Read an Excerpt
In the Hands of Fate
The Story of Patrol Wing Ten 8 DECEMBER 1941-11 MAY 1942
By Dwight R. Messimer Naval Institute Press
Copyright © 1985 United States Naval Institute
All right reserved. ISBN: 1557505470
Chapter One
Patrol Wing Ten The sky was splotched with flak bursts, the air filled with the drone of aircraft engines coming from the Vees of Japanese bombers high overhead. Heavy explosions shook Surabaja, thick black smoke rolled skyward from raging fires on the navy base, and civilians scurried for the beehive-shaped air-raid shelters. Between the sky and the earth, Japanese fighters rolled and looped, pursuing the few Allied fighters that rose to oppose them.
Two men, dressed in khaki shorts and shortsleeved shirts, leaned against a building, looking up at the battle being fought above them. They were unshaven, their uniforms tattered. Each had a pair of gold wings over his left shirt pocket.
An old woman hurrying toward an air-raid shelter paused as she passed the two thin men slouched against the wall in their threadbare uniforms. Shaking her finger at them she snapped, "Young men, you're supposed to be out there fighting." Before the surprised officers could react, the old woman darted away.
The two men looked at each other and burst out laughing. Behind them the wall shuddered and heaved as a bomb exploded down the street. The men were PBY pilots inPatrol Wing Ten. The wing had been fighting the Japanese continuously for eight weeks. Though it had retreated nearly 1,500 miles and had lost 66 percent of its aircraft, the wing's aircrews were still flying back-to-back patrols in planes that were barely fit to fly. Dead tired, dressed in rags, and poorly equipped, the men in PatWing-10 faced the Japanese during the darkest weeks of the war.
This is their story.
The view through the cockpit windshield was obscured by thick grey clouds and heavy rain. Alone in the PBY's cockpit, Ensign Gordon Ebbe sat in the right-hand seat, a partially folded chart on his lap, his side window open. Rain blew through the open window, soaking the flyer and causing rivulets of water to run down his face. Peering downward through the gloom, Ebbe could barely make out the island's coastline two hundred feet below. As the plane sped past the island, the ensign compared the twists and turns of the shoreline to the wet chart on his lap. Despite the poor visibility, Ebbe was satisfied that he was still on course and there was no need to awaken his PPC (Patrol Plane Commander), Lieutenant Harvey Burden, who was asleep on the berth aft.
Another PBY flew beside Ebbe's plane, keeping station on his left wing. In that plane's cockpit Ensign Duncan ("Duke") Campbell and Ensign Edgar Hazelton were concentrating on staying with Ebbe. Their concentration was motivated by more than just a desire to keep formation-Campbell and Hazelton had no idea where they were going. Understandably, Campbell was uneasy and slightly irritated. He recalls:
Harvey Burden and his crew had whatever secret information there was to be delivered, and all we were along for was to pick-up Burden if he broke down. During our refueling stop in Palawan, I asked Harvey where we were going, but the mission was so hush-hush that he wouldn't tell me. All he told me was to fly wing on him. It was a night flight from Palawan, and after takeoff we learned we were headed south into the China Sea. I got really concerned then because I didn't have any charts for that area. All I had was a five-inch by seven-inch map I had found in a book. It covered everything from the Dutch East Indies, clear through the Philippines. If I didn't stay with Burden, we'd never get back.
Campbell's worst fears almost came true when the two planes became separated in the dark. Hurrying ahead to catch up, Campbell and Hazelton searched the black sky for some sign of Burden's plane. For a moment they thought they might have passed Burden, until Hazelton spotted a faint glow ahead to the right. It was the glow of the other plane's exhaust. The sighting had been fortunate. Just as Campbell closed up on Burden's left wing, it started to rain.
As the two PBYs neared their secret destination, the Kapuas River on Borneo's west coast, the four pilots faced several unknowns. Campbell and Hazelton still did not know their destination, and none of the pilots knew that the war they all expected was just a month away. But those things were really unimportant compared to the third unknown. They did not know that the map on Ebbe's lap was wrong and they were about to hit a mountain.
The first warning came when Ebbe lost sight of the shoreline. It just disappeared, swallowed up in the dark. He stuck his head out of the window for a better view, but the rain beat his face with such violence that he jerked back inside. But Ebbe had seen why the shoreline had disappeared. Ebbe saw trees.
The chart was all wrong. It showed the coastline continuing straight ahead and then curving off to the right. In fact, the shoreline made a ninety-degree left turn. A chunk of tree-covered land, three or four hundred feet high, was directly in front of the PBYs.
