Pearl Harbor’s Hero with a Hangover

by Don Dwiggins

Published in December 1969

And so there I am on Sunday morning, flying this tired P-40 in my tuxedo pants and a skivvy shirt, right inside a pack of jittery Japs strafing Ewa Marine Base next to Pearl Harbor, unshaven, a little hung-over. I sneak in behind this Val, get him in my sights and start shootin’. I am absolutely amazed at how quickly he folds up. Bingo! A ball of fire! Then I pull up, onto another one…”

The general is talking over his shoulder from the left seat of a slick, new Piper Cherokee 140 he is flying around the island, reliving the utterly pre­posterous thing that happened to him twenty-eight years ago, 7 December 1941, a terror-laden Sunday morning that heaved world history into chaos.

He chews hard on an unlit cigar, the muscles in his jaw rippling, sweat beading his face. He flies with consummate, unstudied skill, though he’s never piloted a Cherokee before. He jabs the cigar dead ahead, stretching his neck to see better.

“Down there! Look down there! At what’s left of Haleiwa! The strip I took off from!” General Kenneth M. Taylor, a lit­tle heavier now, hair thinning, but real cool, hunches forward, knuckles white on the wheel, his neck corded. With a gut-sucking wrench, he slams the Cherokee hard over into a ver­tical bank, the wingtip seeming to drag through tall palms lining a bar­ren gash and then across the foaming surfline on Oahu’s Windward Coast.

In the right seat, Bud Weisbrod, hulking operator of Hawaii’s Island Flight Center, cringes noticeably. It’s his airplane. “The general,” he says matter-of-factly, “is doing his thing.”

Taylor’s eyes squint, and they are no longer the eyes of a middle-aged brigadier general, Assistant Adjutant General (Air), Alaska, holder of the Distinguished Service Cross, Legion of Merit, Air Medal, Purple Heart and other hardware.

They are the gray-green eyes of Second Lieutenant Ken Taylor, prize hotshot of the Army Air Force’s 47th Fighter Squadron, 15th Fighter Group, one of only two fighter outfits in the Territory on Pearl Harbor Day. A little bloodshot from a Saturday night of hell-raising, but steady, puzzling over a funny-look­ing B-17 with a strange tail, unlike the Fortresses he’d seen at Hickam.

Lieutenant Taylor tests his guns, a pair of .30-caliber machine guns in each wing, two fifties in the nose, heaviest armament in service. Trac­ers spit forward. He wags his wings to signal his wingmate, Lt. George Welch. Together, they are the only two combat-ready fighters in the sky to attack the invaders.

“We drive up pretty close,” he re­lates. “One of us on each side. We are ready to turn in for the kill, but we see a bunch of guys inside, jump­ing around and waving. We pull away. They’re on our side. One of Maj. Truman Landon’s new ships, just arriving from the mainland.

“I crank the coffee grinder to George’s frequency and we chat a bit. ‘What do you think, George? We doing the right thing?’ Remember, this is our first war, and we aren’t sure we’re not making a horrible mistake.

“That’s when we run down to Ewa, where all the action is, and slip into the circle of Vals. We get on the tail end and go to work. Our guns are bore-sighted for six hundred feet, so we start in shootin’ at seven hundred.

“After I flame the first one, I line up on this next character, and I’m hitting him but he’s not burning. His rear gunner is shooting at me and that makes me very mad. I put him out of action. I see flames, and he heads out to sea, trying to get back to the carrier. He doesn’t make it.”

Right here is where one of the ironies of war makes it tough for Taylor to verify his claim to being America’s first ace of World War II. He had no gun camera, hence the Japanese planes he and George Welch sent to the bottom of the ocean dur­ing the Pearl Harbor holocaust weren’t counted officially. Later, when it was learned that the Japanese lost twenty-nine aircraft in the raid, the government credited four kills each to the two lieutenants.

Of course, things haven’t changed a hell of a lot in twenty-eight years. When Bud Weisbrod and a friend, Professor Martin Vitousek, from the University of Hawaii, fly up to Wheeler Field to pick up Gen. Taylor and me, they cannot land. Somebody forgot to tell the brass they were coming.

