less than a football field’s length away, their B-52s sat on a special “Christmas tree” alert ramp. The bombers were fully fueled, armed and preflighted. At all times, six alert aircraft stood ready on the Christmas tree and another 12 to 14 bombers also on alert sat

Goodwill mission Top: USAF Lieutenant Gail Halvorsen makes a personal delivery of candy to German children during the Berlin Airlift. Above: Halvorsen preps tiny parachutes to drop at Berlin Tempelhof from his C-54, a practice that led to his “Candy Bomber” nickname.

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doomsday preppers Above: Crewmen scramble from the “Molehole” to their Boeing B-52 at Westover in 1960.

Above right: A base guard stands before a Stratofortress loaded with hydrogen bombs in June 1964. Below: B-52s from the 99th Bomb Wing provide a backdrop in November 1961 for a Convair F-102 and a Lockheed T-33, whose SAC band and Eighth Air Force emblem suggest its use as a VIP transport.

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on ramps nearby. Maintenance crews constantly attended to the aircraft. Whenever the klaxon went off, the ground crews started the engines before the aircrews even arrived.

The airmen spent their rotation periods in the Molehole reviewing preplanned mission profiles and their associated attack and evasion tactics. The crews rarely flew while on alert unless it was for a practice exercise or an actual launch in response to a potential emergency. When the klaxon went off, the crews never knew if it was the real thing or just a practice exercise. Usually they were notified that it was an exercise only at the point of taxiing for takeoff. In the case of an actual launch, the bombers remained under “positive control,” which meant they were authorized only to take off and fly to their positive control checkpoint—commonly known as their “failsafe” point. Once there, they orbited until they received the order to return to base—or the dreaded coded execution message.

The six-man alert crews were allowed to see their families once a day, usually in the Molehole parking lot. “We would sleep in the same building, travel in the same vehicle,” Daly remembered. “If one of our colleagues had to travel to a particular

building on the base, we all had to go.” Once a crew came off alert, they got a couple days off, and then they went into an intensive two-week cycle of flying training missions. And then…back on alert.

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y the mid-1960s, the Vietnam War was the primary focus of the U.S. Department of Defense. Although Vietnam was some 8,500 miles away from Chicopee, West­ over played a major role in the war. Starting in 1967, 99th Bomb Wing crews and their Westoverbased aircraft underwent a series of four deployments to Andersen Air Force Base on Guam.

During a given seven-month rotation the crews flew up to 100 missions. Most initially were Arc Light missions in support of U.S. ground troops in South Vietnam. Westover crews also staged out of U-Tapao Royal Thai Navy Airfield in Thailand.

A mission flown from Guam lasted 18 hours and required inflight refueling. Missions from Thailand lasted only two to three hours, but the crews sometimes flew two or three per day.

During the December 1972 Linebacker II “Christ­mas Bombings” of Hanoi, two 99th Bomb Wing B-52s from Westover were shot down. On

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day one, December 18, B-52D call sign “Rose 01,” piloted by Captain Hal Wilson, went down after it was hit by a surface-to-air missile. Naviga­tor Captain Richard Cooper and gunner Tech. Sgt. Charlie Poole were killed, and the remaining four crewmen were taken prisoner. Rose 01 crashed in Hanoi’s Huu Tiep Lake, where the wreck remained for many years as a war memorial. On day three, December 20, B-52D call-sign “Orange 03” was hit by two SAMs and exploded in midair just seconds prior to bomb release. Four of the Westover crew, including pilot Major John Stuart, were killed. Only two of the crewmen survived to become POWs. The local civilian population around Westover had always been very supportive of the base— until Vietnam. With the 1970 invasion of Cam­ bodia and the Kent State incident, the anti-war effort around Westover kicked into high gear, with protesters blocking the main gate for hours at a time. On April 1 of that year, Eighth Air Force headquarters left Westover and relocated to Andersen AFB. Several months earlier, in July 1969, the 57th Air Division had been inactivated.

Finally, on March 31, 1974, the 99th Bomb Wing was inactivated.

In 1972 the annual payroll for the 5,300 military and 800 civilian personal at Westover was $54 million, but the handwriting was already on the wall. On April 20, 1973, the Air Force announced that portions of Westover would close, and the remaining portions would be turned over to the Air Force Reserve. The downsizing had a devastating impact on the local economy—especially since the U.S. government had closed the Springfield Armory in 1968.

Westover AFB was officially redesignated West­ over Air Reserve Base on May 19, 1974. Although Westover is today the largest air reserve base in America, it is a pale shadow of the bastion of American air power that it was in the 1950s and 1960s. In the early ’60s, many of the World War II “temporary” wooden barracks buildings were still

standing and in use. They are all gone now, giving the impression of a huge ghost town to anyone who remembers Westover’s heyday.

