The Aleuts: Flying PBYs in the Aleutians with VP-61

by Murray Hanson

The two young warriors, husband and wife just transferred from Hawaii, had quickly reported in to the new PBY squadron at NAS Alameda in May 1942, and found a place to live nearby. They had never before met the prospective commanding officer of VP-61, Lt. Comdr. Frank Bruner or his wife Em, but Lt. Murray Hanson looked forward to being his executive officer.

For a place to live they were most fortunate to find a lovely, two-story home with beautiful gardens surrounding it, in an area on Dayton Street near the Alameda Yacht Club. It was lucky for the young couple that they found their new home at once and settled in quickly. Thirteen days after their arrival Margot began to feel labor pains—not too widely spaced. The baby came close to being born in the ambulance en route to the Naval hospital in Vallejo. Murray rode up in the ambulance, too, and when they reached the hospital he rushed in to let the medical staff know that probably the most important baby in the world was about to arrive.

And so he was. Murray Junior entered the world less than two hours after his parents reached the hospital. His entrance brought great happiness indeed, and not a little consternation, too. He was a girl!

Having been advised by their doctors repeatedly during the nine-month wait that the baby almost certainly would be a boy, the Hansons were totally unprepared for this lovely, pink morsel of femininity. All their new baby things—the layette, the blankets, the decorations on the crib—were done in blue. The prospective name and plans for the future had assumed a masculine dominance.

"I don't care," said Margot, "I'm not disappointed. 'Murray' can be a girl's name, too. I'm still going to name her Murray. Oh, how I love her!"

Indeed she did. She was certain from the beginning that this tiny human being, conceived in peacetime and now born of war after a most hazardous ocean crossing had a very special destiny on earth, and Margot didn't let anyone forget that.

Even so, Big Murray could not afford to take very much time off on account of his new namesake: he found a young high school girl to be maid-of-all-work for the household, and turned to helping Frank Bruner get the new squadron organized.

VP-61 included in its roster several old friends from Kaneohe, including Gus Wehmeyer. There were a number of new recruits aboard, but many were old PBY hands, too, among both the officer and the enlisted cadres.

The old PBY hands became trainers and coaches, and a qualification board was set up to check out prospective patrol plane commanders, co-pilots and navigators. An administrative organization, ground handling crews, shop crews and flight crews were designated; the shakedown became largely a matter of personnel becoming acquainted with their shipmates, learning each other's strengths and weaknesses, and becoming accustomed to working together under wartime conditions.

Many of the squadron people had wives and in some few cases children, in the Alameda area, and when off duty they left the station to enjoy a bit of home life. But most of them had no family present and lived in the officers' BOQ or enlisted men's barracks on base.

Periodically there would be an unidentified aircraft alert in the San Francisco Bay area, usually at night, and the squadron personnel were expected to go immediately to the hangar area to ready planes and crews for takeoff. Standard operating procedure was for all of the planes to become airborne as soon as possible, both as a defensive measure to avoid being destroyed on the ground and to search for enemy ships launching an attack on the Bay area. There never were any such actual attacks, nor any takeoffs, but bogies spoofed the radar and alert systems from time to time, triggering mass influxes to the military bases in the area.

An inexplicable annoyance that beset the Hansons at Alameda concerned automobile tires. Driving on unpaved roads made of piled-up coral shell at the newly-constructed NAS Kaneohe in Hawaii, the tires of the Buick that they had taken overseas before the war had worn smooth in less than a year. So, as soon as they and the car reached their new station in Alameda the Hansons applied for either some new tires or for re-treading the old ones. Great was their consternation when the local civilian rationing board in Alameda turned them down, opining that Lt. Murray Hanson, U.S. Navy, squadron executive officer, was engaged in work non-essential to the war effort; that he could use streetcars or taxis for his travel needs, even during red alerts. This determination was rendered more incredible when one day the teenage boyfriend of the Hansons' young maid came to Murray and said, "Don't worry, Lieutenant, I'll get 'em for you. I work at the shipyard in Oakland so I'm considered essential. I can get all the new tires I want."

"I'll be damned if I'll let myself be dependent on this teenaged civilian for such an honest, obvious military requirement, incredibly caught up in a wartime snafu," thought Murray. So the Hansons worked on getting some pull.

It happened that their next-door neighbors were Bill and Helen Knowland, of the Oakland Tribune newspaper publishing family. Bill Knowland, who was later to become Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate, was overseas in uniform, but Helen and Margot became close friends, very much supportive of each other. Through this newspaper contact Margot was written up on news wires as, perhaps, the first U.S. casualty of the war. On December 7th, just before they struck at NAS Kaneohe, Japanese Zeros had made an early-morning attack on her on the shoreline near that station. Through Helen also, Margot met a number of members of the "Knowland Machine"—the Republican political organization—in California, all the way up to the Honorable Earl Warren, then Attorney General of the state.

Murray submitted a reclama on the ration board decision and eventually, from the attorney general's office itself, came a reversal and clear permit to have the bodacious tires recapped.

The same ration board periodically introduced some complication regarding the allocation of gasoline for the cars of military personnel, too, so that the young warriors come recently from the combat zone, soon to re-enter active hostilities anew, and presently called on to help defend the local civilian community (including the homes of the ration board members) began to wonder who was the real enemy of their war effort.

Little Murray cooed and gurgled her way into the hearts of her parents, and was soon the dominant interest in their household. For a time Margot had a nurse to help her. And the young mother insisted on breast-feeding the baby to give her a better start in life. She prospered.

Big Murray's boss Frank Bruner revealed himself to his new command to be a taciturn, cerebral individual, with a fine knowledge of seaplane characteristics and operations. He put together a good squadron, and soon VP-61 was almost ready for war.