“Security here is tighter than in forty-one,” Taylor comments dryly.

We have to drive back down to Honolulu International to meet them. It was there, incidentally, that Vitousek, as a boy of seventeen, got airborne in an Aeronca, flying with his dad, just in time to watch Pearl Harbor explode. A sight that scars his mind today.

The occasion for this get-together of old Pearl Harbor hands is a movie—Twentieth Century-Fox’s “Tora! Tora! Tora!”—a $25,000,000 sham battle so damnably real it had sailors diving overboard and jittery Fox Air Force pilots trying too hard to sink dummy battleships with Plexiglas bombs. When you try too hard, you die. Two did.

Flying over the island of Oahu, I am privy to their psychological vibrations as Taylor and Vitousek flash back across three decades, remembering what it was like. A junk-pile Japanese Zero flashes by, streaking for Hickam Field. Taylor grimaces.

“Over there … in that pineapple plantation … that’s where I flamed one,” he is saying.

Nothing there today. Just miles and miles of pineapples.

Back at the Ilkai bar, we talk over a maitai, about how the Japanese finally took the city by buying it.

“It’s changed quite a bit,” Taylor says.

He was young and in love and a hell-raiser in general, who often buzzed the town on Sunday mornings “to wake up the Navy.”

“George and I were permanent ODs,” Taylor grins over his maitai.

Saturday night, 6 December 1941: Pearl Harbor is invulnerable, and the P-40s at Wheeler are safely parked tail to tail in mid-field, safe from saboteurs. Taylor and a buddy, Lt. Charley Parrot, go out on the town together.

“We hit a Chinese place—Laui Chi’s—where the officers hung out. You had to dress for dinner. White coat, black tie. We were ready for whatever came along.”

The girl he hoped would come along didn’t show up—Flora Love Morrison, a good-looking girl from Hennessey, Oklahoma, near his home town of Enid, living with her father, who worked at Pearl. A girl he would later marry, and call Baby because she has this pretty baby face.

“We drifted over to the Officer’s Club at Hickam, in a group. I had a date with a gal named Maxine, who later married Charley Parrot. The usual Saturday night … drinks, talk, dancing. Then back to Wheeler. I wanted to sit in on the poker game that ran every Saturday night. There were some mighty good players there.”

“This colonel—his name was Flood—asked how I could play in such a big game on my salary. It was no problem, I told him, since the first game, because I was playing on his money.”

Midnight passes, and as the world remembers, the predawn hours trickle out to end an era, while offshore, in a biting wind, Capt. Mitsuo Fuchida, air group commander of the Japanese Imperial Navy’s carrier Akagi, waits impatiently for dawn.

The Wheeler Field BOQ is a rambling stucco building surrounding a patio. Sleeping quarters line two sides, and an entrance lobby, bar and dining-dance area the others. Lieutenant Taylor is winning at poker, but not so much he can’t leave the game. He cashes in his chips, yawns and heads for the sack.

It’s been a busy week for Ken Taylor. The 47th Fighter Squadron had flown down to Haleiwa for routine air-to-air gunnery practice, shooting up tow targets. He and George Welch were among the 47th’s top scorers.

Taylor turns in. The sack feels good. No weekend flying. Tomorrow, Sunday, will be just another easy day.

Explosions jar the BOQ. Taylor sits bolt-upright. It’s daylight, not yet light. He runs to the window. More bombs explode, slugs rip through the BOQ patio.

He grabs his pants and a skivvy shirt and runs outside. He meets Welch. They stare in amazement. Japanese planes are strafing Wheeler. The rows of P-40s, all neatly parked in mid-field, are burning, belching black smoke. More Japanese planes come in, lining up for their strafing runs, right over the BOQ.

“Ken,” Welch says thoughtfully, “these guys are not friendly. Let’s go!”

Taylor thinks, well, maybe there’s gonna be one hell of a big court-martial. We’ve got no orders! (Captain Austin, the CO, is on another island, Hawaii.)