Westover today is the home base of the 439th Airlift Wing, an Air Force Reserve unit that operates eight Lockheed C-5M Super Galaxy transports. Thus, Westover has come full circle back to the strategic airlift mission that was its primary focus during the years immediately after the end of World War II. Historynet’s chief military historian David T. Zabecki retired from the U.S. Army in 2007 as a major general.

A field artillery officer and Vietnam War veteran, he trained as a nuclear target analyst at one point in his military career. In 1962-66 he was a CAP cadet at Westover. For additional reading, see: Westover: Man, Base and Mission, by Frank Faulkner; and A Cold War Legacy: A Tribute to Strategic Air Command, 1946-1992, by Alwyn T. Lloyd.

heavy traffic Top: Lockheed C-5B Galaxys of the 439th Airlift Wing taxi at Westover on July 7, 2012. The air reserve wing now operates C-5M Super Galaxy transports. Above: A C-5B returns from a local training mission, passing Westover’s 123-foot-high control tower, built in 2002.

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high dive Captain William Magruder and crew briefly go supersonic in a Douglas DC-8 while Chuck Yeager—who first achieved the feat horizontally in a Bell X-1—observes from a Lockheed F-104 chase plane (near background).

Don Hollway’s illustration also shows the North American F-100F camera ship that accompanied the test flight.

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THE FIRST SST IN AUGUST 1961 A CREW OF DOUGLAS AIRCRAFT TEST PILOTS PROVED THE NEW DC-8’S WORTH BY DIVING IT THROUGH THE SPEED OF SOUND BY DON HOLLWAY

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black sky Above: The DC-8 and F-104 fly at high altitude on August 21, 1961, before making the dive. Inset (from left): Magruder, Alvin “Tex” Johnston and Lt. Col. Guy Townsend confer near the YB-52, which made its first flight on April 15, 1952.

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In an interview with aviation historian Bill Was­ serzieher for a Douglas employee oral history project, flight test engineer Richard H. Edwards recalled, “The night before, at Long Beach, some­ body had dinged the [wing leading-edge] slats and they didn’t work.” And during the preflight check Edwards damaged the trailing-edge flaps, bang­ ing one on a flight crew workstand inadvertently left under it.

Without slats and flaps, low-speed handling was going to be tricky. Luckily, this crew wasn’t aiming for a low-speed record. Pilot William Magruder

told them, “Well, we can take off with no flaps and the airplane will be all right…if we don’t lose an engine.”

Douglas had a lot riding on the flight. Over the previous decade Boeing had just about locked up the market for military bombers with its B-47 and B-52. Now with Boeing’s new 707 jet airliner (first flown in December 1957), the company was seeking to do the same to the commercial mar­ ket. Douglas had gained a huge head start in the airliner business with its legendary prewar DC-3, but its new four-jet DC-8 had not flown until six

PREVIOUS SPREAD: DON HOLLWAY; ABOVE: COURTESY OF MIKE MACHAT; INSET: U.S. AIR FORCE/GETTY IMAGES

ONE WOULD EXPECT AN AIRPLANE SLATED FOR A RECORD FLIGHT ATTEMPT TO BE PREPPED AND FLAWLESS DOWN TO THE LAST RIVET, BUT BEFORE IT EVEN LEFT THE DOUGLAS AIRCRAFT PLANT IN CALIFORNIA THE DC-8 CHOSEN FOR THIS PARTICULAR ATTEMPT WAS NO LONGER FACTORY-FRESH.

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FROM TOP: COURTESY OF MICK MACHAT; COURTESY OF ROGER PETERSON VIA EMILIO CORSETTI; MCDONNELL DOUGLAS

first flight Left (from left): Pilot Arnold Heimerdinger, Donald Douglas and copilot Magruder confer in the cockpit of the first DC-8 (shown above) on May 30, 1958, when the airliner made its maiden flight (below).

blazoned with its new name, Empress of Montreal, the DC-8 looked fine with its dinged slats and flaps closed—nobody could tell the bird was slightly crippled. “We took off with flaps up,” admitted Edwards, “which is kind of a no-no because at takeoff thrust, you can’t control the airplane if it loses an engine with flaps up—there’s an interlock on the rudder.”

The test was to be conducted about 80 miles to the north, over Askania Tracking Range at Edwards Air Force Base in the California desert.

On the way up the DC-8 rendezvoused with a two-seat North American F-100F Super Sabre

PREVIOUS SPREAD: DON HOLLWAY; ABOVE: COURTESY OF MIKE MACHAT; INSET: U.S. AIR FORCE/GETTY IMAGES

months after the 707 took off.

