Wings of Gold: An Account of Naval Aviation Training in World War II, The Correspondence of Aviation Cadet/Ensign Robert R. Rea
348
Wings of Gold: An Account of Naval Aviation Training in World War II, The Correspondence of Aviation Cadet/Ensign Robert R. Rea
348eBook
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Overview
Millions of Americans underwent military training during World War II, and contemporary historians and readers have begun to recognize the significance and value of primary sources related not only to combat but also to training and preparedness.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780817390303 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Alabama Press |
| Publication date: | 10/21/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 348 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
Wesley Phillips Newton and Robert R. Rea are Professors of History, Auburn University.
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Wings of Gold
An Account of Naval Aviation Training in World War II
By Wesley Phillips Newton, Robert R. Rea
UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS
Copyright © 1987 The University of Alabama PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8173-9030-3
CHAPTER 1
Personal Background
THE AUTHOR OF the following letters, Robert Right Rea, was born in Wichita, Kansas, on October 2, 1922, the only child of George Edgar and Fleda Schollenberger Rea. The city in which he grew up was young enough to remember its cowtown antecedents and brash enough to boast that it was "the Aircapital of the World" and to claim a population of 100,000. Robert's maternal grandfather had built a sod house on the Kansas prairie, and as a lad Bob met an elderly lady who had been kidnapped by Indians from her Wichita home and an old gentleman who had witnessed the bloody aftermath of an Indian massacre a few miles south of town. At the same time, Wichitans gathered by the thousands to watch the planes at the Travel Air, Stearman, Swallow, and Cessna factories, and they picnicked at the half-completed Municipal Airport while Ford Trimotors landed on a summer's evening. Wichita stood between its cattleman's past and a great aeronautical future — just as that generation stood between two world wars.
Like most Wichitans, the Rea family came from someplace else. The Reas were Hoosiers who had farmed above Madison, Indiana, on the Ohio River, since the late eighteenth century. George Rea (1881–1948) left Madison, and after trying his hand as a farm machinery salesman from Texas to the Dakotas, he settled in Wichita. The discovery that oil and water do not mix led him into a new business venture when petroleum-rich El Dorado was forced to turn to Wichita for bottled drinking water. Horse-drawn wagons could not compete with solid-tired trucks, and having successfully demonstrated the efficacy of the new mode of transportation, George Rea employed his equipment locally, forming the Rea & Bell Transfer Company, later the Merchants Van & Storage Company. As small businesses go, it was a success.
At about this time, George met Fleda High Schollenberger, organist at the Central Christian Church, where the bachelor businessman sang in the choir. The Schollenbergers had moved west from Pennsylvania to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Fleda was born in 1882. The family subsequently settled in Wichita, running a small hotel which, according to a venerable traveling salesman, was the only decent place to eat in Wichita early in this century. Jacob D. Schollenberger, a patriarchal old gentleman, devoted his last years to building neighborhood churches (no matter what the denomination) and, as a staunch prohibitionist, bailing the hatchet- wielding Carry Nation out of the Wichita jail. Fleda was a professional musician and cared for her elderly parents until, in 1917, she married George Rea. Marriage during wartime would be repeated in the next generation, but George Rea was old enough to escape service in the First World War, and his family was well established in a comfortably roomy house when his son was born.
The household in which Robert grew up was run by his mother but dominated by his father. George Rea was a powerful six-footer, bald at an early age, who never raised his voice nor needed to, at home or at work, where his men respected the boss who could do — and did — anything he asked them to do. He fondly remembered his youthful prowess as a boxer. In his mature years he found relaxation in hunting and fishing, boasting that he never shot a squirrel out of a tree, save through the head, and never caught more fish than his family could eat. He was understandably disappointed that his son inherited neither his stature and physique nor his love of roughing it on the banks of the Ninescah River. Fleda Rea was a proper Pennsylvania Dutch housewife. She was house-proud, and her kitchen was the source of endless delight to her husband and son. Dinnertime was family time, and there an attentive lad might learn much. After dinner she introduced her son to the piano sonatas of Beethoven and accompanied her husband as he sang the love songs of their generation. Life was quiet, ordered, and disciplined, filled with a love carefully restrained by what were then considered to be the proprieties.