Taylor grabs a phone in the corridor, dodges bullets as more planes sweep in low, gets Haleiwa’s OD. “Warm up two ships!” he yells.

Moments later, they’re plunging down the ten miles of dirt road to Haleiwa, Ken’s brand-new 1941 Buick sedan raising a trail of dust. A Zeke comes for them. Ken swerves hard and the bullets miss. At Haleiwa, they leap out and run to their idling Warhawks, parked under palm trees. The Japanese somehow missed seeing the rows of fighters parked there.

Taylor and Welch roar down the runway, wingtip to wingtip, a formation takeoff to fly line abreast, a style of fighting thus born that would become SOP for the rest of the war.

“We didn’t plan it,” Taylor says over his maitai. “It just worked out best; we could guard each other’s tails that way.”

Again, that uneasy feeling that their necks are out a mile. They look over the stray B-17, then climb up under the cloud base at 3,000 and loaf down toward Pearl.

Battleship Row is a bloody, burning shambles. At Ewa it looks as if the Marines are getting off. They dive for Ewa, get a rude shock. The planes are Vals! George and Ken split, slip into the circle of orbiting planes and each shoot down two like sitting ducks. Taylor follows another out over the water, flames him good. Three kills, and his guns are empty.

Back at Wheeler, he finds Welch on the ground reloading. He sets down, taxis past the pyre of P-40s and stops alongside George. Ground crewmen frantically dart inside the burning hangars, wheel out boxes of ammo.

“People are jumping up on the wings, yelling at us to disperse! Disperse!” The general grins. “I take one look at those burning P-40s and shake my head. We’ve got the only flyable ships on the field. We get all kinds of advice. All bad.”

Concerned lest somebody might pull rank and swipe his ship, Lt. Taylor watches George leap off and then starts after him. An ammo dolly blocks his way. To hell with it! He guns the P-40. It bounces over the dolly. He swings out to take off into the south, just as a flight of Japanese comes in from that direction. His lips pull back. Rolling fast now, he holds the gunsight on the lead Japanese, while still on the ground. He squeezes the trigger.

“We pass with a great rush,” he says. “I’m sure I got some hits on him. I chandelle up into position behind another Japanese in the strafing line, and I have him smoking—but I make one mistake. I’ve chandelled right into the middle of the line. A slug comes through my canopy. Slivers dig into my leg.”

His head on a swivel, Taylor sees his buddy, George, knock off his attacker. He breaks off and pulls up into a cloud.

“George and I got two more out of that group. After a couple of hours, we landed at Wheeler, then went back to Haleiwa, where I got first aid.””Then they climb back into Ken’s Buick and drive toward Wheeler, to look over one of the wrecks.

“Suddenly we see Capt. Austin and the operations officer roaring down the road, the top on their convertible flying up and down. They pull out to block the road and we skid to a stop. Austin starts giving us one of his famous chewings. He ended by shouting, “If you don’t know there’s a war on, I’ll tell you bastards, there is! Now get to the field and do something about it!”

Lieutenant Taylor stammers, reddening, “But, sir,” he says, “your squadron, the Fighting 47th, has just distinguished itself!”

The CO’s mouth drops open and, the general remembers, “it was one time he was delighted with Taylor and Welch!”

Both pilots win the DFC and each are credited with two victories; later on, each officially is given four kills. Of the twenty-nine Japanese ships that did not return to the carriers, more than half cannot be attributed to anti-aircraft fire.

Taylor went on to finish the war in the South Pacific and run his total of official victories to six. In 1967, he retired from the Air Force and joined the Alaskan Air Guard as a brigadier general. George Welch later became a test pilot and was killed in a jet crash.

When Gen. Taylor and I drove out to Wheeler AFB recently, to watch Director Richard Fleischer direct a scene for “Tora! Tora! Tora!” wherein actors Carl Reindell and Rick Cooper reenact Taylor’s and Welch’s roles on Pearl Harbor Day, something went wrong. A radio-controlled P-40 went out of control on take-off, smashing into four parked Warhawks with a wild explosion.