It came swiftly and unexpectedly. The Japanese were proving invincible in the Coral Sea area, in Burma and in the Philippines. On 3 June then, they simultaneously attacked Midway Island west of Hawaii and Dutch Harbor in the Aleutians. Four days later they invaded the northern archipelago, stretching more than a thousand miles westward from the Alaska Peninsula. They put troops ashore on Kiska Island then, and later expanded their foothold to include Attu.

During the five days of the seaborne assault the defending Americans expended their stock of torpedoes in such large numbers that an urgent re-supply train had to be set up. Aircraft from a number of Navy squadrons based on the West Coast, including VP-61, were loaded with torpedoes and dispatched to Dutch Harbor via Sitka and Kodiak. From Dutch Harbor the aircraft and crews themselves were pressed into service, not only as torpedo planes against the invading ships but even as bombers against the troops after they got ashore. In one unique operation the PBYs flew over Kiska in and above an overcast, diving at near-terminal velocity down through the cloud deck to release at very low level bombs sighted by "seaman's eye" against new enemy installations. Then they zoomed back up into the clouds for cover. It was big, lumbering seaplanes designed for long-range search and patrol at slow speeds engaging in a sort of inelegant, ungainly dive bombing operation!

The VP-61 commandos were soon back at Alameda, telling hairy tales of bravado to their envious shipmates over beers at the club. For a while they even set themselves apart from their fellows by referring to each other as "Aleuts," pronounced as three syllables. The others didn't qualify.

A month later, now well into August, the whole squadron prepared to move northward. Helen Knowland invited Margot and the baby to move in with her while Murray was to be gone. The two young service wives had become fast friends—one Army, one Navy, their husbands "at the front" and they became marvelous companions for each other. Helen and Margot were much alike—both vivacious, warm, beautiful and exciting young women. With her accouchement now three months behind her, Margot's figure had resumed its natural curvaceous slimness, and the two girls made a striking pair wherever they went together.

That was everywhere. Helen delighted in introducing Margot socially to her many friends, and took her to the office of the Oakland Tribune where Helen pinch-hitted as publisher while Bill was gone.

On a gray, windless day then, all twelve planes of the squadron took off with augmented crews, the remainder of ground crews and administrators to follow by ship. Their first overnight stop was at NAS Sand Point, on the western shore of Lake Washington, near Seattle. The next day they headed for Sitka, Alaska, for another stop overnight. Gus Wehmeyer, Murray and several others who had formerly been attached to VP-14 at Kaneohe took the opportunity to call on Irene Reynolds, whose husband, T. C., had been killed with his PBY crew in a flight out of Kaneohe shortly after the war started. Irene had been born and raised in Sitka, and returned to her family there when she lost T. C.

The next morning the squadron prepared to take off for Kodiak, but fog kept them on the ground. Other flights in the area were grounded as well. Around noon came a message from the wing commander in Kodiak—"Proceed regardless of weather." And right after it came another, this one from Adm. Chester Nimitz, CINCPAC at Pearl Harbor, addressed to the wing commander—"Cancel that last message." Even in the midst of war the Commander-in-Chief didn't consider his troops to be so wantonly expendable, and didn't permit his subordinate commanders to so devalue the troops, either.

So VP-61 remained an extra night at Sitka, and the ex-VP-14ers paid a second call on Irene and her family and friends.

The next day the weather had cleared and the squadron flew on to Kodiak. It was an uneventful six hour flight across the Gulf of Alaska, but when the airmen climbed down out of their planes and stepped out on the parking apron they were startled to find that the temperature in Kodiak was 30 degrees cooler than it had been in California.

VP-61 remained in Kodiak about ten days, reorganizing their spare parts and equipment wardrobe, drawing classified operations manuals and becoming familiar with Wing operations doctrine and the PBY patrols. During the sojourn the off-duty crews went into the town of Kodiak to sight-see and to shop for fur parkas, miniature totem poles supposedly carved by Alaskan Indians and other souvenirs. In one of the fur shops a lovely young Eskimo girl modeled the parkas for the newcomers; that store seemed to get all the fur business in town that week.

The countryside between the naval air station and the town was somewhat bleak, but interesting for the huge Kodiak bear occasionally seen from the air, and for the salmon fighting their way upstream at that time of year to spawn in the headwaters of the many creeks and rivulets. The fish were so plentiful, and so battered and exhausted by their efforts that the airmen could wade into the water and fish them out by hand.

The countryside was well populated by ptarmigan, too, the birds so tame and unused to being disturbed by man that they could be rooted out of their ground burrows with the toe of a boot.

One of Murray's earliest flights from Kodiak occurred the day a heavy fog set in. When he returned from his patrol he could actually see several flagpoles and the tops of some trees sticking up above a thin layer of dense fog over Woman's Bay, but he couldn't land. So the tower told him to go across the island to Larson's Bay for a protected anchorage and to stay overnight. When he got there he found the bay clear and tied up to a buoy laid out by the Navy for emergency use. A nearby fish cannery sent a boat out to take the crew ashore to bed down for the night. The next day the fog lifted and the flight returned to base, each crewman loaded with freshly canned salmon to remind him of his visit to Larson's Bay.

The squadron moved on from Kodiak at last: to another Sand Point, this one located on Popoff Island near the western end of the Alaskan Peninsula. They stayed several weeks. A large salmon packing plant on Popoff Island needed working hands, so a number of the men took jobs at good pay when not flying.

VP-61 flew patrols out over the North Pacific and the Bering Sea toward Siberia and northern Japan, with periodic looks at the enemy installations on Kiska and Attu. The usual ordnance load was depth bombs. The short Aleutian summer had already passed and cold began to grip the land and the sea and the air. The crews recently from Hawaii and California necessarily learned the hard way to cope with frozen metal of aircraft parked outdoors overnight, with frost and ice on the wings and fuselages, with finger-numbing ice-cold armament and refueling equipment, with the use of oil heaters to warm up the engines so they could be started each morning and with bone-chilling water during launching and recovery operations.