Magruder had been copilot in 1958 on the DC-8’s maiden flight. As an Air Force test pilot and engineer he had flown everything from the North American F-86 Sabre and Martin B-57 Canberra to the Douglas C-124 Globemaster II and B-52 Stratofortress. He had flown with Chuck Yeager, the first man to exceed the speed of sound in level flight, and Alvin M. “Tex” Johnston, who had famously flown a Boeing 367-80 (707 prototype) through a double barrel roll, before joining Douglas in 1956. “He was well known in the industry and very articulate,” recalled Edwards, “well educated, with a lot of new ideas.”

His newest idea was to grab headlines for the DC-8 by making it the first commercial airliner to break the sound barrier. “Very smart,” agreed Edwards, “get it out there, show the airplane can survive this and not fall apart. Boeing will never try it [with the 707] because they don’t want to be second.”

The DC-8 was decidedly subsonic, designed to cruise at 542 mph at 35,000 feet (Mach .82).

Douglas put a whole team of engineers to work on the math. Edwards recalled, “They had to determine the pushover load factor, the dive angle, to be sure they got to Mach 1.01 at a rather high altitude, so the airspeed wouldn’t be that high up there.”

On the designated day, August 21, 1961, Magruder and Edwards were joined at the Douglas plant in Long Beach by copilot Paul Patten and flight engineer Joseph Tomich. The aircraft chosen for the flight was a new DC-8-43, no. N9604Z, the 130th built. The Series 40 was the first airliner in the world powered by turbofans, for improved efficiency and less noise and smoke.

Resplendent in the red and white colors of its new owner, Canadian Pacific Air Lines, and em-

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cast and crew Top: The flight and ground crews for the DC-8 supersonic run included flight test engineer Richard Edwards (third from left). Magruder is standing behind the sign in a white shirt.

Inset: After the test flight, the DC-8 Empress of Montreal served with Canadian Pacific Air Lines for nearly 20 years.

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camera ship and a Lock­heed F-104 Star­ fighter chase plane (flown by Magruder’s old friend Yeager) provided by the USAF Flight Test Cen­ter, which also supplied a weather bal­ l oon to verify speed and atmospheric data. Over the southern tip of Rogers Dry Lake, Magruder leveled out at 50,090 feet, in itself a record for a civil airliner at that time. “The thing that impressed me the most was the dark, black sky,” recalled Edwards. “I’d never seen anything like that.”

From that altitude, the rest of the flight would be downhill all the way. It was Edwards’ job to know when they crossed the magic number. “The Mach number itself isn’t used in a dive as a target because it’s much more accurate to use airspeed,” he explained. “So every thousand feet I would read off to Bill the airspeed at the next altitude.

As we were coming down, I was talking almost all the time because at a descent rate of 500 feet per second, every two seconds we were 1,000 feet lower. Looking out the window—which I stopped doing—it looked like it was straight down.”

As the airliner neared Mach 1 it compressed the air moving over it into shock waves, capable of tearing a poorly designed aircraft to pieces. “At .96 Mach it buffeted for a while,” remembered Edwards, “…and a little above .96 it went away.”

But shock waves can also affect control surfaces, to the point of reducing or even reversing pilot input. “I had mounted some cameras in the mid-

dle of the airplane, shooting out each window,” Edwards recalled. “I wanted to catch the chase airplanes out there, but I never saw the chase airplanes in the pictures. But it did show the ailerons flapping up as the shock wave left—I think it was about .97 Mach. They went up about five degrees, I think—both sides, fortunately.”

Magruder held the yoke steady as Empress made history. “In the dive, at about 45,000 feet, it went to Mach 1.01 for maybe 16 seconds,” said Edwards. In fact, at 41,088 feet the DC-8 recorded Mach 1.012, 660.6 mph at that altitude.

By then Magruder was already starting to pull out, but as Edwards recalled, “The recovery was a little scary.”

When Magruder eased back on the yoke to pull out of the dive, the plane barely responded. The elevators, not designed to operate at such speed, could not overcome the supersonic airflow. The DC-8 was out of control, hurtling earthward at just over Mach 1, and in less than a minute would impact the desert floor…unless it tore apart in midair first.

“Well, I’ll use the stabilizer,” said Magruder.

Besides the elevators on their trailing edges, the DC-8’s horizontal tailplanes (also called stabilators) could rotate as one piece—at least, at sub­sonic speeds. At 39,614 feet the DC-8 hit a maximum true airspeed of 662.5 mph.

“The stabilizer wouldn’t run....because of the load,” recalled Edwards. In the high-speed pullout, with the airliner ever so slightly nose-up to the wind, the motor controlling the tailplane angle literally couldn’t overcome the air pressure under the tail.

“What [Magruder] did, because he was smart, is something that no other pilot would do,” said

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Edwards. “He pushed over into the dive more, which relieved the load on the stabilizer.”