The general nodded to Fleischer. “Yes, that’s the way it was. Like that.” [Note: The scene was filmed and put into the movie.—R.M.]

Later, I asked who was credited with shooting down the first enemy plane in World War II—he or George?

“No one will ever know,” he replied. “George and I separated over Ewa, remember. But we made a gentleman’s agreement. If one of us bought the farm, the survivor could claim it. George is dead now. That leaves me.

Kenneth Taylor (shown here as a major, circa 1945) was a second lieutenant when he took off from blazing Wheeler Field and became the first World War II Yank to score an air kill.

 

Taylor receiving the Distinguished Service Cross on January 8, 1942 for his efforts. Note the tattered flag.

The tombstone of Kenneth M. Taylor at Arlington National Cemetery.

Pearl Harbor Heroes: George Welsh and Ken Taylor

At exactly 7:55 on a beautiful Sunday morning the United States was suddenly plunged into the greatest conflict in the history of the world. We were not only unprepared for war, but our armed forces in. the Pacific were caught completely by surprise.

That same Sunday morning two young Army Air Corps lieutenants were just leaving an all-night party at Wheeler Field, Hawaii. They were George Welsh and Ken Taylor of the 15th Pursuit Group. As they stood outside an army barracks watching the tropical dawn grow brighter, neither had any idea of the momentous event which was about to change their lives. It was 7 December 1941. Welsh was saying that instead of going to sleep, he wanted to drive back to their own base at nearby Haleiwa Field for a nice Sunday morning swim.

At that moment, just ten miles south of Lieutenants Welsh and Taylor, carrier-based dive bombers, torpedo planes and fighters of the Imperial Japanese Navy were beginning their carefully planned sneak attack on the great American naval base at Pearl Harbor, as well as its surrounding airfields. Most of our powerful Pacific Fleet was in training, and there were ninety-six United States warships anchored in and about this Pacific stronghold. War had been expected by our military leaders, but the general opinion was that the Japanese would open hostilities against the Dutch or British possessions in Asia thousands of miles farther west.

As Welsh and Taylor walked to their car to head back to their own base, they saw sixty-two new Curtiss P-40 “Tomahawks” parked wing tip to wing tip so they could be guarded “against sabotage.”

Suddenly the Japanese swooped down on Wheeler Field, which was a center for fighter operations in Hawaii. Dive bombers seemed to appear out of nowhere. Violent explosions upended the parked planes, and buildings began to burn.

Welsh ran for a telephone and called Haleiwa as bullets sprayed around him.

“Get two P-40s ready!” he yelled. “It’s not a gag—the Japs are here.”

The drive up to Haleiwa was a wild one. Japanese Zeros strafed Welsh and Taylor three times. When the two fliers careened onto their field nine minutes later, their fighter planes were already armed and the propellers were turning over. Without waiting for orders they took off.

As they climbed for altitude they ran into twelve Japanese Val dive bombers over the Marine air base at Ewa. Welsh and Taylor began their attack immediately. on their first pass, machine guns blazing, each shot down a bomber. As Taylor zoomed up and over in his Tomahawk he saw an enemy bomber heading out to sea. He gave his P-40 full throttle and roared after it. Again his aim was good and the Val broke up before his eyes. In the meantime Welsh’s plane had been hit and he dived into a protective cloud bank. The damage didn’t seem too serious so he flew out again—only to find himself on the tail of another Val. With only one gun now working he nevertheless managed to send the bomber flaming into the sea.

Both pilots now vectored toward burning Wheeler Field for more ammunition and gas. Unfortunately the extra cartridge belts for the P-40s were in a hangar which was on fire. Two mechanics ran bravely into the dangerous inferno and returned with the ammunition.

The Japanese were just beginning a second strafing of the field as Welsh and Taylor hauled their P-40s into the air again. They headed directly into the enemy planes, all guns firing. This time Ken Taylor was hit in the arm, and then a Val closed in behind him. Welsh kicked his rudder and the Tomahawk whipped around and blasted the Val, though his own plane had been hit once more. Taylor had to land, but George Welsh shot down still another bomber near Ewa before he returned.