Two weeks after arriving at Sand Point the squadron received orders to move on again—this time to relatively civilized accommodations and operating facilities at Dutch Harbor. There was a two-story wooden BOQ and wardroom there, some barracks and a mess hall, some individual Yakutat (pre-fab) houses; the latter were assigned to senior officers, and Frank Bruner and Murray occupied one together.

The squadron's offices were on the top floor of a solidly-built power plant building, cozy and warm. Frank and Murray shared an office there, too. There were nose hangars and shops, wide parking aprons and two good ramps to a protected bay for seaplane operations. And Navy CB units were hacking down a small mountain protruding into the bay from the northeast that soon was to become a landing strip with some peculiar characteristics.

The season's first snow storm hit Dutch Harbor the day after VP-61 arrived; it left a white blanket that would pack higher and higher, until the sun moved back up in the sky the following spring. Winter flying suits and ground gear were broken out, much needed for warmth but they also added much awkwardness to the sustaining of flight operations in this unfriendly environment.

One of the innovations that confronted the squadron at Dutch Harbor was the uniform regulation established by the wing commander in his headquarters back in Kodiak. For some inexplicable reason he required that only complete, regulation coat and tie could be worn in the wardroom and mess hall at Dutch Harbor—no flight gear—not even for an early, early breakfast before takeoff for a dawn patrol. So flying officers and chiefs had to go to breakfast in complete uniform carrying their heavy, fleece-lined flying suits, boots, helmets and gloves, eat breakfast and then make a quick change into the flight gear in the lobbies of the mess halls. Then they proceeded to their aircraft, leaving coats, ties, caps and sometimes pants hanging in the lobby. The procedure was reversed when they got back from their flight. Some war!

The Aleutians are reputed to be among the most continuously humid areas in the world. They lived up to that reputation that winter of 1942-43: day after day heavy fog surrounded the islands, with clear days so rare that it was like the lifting of a great, celestial curtain to reveal landmarks and sometimes whole islands that had not been seen before. Because of the unpredictable fog and the absence of electronic navigational aids, standard operating procedure prohibited takeoff unless there was a fully operational radar on board.

Another unusual hazard to flying was a group of islands called the Islands of Four Mountains. Actually there were only three such islands, but they supported four mountains that rose sheer out of the sea to elevations of 5,000 and 6,000 feet. The combination of sheer rises to high elevation in conjunction with the frequent fog constituted considerable hazard in itself, but what was most insidious about them and greatly aggravated the threat they posed to safe flight was that they were magnetic. The magnetic lines of force were so distorted in their vicinity that the cards of magnetic compasses were pulled toward the islands, causing passing vessels and aircraft to veer toward those islands if the distortion were not recognized and compensated for. Close inspection of the flanks of the mountains in clear weather revealed several crash sites on the sheer slopes, and it was said at the end of the war that bodies had been removed from a dozen or more wrecks found plastered against the Islands of Four Mountains.

The frequent foggy weather plus the restriction to flying only with operable radar tended to keep the airmen on the ground more in the Aleutians than in other theaters. The forced aerial inactivity, the chilly climate, the prolonged darkness due to sun low in the sky and the snow drifts piled as high as the eaves of the Yakutats combined to confine the airmen to their quarters much of the time. Boredom, sheer boredom was the result.

Frank and Murray each read their own collections of paperbacks through and through, then swapped and read each other's—then swapped back again. They played pinochle, listened to the radio, played chess and checkers until they hated the games. This was air warfare?

It was said that more mental breakdowns occurred in the Aleutians than in any other combat zone—because of the boredom.

But the weather did occasionally add some excitement. Periodically a dreaded 'williwaw' moved through the area. Originally the name referred only to the violent squalls that sometimes blow far south in the Straits of Magellan. How the name leapt the 8,000 miles from there to the Aleutians is a mystery, but leap them it did. Whenever a deep low-pressure air mass on one side of the Aleutian chain was matched by a high-pressure area on the other side, wind sheer across the islands from high- to low-pressure became horrific. Every once in a while a williwaw would invade Dutch Harbor, the force of the wind augmented within the vortex of the harbor to as much as 150 miles an hour, and damage invariably resulted. After one such passage one of VP-61's PBYs was left completely inverted on the parking apron, resting on its back with its side mounts still attached and pointing upward. It looked for all the world like a huge roast turkey laid out on a platter for Thanksgiving dinner.

The upside-down PBY was an altogether fitting symbol of the cockeyed Aleutian environment that enveloped these newcomers from Alameda. The weather, the boredom, the uncommon hazards to navigation, even the uniform regulations in the mess hall conspired for their official ordination: they were all "qualified Aleuts" now.

The morning weather map frequently revealed a whole series of low-pressure areas extending fifteen hundred miles to the southwest, parallel to the Aleutian chain. Each of the storm areas would assault Dutch Harbor in succession, a day or two apart. This repetitious interference with flight operations was of great concern to the staff aerologist—Lt. Comdr. John Tatom. John wanted to learn more about the conditions between the Aleutians and Siberia, where the weather seemed to make up before coursing eastward toward Alaska. So one day he asked Murray if he could go along on one of the flights at dawn the next day.

Murray took John along in his own plane. When they took off the weather wasn't bad, but as they flew westward over the North Pacific the ceiling lowered and rain and snow began to batter the plane. This was what John was looking for: he moved up to the machine gun turret in the bow where he could look out portholes directly into the teeth of the storm. Soon they were in it all together—the clouds closed down and the wind became violent.

The cloud layer extended right down to the water; searching for enemy ships was impossible and the turbulence actually seemed dangerous. After about fifteen minutes of this Murray was ready to return to base. Not so the staff aerologist; he loved it. He was not an aviator; he felt no concern for the vehicle he rode in. He was interested only in the weather and how to outguess it; he wanted to see more of it. "Onward," he chortled whenever Murray asked if he hadn't had enough.

Tatom kept the flight bearing farther and farther into the storm, until after one horrendous lurch of the fuselage the plane captain in his tower reported that a spare generator had wrenched itself loose from its hold-down brackets and punched a hole in the fuselage on its way to freedom. Murray asked no further; he made a 180-degree turn and headed for home.

