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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