Sunday in Hell, page 54
Men of the 44th Pursuit Squadron rushed to disperse, fuel, and arm their twelve P-40 Warhawks lined up on the edge of the runway. Only four of the squadron’s officers were at Bellows that morning, and three were pilots. They wanted to get in the air immediately, though their aircraft were not completely armed. Lieutenant Phillips, the armament officer, insisted that all six .50-caliber guns be fully loaded before any aircraft took off. When Nono’s nine Zekes appeared and began raking Bellows with strafing attacks, the three determined pilots saw no choice but to ignore his wishes.
Second Lieutenant Hans C. Christiansen started to get into the cockpit of his plane. An enemy machine gun bullet struck him in the back. He fell at the feet of his astonished mechanic, Corporal Elmer L. Rund, who was standing by the [trailing edge] of the right wing. Blood gushed from a large hole in the life jacket of the fatally wounded pilot. Rund and his crew chief, Joe Ray, ducked under the aircraft for protection from the strafing attack by the Japanese planes, which seemed to come from all directions.
In the meantime, 2d Lieutenant George A. Whiteman ran up to a P-40 that was still being loaded with ammunition. He told the men to get off the wing because he would fly the plane as it was. He started the engine and taxied out onto the runway, leaving so quickly that the armorers hadn’t time to reinstall the gun cowlings on the wings. Whiteman began his takeoff run. Two Zekes immediately spotted him, and rolled in to attack. He managed to get his slowly accelerating Warhawk off the ground approximately 50 feet before enemy planes closed sufficiently from high on his tail to open fire. He tried to turn inside the two fighters to spoil their tracking solution and cause them to overshoot his flight path, but the P-40 hadn’t enough speed and altitude to successfully make a hard turn and evade. His attackers’ bullets struck the engine, wings, and cockpit. The Warhawk burst into flames. He attempted a last ditch belly landing on the beach, but his left wing hit the sand, the airplane cart-wheeled, broke up, and a tremendous ball of fire erupted.
Staff Sergeant Cosmos Manning carried a large fire extinguisher down to the wreckage, and others followed in a hopeless rescue effort. Black smoke rose in a thick column from the crash site, marking the funeral pyre of Lieutenant Whiteman. Staff Sergeant Edward J. Covelesky, a P-40 crew chief, had thrown himself down on top of a sand dune to hide in the vegetation when the strafing attack began. He picked himself up and ran down to the beach area, where he saw the only trace of the P-40 was a few scattered pieces of metal surrounding an ugly black patch of smoldering sand. Fourteen years later, Sedalia Air Force Base in Missouri was renamed Whiteman AFB in honor of Lieutenant Whiteman.
The third pilot at Bellows, 1st Lieutenant Samuel W. Bishop, taxied into position, turned his Warhawk toward the ocean, and began his takeoff roll directly behind Whiteman. He saw Whiteman’s plane go down burning after a burst of gunfire tore into the engine and cockpit. A deep rage engulfed him as he got airborne. He held the P-40’s gun trigger down as Japanese planes swarmed around him. As he retracted his landing gear and hugged the water, trying to gain speed, the Zekes clung tenaciously to him and shot him down in the ocean about a half mile offshore. Despite a bullet wound in his leg, Bishop managed to get out of his plane and, with his Mae West keeping him afloat, swam to shore.31
When the crew flew their crippled B-17C aircraft out of the fury engulfing Hickam and made an emergency landing at Bellows Field, their long ordeal wasn’t yet over. Bellows had had one lone fighter attack during the Japanese first strike, but fully expected more. By the time the bomber slid off the runway on its belly, word had spread at Bellows of attacks at Pearl Harbor, Wheeler, Kaneohe, and Hickam. The B-17 crew had been caught in the middle of the attacks on Hickam and had seen from a distance some of the devastation wracking Pearl harbor. Everyone anticipated a possible landing of Japanese troops. The weary, beleaguered bomber crew immediately began work to salvage the still-secret, new bomb sight and remove the stowed, still-greased guns they were going to mount for the last leg to the Philippines. The guns were later set up for ground defense.
Private Lester A. Ellis of the 86th Observation Squadron was positioned on the runway as a lookout near the crash-landed B-17 when the Japanese second wave appeared at Bellows.