It was unconventional thinking—increase the dive rate to pull out of a dive? But as soon as Magruder stopped trying to pull out, the airliner “straightened out” into the wind, and the reduced air pressure allowed the tailplane motor to function and the stabilators to bite into the airflow.

They “recovered at about 35,000 feet,” Edwards noted, no doubt with a sense of relief.

In the course of the dive the DC-8 had covered almost 15 miles, to the southern tip of Rosamond Dry Lake. “We were all smiles,” said Edwards.

“We weren’t frightened, but we were more or less happy that we had got there.”

In just that one flight, Empress of Montreal had set altitude, payload and speed records for commercial transport aircraft. The speed record stood until broken by a Soviet Tupolev Tu-144 SST in June 1969. Each crewman received a

$1,000 bonus from Douglas, and the Society for Experimental Test Pilots awarded Magruder the Iven C. Kincheloe Trophy for outstanding professional accomplishment in flight testing.

Canadian Pacific took delivery of Empress of Montreal that November. With a small plaque on the forward bulkhead attesting to its place in history, it served for almost 20 years, logging 24,268 flights for a total of 70,567 hours in the air. In May 1981 it was sold, and at Opa Locka Municipal Airport north of Miami, Fla., scrapped. It never broke the sound barrier again.

fasten seat belts Below: In April 1979 a TWA 727 suffered a slat retraction failure and entered into an uncontrolled spiral dive during which it exceeded the speed of sound. The crew regained control at 8,000 feet after the slat tore away.

Frequent contributor Don Hollway last wrote for us about General Curtis LeMay in the November 2021 issue. His most recent book, The Last Viking, was released in September 2021 to critical acclaim. Further reading: Douglas DC-8, by Terry Waddington.

OPPOSITE TOP: COURTESY OF RICHARD H. EDWARDS VIA CAROLINE SHEEN; OPPOSITE INSET: ©PETER SCHARKOWSKI; RIGHT: COURTESY OF JOHN PROCTOR VIA EMILIO CORSETTI

THE FOURTH SST DC-8 no. N9604Z was the first airliner to exceed Mach 1, but not the last. The Concorde and Tu-144 made supersonic passenger flight seem routine (at least, until a series of crashes and economic considerations caused their retirement). Today most commercial airplanes like the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350 cruise around Mach 0.85 to 0.89, while smaller corporate jets from Cessna, Gulfstream and Bombardier routinely cruise above Mach 0.90. It’s not unheard of, however, for subsonic airliners to exceed Mach 1 (761 mph at sea level), at least in terms of ground speed.

In February 2018 a Norwegian Air 787-9 heading from New York to London caught a ride on the jet stream over the Atlantic. Dreamliners had previously reached 776 mph with a tailwind, but this one made the crossing in 5 hours and 9 minutes, topping out at 799 mph. And a year later, a Virgin Atlantic 787-9 out of Los Angeles on its way to London also caught the jet stream 35,000 feet over Pennsylvania, achieving a ground speed of 801 mph. Because the high-speed wind was carrying the jets like boats on a river, these airplanes did not exceed Mach 1 as measured by local airspeed. At least one other non-SST airliner, however, did break the speed of sound…though not intentionally.

In April 1979 TWA Flight 841, a Boeing 727-31 en route from New York City to Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minn., deployed the no. 7 leading-edge slat on its starboard wing while cruising at Mach .816, 39,000 feet over Saginaw, Mich. Slats being low-speed, high-lift devices, the resulting asymmetrical lift and drag immediately threw the airliner into a starboard roll. It entered into an uncontrolled spiral dive and plunged about 6 miles in 63 seconds, according to the flight recorder doing two complete 360-degree rolls and breaking the sound barrier in the process. At that velocity the wind tore off the exposed slat, the captain dropped the landing gear to put maximum drag on the airframe and the crew regained control with about 8,000 feet to spare. They made a successful emergency landing in Detroit.

Despite damaged landing gear, parts of flaps and wing spoilers missing and a host of other damage including a cracked cabin window, the passengers and crew suffered only minor injuries. The aircraft was returned to service a month later. A National Transportation Safety Board investigation attributed the incident to incorrect operation of the slats by the crew. (A rumor had circulated that slightly deploying slats and flaps at cruising speed increased the 727’s lift with no increase in drag, yielding greater fuel efficiency. According to the NTSB, the crew had deployed all the slats, but due to air loading no. 7 failed to retract.) The crew strongly denied wrongdoing, pointing out seven previous incidents of single-slat extensions by 727s.

D.H.

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REvIEWS

AERIAL FOREIGN LEGION

Volunteer Foreign Airmen in French Escadrille Service

Although the Lafayette Escadrille is undoubtedly the most well-known squadron of foreign volun­ teers to serve in French aviation during World War I, there were many more volunteer airmen from countries other than the United States who flew combat in a wide assortment of aircraft such as Nieuports, Spads and Farmans, as well as one-off types, in theaters beyond the Western Front. > > That is the basic theme of this unique, well-researched and well-illustrated new volume from prolific author (and Historynet research director) Jon Guttman.