Robert Rea was educated in the excellent public schools of Wichita. As elementary and intermediate schools were no more than a block from home, his was very much a neighborhood society; friends and playmates lived within the elm-shaded confines of South Martinson Avenue. He moved rapidly through the grades and went to East High, on the far side of town, because it was relatively close to his father's place of business. Along with the evident advantages of good schooling, Bob enjoyed the hidden advantages of being put to the broom, the bucket, and then the loading dock of his father's warehouse. The boss would not allow, nor did the son receive, any privileges of status — that was to be earned if it was to be enjoyed, and truck drivers are great social democrats. At the same time, Bob was led into music by his mother and rather casually practiced the violin until, having achieved the principal's chair in the high school orchestra, he and his teacher agreed that he was not destined for the career of a professional musician. That decision opened the door to musical pleasure, and his collegiate years were filled with fiddling, singing, and long evenings devoted to absorbing the recorded classics in the company of friends. In high school, a boy's delight in the novels of Alexandre Dumas found active release in a self-taught fencing club. A relative latecomer to the Musketeers, Bob happily inherited the mantle of D'Artagnan and devoted himself to proving his merit with a foil. After watching his first intercollegiate fencing match, George Rea pardoned his son's disinterest in boxing, baseball, and other "manly" sports.
In the fall of 1939, Bob Rea began his studies at Friends University, a Quaker college in Wichita which had a fine reputation for scholarship, music, and broadly tolerant Christian values. Classes began on September 2; Hitler had invaded Poland the previous day. While adults who remembered the war to make the world safe for democracy seemed to disbelieve that such a war could happen again and were surprised and horrified by its outbreak, the entering college class of 1939 was not. For years they had read of war in Manchuria and other parts of China, Ethiopia, and Spain and had watched the swastika creep like a shadow across central Europe. Under the evening streetlights they had weighed the future, as boys will do among themselves, and concluded that war was inevitable. They would simply have to live with it, quite certain where right lay and equally sure that, as Americans, they would be there.
Happy the young man who can spend his college years in a small school wherein ideas flourish and intellectual competition is the norm, where the arts are nourished and individual initiative replaces team effort. That was Friends University between 1939 and 1943. There were social fraternities and sororities, such as Alpha Kappa Tau and Delta Rho Alpha Nu, where town boys and dorm girls met and fell in love. There were sports, for Bob tennis and fencing and — surprisingly — an athletic letter. There was no drinking, no smoking, and the dances were officially unofficial. There was also a student newspaper, the University Life, on whose staff Bob began to write, turned to soliciting advertisements, and wound up as an editor — a position in which he learned the dangers of a too-free press. If he made Who's Who in American Colleges and Universities, he did not (quite) make the university honor society.
From the outset, the war posed a problem of values and understanding in a Quaker school with firm pacifist beliefs. Like the majority of his friends and fellows, Bob was neither Quaker nor pacifist and was inclined to scorn their views. As young men began to leave school for the armed services, the arguments became heated at times, but the point was made, on both sides, that good men may differ in matters of principle, and draftee, volunteer, and C.O. learned to accept one another.
