My Father-In-Law (Jim) was Radio/Radar Man stationed at Kaneohe Bay with a PBY unit in Oct 1941. He would fly in a PBY to Wake Island and then take Marine Major Deveroux up to do a visual check on the island defenses. He asked Jim to pick out the artillery emplacements. He picked out all of the fake ones and did not detect the real ones so the Major was satisfied.
Then about mid-November, he and a fellow crew member were called to the Squadron CO's office. He asked which of them was more skilled. They replied they were both equally skilled. The CO had to make a decision on selecting one of them so he flipped a coin. He said that Jim lost and his buddy won and was to pack his gear as he was leaving the next day for Wake Island. Jim never found out what happened to him.
When Pearl Harbor was attacked the first place they hit was Kaneohe Bay. Fortunately, Jim had the day off and was fishing when the first wave hit. When he got to the airstrip the second was approached and he was strafed by a Zero and took off running and hid a culvert. He crawled out and made a run for it again and got strafed by another Zero. They both missed.
When he got to the hanger his Gunnery NCO Chief John Finn was standing in the open firing a machine guns at the Japanese. Finn was strafed a number of times and took 29 hits from .30cal rounds and shrapnel. He was later awarded the MoH. Jim went to the hospital a few days later and Finn was outside on crutches all bandaged up smoking a cigarette.
Jim's squadron was relocated to the New Caledonia area and to search for the Jap fleet and then converted to Navy PB4Y-1 (B-24) and moved to Guadalcanal. They did single plane missions up the Slot to Rabul taking on targets of opportunity like Jap floatplanes, transports and sometimes engaging in a dogfight with a Betty bomber or Mavis flying boat. Since he was the only one that could repair the radar, radio and turret controls he was taken off flying duty. That was fortunate as his squadron lost 30% of its personnel.
He got strafed again on the day of the big dogfight on Guadalcanal with a P-39 chasing the Zero away. On a Jap night bombing raid, he was in a slit trench and then woke up outside of the trench on the ground all covered in dirt. A bomb had hit next to his trench and lifted him out without a mark on him.
He contracted polio and malaria with his left side paralyzed and could barely walk. In the morning his buddies would go to his hooch, roll him out of his bunk, carry him to the radio shack and prop him up in the chair so he could use his right arm to repair and solder equipment. He spent his entire tour on the island.
While on Guadalcanal his squadron CO, Cmdr Bruce Van Voorhes, was awarded the MoH posthumously for taking out a Japanese radio communications facility near Rabul. He said when a plane would take off if it was not back in 12 hours they just assumed it was lost or shot down. He didn't find out what happened until a few decades later. On the bright side, he did have a vegetable garden while on Guadalcanal and fully recovered from malaria and polio and never got a scratch on him and lived to be 92.
When he was called up to active duty in 1941 he was an E-3. When the war ended he was a WO-4 on Guam. Even though he had seniority he was one of the last ones to return to the US as he let married guys and ones that were wounded go first.
After the war, he went into defense contracting and developed the first seeker head for the Sidewinder (another entertaining story), the CLGP projectile and the solar-powered call boxes you see along the highways.
Wolfhag
goes to sea with the Terrain Mat.