Guttman’s aviation knowledge covers many periods, individuals and aircraft but he is probably best known today for his many books on WWI aviation and as chroni66

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cler for the American Fighter Aces Association.

The squadron member profiles are organized by national affiliation, with countries of origin including China, Cuba, tsarist Russia, Japan and neutrals Denmark, the Netherlands, Persia and Switzerland. From 1914 through 1918, foreign volunteers flew for France in all

types of aircraft, with some even achieving ace status. A few even flew on in World War II. Guttman chronicles the careers of Danish aviators flying rare Morane-Saulnier AC monoplanes as well as ubiquitous Spads. Japanese volunteers piloted Nieuports and Spads. A few AngloArgentine citizens flew for

flying for france Sub-Lieutenant Djibraïl Nazare-Aga (left), a Persian volunteer pilot, poses with French comrades beside a Breguet 14.B2 bomber.

the British in Bristol F.2B two-seat fighters and S.E.5a single-seaters. Dutch observer Georges de Ram took to the sky in Morane-Saulnier L parasols, two-seaters that Roland Garros modified to develop a single-seater whose machine gun fired through the propeller.

The list goes on, providing the reader with an incredible journey through unknown territory in what is sure to become a valuable reference for WWI aviation enthusiasts and historians.

Peter Mersky

SERVICE HISTORIQUE DE LA DÉFENSE (AIR)

by Jon Guttman, Aeronaut Books, 2021, $49.99.

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WE WERE NEVER THERE

Volume 1: CIA U-2 Operations Over Europe, the USSR and the Middle East, 1956-1960

by Kevin Wright, Helion & Company Ltd., 2021, $24.95.

The U-2 suddenly became world news on May 1, 1960, when Francis Gary Powers was shot down in one during a reconnaissance mission over the Soviet Union. After the U.S. government tried to cover up the incident by insisting that a civilian weather plane had “strayed off course” after the pilot had “experienced difficulties with his oxygen equipment,” the live pilot and nearly intact aircraft were displayed pub­ licly by the Soviets. Not only

was the incident a profound embarrassment to the United States but it compromised a program and aircraft so secret that few outsiders had ever even heard of it before.

To this day some aspects of the Lockheed U-2 and its activities remain classified.

However, Kevin Wright’s fascinating new book, the first volume of a projected series, unveils at least part of the mystery behind one of the most enigmatic aircraft ever created.

BOMBERS AT SUEZ

SERVICE HISTORIQUE DE LA DÉFENSE (AIR)

The RAF Bombing Campaign During the Suez War, 1956

U-2s had already been flying in secrecy for years prior to Powers’ shootdown and they continued to operate for decades thereafter. One reason for the U-2’s shadowy

reputation was that, unlike most reconnaissance air­ craft, it was not operated by the military but by the CIA and was piloted by civilians.

Although sometimes flown from military bases, the U-2s and their activities were always strictly segregated from the normal military activities conducted there.

A university professor of Cold War history, inter­ national security and pol­ itics, author Wright is well qualified to recount this unusual story. Indeed, the book reveals a great deal of detailed information that has probably never been made available before.

Robert Guttman

LOCKHEED CONSTELLATION A History

by John Dillon, Helion & Company Ltd., 2021, $29.95.

by Graham M. Simons, Air World, 2021, $52.95.

On July 26, 1956, Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal Company, sparking an international crisis that briefly involved the application of armed force in an aborted effort to reverse the sudden takeover. The Western powers’ reaction to Nasser’s bold move has been the subject of debate by foreign policy experts ever since. In Bombers at Suez, former British Royal Air Force navigator John Dillon focuses on the planning and execution of the RAF’s weeklong bombing campaign against Egyptian targets, offer­ ing a blow-by-blow account of each mission.

Nasser shrewdly waited until shortly after British troops had left his country before seizing the geostrategic waterway, miffing British Prime Minister Anthony Eden, who feared that the Royal Navy’s supply of Middle Eastern oil might be cut off.

Britain teamed surreptitiously with France and Israel to gain control of the canal, employing Vickers Valiant and English Electric Canberra bombers out of Malta and Cyprus to dam­ age ill-defended Egyptian airfields, railyards, tank positions and bivouacked troop concentrations. The logistical hurdles were formidable, strategic objectives got muddled, nuclear bombers flew conventional missions and crews did not have training in necessary visual bombing techniques.

In the end, the RAF bomber squadrons did what was asked of them, but it was for naught as the international community condemned the attacks. That forced Britain to pull back, pre­ cipitating Eden’s political fall and cementing the perception that the glory days of the empire had come to an ignominious end. This extensively researched text is buttressed by archival photos and color profiles. Highly recommended for those interested in Mideast air warfare.