When sent to his post, he was ordered to give a shouted warning to the plane’s crew, and Bellows men assisting them, should the enemy return and begin strafing runs. Lieutenant Nono’s nine Japanese fighters’ repeated attacks gave him more than enough times to shout, and each time everyone near the downed bomber ran for cover. After the Japanese planes left, the bomber crew counted 73 bullet holes in the B-17. Though considered repairable, the airplane was instead used for spare parts, and never repaired. The crew suffered two seriously wounded, Staff Sergeant Lawrence B. Velarde and Sergeant Vernon D. Tomlinson.32
The crippled, crash-landed B-17C, which diverted from Hickam to avoid repeated attacks by the Japanese raiders. The pilot made an emergency, downwind landing at Bellows Field and retracted the landing gear during roll-out. The crew counted 73 bullet holes in the bomber after the airborne attacks while attempting to land at Hickam, followed by attacks at Bellows Field by nine Japanese fighters. NPSAM
Nono’s Zekes did enough damage at Bellows. In addition to the wounding of the medical detachment’s Private First Class James C. Brown in another lone Zeke’s early morning “out of the sun” strafing pass down the line of tents, the deaths of Lieutenants Christiansen and Whiteman and the wounding of Lieutenant Bishop - all three from Wheeler’s 44th Pursuit Squadron - two more men from the 86th Observation Squadron received wounds at Bellows. Two others received wounds at Hickam in separate attacks. When Nono’s nine Zekes departed Bellows, he wasn’t through. Not yet.33
In Nono’s group of Zekes Sublieutenant Iyozo Fujita was on his first combat mission. The night before, when he was aboard Soryu, the pleasant-faced young fighter pilot was keenly aware this would be his first mission, and expected it to be his last. He drank several bottles of beer to bring on sleep, then took a bath. Before the early morning launch, he donned clean clothing to go into battle spotless, like the samurai of old. Then he pocketed a picture of his deceased parents. He told himself he was completely in the hands of fate - but now, having successfully come off a damaging attack on Bellows, he had passed his first test, was still alive, and was following Nono on his way to Kaneohe.
They streaked back to the Naval Air Station, where nine of Shimazaki’s Kate horizontal bombers already had the field under attack, coming in at much lower altitudes than the 10,000 feet or more flown by the first wave of bombers over Pearl Harbor. The Zekes in the first wave had been able to confirm there were no heavy antiaircraft guns defending Kaneohe. The second wave of Kates approaching at the lower altitude carried a mixed load including two 550-lb bombs, wouldn’t be threatened by big guns - and their bombing could be more accurate.34
The first wave’s eleven Zekes had done heavy damage at Kaneohe and shocked the Air Station into full alert. The Japanese fighters’ 7.7-mm machine guns and 20-mm cannons, armor-piercing ammunition loads interspersed with tracers and incendiary rounds, killed and wounded men scampering to mount a defense; damaged and started fires on aircraft and vehicles, and in hangars. The 20-mm rounds exploded on impact, sounding like bombs, and did much heavier damage. Officers and men rushed to their duty stations and Lieutenant Commander Buckley and a considerable number of men were in Hangar 1, which housed Patrol Squadrons 11 and 12. Buckley was supervising the supply of weapons and replenishment ammunition.
Twenty-five minutes after the first wave departed, Iida’s nine Zekes from the second wave swirled overhead above the bombers, staying out of the way and providing cover, while bombs dropped by Ichihara’s second-wave Kates fell with telling effect. Each released a pair of bombs in each pass from altitudes between 1,000 and 1,500 feet. Two bombs hit and exploded in Hangar 1, destroying the four PBYs inside; two close alongside near the southeast corner, and one dud fell inside. The five bombs caused the most casualties suffered in all the attacks. Another bomb destroyed the Air Station’s only fire truck.