Ebbe kicked the rudder hard left and buried the column in his lap. Banking sharply, the PBY struggled upward as Ebbe rammed both throttles forward. Campbell and Hazelton saw the trees and Ebbe's violent maneuver at almost the same time. Desperately, Duke Campbell hauled his flying boat around, trying to stay with Ebbe. It was a losing proposition. Campbell's plane was on the inside of the turn, and to stay there it had to fly more slowly than Ebbe. But Ebbe was just barely hanging on as he struggled to clear the trees. Campbell and Hazelton were starting to stall.
Unable to stay with Ebbe, Campbell fell off and the two planes crossed, Ebbe above and Campbell below. Trailing from Ebbe's plane like a giant fishing line was a steel, aerial antenna. As Campbell passed beneath Ebbe's plane, the cable slid along the trailing edge of Campbell's right wing and jammed in the aileron. There was a hard wrench and a loud snap as the antenna parted, leaving six feet of steel cable wedged between the aileron and the wing.
Campbell was in trouble. With his right aileron jammed, he had to use maximum left aileron to keep his plane under control. The PBY lacked any mechanically assisted controls, and under the best conditions was a heavy plane to fly. With a jammed aileron Campbell's plane was nearly unmanageable. Only with the greatest effort were Campbell and Hazelton able to keep their plane in the air and stay with Ebbe.
The plan called for Burden to land and deliver the documents, while Campbell circled overhead. It was a plan that had to be changed, and Campbell lost no time getting on the radio to Burden.
While we struggled with the damn thing Burden landed on the river. The reason I wasn't supposed to land was because the river was full of rocks, and they didn't trust a young aviation cadet with a river landing. But I told him I couldn't make it back to Manila with the aileron jammed the way it was. Hell, it was a real struggle just holding the plane level.
It was obvious to Burden that Campbell had to land. The river conditions were bad, and landing even a healthy plane took skill and careful attention. Sweeping around to the left, Campbell lined up on the river and started down. Sweat poured off the pilots as the plane settled toward the water, nose up. They were concentrating so hard on controlling the plane that they were nearly on the water when Campbell realized that his floats were still up. His hand shot toward the switch oh the instrument panel, and the floats dropped down. It had been a close thing.
While Burden delivered the secret messages, Campbell's badly shaken crew cleared the fouled aileron. The whole operation was quickly finished. In less than thirty minutes both planes were off the water and climbing back into the rain and clouds. Campbell never did find out what Harvey Burden had delivered.
The aircrews of Patrol Wing Ten (PatWing-10) had not always been involved in such cloak-and-dagger missions as this one. In fact, PatWing-10 did not even exist until December 1940. Nevertheless, as early as 1939 navy planners, having long recognized the possibility of a war with Japan, decided something had to be done to prepare for that possibility. In order to provide the aging Asiatic Fleet with an efficient long-range reconnaissance capability, a squadron of fourteen PBYs was sent to the Philippines.
The big, twin-engine flying boats' mission was to find the enemy at sea, an indispensable part of the Philippine's defense plan. The navy's role was to intercept the oncoming enemy offshore, and either drive him back or maul him so badly that his weakened forces could be chewed up on the beaches by General Douglas MacArthur's American and Filipino troops. It was the PBYs' job to scout ahead of the fleet, report the enemy's strength, course, and speed, and if necessary, attack with bombs and torpedoes. The PBY was an excellent patrol plane, but wholly unsuited for its role as a daylight, horizontal bomber.
The army was steadily reinforcing the Philippines with B-17s. Since the bomber flew faster, farther, higher, and was more heavily armed than the PBY, one might ask why were not B-17s used instead of PBYs. There were several reasons why.
In the first place, the fleet depended upon observations and reports made by its naval aviators. The soundness of that fundamental requirement had been demonstrated time and again since 1917. Secondly, the B-17s could only operate from land bases in the Philippines. That meant when fuel ran low, the army bombers would have to return to their base to refuel or rearm. The PBY, on the other hand, could land and refuel anywhere a tender had set up shop. In fact, with prior planning, the PBYs could refuel themselves from fuel caches stashed on dozens of small islands. It was the PBY's ability to go anywhere in the Pacific, without relying on prepared airfields, that made its presence in the Philippines necessary.
In its day, the PBY was a big airplane, capable of lifting tremendous loads off the water and carrying them long distances. It was also a rugged airplane, able to withstand rivet-popping landings on rough water, a feature that was particularly appreciated by downed airmen being rescued. But the PBY-4s and -5s suffered two deficiencies that made them very vulnerable in combat, They lacked self-sealing fuel tanks and sufficient armament.
There were four machine guns in a PBY, two .30-caliber guns and two .50-caliber guns. The .30-caliber gun in the bow looked like an arrangement out of World War I, in that it was fired by a man who stood in an open hatch, half his body outside the airplane. On the PBY-4, the two .50-caliber waist guns were fired through rectangular openings in the fuselage. The fourth gunner lay on his stomach peering through a slot in the bottom of the fuselage, between the step and the tail. His field of fire was very limited, so much so that the position was sometimes left unmanned, reducing the crew to seven instead of the full complement of eight.