Philip Handleman

From the end of World War II until the early 1960s, when jets replaced propellers on airliners, the Lockheed Constellation reigned supreme as the “Queen of the Skies.” Its appearance somehow imparted an aura of power, speed and grace that was, and remains, unique in the annals of airliner design. Its elegant, slightly humped fuselage, somewhat reminiscent of a dolphin, terminating in its distinctive triple tail, instantly set the “Connie” apart from every other airliner. In his excellent new book Lockheed Constellation, aviation historian Graham M. Simons recounts the unusual and sometimes dramatic devel­ opment and operational career of one of the 20th century’s most iconic airliners.

It stands to reason that such an extraordinary aircraft was the product of extraordinary creators, and in the Con­ stellation’s case there were two. Kelly Johnson, the head of Lockheed’s fabled “Skunk Works,” was arguably among the most talented aircraft designers of his era. Of no less impor­ tance, however, was the input of the controversial and enig­ matic aviator-entrepreneur Howard Hughes. That the initial prototype of a new super-airliner was completed in the midst of WWII, with the U.S. industry entirely converted to military mass production, is remarkable. That, of course, was Hughes’ influence. If Howard Hughes wanted a thing done, not even a world war could stop it. It was also Hughes who, in 1944, personally flew the prototype Constellation from Burbank to Washington, D.C., in record time. Although criticized for showing off and wasting gasoline amid enduring shortages and rationing, Hughes accomplished his goal of demonstrating what he firmly believed would become the future of postwar air travel in a manner that could not be ignored.

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REvIEWS SPITFIRE ACE OF ACES: the album The Photographs of Johnnie Johnson

by Dilip Sarkar, Air World, 2021, $39.95.

The story of James E. “Johnnie” Johnson, the British Royal Air Force’s highest-scoring ace of World War II with 38½ victories, is the stuff of legend. Surgery for a rugby injury limited his involvement in the Battle of Britain, but he returned to operational flying in early 1941 as a pilot officer in No. 616 Squadron, soon to become part of the destined-for-glory Tangmere Wing, commanded by the legless ace Douglas Bader.

Until V-E Day, Johnson was in almost continuous combat, participating in major operations such as Overlord and Market Garden and concluding his career as an RAF air vice marshal in 1966.

A new and thrilling perspective on the famous ace’s service during the war is offered by this picture book comprising approximately 300 photos, some not previously published. Most of the images are from Johnson’s personal collection and the scrapbooks of his family, while the remainder come from friends and archives. The snapshots have been selected, chronologically

british top gun “Johnnie” Johnson, the top Spitfire ace of World War II, poses with his mount and Labrador retriever Sally at Bazenville, Normandy, in 1944.

sequenced and captioned by Dilip Sarkar, a military aviation historian and close friend of Johnson’s.

This rich compilation is an absolute treasure, showcasing Johnson in a variety of settings, both posed and captured unawares. One photo shows Johnson at Kings Cliffe standing in the cockpit of a Spitfire with the men of his flight gathered around, while others show him in the company of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, General Dwight Eisenhower and Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. Johnson’s irrepressible zest comes across in this visual feast, which culminates in his late-in-life introspective self-appraisal: “I’ve had a wonderful life. Amazing, wasn’t it, really?” As Sarkar notes, “Who could disagree?”

Philip Handleman

SBD DAUNTLESS VS A6M ZERO-SEN Pacific Theater 1941–44

by Donald Nijboer, Osprey Publishing, 2021, $22.

The ubiquitous Mitsubishi parison of technical developA6M Zero took on a variety ment and performance, but of Allied fighters throughout the interesting part deals with the Pacific War, and several training, doctrine, tactics and entries in Osprey’s “Duel” how they all played out in series have matched it up practice. As the author notes, with such classic opponents the primary purpose of the as Curtiss P-40s, Grumman SBD rear gunner manning F4F Wildcats and Grum­ two .30-caliber machine man F6F Hellcats. In SBD guns was “not to shoot down Dauntless vs A6M Zero-Sen, enemy fighters, but to keep however, Donald Nijboer them from shooting him seems to have conceived down. Getting the enemy something of a mismatch: to open fire out of range or a dive bomber whose cause him to break off with primary mission was to accurate fire was an essential seek out and sink enemy part of the job.” Although the shipping encountering a SBD was famously credited carrier-based fighter whose with grievously wounding purpose on such occasions Japanese ace Saburo Sakai was to prevent the Douglas near Guadalcanal on August SBD from doing so.

7, 1942—an event covered There is the usual comin up-to-date detail in the

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book—the author also makes it clear that the 138 Japanese aircraft, including 106 Zeros, credited to Dauntless crews were grossly exaggerated.