Perhaps twenty American fighter planes managed to get into the air that morning—including five obsolete Republic P-35s. Most of them were shot down, but their bravery and initiative accounted for six victories in the one-sided aerial battle.

The United States possessed no airplane which could outfight the Japanese Zero on its own terms. The Zero was faster—except in a dive. It could out-turn the American fighter planes and it could out climb them. It was the most important weapon Japan had until the Kamikaze planes were introduced near the end of the war.

At first our pilots did not know the weaknesses of the Zero—that it had no armor, that it had no self-sealing gasoline tanks, and that its explosive 20-mm cannons did not have the range or accuracy of the smaller but powerful .50-caliber machine guns mounted in our newest fighters. Also our pilots had not yet perfected the principle of the wingman, who was trained to stick close to his leader during combat and protect him from any attack from the rear.

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who was in charge of all Japanese naval operations, had planned the Pearl Harbor strike brilliantly. In a few hours all of the Navy and Marine aircraft at Ewa air base were destroyed on the ground. Two-thirds of the Pacific Fleet was either sunk or seriously crippled. Luckily our two aircraft carriers in the South Pacific, the Lexington and the Enterprise, were away from Pearl Harbor during the attack.

The Japanese particularly wanted to catch our carriers in the harbor. Admiral Yamamoto knew the value of the carrier better than most naval commanders. As early as 1915 he had stated that: “The most important ship of the future will be a ship to carry airplanes.” (After the war we learned that most of the messages sent from Pearl Harbor by a Japanese spy had to do with the whereabouts of our carriers.)

The Enterprise didn’t escape entirely, however. She was on her way back to Pearl Harbor after delivering Major Paul Putnam’s squadron of Marine Grumman F4F “Wildcats” to Wake Island. Heavy seas had kept the “Big E” from arriving on time—which would have meant her destruction. But many of her scouts and bombers which flew in ahead of the ship were caught in the initial Japanese attack, and five were lost.

Even more tragic was the fate suffered by Navy Lieutenant Fritz Hebel. He was leading his Wildcat fighters from the Enterprise toward Ford Island in Pearl Harbor later that day after completing a search mission. It was 7:30 and getting dark. The men on the ground were still jittery from the morning attacks. As Hebel’s fighters came in for a landing the whole sky suddenly filled with tracer bullets. Practically every ship in the harbor thought the Wildcats were Japanese planes returning for another raid. Lieutenant Hebel and three other Navy pilots were killed by our own guns.

A flight of six Curtiss-Wright P-40B Warhawks of the 44th Pursuit Squadron, 18th Pursuit Group, over the island of Oahu, Territory of Hawaii, 9:00 a.m., 1 August 1941.

 

Maj. George S. Welch poses with his P-40 aircraft while assigned to the 45th Air Base Group in
Hawaii.

Lieutenants Kenneth Marlar Taylor and George Schwartz Welch, Air Corps, United States Army. Taylor and Welch took two Curtiss-Wright P-40B Warhawk fighters from a remote airfield at Haleiwa, on the northwestern side of the island of Oahu, and against overwhelming odds, each shot down four enemy airplanes: Welch shot down three Aichi D3A Type 99 “Val” dive bombers and one Mitsubishi A6M2 Type 0 (“Zero”) fighter. Taylor also shot down four Japanese airplanes.

The Curtiss P-36A Hawk in the World War II Gallery at the National Museum of the United States Air Force features a mannequin of a pajama-clad 2nd Lt. Philip M. Rasmussen.

The few who got up: (L-R) Pearl Harbor fighter pilots 2nd Lt. Harry Brown, 2nd Lt. Philip M. Rasmussen, 2nd Lt. Kenneth M. Taylor, 2nd Lt. George S. Welch, and 1st Lt. Lewis M. Sanders.

(L-R) Pearl Harbor fighter pilots 1st Lt. Lewis M. Sanders, 2nd Lt. Philip M. Rasmussen, 2nd Lt. Kenneth M. Taylor, 2nd Lt. George S. Welch, and 2nd Lt. Harry Brown.