When they reached the Dutch Harbor area hours later the cloud deck was at sea level and a blizzard was raging even within the harbor itself. They would not be able to make it into the harbor and land at all.

Murray flew around off Unalaska Island while deciding what to do. Then they found a sort of "bubble" in the blizzard—a relatively open area near the circular center where the clouds seemed to lift several hundred feet above the water, leaving a clear expanse beneath. The plane could circle there and keep the ocean surface in view.

Watching the wind streaks on the water and the apparent drift of the bubble convinced him that the clear area was actually bearing down on Dutch Harbor, and might move over it within a half hour or less.

So Murray continued to circle, and sure enough the bubble migrated right into the mouth of the harbor and over the landing area. After what seemed like a hundred circles it was clear enough to set the plane down and taxi to the ramp.

One memorable day a message came from the wing commander alerting all of his airmen to the possible appearance of another Japanese task force, bent on either reinforcing or withdrawing the garrisons on Kiska and Attu. Some intelligence intercept apparently had triggered the expectation. The wing commander offered "Christmas leave in Seattle" to the first PBY crew to spot the invaders.

The airmen were all on their toes after that. Submarines were sighted and reported that hadn't been seen before. Each flight crewman's eyes were strained to be the ones to find the enemy in that improbable visibility—fog, mist, snow, sun low in the sky and heavy windstreaking on the sea. To the point where nearly anything, real or imagined, could be seen. And then one day the entire command throughout the Aleutians and the Alaskan theater was electrified by a contact report from one of the Dutch Harbor planes: the enemy task force was sighted south of the chain, in the Gulf of Alaska. An amplifying report spelled out "six cruisers, several transports and many destroyers."

Back on land the gun had already been loaded; now it was cocked. Strike aircraft were launched; Allied ships in the area were directed to the attack. And then—silence! Nagging, annoying silence!

Time dragged by, until the wing commander could stand it no longer. He sent a query to the PBY, asking for more information. It was then that the pilot reported back that, after getting off his initial and amplifying reports he decided on a closer look, turned away from the ships and climbed into the overcast. Then he turned again to get directly over the enemy. But when he got there and dropped down through the clouds again the Japanese were nowhere in sight. He couldn't find them. He never saw them again!

The strike aircraft and surface ships had to be recalled. The reporting pilot was ordered to proceed directly to Kodiak for interrogation by the wing commander and staff. He could never account for having seen and reported a whole enemy task force, then losing it completely. None of his crew had seen any of the ships he had reported. No trace of the "invaders" was ever seen again, nor reported to have existed.

The consensus was that, precipitated by the stress of the Aleutian environment and the self-hypnosis of preoccupation with the offer of Christmas leave the pilot either had suffered an hallucination or else he had deliberately fabricated the incident in order to win the prize. In any event he was judged to be abnormal, he was banished from the Alaskan Command to undergo psychiatric examination on the mainland and quickly left Dutch Harbor.

But he had the last laugh. He got his Christmas leave in Seattle, and never returned to the Aleutians. The rest of the troops were left in their wartime hell-hole, to forever wonder about the authenticity of that "aberration" of his.

It soon became apparent to the Wing that the daily patrols from Dutch Harbor could not reach out far enough westward to effectively interdict ship traffic between Japan and the garrisons on Kiska and Attu. So a classic seaplane advanced-base operation was set up. Seaplane tender Casco was deployed to anchor in Atka Bay, 350 miles west of Dutch Harbor, to support PBY operations staging through. VP-61 had the dawn patrol the first day, and Murray was sent out in charge of three planes. They were to land at Atka after their patrols and remain overnight on Casco. They would fly sectors farther westward the next morning.

The dawn patrol went smoothly and the three planes landed at Atka on schedule. Casco had laid out mooring buoys for them and rigged a refueling boom astern. The crews were soon aboard ship, assigned quarters, took showers and relaxed to wait for supper.

Murray was one of ten or twelve officers gathered in a bunkroom shooting the breeze, when suddenly they heard a shout, then there was a muffled explosion and the General Alarm began to ding. Almost immediately the lights went out, and the roomful of men scrambled to get up on deck. At the door of the compartment there was shoving and shouting, grunting and cursing; the door refused to open for them in the darkness. Someone struck a match, and then it was seen that, while half of the men were trying to pull the door open the other half were pushing it shut!

When they did reach the deck they found that the ship had slipped anchor and was slowly getting underway. For some reason then it steamed around and around in circles at about half speed. Each time the ship was headed in an easterly direction its single 5-incher forward spoke, sending round after round into the evening gloom at the harbor entrance. The grapevine brought the word that an enemy submarine had fired two torpedoes from that position; one had crossed the ship's bow eliciting the shout from the lookout there; the other then hit the ship amidships on the starboard side, exploding near the battery room and the switching-gear locker. The explosion killed one of the ship's two diesel engines and jammed the rudder hard over on the same side, which accounted for the ship's movement 'round and 'round Atka Bay.

To a macabre sense of humor, it was amusing to notice that each time Casco turned her beam toward the harbor entrance where the enemy sub presumably still lurked, all those up on deck not otherwise engaged seemed to fade away, toward the side of the ship farthest away from the sub, screened from it behind the superstructure. How powerful imagination becomes at times of inactivity under stress!

The ship's captain, Comdr. T. B. Williamson on the bridge kept Casco underway as long as he could, until finally its last circle fetched it aground on a sand bar and he stopped the one good engine. The large hole blasted in the side was letting in tons of water that soon might have sunk the ship had she not grounded at that point. By then it was dark, which at least gave an illusion of security from the attacking sub. Very soon the word was passed that the aviation crews were to be moved ashore, so Murray and the others went below to pack up.