Immediately behind the nine bombers came nine more led by Lieutenant Tsutomu Hagiwara. At this point men on the ground who observed the bombers’ attacks became uncertain whether or not the second nine Kates dropped any bombs at Kaneohe. “So much smoke was in the area and people [were] stunned by the first wave [of bombers]…” Observers on the ground concluded, if the second group didn’t release their bombs, the lead observer-bombardier had probably been killed because his aircraft had taken considerable punishment from a high volume of machine gun fire aimed at the lead aircraft. They had seen the tracers hitting the aircraft. If the second group of Kates didn’t drop, the first group made another bomb run, aiming for the other hangar - and were far less successful. By then resistance was fierce. Some bombs fell between the hangar and the water, causing holes in the parking ramp. The rest fell in the water, not a tribute to the raider’s bombing accuracy. Explosions in front of the open hangar doors heavily damaged airplanes inside and set them on fire.
Twenty year-old Aviation Machinist Mate Clifton E. Dohrmann woke up to war at Kaneohe when the first wave came that morning. Clif was in his bunk in Patrol Squadron 11 barracks in the foothills, about a mile from the flight line, when he awakened to what sounded like bombs going off. He and other men went outside to see what was going on, looked toward Kaneohe Bay and saw Filipino contractor personnel running away from the airfield toward the foothills. Then he saw aircraft he knew to be Japanese Zeroes attacking the Air Station. More men came outside, the word spread rapidly, and then Clif and others went back inside to pull on their uniforms and hurry on foot to their duty stations.
As he neared Hangar 1 and its engineering shop in the northwest corner, his duty station, he found himself running for cover inside the huge building. The first wave had come and gone. Bombers were coming, the beginning of the second wave. The hangar housed aircraft from patrol squadrons VP-11 and VP-12. Men were scurrying to find weapons to fire, or for cover anywhere they could find it, as were drivers of any vehicles and the small flight line tractors pulling flatbeds picking up wounded and dead. Bombs from the Kates were exploding uncomfortably close, near the hangar. Running beside him was another man. Clif didn’t know who he was and neither of them had time to stop and get acquainted. They never did become acquainted.
As they neared the huge hangar door, the first of the two bombs to hit Hangar 1, penetrated the roof, exploded on the concrete floor, and sent a piece of shrapnel tearing through the door, instantaneously leveling the man next to Clif. It tore off his leg. Fear, shock, training and the survival instinct took over. There was nothing Clif could do. The wounded man would be picked up. He had to get to his duty station in engineering.
Guns. Men arriving in engineering needed guns. The squadron’s airplanes had been badly damaged by the first wave of Zekes. All four PBYs moored in the water were on fire. Crews couldn’t possibly get any Catalinas safely in the air when fighters were waiting for the Kates to finish their work. Clif and others rushed to Ordnance, Patrol Wing ONE’s armory, to get rifles, pistols, machine guns, and ammunition, anything they could to fight back. It was locked, but someone quickly arrived with keys.
Clif’s engineering boss, Chief Aviation Machinist George Roy Jackson, grabbed a
.50-caliber machine gun and ammunition and headed for the ramp. Clif and another man took a .50-caliber machine gun, a tripod and ammunition and went out the single door adjacent to Ordnance, facing Kaneohe Bay, near the northeast corner of Hangar 1. The Japanese fighters in the first wave had strafed east and west, up and down the line of PBYs parked wing to wing between the ocean and the hangars. Men were fighting fires on several of the airplanes, still targets for the second wave now savaging the Air Station. The two defenders would need some protection.
Clif remembered engineering was modifying VP-11’s aircraft, installing armored seats for the pilots and other crew members. The two men rushed enough armored seats onto the ramp to form them into a semi-circle facing the ocean, with Hangar 1’s high concrete block and stucco wall at their backs for protection. Clif quickly set up as the gunner on the right, facing the Bay, inside the protective semi-circle. His volunteer assistant gunner, a crew member on one of VP-11’s Catalinas was to his left, almost aligned with and in front of the hangar’s side entry door, near Ordnance. He was to be the ammunition bearer and feed the ammunition belts into the gun.
At this point, in which brief minutes seemed an eternity, bombers were still on the attack. Chief Jackson was on the ramp firing his hand-held .50-caliber machine gun at Kates as they roared overhead. On the bay-side of Hangar 1, Clif fired short bursts at raiders he believed he might have a chance to hit. They saw no hits.
