Sunday, July 14, 2019

Besby "Frank" Holmes at Pearl Harbor




Second Lieutenant Besby “Frank” Holmes had enlisted in the Army in March 1941, graduating from advanced flight training in November and immediately being shipped to Hawaii. He was assigned to the 47th Pursuit Squadron, 15th Pursuit Group based at Wheeler Field. On the morning of the attack, he was assigned to Haleiwa Field and had checked out in a P-36 the day before for the first time.

    We had been on a 7 day alert 24 hours per day. Everyone in the military forces had been restricted. Haleiwa was at the extreme north end of Oahu; Wheeler Field, which was right in the middle of Oahu, was our group's main base. Honolulu was on the other extremity of Oahu and that's where everybody from the three services went. We were going to have a fine Saturday night. We'd been restricted for 24 hours a day, but the teacher let the monkeys out.

    Nobody warned me about sweet rum drinks. One is fine, two is great, three is murder, and four is death. I don't know how many I had. I woke up the next morning with a horrible headache. I was down. All I could think about was getting up, going to church, getting Mass out of the way, putting my swimming suit on, getting out on a beach, and letting the sun bake the poison out of my body. I got up, got dressed, and went across the street to church. I had on a brown pin-striped suit and a green wool tie made by the Navaho Indians in Arizona.

    I was praying to God that my headache would go away when the first bombs fell. The church was open all the way around, for air circulation. I heard this whirring, whooshing noise. I thought, 'the stupid Navy! We called the alert off yesterday and they're still practicing.' The sexton ran out to the altar and whispered in the Irish priest's ear, but the priest didn't say any to the congregation. He just moved up the tempo of mass. I was having trouble following him. I couldn't stay with him in my missal. He didn't say anything about the bombs, but mass ended real quick. I walked outside and saw all the military trucks roaring up and down Kalakaua Boulevard. I thought 'what'd going on?'

    I darted across the street to the Royal Hawaiian and got up to the room. Johnny Voss and his cousin, the assistant manager, were so excited they were practically chasing each other around the room. In the middle of the table they had a little portable radio. The radio announcer was saying 'Don't get excited, don't get excited. The Japs have attacked Pearl Harbor but the Army has the situation well in hand.' And I thought, 'Dear God, if the rest of the Army feels like me, we're in trouble.'

    Fortunately, Johnny had the presence of mind to put his uniform on. I was still in my brown pin striped suit, We dashed outside, stopped the first car that went by (a little Studebaker Champion), and commandeered it. It was a civilian car. The guy said, 'What do you want, kids?' I said, 'we gotta get to our air base. We're both pilots.' He said, 'great,' moved over to the middle and said, 'you drive.' So I jumped in and drove. As we passed Pearl Harbor, the battle was in full force. I saw the Arizona's side blow out as we went by but we still didn't know what was going on. We were in a little fire engine red car; I don't know why we weren't strafed because it looked like a fire vehicle or something.

    We passed Pearl Harbor and drove up a hill to Wheeler Field, our main base. It was a shambles. There were 75 P-40s lined up on the edge of the parking ramp; they were all burning. We drove to my hangar but it was all aflame. As we drove up, the top just melted and crushed in. A big old sergeant saw me and said 'Lieutenant, I got an airplane for you to fly.' I said, 'Great, where is it?' Just by the hillside was a biplane with two cockpits. I don't even know what it was. It hadn't moved in the two weeks I'd been in Hawaii. The sergeant said, 'There it is Lieutenant, let's go.' And I said 'thank you very much, Sergeant, but I don't think I want to fly that thing.'



    I jumped back into the car and drove off from Wheeler, back to Haleiwa, which was 8-10 miles away. I drove through the gate we had left the afternoon before, but some idiot had put up a barbed wire fence. Well I didn't see the barbed wire fence and drove right through it. I said to this poor guy whose car we had commandeered, 'I'm so sorry, I'll pay for it.' He said, 'forget it Lieutenant, glad to help.' As I jumped out of the car, a big old line chief saw me. He grabbed me, handed me a parachute and a helmet, and said 'son, I've got an airplane that's ready to go.' Mind you, I'd only just checked out in this P-36 the day before. I had had one flight in it. He grabbed my shoulders with his big hands and got on my parachute. Someone ran up and handed me a naked .45. No holster, just a .45 pistol.

    We were running to the P-36 which was about 150 yards away, when I heard a boom, boom, boom. I looked around and saw the dust was spreading up around my airplane. I didn't like that at all. I looked over my shoulder and saw that a Val dive bomber was strafing my Curtiss Hawk. The Val was about 45 yards from me so I started firing at him with my pistol. One of the kids said, 'By God, you've hit him!' I emptied the pistol. I looked at the empty, smoking thing. I threw it up in the air and said, 'Got him! Hell, I hit the canopy.' I had seen the canopy craze but I thought, he's not on fire or going down. I said, 'Let's go and hide. I don't want to be caught out in the open.' We hid behind some bushes but the Val didn't come back. We picked up my parachute and helmet and went on out to the airplane. The Val hadn't touched it.

