Francis "Gabby" Gabreski was a 22 year old Pennsylvania native who joined the Army in 1940. He was a second lieutenant in the 45th Fighter Squadron, 15th Pursuit Group, Army Air Corps flying P-36s and P-40s while stationed at Wheeler Field at the time of Pearl Harbor. He later transferred to the ETO and as a member of the 56th Fighter Group, scored 31 kills over the Germans. He ended the war as a POW and scored a further 6 ½ kills in the Korean War. His reputation follows as one of the finest fighter pilots to ever wear the uniform.
I was lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling. I had a problem. Kay and I had had our first falling out the night before and I had to figure out how to handle it. Should I go to Mass at Wheeler chapel this sunny Sunday morning and seek some divine guidance on how to handle it? Or should I go straight over to Schofield, where I knew she would be attending services, and try to work things out right away? It was December 7, 1941, a little before 8 o'clock in the morning.
I got up and went into the bathroom in our barracks to clean up and shave. At first, I didn't pay much attention to the roar of low-flying aircraft passing by outside. After all, this was an airbase here at Wheeler. But when I heard the rumble of explosions and the rattle of machine gun fire, I went to the window to see what the hell was going on. Just then a gray monoplane roared past the barracks. I could see its fixed landing gear and the red circles it carried for insignia. And the gunner sitting behind the pilot was firing away for all he was worth. I stood there in shock for a second until the truth hit me. That was a Japanese aircraft. We were under attack!
Once I figured out what was happening, I started running up and down the hallway yelling at the pilots to get out of bed because we're under attack by the Japs. As the guys gathered in the hallway, I tried to make some sense out of what I'd just seen. We could hear explosions going off in the distance, so everyone crowded to the windows to see what we could see. The front of our building faced the airfield from higher ground. We could see smoke billowing from the airplanes burning on the flight line. There was black smoke coming from the hangars as well, but they weren't engulfed in flames. It also looked as if the airmen's mess had been hit. We pilots pulled on our flying clothes as quickly as we could and headed out the door.
The flight line was about 500 yards from the barracks and a road ran between the two. To the left of the road, you could see the hangar line up on a slight rise. Everything was going up in flames. We got out the front door, and just as we were ready to get into our cars and head over there, another Japanese plane headed right for us and started shooting. All of us hit the dirt, some guys ducked under the barracks for cover. Others hopped under the cars. Fortunately, no one was hit. I decided to make my way to the flight line on foot, but I hadn't gone far before a car full of pilots pulled up and I joined them for a short ride. No one seemed to be in charge at the hangars, so we just pitched in where it looked like we could be most useful.
The first thing was to try and separate the undamaged fighters from the ones that were on fire. I plunged into the work with the other guys. The heat and smoke were terrible. We would pull the chocks out from under a fighter's wheels and then push it for all we were worth until it looked as if the plane was a safe distance out of the way. Then we'd start on another one. We didn't have time to think about how dangerous the work was. Most of the fighters we saved were P-36s because the P-40s had been parked together in the most exposed position. All this time, the fires continued to burn in the hangars. At one point, someone noticed that all the refueling trucks were parked in there and in growing danger of exploding. But when we tried to start the trucks so we could drive them out, we found they were locked. What was worse, no one seemed to know where the keys were.
Then the ammunition that was stored in the hangars began to cook off. Bullets were exploding in the fire and shooting every which way. It was chaos. We just had to leave the fuel trucks where they were. After about an hour, we had salvaged everything we could. Things that were on fire, like tires, we just left to burn themselves out. The only good thing about the situation was that the planes on the ramp contained no ammunition and very little fuel. That made it a bit easier to save the planes, though it also made them useless for the time being.
Only 10 or 11 planes were ready, so Captain Tyler and the flight leaders looked over who was available to fly them and came up with a flight roster. Woody Wilmot must have read my eyes that I was eager to go, so he assigned me to fly number 4 in his flight. This was it. War was on, and I was going to do my part. I took it for granted that we would probably be getting into combat. Maybe I would shoot down an enemy plane. Maybe I would get shot down myself. I didn't expect to be killed, but I'll have to admit the thought crossed my mind. It didn't matter. The main thing was to attack the enemy. We had a mixed group of P-40s and P-36s; I got a P-36. I tried to keep myself calm as we climbed out together, heading south. In a few minutes, we were over Pearl Harbor. Boy, what a sight. Black, billowing smoke rose high into the heavens. I could see ships over on their sides, burning. It was a horrible mess.
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| Gabreski took the skies over Pearl Harbor in a P-36A similar to the one shown above. |
We flew over at about 4,000 feet but by now everybody down there on the ground was so jittery that they fired on any airplanes they could see, including ours. We were high enough that small arms fire couldn't reach us, but they blasted away nevertheless. We could see tracers arc up toward us and occasionally a smoky burst of flak would explode nearby. Crazy Fred Schifflet, who was flying a P-40, decided he's go down lower so the people on the ground could identify us as friendly aircraft and stop shooting at us. I guess everyone makes foolish mistakes at one time or another. Anyway, he rolled out of formation and zoomed down across Hickam Field waggling his wings so everyone could see the U.S. insignias on them. The only trouble was the insignias in those days consisted of a blue disc with a white star on it and a red circle in the middle of the star. Forget the disc, forget the star. All the people at Hickam saw that red circle. They opened up with everything they had on old Fred: pistols, rifles, machine guns, probably even a few rocks and beer bottles.
Almost immediately, Fred yelled over the radio that he had been hit. A little peevishly, Tyler ordered him to fly back to Wheeler. The rest of us steered clear of Pearl Harbor and continued to search the skies for another 45 minutes, but the Japanese were long gone. We never did receive any orders from the ground, so when our fuel started to get low, Captain Tyler led us back to Wheeler. I was pretty discouraged as I taxied to our hangar area. Pearl Harbor was a shambles. The other airfields had been damaged as badly or worse than ours. We had accomplished nothing. Then I caught sight of Fred's plane. It was so pathetic it was almost funny. The P-40 was full of small holes where it had been punctured by small arms fire. You could see where the bullets had hit the cockpit area, but luckily none of them hit Fred. The plane was junk, good only for salvaging parts to fix other P-40s.”
“Fred was already in the operations office when we arrived and he was complaining long and loud about the rude greeting he had received from the Hickam gunners. He didn't get much sympathy from us. What did he expect them to do under the circumstances after the pounding they had taken all morning? We spent a terse afternoon awaiting further instructions. The questions mounted. Had anyone located the Japanese carriers yet? Would they attack again? Worse yet, would they invade the island? No one knew anything except what we had seen. We stayed at the operations room until evening. A curfew was established at night. We were instructed to stay close to the phone and return the next morning with our sidearms, which were .45 caliber pistols.
Once we began to disperse and the married fellows headed off to rejoin their families, I started to think about Kay. In all of the excitement of the day, I had hardly given her a thought, but now I was worried about her. I tried to call her at Colonel Bush's house, but I couldn't get through. It wouldn't have done any good anyway, since all of the civilians had been moved from Schofield to Honolulu during the day. She finally reached me by phone about 3 days later. It was a tense night for everyone because we had not idea that the Japanese task force had already turned around and was on its way back across the Pacific. We were worried about saboteurs or even a full scale invasion but the fact that the Japanese had done all the damage they intended to do.”
Source:
Gabreski, Francis and Carl Molesworth. Gabby: A Fighter Pilot's Life. New York: Orion Books, 1991, pgs. 39-44
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