In the PBY-4, the exposed positions of the bow and waist gunners seriously interfered with their shooting accuracy. The problem was the 110-knot wind, caused by the plane's movement through the air, that buffeted guns and gunners.
There were three pilots in the crew, usually two officers and an enlisted man called a Naval Aviation Pilot (NAP). The senior officer was usually the PPC, but not always. Prewar requirements were that a pilot needed up to 1,000 hours of flight time before he could take the qualifying, practical examination for PPC. That meant that a newly assigned lieutenant, lacking the minimum flight time, could be assigned as the second pilot in a plane commanded by an ensign, or a lieutenant (j.g.). One of the long-standing gripes voiced by reserve officers during the prewar period was the practice of allowing regular navy officers to become PPCs with only a few hundred hours of flight time, compared to the 1,00 hours minimum set for reserve officers. The 1,000-hour requirement was dropped when the war started.
An NAP was nearly always the third pilot. They were excellent pilots, often with much more experience than the officers. As a result, a good NAP was worth his weight in gold, and some PPCs insisted on having two NAPs aboard instead of another officer. The enlisted pilots were usually radiomen or machinist's mates, which is one reason they were so valuable.
On long patrols, often up to seventeen hours, the three pilots took turns flying. Similarly, the rest of the crew was made up of two radiomen and three machinist's mates who took turns manning the radio or sitting in the tower. When not at one of those positions, they rested, made coffee, or manned a gun position. In combat, one of the pilots went into the bow to act as bombardier and man the bow gun. Usually the senior radioman was on the radio, and the senior machinist's mate, the plane captain, was in the tower. The other crewmen manned the waist and tunnel guns.
The tower position requires an explanation, since it is frequently mentioned in the events covered in this book. The plane captain, usually a chief machinist's mate or a machinist's mate first class, was the flight engineer. He sat in the pylon that supported the wing above the fuselage, monitoring fuel consumption, engine temperature, and a host of other gauges.
The PBY crew was an integrated team of specialists, most of whom were cross-trained. The prewar practice of keeping the crews together, assigned to specific planes, resulted in closely knit companies of eight men each. That situation already existed in VP-21 when it made the move west from Pearl Harbor to the Philippines.
In September 1939, VP-21 flew to the Philippines via Midway, Wake Island, and Guam. The flight was uneventful except for a typhoon between Guam and the Philippines. Had the typhoon extended all the way to Manila, the situation might have gotten serious, because the charts being used to navigate did not show the heights of the mountains on the approach to Manila Bay. Therefore, the pilots were depending on clear weather for the flight across Luzon and into Manila Bay. Before there were any problems, they luckily broke out of the storm, and their arrival at Sangley Point was without incident.
Because the seaplane base at Sangley Point was unfinished, the planes moored to buoys that had been set by the tender USS Langley (AV 3). The Langley was an ex-aircraft carrier; in fact, she was America's first flattop, commissioned in 1922 after being converted from a coal collier. After having been converted a second time, this time from carrier to tender, she was sent out to join the other elderly ships that made up the U.S. Asiatic Fleet.
Though old and slow, the Langley was probably the finest seaplane tender in the world. But her spacious work areas, well-equipped machine shops, and ample stores were not really appreciated by the aircrews of VP-21, who had to live aboard her until the seaplane base an Sangley Point was finished.
Living aboard the Langley was not a popular arrangement with the aircrews. There was a certain amount of friction between the ship's crew and the "airdales," whose presence tended to disrupt the ship's routine. On the other side of the coin, the aircrews complained that their quarters were cramped, hot, and noisy. But strained relations were not limited to airmen and sailors.
By mid-1940 relations with Japan were becoming increasingly bad, and what a few described as a "do-nothing routine" had become one of regular training flights and practice bombing missions. The practice bombing missions were primarily against ships, and the emphasis, until the war started, was on horizontal bombing from 10,000 to 12,000 feet. Torpedo practice was done only "to a very small degree," and gunnery practice was done "very infrequently." The prewar training exercises revealed faults in the PBY that were either overlooked, or ignored.
From mid-1940 on, there were occasional exercises with PBYs against fighters. The fighters were to attack the PBYs, using gun cameras to record "hits." The PBYs' guns were similarly equipped. Film analysis showed that the fighters were scoring 1,300 "hits" for each six scored by the PBYs. Part of the problem stemmed from the open-to-the-elements arrangement of the PBY-4's guns. Gunners had a hard time concentrating on the target while being battered by a 110-knot wind. But regardless of the reason, the fact was clear that the PBYs were very vulnerable to fighter attack. Curiously, the one-sided score did not alarm anyone.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from In the Hands of Fate by Dwight R. Messimer Copyright © 1985 by United States Naval Institute
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