A look at enemy records reveals the same wishful overclaiming on the part of their Japanese antagonists: In spite of its comparatively sluggish performance, SBDs suffered

the lowest percentage of losses of any American warplane in the Pacific theater.

The true measure of the Dauntless’ success, however, was the tally of targets it sank: six aircraft carriers, a battleship, three cruisers, four destroyers, a submarine and 14 transports, making it the most successful dive bomber type in history. That status lost relevance in 1945, when versatile fighters such as the F6F-5 Hellcat and the Vought F4U-1D rendered the specialized dive bomber obsolete. Nevertheless, the SBDs could claim at least four minutes of immortality when they slipped through a scrimmage of A6M2s to dramatically change the course of the Battle of Midway— and, arguably, that of the Pacific War. Jon Guttman

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DOUGLAS XB-19

America’s Giant World War II Intercontinental Bomber

by William Wolf, Osprey Publishing, 2021 $22.

Although it is scarcely more than an obscure footnote in aviation history today, at one time the Douglas XB-19 was among the best-known aircraft in America. The largest airplane in the world at the time of its highly publicized maiden flight in 1941, the XB-19 was so famous that it was even mentioned in The Man Who Came to Dinner, the play in which George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart managed to drop the name of just about every celebrated person and institution of the day.

To put the XB-19’s enormity into perspective, it had twice the loaded weight and twice the wingspan of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress and even dwarfed the later Boeing B-29 Superfortress.

In 1935 Donald Douglas competed actively for the contract to develop the XB-19. By 1938—three years before the aircraft flew—Douglas was already convinced that the XB-19 would be obsolete before it was completed and that no production contract would ever be forthcoming. Despite Douglas’ requests to cancel the project, however, the U.S. Army Air Corps insisted that the bomber be completed. Eventually Douglas was proven correct in that the XB-19 remained a lone prototype and the company lost more than a million dollars creating it. Nevertheless, a great deal was learned from the XB-19, which benefited the development of the subsequent

one-of-a-kind bomber Mechanics “prop” an engine on the Douglas XB-19 to clear oil from the lower cylinders.

“Pulling them through” was accomplished via canvas cuffs with long ropes attached.

B-29 and Convair B-36 bombers.

Author William Wolf explains how the gigantic bomber fell victim to the fact that aero engine technology was lagging behind airframe development. Thus, although mounting the same engines later installed in the B-29, the XB-19 was underpowered and consequently reduced to serving as a “flying laboratory.” This highly detailed new study provides a valuable retrospective on a fascinating and all but forgotten chapter in American aviation development.

Robert Guttman

THE FIGHTING CORSAIRS

The Men of Marine Fighting Squadron 215 in the Pacific During WWII

OPPOSITE, FROM TOP: IWM CL 604; IWM TR 2145; ABOVE RIGHT: WARREN M. BODIE COLLECTION

By Jeff Dacus, Lyons Press, 2020, $27.95.

Many books and articles have been written about the relatively few Marine Corps Vought F4U Corsair squadrons in the Pacific. There has even been a television series on the most well-known squadron of all, Pappy Boyington’s “Black Sheep” of VMF-214. This new book concerns one of the rankand-file units, which had its own cadre of successful Marine aviators.

There’s no denying VMF215’s colorful story and thus retired Marine Master Sgt. Jeff Dacus’ deeply researched account is welcome, with

some technical and stylistic reservations. His somewhat rough writing style eventually smooths out by the middle of the book, although his decision to start each chapter with odd quotations without telling the reader who he is quoting is annoying.

One of the most enjoyable portions is Dacus’ description of the squadron’s development—how the pilots became an effective fighting force as they faced the Japanese army and navy squadrons that had taken hold of the Pacific a year after Pearl Harbor. The Marines’

time on leave in Sydney, Australia, when the Aussies welcomed their young American comrades and took them into their hearts, is a nice respite from the usual descriptions of aerial combat.

Chapter 11 gives a running description of what it was like

to fly and fight a midwar escort mission against the still-dangerous Zero, whose Imperial navy pilots remained skilled in using their once top-line fighters against the Marines’ big F4Us, which were completely counter to their enemy’s design philosophies.

As the book heads toward the final chapters, we get into its purpose—to tell the story of the men who manned the squadron and its Corsairs at a desperate time. It’s a nice historic snapshot of a group of young Marine fighter pilots who took their new mount into combat, got to know its capabilities as well as eccentricities and tangled with many of the enemy’s best aviators.

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FLIGHT TEST

AERIAL INCIDENTS 1. Which country’s aircraft was the first Royal Dutch Air Force victory in WWII? A. Belgium B. France C. Britain D. Germany

MYSTERY SHIP

Can you identify this U.S. Navy torpedo bomber? See the answer below.