When the boats reached the shoreline it was seen that the small fishing village of Atka was completely deserted. There were perhaps fifteen or twenty two-story houses there, and a store. The crews from Casco were able to gain entrance to several of them, and immediately set up housekeeping.

It was apparent that the regular residents of the village had left in a hurry. Beds were still made up, piled high with blankets; canned goods lined shelves in the kitchens. There was an old-fashioned trunk upstairs in one of the houses, unlocked and easy to plunder. One of the crewmen foraging through it reported that he found a bank book evidently belonging to the owner of the house; it showed that that humble fisherman had more than $10,000 in a savings account in Seattle. Someone said that the resident fishermen and their families had all been evacuated to Seattle without any warning when the Japanese moved in to Kiska and Attu.

It was several days before all of the crews could be taken out of Atka and flown back to Dutch Harbor. They found potatoes, other vegetables, fruits and preserved beef among the canned goods in the kitchens, as well as powdered milk, coffee and tea. Life wasn't so bad in Atka Village for those refugees who had abandoned ship when it was holed by the enemy and run aground in the inhospitable environment of the Aleutian winter.

The hole in Casco was patched up, the steering gear and damaged engine cobbled back to life and the ship was able to make it under her own power, escorted by a destroyer, to a Seattle shipyard for more permanent repairs. Thus ended the only seaplane advanced-base operation ever attempted in the Aleutians during wartime.

The Casco incident occurred just before Christmas in 1942. No doubt largely because of the failure of that operation it was concluded that to sustain patrol operations to effective distances west of Kiska and Attu we would need to use landplanes and base them farther out the Aleutian chain than Dutch Harbor. VP-61 was picked to trade off its PBY-5 seaplanes for PBY-5A amphibians.

Frank Bruner took the squadron back south all the way to San Diego to get the new planes. Many of the men's families were still on the West Coast, and great was the joy in their households brought by the unexpected Christmas reunion of VP-61 families.

Not only for Christmas. After a couple of days in San Diego checking out and learning to fly the PBYs with wheels the squadron headed back north to the combat zone. Several of the wives including Margot managed to get themselves up the coast to Seattle in time to spend another day with their husbands as they passed through NAS Sand Point again. The weather and the squadron's good luck combined to pay off for them; a planned New Year's Day takeoff for Sitka had to be aborted by Skipper Bruner due to fog. Unexpectedly the squadron got to enjoy New Year's Day still in civilization.

The delay brought another dividend to Murray's crew, too. On his way to provide some USO entertainment for the troops throughout the Alaskan theater, the famous ventriloquist Edgar Bergen elected for some reason to hitch a ride north by PBY. During the flight he reached into a large, square trunk that he brought along and produced, first, Charlie McCarthy, and then Mortimer Snerd. This generous, world-famous entertainer regaled the crew all the way to Kodiak doing sketch after sketch with his little wooden pals.

During their brief reunions—in Alameda, then in San Diego and finally in Seattle—Murray learned that Margot had continued to be domiciled with Helen Knowland in Alameda, and through Helen—because of Margot's experience with the Japanese planes on 7 December 1941 and her resultant publicity as, perhaps, the first American casualty of the war—had been recruited to make speeches at various shipyards and factories in the bay area to whip up spirits and inspire the workers to increase their productiveness. The Knowland political wheels arranged the visits, provided transportation in big, black limousines and insured enthusiastic audiences. Margot was a natural-born public speaker and enjoyed it immensely. She usually did her turn during the lunch hour at the factory or yard—her emotional exhortations sent the hard-hats back to their jobs vowing to "give their all" for the boys at the front, and "for the little lady," too.

The squadron returned to Dutch Harbor for only a few days, then moved west to Umnak Island. For that flight they took off from the water at Dutch Harbor and then an hour later put down their wheels and landed on a brand-new runway at Umnak. It was a whole new ball game for them now, operating as landplanes and patrolling past Kiska and Attu. It was a cleaner and far more comfortable operation, too, than had been the launches and recoveries from the icy waters of Dutch Harbor. The troops appreciated their graduation to landplanes. Later they were to stage through a runway built by Navy CBs 375 miles still farther out on Adak Island, where refueling the planes permitted their search sectors to be extended far out past the Japanese-held islands toward the Komandorskis.

One day, through a hole in a heavy cloud layer, Murray's plane spotted a freighter coming in toward Kiska from the direction of Siberia. He circled attempting to identify it; it showed no flag or other marking. But soon bursts of anti-aircraft fire began to pursue the PBY around its orbit. It had to be Japanese.

Murray sent off a contact report and circled closer. He thought about bombing the ship, but then decided that his depth bombs, set for underwater explosions against submarines, would be ineffective against the ship.

The ship changed course; Murray altered his circle to stay overhead. On signal he began to transmit a homing signal to bring in a flight of Army bombers being sent out. The aim of the gunners on the ship improved, as the puffs of exploding shells moved closer and closer to the PBY. Then to add to the excitement the plane's port engine began to run erratically. After about thirty minutes on the scene, with calculations showing little if any extra fuel for the flight back to base, Murray turned and headed for home.

About forty minutes later he received a message from the Wing—"Report enemy ship's position and bomb it." Bomb it? With depth bombs? Murray concluded that whoever on the Wing staff had sent that message didn't know what ordnance load the PBYs carried. He replied, "I departed ship's position forty minutes ago. Now returning to base with engine trouble and all depth bombs on board." He heard nothing further from the Wing. Later that day the squadron was advised that the six Army bombers sent out in response to Murray's contact reports bombed the enemy ship (with the right kind of bombs) but all of them missed the target in the mist.

The daily penetration of the squadron aircraft farther westward led to the discovery of a curious phenomenon, another unique hazard to flying in the Aleutians. Somewhere between Kiska and Attu there was a disappearing island. It was difficult to pinpoint its precise location because of the uncertainties of navigation in the nearly continuous darkening fog and mist, or even to know for certain that it was not just a specter in the wispy obscurity that prevailed. But the pilots were agreed that the mysterious island did exist—not large, not very high, but probably riding on a terrestrial crust that somehow rose and fell with seismic expansions and contractions. On some days the island loomed dark but clear out of the fog, its top well above water; on other days it submerged completely beneath the waves—gone as a landmark, dangerous if relied on as such.