Welch and Taylor during the awards ceremony for their Distinguished Service Cross medals. Welch was nominated for the Medal of Honor but was rejected because he acted without orders to take off'.

Lieutenant George S. Welch, of Wilmington, Delaware, gets a hearty handshake from President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the White House in Washington, May 25, 1942 and his congratulations for shooting down four Japanese planes during the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7. From left to right are Sen. James H. Hughes (D-Del.), Mrs. Hughes, Mrs. George Schwartz, Welch's mother; George Schwartz, his stepfather, and Lieutenant Welch.

George Welch. He would end World War II with 16 total confirmed enemy airplanes shot down. A test pilot post-war, he died of injuries from a plane crash sustained during a test flight of the F-100.

Burial, Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Arlington County, Virginia. Plot: Section 6, Grave 8578-D.

Rasmussen beside damaged P-36 Hawk. Philip M. Rasmussen (May 11, 1918 – April 30, 2005) was a United States Army Air Forces second lieutenant assigned to the 46th Pursuit Squadron at Wheeler Field on the island of Oahu during the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941. He was one of the few American pilots to get into the air that day. Rasmussen was awarded a Silver Star for his actions. He flew many later combat missions, including a bombing mission over Japan that earned him an oak leaf cluster. He stayed in the military after the war and eventually retired from the United States Air Force as a lieutenant colonel in 1965. He died in 2005 of complications from cancer and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Curtiss P-36A Hawk, at the National Museum of the United States Air Force, in the markings of the aircraft flown by Rasmussen during the Pearl Harbor attack.

Wrecked P-40 and hangars at Wheeler Field.

Another casualty of the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor. This photograph was taken seconds after the plane exploded.

Resourceful aircrews remove parts from a P-40 destroyed in the Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Wheeler Air Base for us on other repairable aircraft.

Wrecked planes at Wheeler Field after the 7 December attack. Of the Army's 123 first-line planes in Hawaii, 63 survived the attack; of the Navy's 148 serviceable combat aircraft, 36 remained.

The remains of a P-40 Tomahawk at Wheeler Field.

A heavily damaged U.S. Army Air Forces Curtiss P-40 from the 44th Pursuit Squadron at Bellows Field, Territory of Hawaii, after the Japanese attack on 7 December 1941.

P-40 Warhawk aircraft damaged in a taxiing accident with another P-40 at Bellows Field, 8 December 1941. Is this the aircraft that was in the accident with the P-40 in the previous photo?

Remains of P-40s caught on the ground during the attack.

The first bombs to strike Hickam Field Dec. 7, 1941 were dropped on Hawaiian Air Depot buildings and the hangar line, causing thick clouds of smoke to billow upward.

Members of the Hawaiian Air Force's Headquarters Squadron, 17th Tow Target Squadron and 23rd Materiel Squadron watch Japanese high-Ievel horizontal bombers heading toward Pearl Harbor Dec. 7, 1941.

Airmen with other personnel man a gun emplacement set up in a bomb crater between Hangars 11-13 and 15-17, Hickam Field, Dec. 7, 1941.

Construction work at Wheeler Field on 11 December 1941. After the Japanese raid many destroyed or damaged buildings were rebuilt.

USAAF Curtiss P-40B (s/n 41-13297, c/n 16073). This aircraft survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 as it was in a maintenance hangar undergoing repair. The plane was wrecked on 24 January 1942 while on patrol over Koolau Range, Oahu, when it spun in. The pilot was killed.

The former USAAF Curtiss P-40B (s/n 41-13297, c/n 16073) in flight. The wreck was recovered between 1985 and 1989 and restored by the Curtiss Wright Historical Association, using parts from aircraft 39-285 and 39-287. It was later sold to "The Fighter Collection" at Duxford, UK.

Wheeler Army Air Field, Hawaii: Soldiers from B Company, 209th Aviation Support Battalion push a Curtis P-40 Warhawk into position near Wheeler's Kawamura gate. The static display used in the movie "Tora, Tora, Tora" was recently refurbished by the soldiers. 12 June 2008.