EXTREME RECONNAISSANCE PLANES Match the airplane with its claim to fame.

A. Lockheed A-12 B. Sikorsky Ilya Muromets C. Nakajima C6N Saiun D. Rumpler C.VII Rubild E. Republic XF-12 Rainbow F. Mitsubishi Ki-46 G. Junkers Ju-86R-1 H. Martin/General Dynamics WB-57 I. Helicopter Ingenuity J. Hughes XF-11

Lockheed A-12

1. Four-engine recon aircraft of 1914, featuring automatic camera 2. World War II high-speed photorecon plane, used by army and navy 3. Twin-boom photorecon plane crashed on its first flight by its designer in 1946 4. World War II photorecon plane capable of 47,500 feet 5. High-altitude atmospheric research plane based on a British bomber 6. First aircraft to fly on the planet Mars 7. Four-engine recon plane of 1946, canceled due to adoption of jet power 8. Photorecon specialist of 1917, capable of 24,000 feet 9. High-altitude Mach 3 aircraft designed for the CIA 10. High-speed carrier-based recon plane of 1944

3. Which aircraft, after landing in error on the night of April 28-29, 1944, became the target of every secret agent in Switzerland?

A. Consolidated B-24J B. Messerschmitt Me-110G-4 C. Boeing B-17G D. de Havilland Mosquito Mark 30 4. Which two aircraft were responsible for shooting down two Swiss Messerschmitt Me-109Es on September 5, 1944?

A. Lockheed P-38s B. Focke-Wulf Fw-190As C. North American P-51s D. Messerschmitt Me-109Gs 5. In 2001 a collision over which island resulted in a Lockheed EP-3E having to force-land and the death of the intercepting Chinese Shenyang J-8II pilot?

A. Hainan B. Quemoy C. Taiwan D. Matsu

ANSWERS: MYSTERY SHIP: Martin T4M-1. Learn more about it at historynet.com/aviation-history.

EXTREME RECONNAISSANCE PLANES: A.9, B.1, C.10, D.8, E.7, F.2, G.4, H.5, I.6, J.3. AERIAL INCIDENTS: 1.A, 2.D, 3.B, 4.C, 5.A. 70

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TOP: NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND: BOTTOM: U.S. AIR FORCE

>

2. On October 20, 1942, Finnish ace Ilmari Juutilainen shot down which unmarked German aircraft, suspected of being Soviet-crewed?

A. Junkers Ju-88 B. Junkers Ju-52/3m C. Dornier Do-17Z D. Heinkel He-111

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TODAY IN HISTORY MAY 1, 1931 THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING OFFICIALLY OPENS. IN ITS FIRST YEAR ONLY 23% OF THE AVAILABLE SPACE WAS SOLD. THE LACK OF TENANTS LED NEW YORKERS TO DISMISS THE BUILDING AS THE “EMPTY STATE BUILDING.” IN YEAR ONE THE OBSERVATION DECK HAULED IN APPROXIMATELY $2 MILLION IN REVENUE, EQUAL TO WHAT ITS OWNERS COLLECTED IN RENT. THE BUILDING FIRST TURNED A PROFIT IN THE 1950s.

For more, visit

WWW.HISTORYNET.COM/ TODAY-IN-HISTORY

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AERO ARTIFACT survival story George Gay reads up on news from Midway at Pearl Harbor. The Navy ensign was flown to Hawaii for treatment immediately after his ocean rescue—note the bandaged wound on his left hand, courtesy of a Zero’s bullet.

in hot water

As Lt. Cmdr. John Waldron’s TBD-1 Devastators (story, P. 44) of VT-8 made their way from USS Hornet toward the Japanese fleet at the Battle of Midway on June 4, 1942, Ensign George H. Gay Jr. could tell there was trouble ahead: “A Japanese scout from one of their cruisers fell in behind us and tracked us and I know gave away our position and course and speed.” Before long, “Zeros jumped on us and it was too late.”

The unescorted Devastators were no match for the speedier A6M2s, which splashed 14 of the 15 TBDs before any could make torpedo runs. The only exception was Gay, who dropped his torpedo at Japan’s Sōryū aircraft carrier before Zeros shot him into the Pacific. For 30 hours Gay bobbed in the water, an eyewitness to history as the Japanese fleet maneuvered and eventually burned around him from the ensuing SBD Dauntless attacks that changed the course of the Pacific War. Three objects from the airplane saved Gay: The life jacket (above) that kept him afloat; his pilot’s seat cushion that “just came floating out,” which he used to hide his face from strafing enemy fighters and circling ships; and a lifeboat that somehow came free of its secured position inside the airplane. “Personally, I was just lucky,” Gay later reflected. “I’ve never understood why I was the only one that came back....I want to be sure that the men that didn’t come back get the credit for the work that they did.”

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AH

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