My north Americans

Air Classics, May 2001 by Reed, Boardman C

AFTER COMPILING LOTS OF HOURS IN MITCHELLS, BOARDMAN REED MANAGES TO LOG SOME TIME IN

THE NAA B-45 TORNADO AND IS RE-INTRODUCED

TO THE B-25 AT A WARBIRD AIRSHOW

CONCLUSION

My folks, alerted to meet me at March, drove me home for the weekend. Saturdays had always been a peace-time fun flying day, so I asked my old friend Dave Kenyon - from our old 115th Observation Squadron days - if perhaps he might like a flight in one of those new B-25s? Such a silly question! In uniform, he drove us back out to March Field where I gave him a half-hour hop in one of my 34th squadron ships, a near-new B-25B s/n 40-2301. This was his first flight in the newly-fashionable tricycle landing gear, so after we landed, I demonstrated it by holding the nose-wheel off as long as possible. So far, of course, that felt like a normal, old familiar tail-wheel landing; he could feel the main wheels firmly on the runway. But when we slowed down further, and our B-25 finally pitched forward on the nose wheel, his horrified expression was wonderful to behold, as he just knew we were going over on our nose! Later, Dave was on B-29s, and after the war spent many years with the graceful Lockheed Constellations he once gave me my first "Connie" flight - but I often wondered if he ever recalled his very first landing with a nose-wheel.

The next day was Sunday, 7 December.

Can you imagine what it was like?...that Sunday, so many years ago..."A date (our President called it) that will live in infamy." For those of us who lived during World War Two, it is already fading into dusty old memories, although most of us remember what we were doing on Pearl Harbor Day. But for the vast majority, however, "The day that will live in infamy" is becoming a distant event, ancient history.. something briefly learned in school...and soon forgotten. Somewhere it is written, "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it."

Sunday morning, 7 December 1941, we attended the Church of Our Savior in San Gabriel, where - as a little boy - my first Sunday School teacher had been Miss Ann Patton, whose brother became the famous General Patton. Home in Pasadena that Sunday afternoon, we didn't have the radio on. Television, of course, was not yet developed or even available. At supper with friends in a restaurant, we were shocked by dozens of wild rumors. Strangers were exchanging the latest radio reports. The Japs had bombed Hawaii; our Pacific fleet had been destroyed; their fleet was approaching our coast; the Boeing airplane factory in Seattle had been bombed; strange airplanes were over Los Angeles..or maybe it was San Francisco. How much was really true and how much was hysteria? I repeatedly tried to phone March Field, but couldn't get through. It was chaos..and also getting late. We would drive out to March very early in the morning.

At March Field (as everywhere) the chaos was compounded. We were confronted by confused armed sentries at the gate. No private cars were allowed through and there was a traffic jam of more family cars outside the North Gate with soldiers hurriedly returning. Car radios ceased their doomsday bulletins to announce the President would address the nation and I heard the words "- a date that will live in infamy..." as I sprinted for the gate. "Halt!" Full uniform and my AGO Card (Adjutant General's Office ID card) meant little or nothing - maybe I was a saboteur in disguise! An MP officer was called. What was my outfit? "There is no 17th Bombardment Group assigned to this base." "Of course not; we are just passing through on a cross-country." Telephone calls. "That outfit has departed to a secret destination." Finally convinced that I knew where they were going (Pendleton, Oregon), and that I was legitimate, they cleared me in. A passing Jeep took me the mile down to Base Ops, where I got a ride up to my squadron at Pendleton Army Air Field.

Earlier in the year, a new policy had transferred shorter-ranged pursuit squadrons to airfields closer to the coast, while longer-ranged bombers would be based a little farther inland...in our case, just behind the Cascade Mountains. It turned out to be an unusually brief PCS (Permanent Change of Station), as we almost immediately went TDY (Temporary Duty) down the river to the new Portland-Columbia Airport, still under construction and basically just acres of concrete with a hangar or two. Today, it is the Portland International Airport and, of course, totally unrecognizable from 1941.

From here we would be flying our B25Bs on coastal patrol off Oregon and Washington. Enemy submarines were reported along all of our coasts and, in fact, a few really were. We flew in typical December weather along the Pacific Northwest coast - fog, low clouds, drizzle, more fog and even ice. That was when Portland had a freezing rain that turned to ice, coating everything, and breaking electrical lines and trees. There was no flying, of course, as the ramps, runways and aircraft were also ice covered. I had recently been issued a government driver's license for Jeeps and staff cars, so I took this opportunity to add more vehicles to my license, including the huge fuel tank trucks. For towing airplanes, we had a tug that ran on endless tracks, called a Cletrac. As with a caterpillar tractor, it was steered by two levers which, when one was pulled back, braked the track on that side. Practicing on an empty, remote ramp, and going too fast on the ice, I pulled harder than necessary on one lever, and around and around we spun. It was fun on a wide open space with no obstructions, so I tried it a couple of more times. The ever-observant sergeant glared at me when I returned to the hangar. More importantly, I also learned that if even a caterpillar tractor will slide on ice, automobiles are much more able to skid, a lesson that has kept me out of some trouble ever since. Well, mostly..anyway!