Another danger that presented itself that winter particularly involved staging out of Adak. The crews had had little experience, in California and Hawaii where most of them came from, with the nearly instantaneous icing of aerodynamic surfaces that can occur at freezing temperatures when the atmosphere is at one hundred percent humidity and becomes dynamically supercooled. One early morning a PBY from another squadron at Adak became impatient to take the air and started its takeoff run before patchy ground fog had completely lifted from the runway. VP-61 crews readying their own planes watched in horror as the impatient one roared down the runway, taking a longer and longer roll to achieve flying speed. Because of the extra weight and the lift-destroying effects of rime ice formed on its wings during the run it was never able to lift off; the pilot failed to abort soon enough and they crashed into a hillside.

Murray's co-pilot for a part of his tour in the Aleutians was Lt. (j.g.) Oliver Glenn, whose wife Rosemary had become fast friends with Margot back in Alameda. One day Murray and Oliver were given an assignment to take an Army colonel and his party of explorers to Kanaga Island, between Adak and Semisopochnoi, closer to Kiska. Their mission was to seek out any Japanese on the island, and to determine whether or not it would be feasible for U.S. forces to seize it and build another runway there. It was with some misgivings that Murray and Oliver set their plane down on the water near a corner of Kanaga; the waves were running 4 to 6 feet high with a crosswind. The amphibian PBY-5A was not the easiest aircraft in the world to handle for a sea landing under those conditions.

They got down with a bang; the colonel and his expedition broke out two rubber boats, climbed in and pushed off for the arcane shoreline with a nonchalant "Cheerio." The PBY crew never saw them again, nor ever heard if they were later picked up from Kanaga by some other crew. But no runway was ever built on the island.

In late February 1943 Frank Bruner called Murray in to tell him that he had just recommended him for his first command—he would get a squadron of Vega Venturas (PV-1s) to be commissioned at NAS Whidbey Island near Seattle. To say the least Murray was overjoyed.

The new orders came quickly. Little time was wasted in saying goodbye to the combat zone. One of the squadron's planes needed some major repair work and Murray was asked to fly it back to Kodiak as soon as possible on his way south. When he got to Dutch Harbor the new landing strip "whacked out of the side of a mountain" near the entrance to the bay had just been opened for flight operations, so he elected to land on it. During his approach the tower cautioned that peculiar winds could be expected on the ground: he should make his approach unusually low. This he did, only to find himself floating over the downwind end of the runway, well past the threshold, not about to touch down anywhere near it. He went around again. This time he dragged in hanging on the props. Again he encountered the unusual floating sensation over the threshold, but he was able to set the plane down and brake it to a stop before running out of runway. When he deplaned and talked with the base operations officer he learned that Dutch Harbor's new strip was probably the only place in the world where the wind blows simultaneously in opposite directions at the two ends of the runway. Because the runway had to be carved out of the downwind side of a peninsula in such a direction that it lay directly across the axis of the prevailing wind, the windstream was split by the peninsula into two streams: one blew toward the center of the runway from one end, while the other followed the contour of the peninsula around to blow toward the center from the other end. An incoming pilot had a choice of landing in either direction, but whichever he chose he would find himself landing downwind and floating across the near end.

But it wasn't as dangerous as it sounded. By the time his wheels touched down and reached the center of the runway he could count on a reversal of the wind leaving him taxiing into the wind in a normal manner. Usually.

"Never a dull moment, right up to my last day in the Aleutians!" thought Murray.

The next day he flew the "old clunker" on to Kodiak; his call sign en route was "X-ray Four." When he got to Kodiak he found a bit of consternation, because another pilot named George Hansen was also making a special non-tactical flight that day, with call sign "X-ray Three." X-ray Three was already overdue at its destination—some place other than Kodiak, and some confusion existed because of the similarity of names and call signs. Murray was to learn later from wife Margot that X ray Three had evidently crashed; news of it had preceded Murray down the coast to Seattle and become confused as to which Hanso[e]n was the pilot.

Murray flew the trip from Kodiak to Seattle via civilian charter flight—a small Lockheed Lodestar contracted for by the military. Stopping in Juneau for gas, they were overtaken by a blizzard and holed up there for the night. The accommodations at Baranof Hotel, a good dinner preceded by a scotch and soda or two, and a fine breakfast the next morning were all courtesy of the pilot, at the expense of the airline. This made Murray doubly hesitant to collect both per diem and mileage when he got to Seattle. But the Navy paymaster there was to insist. Murray felt sure that someday, somehow the Navy would get it all back from him, so he put it in a special savings account and didn't touch it for six months.

In Seattle, Murray and Margot, and Little Murray, too, now had a grand reunion. They were sent to NAS Whidbey Island and set about looking for a place to live in the vicinity.

Three years and 3,000 hours of flight in PBYs, more than half of it in wartime, were coming to a close. The two young warriors, husband and wife—and probably the wartime baby, too, had she known—were happy that he was getting into a new type of aircraft at last. And they were more than happy that he was no longer one of the Aleuts in the very special hellhole that was theirs alone.

The author, Captain Murray Hanson, USN, during Korean War.

*

VPB-61

Lineage

Established as Patrol Squadron SIXTY ONE (VP-61) on 1 May 1942.

Redesignated Patrol Bombing Squadron SIXTY ONE (VPB-61) on 1 October 1944.

Disestablished on 15 September 1945.

Squadron Insignia and Nickname

The only official insignia used by VPB-61 was submitted for approval on 28 June 1945, and was approved by CNO on 6 July 1945. The insignia was comprised of a cat, representing the PBY-5A Land Cats, rolling a lucky seven with a pair of dice. The cat was with lime green pupil; tongue, dull red; mouth, black; binoculars, black with yellow highlights; cap on cat, bright blue and yellow striped.