Then another explosion just as Clif was squeezing off a burst. Another bomb inside the hangar. Again, shrapnel tore through the door, this time from behind his squadron mate. The man pitched forward, face down, pulling the ammunition belt with him, which jammed the machine gun. Clif turned to see a hole in the man’s back, a hole he felt he could stick his entire hand into. Clif’s participation in antiaircraft defense was over. His squadron mate needed immediate medical attention.
He ran out on the ramp in front of the huge hangar door looking for one of the flight line tractors picking up wounded. Now came the fighters, from behind him, then seemingly from every direction. He found someone to help him, and lifted the wounded man onto the flatbed. He feared the man was mortally wounded, but at least he was on his way to medical care. Clif hadn’t time to dwell on the subject. Fires caused by the Kates’ bombs and the Zeke’s cannon and machine gun fire set Hangar 1 ablaze, and the huge structure burned until only its steel skeleton was left.
It was shortly after 1000 hours and it was all over at Kaneohe - or was it? Obvious question. “Where had the Japanese come from?” “Might they land troops?” Logic said troops might not be far behind the air attack. Before night came, Clif and other men from Kaneohe were in the hills above the Air Station, armed with rifles and machine guns, in hurriedly-dug defensive positions, while closer to the beaches, civilians - mostly volunteers, others motivated by the declaration of martial law - were digging trenches and filling sand bags, fully expecting a Japanese invasion.35
In VP-14’s hangar, after the 18 Kate level bombers of the second wave passed, Radioman Third Class Ken Poppleton and others were more fortunate, and they knew it. They believed the small amount of fire power they marshaled had kept their hangar from being struck by the bombers. Hangar No. 1 to the west of theirs took multiple bomb hits, and was the hangar where Kaneohe’s defenders sustained most of their casualties.
Wrecked automobiles, some still burning, beside a damaged hangar at Naval Air Station, Kaneohe Bay, Oahu, during or soon after the Japanese air attack. NHHC
Ken and his squadron mates spent the next hour assessing what else they might need in case another attack occurred. He checked the teletype for any communications telling them what to expect next. He found a message from Ensign Tanner’s PBY, 14-P-1, reporting their attack on the midget submarine. He took the message from the machine and delivered it to their squadron commander. His radio instructor caught sight of him and ordered him to the “Radio Shack” (message center) at the headquarters of Kaneohe Naval Air Station. “We need all the help we can get.”
He spent the next ten hours on the circuit between Radio Honolulu and Radio Washington. The circuit was an intercept circuit to keep NAS Kaneohe Bay and Patrol Wing ONE informed of official communications, and was an alternate communications node in case Pearl Harbor lost it’s capability to transmit and receive.
No sooner did he start monitoring traffic than it became clear people at Radio Washington, receiving messages, were hard to convince an attack was in progress. Not until Pearl Harbor had a temporary power loss during the second wave’s attack, and Kaneohe took control of communications, did Radio Washington accept that an attack was in progress.
Ken Poppleton slept and ate at the “Radio Shack” for the next two days, and only then returned to his squadron. He wouldn’t fly as a crew member on a PBY again until after the middle of December.
Before he left the hangar for his new temporary duty station that morning, the second wave of Zekes came roaring in for further attacks, having come from their assault on Bellows Field. Though one launched a strafing attack on the VP-14 hangar, it caused no serious damage and cost the Japanese pilot his life.
Aviation Machinist Guy Avery recalled the Zeroes “cruised around over us, firing sporadically at any likely target.” They strafed homes, cars, pedestrians. “Particularly did they harass the firemen who were fighting the blazes among the squadron planes standing on the ramp.” Lieutenant Iida went after the station armory, making his pass just as an aviation ordnanceman named Sands stepped out of the side door and fired off a burst with a Browning Automatic Rifle, emptying the clip. A crusty aviation ordnanceman 2nd class of the old school, he called to men inside the armory, “Hand me another BAR! Hurry up! I swear I hit that yellow bastard!”
As Iida moved in for the kill, the defiant sailor “emptied another clip” and escaped Iida’s bullets, which “pockmarked the wall of the building.” Iida broke off the attack, turning to overtake and rejoin the fighters who had reformed and were headed toward a mountain gap and additional attacks on Wheeler Field. It was nearly over at Kaneohe, but not quite.