The war remained distant until December 7, 1941. Bob and his friends heard the first radio reports of Pearl Harbor while hashing over the results of the previous night's fencing match. Then, for most college men, it became a question of how long it would be before the draft caught up with them. The armed forces instituted programs such as ASTP, V-1, and V-5, which allowed a volunteer to attend college while in service or to remain in school until graduation. It was clearly the way to go if one might choose. With the draft board breathing down his neck, Bob sought admission to the V-5 Naval Aviation program in October 1942. Why the Navy? Cleaner aboard ship than in a trench. Why aviation? Young Wichitans had grown up in "the Aircapital" (even if they had never gotten off the ground). And one of Bob's closest friends, William E. Roy, had just won his Navy wings of gold. Bill's whites outshone another friend's olive drab; his sword (even aviation officers had to have them in those days) felt good to a fencer's hand; and Bill knew the trick of polishing his shoes with gin. Enough to take one down to the recruiting station at the Post Office, where you learned to stretch past five feet six inches (Navy minimum, Rea's maximum) and to worry about the effects of too much reading on 20/20 vision. Massive ingestion of carrots took care of the latter concern (or was believed to help), and on November 4, 1942, Aviation Cadet Rea was sworn into the V-5 program, U.S. Naval Reserve, in Kansas City, Missouri. The previous evening he had written to his girlfriend:
Dear Phyl,
Pardon my failure to write Saturday as I usually do, but everything was hanging fire then and I was a bit up in the air. Of course I still am, but the fog is clearing somewhat. "Fog" in case you are curious, is my status with the U.S. Army. At present I am in the process of affiliating myself with the U.S. Naval Reserves as an Aviation Cadet. That will allow me to finish this year at Friends [University] and then give me 8 months training, possibility of a year as an instructor, and then — who knows?
I decided all this Monday [October 26] after receiving notice of my draft physical. I got my papers in order and am here a week later taking lots of tests and wasting two days. I had no trouble in Wichita except getting my eyes O.K.ed. I had read 10 hours Sunday, and Monday my right eye was about 75% efficient. It was alright Tuesday, however, and was fine this afternoon when tested. These navy recruiters are an interesting lot, some of the worst sour-pusses and gripers I ever met, others swell fellows. J_____ and P_____ S_____ are up here now getting into the V-1 program. Their tests were over today and mine will be tomorrow. No hitch in the get along yet, but my fingers are crossed until I get all sworn in.
The Navy kept its word and allowed Bob to graduate from Friends University on May 31, 1943, with an A.B. in History. His Navy orders to report for training were already in hand. From this point his letters may speak for him.
The correspondence presented here consists of most of the letters written by Robert Rea to his parents between June 1943 and November 1945, when he was discharged from active duty and returned home. Like most wartime letters, they were intended to reassure as much as to inform. Consequently, they were couched in homely terms and dealt with matters the writer might assume would be of interest at home. They omitted those inevitable personal foibles that most young men prefer to hide. Otherwise they were open and candid and provide a reasonably complete picture of the conditions and nature of the naval aviation training program. Each letter was devotedly filed by the author's mother, secure in its envelope bearing the serviceman's postmark "Free," and remained untouched from 1945 to 1983, passing from her to the writer upon her death in 1958.
To Bob's letters to his "Dear Folks" have been added excerpts from his letters to Phyllis Jeanne Edwards, who became his wife on February 14, 1945. Phyl was the daughter of Dr. David Morton Edwards, a distinguished Quaker educator, formerly President of Earlham College, and President of Friends University at the time of his death in 1939. She was then a sophomore, a leading figure in all aspects of campus life at Friends University. Brought together by common classes, interests, and activities, Phyl and Bob became romantically involved in 1941, only to be parted in 1942, when she left for graduate study at Boston University. At that point Bob began a correspondence which continued until May 1945, when Mrs. Phyllis Rea joined her husband at Green Cove Springs, Florida. Phyl and Bob remained together during the final stages of his naval training — and recently celebrated their fortieth wedding anniversary. It hardly need be said that their correspondence was not primarily concerned with naval affairs, but as far as it was, it fills some gaps in the first set of letters, and it portrays events in a somewhat different light, often plainer and harsher regarding matters more immediate to the generation that fought the war than to their parents. Curious readers may fill the scholarly omissions with the content of their own love letters.