Nickname: None on record.

Chronology of Significant Events

1 May 1942: VP-61 was established at NAS Alameda, Calif., as a seaplane squadron flying both the PBY-5 Catalina and the amphibious PBY-5A version. During this period the squadron came under the operational control of PatWing-8. Training of squadron personnel continued through the end of July.

10 Jun 1942: Four of the squadron aircraft were ferried to Cold Bay, Alaska, for temporary duty.

15 Aug 1942: VP-61 departed NAS Alameda bound for Sitka, Alaska. Bad weather encountered en route kept the squadron grounded at NAS Seattle until 18 August. A break in the overcast allowed the squadron to make a quick dash to Sitka, then on the next day to NAS Kodiak, PatWing-4 headquarters where VP-61 re-ported for duty. The squadron was assigned duty at Section Base Sand Point, Popof Island. From this location three five-hour patrols were flown over search sectors each day.

23 Aug 1942: Four squadron aircraft were detached for duty at NAS Kodiak. All four returned to Sand Point, Popof Island, on 26 August 1942.

27–29 Aug 1942: Two aircraft were detached for operations from Nazan Bay, Atka Island, with tender support provided by Casco (AVP 12).

30 Aug 1942: Adak was occupied by Army forces and an advanced seaplane base was established there by the tender Teal (AVP 5), which put North Pacific forces within 250 miles of occupied Kiska and in a position to maintain a close watch over enemy shipping lanes to that island and to Attu. The tender Casco (AVP 12) was damaged by a torpedo from the Japanese submarine RO-61, Lieutenant Commander Toshisada Tokutomi commanding, and was beached while repairs were completed.

2 Sep 1942: The squadron headquarters was relocated to NAF Dutch Harbor. Two aircraft were sent to operate with tender Casco (AVP 12) at Nazan Bay, Atka Island; and three aircraft to operate with tender Teal (AVP 5) at Kuluk Bay, Adak Island. From these sites the squadron conducted routine sector patrols and attacks on Japanese shipping.

30 Nov 1942: In preparation for relief and return to the States, all of the squadron aircraft flew back to Dutch Harbor. Weather conditions were so bad at that base that none of the aircraft could be flown, even though they were kept on alert status through mid-December.

12 Dec 1942: A temporary break in the weather allowed the squadron to depart NAF Dutch Harbor, but it only got as far as Sitka, Alaska, when storms kept VP-61 grounded until 22 December 1942.

22 Dec 1942: VP-61 departed NAS Sitka for NAS Seattle, Wash. Upon arrival, crews were given home leave through 6 January 1943.

15 Jan 1943: After a week spent at NAS Seattle settling squadron affairs and administrative matters, the squadron again departed for the north, returning to NAS Sitka, Alaska, then on to Kodiak on 18 January 1943. After reporting to FAW-4 headquarters, the squadron was assigned to NAF Otter Point, Umnak Island.

19 Jan 1943: VP-61 relieved VP-42 at NAF Otter Point. After getting settled, detachments of aircraft were sent to NAF Dutch Harbor, Aleutians.

4 May 1943: Squadron headquarters were reestablished at NAF Adak, Alaska, with a detachment at Amchitka Island.

10 May–7 Jun 1943: Squadron headquarters were shifted to Amchitka Island in preparation for the invasion of Attu Island on 11 May. On 7 June 1943, the establishment of NAF Attu within one week of its capture from the Japanese brought FAW-4 bases to the tip of the Aleutian chain, nearly 1,000 miles from the Alaskan mainland and 750 miles from Japanese territory in the Kuriles.

7–16 Oct 1943: VP-61 was relieved by VB-61. Only half of the squadron was able to depart on the 8^th when the weather shut down operations. The rest of the aircraft left the next day and rejoined the squadron at Kodiak. By 16 October 1943, all of the squadron aircraft arrived safely at NAS Seattle, completing the second tour of duty in the Aleutian Island chain. All hands were given 30 days home leave and told to report on expiration of leave to NAS Whidbey Island, Wash.

5 Jan 1944: VP-61 was reformed at NAS Whidbey Island under the operational control of FAW-6, spending the next three months training new crews and refurbishing equipment.

8 Apr 1944: The squadron departed NAS Whidbey Island for its third Aleutian tour, proceeding to Yakutat, Alaska, then on to NAS Kodiak on 12 April. After reporting to FAW-4 headquarters, the squadron was given orders to report to Adak Island to attend the LORAN School and the Ordnance refresher course. LORAN, which stood for long-range aid to navigation, equipment had been tested for the first time at NAS Lakehurst, N.J., on 13 June 1942. Operators could home in on beacons during IFR flying conditions and find their home bases safely. In the inclement weather of the far northwest, this equipment proved to be a lifesaver.

22 Apr 1944: VP-61 departed Adak for NAS Attu, commencing daily patrols the next day. The patrol areas were divided into six pie-shaped segments extending 350 miles out to sea.

15 Sep 1944: VP-61 began flying inshore patrols along the shipping lanes, which extended the complete length of the Aleutian chain. To facilitate the coverage over these vast distances, the squadron was divided into detachments: Headquarters moved to NS Adak, Detachment 1 went to NAF Amchitka, Detachment 2 to NAS Kodiak, and Detachment 3 went to NAF Dutch Harbor.

10 Dec 1944: VPB-61 was relieved from inshore patrols by VPB-43. The various detachments rejoined the headquarters staff at NAS Kodiak.

11–28 Dec 1944: VPB-61 departed Kodiak en route to NAS Seattle, Wash. The last aircraft arrived on 28 December 1944, and all hands were given home leave.

1 Feb 1945: VPB-61 began reforming at NAS Whidbey Island with new personnel and equipment. With the end of the war imminent, deployment plans were delayed until the end of August, when the decision was made to disestablish the squadron.