P-36 cockpit and instrument panel


    I got in the cockpit. The P-36 had a peculiar starting system; it had an 8 gauge shotgun shell compression starter. The charge was ducted into the bottom three cylinders of the radial engine. If everything was right, it would kick the prop over three revolutions. If you had the primer set, the mixture set, everything set, and your tongue was in the right corner of your cheek, maybe it would fire. I had six shotgun shells and fired five without getting the engine started. I had one left, so I jumped and handed it to the big line chief. I said 'you start it, I'm all thumbs.' It was a cranky starting system. He jumped in and started it; not sure if I said to myself 'damn him' or 'good for him.'

    When the engine started, the line chief began to jump out but I thrust him back into the cockpit. His eyes opened up to the size of saucers like I was going to make him fly the plane. I said, 'Sarge, just load the gun. Turn on the switches and turn on the gunsight. I don't know where the hell the switches are, and I've never loaded a gun in this plane.' He turned on the gunsight, put the circuit breakers in for the firing mechanism, and charged the gun. The P-36 was armed with a .30 and .50 caliber machine gun, which both fired through the prop. However, since we were at gunnery camp and .50 caliber ammo was too expensive to waste on gunnery training, I had just the one .30 caliber pop gun firing through the prop for my second flight in a P-36. That's how I went off to war over Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

    I took off and chased all over the island. It seemed like everyone on the ground who had a gun fired at me. I flew over Wheeler Field and Schofield Barracks first, as they were closest to Haleiwa. They were both a shambles. My next destination was Pearl Harbor, with Ford Island Naval Station in the middle. The damage was awesome. Huge ships were sunk and burning, fuel was burning, aircraft were burning, and hangars were burning. The antiaircraft fire that was directed at me was pretty intense, but fortunately, it was very inaccurate. I left the vicinity of Pearl quickly when I could find no enemy aircraft and I took a quick look at Ewa Marine Corps Air Station. It was much the same as Wheeler and Ford Island. Hickam Army Airfield was also beat up. Next, I flew over the Pali to Kaneohe Naval Air Station on the eastern side of Oahu. It was also beat up but not as badly as Pearl Harbor and the fighter bases around it. Men on the ground at Kaneohe fired at me. I thought that it was ridiculous that everybody on the ground was firing at me while I never saw a Japanese plane in the sky. Thank the Lord I didn't run into a formation of Zeros. They would have creamed me.

    I decided to return to Haleiwa and land. My whole flight lasted about 30 minutes. In my absence, some B-17s inbound from the U.S. had found our tiny little dirt field and had safely landed. They had no alternative as all the major airfields had been put out of commission. We had no tractors to tow the four engine bombers so we manhandled them underneath some tall trees. It was the best camouflage we could provide. An extended period of chaos ensued. Rumor after rumor circulated- a new air attack was imminent, it wasn't, a landing was about to occur, a landing was underway at Pearl, a landing wasn't underway at Pearl. I couldn't keep up with the rumors. Since all of the Army Air Corps fields on Oahu has been attacked and damaged except Haleiwa, all the operable P-36s and P-40s on Oahu came to our dirt strip. Additionally, numerous pilots who were senior to me (just about all of them) arrived. Naturally, my P-36 was taken away from me by one of the senior pilots.

Wheeler Field in the aftermath of the Japanese attack


    During the rest of the day, there was a lot of scurrying around doing things then undoing them. Then all the senior pilots spent that night in the cockpits of their assigned planes while junior pilots were sent to be beach guards. Johnny Voss and I were instructed that when, not if, we spotted the Japanese landing craft approaching the beach at Haleiwa, we were to fire our weapons, one .45 caliber automatic apiece, at them or into the air three times. That was the signal for all of our pursuit planes to immediately scramble and take off inland. A late rumor indicated that all the holes in Wheeler's runways had been filled in, so hopefully they would all be able to land safely.

    I trudged up and down my mile and a half of beach all that dark and lonely night, passing Johnny Voss every half hour or so. In the tropics and semitropics, the waves take on a luminescence that to my untrained eye, looking like the bow waves of landing barges. I must have seen a thousand waves I was certain contained troop-filled barges. Fortunately, no one fired a false alarm. If all 20 or so P-40s and P-36s had attempted a takeoff from that tiny dirt strip at night with no runway lights, taxi strips, or control tower, it would have been awful. Dawn finally arrived. There had been no further attacks. I cannot remember a more welcome sunrise.

Source: 
Hammel, Eric. Aces Against Japan: The American Aces Speak. Novato: Presidio Press, 1992, pgs. 5-10

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