CHAPTER 2The Distant Drums of War
WHEN TWENTY-YEAR-OLD Robert Rea was sworn into the U.S. Navy's V-5 program on November 4, 1942, World War II had been in progress for three years, two months, and four days. In the year of his enlistment, the armed services put together an indoctrination film series entitled Why We Fight, based on old and recent newsreels. With riveting narration and drum-punctuated musical score, it unfolded the epochal events that had led to September 1, 1939, and those that had since reshaped the world. The film pictured Adolf Hitler working himself into hysteria before a crowd that responded with mechanical frenzy; a diving Stuka with keening siren and whistling bomb; a dead child in a blasted street; panzers on the point of the blitzkrieg in open country beyond the Meuse; the sky over Kent whorled with contrails as Sir Hugh Dowding parceled out Britain's "few" to intercept Goering's black-cross bombers. Through his periscope a smiling "Grey Wolf" captain savored the fiery results of his handiwork on an oil tanker. A begoggled Field Marshal Rommel paused in his command car to muse over the smoking hulks of British armor near Tobruk. On and on the images flickered in black and grey and white, reminding Americans of Pearl Harbor on that special Sunday in 1941 when a tranquil scene was transformed into a latter-day Dante's Inferno. No less grim were the subsequent losses of the carriers Lexington and Yorktown and the sky battles of the Coral Sea and Midway.
Midway occurred five months to the day before Bob Rea took his oath. From that short perspective it was not possible to realize that the "five minutes of Midway" — in which three Japanese carriers were fatally struck by U.S. carrier-borne Dauntless divebombers, to be joined later by a fourth carrier of the Imperial task force — "spelled the ultimate doom of Japan." Defeat in the Coral Sea and at Midway turned the enemy to an overland offensive through the jungle and across the steep Owen Stanley mountain range of New Guinea. Their objective was the key base of Port Moresby, from which they planned to launch an invasion of Australia.
As a companion piece to their New Guinea campaign, the Japanese had begun to occupy the adjacent Solomon Islands. From August 1942 onward, the name "Guadalcanal" increasingly made banner headlines. It was the first major objective of an Allied counteroffensive in the Pacific, and it came to symbolize the classic rigors of jungle warfare as isolated U.S. Marines fought off attacks from land, sea, and air. The action focused on an airfield called Henderson. From there, Marine, Navy, and a few AAF pilots engaged the Zero, an enemy fighter superior in several respects to the U.S. Navy's and Marine Corps's Wildcat and the AAF's Lightning, the United States' first-line fighters of that day. In furious air battles the Japanese "suffered a significant weakening of air strength through the loss of trained pilots. ... The Japanese could ill-afford this attrition, for American plane production and pilot training were increasing." The climax of the struggle for Guadalcanal came late in October and during the first two weeks of November. When the final banzai charge was repulsed and the last Japanese effort to reinforce "the Island of Death" ended in costly failure, the Marine commander signaled to the Navy, "The men of [Guadalcanal] lift their battered helmets in deepest admiration."
The Japanese were still entrenched on Wake, in the Gilberts, the Carolines, the Marshalls, and the Marianas. They held the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, and Formosa. From Burma they threatened India, and squabbling between Washington and Chiang Kai-shek over American neglect of the CBI (the China-Burma-India theater) threatened to deliver China to the Japanese invader. Yet November 1942 was a time for relief, as in both the Solomons and New Guinea, Allied forces began to shove the enemy back.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Wings of Gold by Wesley Phillips Newton, Robert R. Rea. Copyright © 1987 The University of Alabama Press. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Illustrations,Preface,
Introduction: The Training of U.S. Naval Aviators, 1910-1945,
1. Personal Background,
2. The Distant Drums of War,
3. Sprouting Wings,
4. Winter of War,
5. Spring in the Air,
6. Winning the Wings of War,
7. Corsairs and Carriers,
8. War's End,
A Personal Postscript,
Appendix: Flight Maneuvers Mentioned,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Index,