15 Sep 1945: VPB-61 was disestablished at NAS Whidbey Island, Wash.

Home Port Assignments

NAS Alameda, Calif.: 1 May 1942

NAS Seattle, Wash.: 22 Dec 1942

NAS Whidbey Island, Wash.: 5 Jan 1944

Commanding Officers

LCDR Frank Bruner: 1 May 1942

LCDR Charles J. Eastman: 5 Jan 1944

LCDR W. J. Camp, Jr.: 18 Feb 1945

Aircraft Assignment

PBY-5/5A: May 1942

Squadron Insignia and Nickname

The only official insignia used by VPB-61 was submitted for approval on 28 June 1945, and was approved by CNO on 6 July 1945. The insignia was comprised of a cat, representing the PBY-5A Land Cats, rolling a lucky seven with a pair of dice. The cat was standing on a bomb with a pair of binoculars around its neck, signifying the squadron’s primary function as a patrol bombing squadron. There were two color themes for the cat. When northern based, the squadron painted the cat white on a black bomb; if southern based, it became black on a gray bomb.

Colors: field, aquamarine; dice, white and gray with black dots; bomb, black (or gray) with yellow highlights; cat, white (or black); cat jowls, gray; eyes, white with lime green pupil; tongue, dull red; mouth, black; binoculars, black with yellow highlights; cap on cat, bright blue and yellow striped.

 Nickname: None on record.

Major Overseas Deployments

Date of Departure	Date of Return	Wing	Base of Operations	Type of Aircraft	Area of Operations
10 Jun 1942	*	PatWing-4	Cold Bay	PBY-5/5A	NorPac
15 Aug 1942	*	PatWing-4	Sitka	PBY-5/5A	NorPac
30 Aug 1942	*	PatWing-4	Adak	PBY-5/5A	NorPac
			Teal (AVP 5)
2 Sep 1942	22 Dec 1942	PatWing-4	Dutch Harbor	PBY-5/5A	NorPac
			Casco (AVP 12)
			Teal (AVP 5)
15 Jan 1943	*	FAW-4	Umnak Is.	PBY-5A	NorPac
4 May 1943	*	FAW-4	Adak	PBY-5A	NorPac
11 May 1943	7 Oct 1943	FAW-4	Amchitka	PBY-5A	NorPac
12 Apr 1944	*	FAW-4	Kodiak/Adak	PBY-5A	NorPac
22 Apr 1944	11 Dec 1944	FAW-4	Attu	PBY-5A	NorPac

Air Wing Assignments

PatWing-8: 1 May 1942

PatWing-4/FAW-4:†  15 Aug 1942

FAW-6: 22 Dec 1942

FAW-4: 15 Jan 1943

FAW-6: 16 Oct 1943

FAW-4: 12 Apr 1944

FAW-6: 28 Dec 1944

† Patrol Wing 4 (PatWing-4) was redesignated Fleet Air Wing 4

Unit Awards Received

None on record.

 

PBY-5A Catalina patrol plane flying past Segula Island (just east of Kiska), Aleutians, Summer 1942.

PBY-5A Catalina aircraft of US Navy Patrol Squadron VP-61 in flight in the Aleutian Islands, US Territory of Alaska, March 1943.

PBY-5A Catalina aircraft of US Navy Patrol Squadron VP-61 in flight in the Aleutian Islands, US Territory of Alaska, March 1943.

A Consolidated PBY-5A Catalina Flying Boat of Patrol Squadron VP-61 in flight during a patrol in the Aleutians in March 1943.

U.S. Navy PV-1 Ventura aircraft of Bombing Squadron VB-135 and PBY-5A Catalina from another squadron at the Adak Island airfield, Aleutian Islands, US Territory of Alaska, summer 1943.

Bombing up a PBY for a mission after a snow storm at Cold Bay, Alaska, 23 November 1942.

U.S. Navy Lieutenant William Thies and Captain Leslie Gehres standing in front of their PBY Catalina aircraft, Aleutian Islands, U.S. Territory of Alaska, 1942.

U.S. Navy personnel freeing a PBY-5A Catalina aircraft from frozen waters in the Aleutian Islands at Kodiak Bay, U.S. Territory of Alaska, 1942-1943.

U.S. Navy Consolidated PBY-5 Catalina aircraft in flight over a glacier on the Alaskan coast, 22 August 1942. The wartime censor has tried to erase the squadron code on the first PBY, which appears to be "43-P-16." VP-43 operated from Nazan Bay, Atka Island, against the Japanese on Kiska and Attu Islands.

Another view of the same aircraft as shown at left in the previous photo.

PBY-5A Catalina of the U.S. Navy's 4th Air Wing in the Aleutians after running off the runway's steel matting, 1943-44. Note the aerial depth charges mounted under the wings.

Flight crews gather around a PBY-5A Catalina patrol plane on a Marsden Mat seaplane ramp in the Aleutians, 1944-45. Note oil splatters on the hull from the notoriously leaky radial engines.

PBY Catalina turned upside down by heavy winds at Dutch Harbor, Alaska, 2 November 1942. Note another PBY askew in the left background.

Another view PBY number 25 overturned in Dutch Harbor, November 1942.

PBY-5 Catalinas from Fleet Air Wing 4 in the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, January 11, 1943. Note four Mk-37 aerial depth charges under wings, with two more and one 500-pound general purpose bomb on bomb cart.

Higgins 78-foot torpedo boats of Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron 13 (MTBRon 13) moored in Attu, Alaska, July 1943. Note PT-75 and PT-78 nested outboard of their squadron-mate and PBY Catalina patrol plane taking off.

U.S. Navy Commodore Leslie Gehres, commander of Fleet Air Wing 4 in the Aleutians (with his back to the PBY Catalina airplane), making introductions of newly arriving officers at Attu, Alaska, 1944.

PBY-5A, Number 71, on Attu Island, Alaska, 1944.

A PBY on a gravel runway on Attu, 1945.