wrong place, wrong time
Other aircraft airborne that day
At 0620, three PBYs were ordered into the air on a routine submarine patrol that had nothing to do with any knowledge of an impending attack. One found a midget sub and helped the USS Ward to sink it. When the attack on Pearl Harbor started, they were diverted to search for the Japanese carriers. At 0700, four PBYs took off on a training mission with submarine USS Gudgeon off the island of Lanai. They, too, were diverted to search for Japanese carriers. One flew into a Japanese Val formation and managed to survive an air-to-air battle.
Eighteen unarmed SBDs from the USS Enterprise were unwittingly flown into battle (six were lost—one, to ground fire), and 12 B-17s came in from California (two were lost). They arrived just after the Japanese began the war in the Pacific. At 0915-0930, while USS Nevada was being hit by Vals, a courageous PBY pilot Lt. Cmdr. Massie Hughes and a full crew braved all the strafing and plodded down the seaplane ramp at Ford Island. In the midst of the smoke and explosions, they plowed through the water of the main channel and took off, intending to search for the Japanese carriers. They had an uneventful 12-hour flight northwest of Oahu. Another PBY pilot, Ens. Ted Marshall, was so angry about losing his aircraft at Pearl Harbor Naval Air Station that he dashed over to the old Luke Field side of Ford Island, braved the fires and bullets and climbed into the available aircraft until he found a TBD torpedo bomber that could still be flown. Even though this aircraft was hardly suitable for air-to-air combat, the citation for his Silver Star simply says that he followed and attacked a Japanese unit until his fuel gauge said “return.”
The crew of a B-18 on Molokai were told to return to their duty base at Wheeler, and when they arrived over Oahu, they were fired on by Ft. Ruger fire and then Hickam fire; they landed at Wheeler just after a Japanese strafing attack. Within 300 miles of Oahu, the USS Enterprise put up a fourplane combat air patrol, an inner air patrol of two bombers and then more planes. Although some Japanese units, with their ammunition and bombs expended, were still over Oahu surveying the damage, Pearl Harbor NAS continued to get aircraft airborne to search for Japanese carriers. Four SOCs were assigned sectors. One ran out of fuel and was found floating in the ocean two days later. The pilot was OK—but thirsty.
Two bomb-damaged, hastily repaired Kingfishers were assigned the southern sector just west of the Big Island.
The one from the USS Pennsylvania made it back to Ford Island, but bullet holes in the main float allowed it to fill with water, and the plane sank. The USS Maryland OS2U ran out of fuel and crashed offshore at Barbers Point. Its gunner tried to save the pilot, but he died en route to the hospital. The gunner was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross. Five “slow
and Sikorsky” JRS flying boats from Ford Island fanned out over the Pacific. Normally used as transports, the planes’ defenses were augmented by sailors armed with bolt-action rifles. One volunteer defender was an oil-soaked Marine from the USS Oklahoma. Two
JRSs had the due north sector. The one on the west side of the track was briefly attacked by a combat air patrol Shokaku Zero, yet the one on the east side, JRS 1-J-1, went closest to the Japanese fleet—but not close enough. The five JRS pilots were awarded the Navy Cross for the mission, and JRS 1-J-1 is stored at the National Air and Space Museum’s Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration and Storage Facility in Suitland, Maryland.
The nine SBDs from USS Enterprise that arrived at Ford Island in the early morning were given a mission early in the afternoon. The Enterprise task force put up three pairs of SOCs from some cruisers. One pair engaged an Akagi fighter just north of Niihau Island. After playing “through the waves” over the ocean, the damaged Akagi fighter returned to its carrier. The ground crews at all the AAF bases checked for undamaged planes and quickly repaired the damaged ones. At Hickam, four A-20s were hastily loaded with 600-pound bombs and then trekked west to bomb the four landing craft that were reported to be steaming in off Barbers Point. They were discovered to be sampans from Oahu carrying Japanese-American fishermen. The next day, the sampans were strafed by AAF fighters, a PBY, and an SBD; six fishermen were killed and several injured. Three B-17Ds based at Hickam were ordered to cover a sector northwest of Oahu to fill in for a PBY that had been attacked and was thought to be lost. For some reason, the first to begin its takeoff run wound up on its nose and ruined its four propellers. The other two had an unproductive flight.
More surviving planes at Hickam Field and the B-17s from
California were put to use. Two B-18s were sent on a mission due north, but they saw neither the Japanese fleet nor the JRS flying boats that preceded them. An afternoon mission by four more A-20s got a long sector along with three B-17s that went southeast.
At 0950, from remote Bellows Field on Oahu’s east shore, an 86th Observation Squadron O-47 circled Oahu, and three more followed at 1020. The 44th PS ground crews at Bellows hastily repaired more P-40s and had a flight of five in the air just after noon and six P-40s up by 1600 hours.
Late in the afternoon, a large unit of torpedo planes was launched from the USS Enterprise to attack a carrier that turned out to be a U.S. ship. The F4Fs returned to the Enterprise but were waved off and directed to Ford Island. Then the TBDs arrived, and the ship allowed them to come aboard. That evening, as the F4Fs arrived over a dark Pearl Harbor, the tragedy was all too evident. Tracers—a few at first and then many—searched for enemy aircraft, and several F4Fs were shot down by U.S. harbor firepower. Guided by that anti-aircraft fire, a AAF B-18 came in from Hilo, Hawaii and landed at nearby Hickam Field.
As the moon rose, a P-40 unit led by 2nd Lt. Charles McDonald was vectored by radio to intercept an unknown plane that had its lights on. As the P-40s kept climbing, McDonald eventually asked the tower, “Where is Venus this time of year?” Thus ended the first U.S. night-fighter mission of WW II. (McDonald went on to score 27 kills and was the third-highest ace in the Pacific; he also commanded the 475th FG.)