Finish Forty and Home: The Untold World War II Story of B-24s in the Pacific Mayborn Literary Nonfiction

243 Pages·2011·2.95 MB·English

by  Scearce

FINISH FORTY
AND HOME
The Untold World War II Story
of B-24s in the Pacific
Phil Scearce
Number 5 in the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Series
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS PRESS
FRANK W. MAYBORN GRADUATE INSTITUTE OF JOURNALISM
DENTON, TEXAS
© 2011 Phil Scearce
Foreword ©2011 University of North Texas Press
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
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University of North Texas Press
1155 Union Circle #311336
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The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, z39.48.1984. Binding materials have been chosen for durability.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Scearce, Phil, 1962-
Finish forty and home : the untold World War II story of B-24s in the Pacific / Phil Scearce. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (Number 5 in the Mayborn literary nonfiction series)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-57441-316-8 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Scearce, Herman, 1925- 2. United States. Army—Biography. 3. Soldiers—United States—Biography. 4. Radio
operators—United States—Biography. 5. Radar operators—United States—Biography. 6. B-24 bomber—History. 7.
World War, 1939-1945—Pacific Area—Aerial operations, American. 8. World War, 1939-1945—Campaigns—Pacific
Area. 9. Pacific Area—History, Military—20th century. I. Title. II. Series: Mayborn literary nonfiction series ; no. 5.
D767.9.S39 2011
940.54’4973092—dc22
[B]
2011016700
Finish Forty and Home: The Untold World War II Story of B-24s in the Pacific is Number 5 in the Mayborn Literary
Nonfiction Series
to Diane
Contents
List of Illustrations
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Sergeant at Seventeen
2 Hawaii
3 First Mission
4 Nauru
5 Air Raid
6 Chance
7 May 1943
8 The Squadron’s Objectives
9 The Pacific Preferred
10 Softening Tarawa
11 Forever Consequences
12 Losing Altitude Fast
13 Back to Hawaii
14 Last Flights
15 Ask the Man Who Owns One
16 The Meaning of Boxes
17 Guam
18 Back in Business
19 Halfway to Forty
20 January 1945
21 Endings for Some
Epilogue
Endnotes
Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Map of Pacific Theatre
Al Marston, Herman Scearce, and Jack Yankus, Oahu, 1943
Original crew of Dogpatch Express
Dogpatch Express in flight
S.Sgt. Bob Lipe
Lt. William “Gailor” Roy
Jack Yankus and Herman Scearce
Close-up of B-24 cockpit
Deasy’s crew around Jeep
Captain Joe Deasy
Texan with rear-facing gun position
Naughty Nanette
963 unloading supplies on Funafuti
Charlie Pratte’s Belle of Texas
Virginia Belle
Bombing-up for a mission, Funafuti
B-24 destroyed by bomb in raid on Funafuti
B-24 propeller following Japanese raid
Crew quarters, Funafuti
Airmen with native girl, Funafuti
Funafuti
Lt. George Smith’s crash on take-off, overloaded for a photo-reconnaissance mission
Daisy Mae on the beach at Midway after Wake Island raid
Dogpatch Express going down
Pratte’s brakes-out landing using parachutes
Corpsmen removing dead from truck hit by bomb
Mess hall fire, Funafuti
Engine maintenance, Funafuti
Intelligence debrief, Deasy’s crew after mission
Chow time, Funafuti
Bomb plot chart
Mission briefing, Guam
Christmas mail call on Guam
42nd Squadron B-24 takes off
Crew quarters, Guam
Mine released from B-24
Strong’s B-24 after mine struck fuselage
Over Iwo Jima, phosphorous bomb bursts nearby
Bomb train explodes across runway, Iwo Jima
42nd Squadron B-24 over Iwo Jima
FOREWORD
WE FOUGHT A SMALL WAR in the Central Pacific. Our numbers were not large but the
percentage of men and planes lost was great. When I arrived in Hawaii in October of
1942, I was billeted in a barracks with the officers of four combat crews, sixteen of us in
all. When I left the Pacific for home in March of 1945, there were four of us still alive and
two of the four, Russell Phillips and Louis Zamperini, had spent two years in a Japanese
prison camp. In a five-week period flying bombing missions over the Marshall and Gilbert
Islands, we lost four crews and five airplanes out of eleven in the 42nd Squadron.
I finished my forty missions in January 1945. I was released as Squadron Commander
and returned home on March 10, 1945, twenty-nine months after leaving.
This history brings back memories of the dear friends who gave their lives in this war
and is a tribute to them and to all those, like Sergeant Herman Scearce, who laid their lives
on the line and were blessed to survive. It is a comfort to know that this record has been
written in remembrance of these patriots and of this part of our war in the Pacific.
Colonel Jesse E. Stay
United States Air Force, Retired
Preface
THIS BOOK IS ABOUT MY FATHER, Herman Scearce, and the men he served with during World
War II, young airmen of the 11th Bombardment Group’s 42nd Bomb Squadron. They
fought almost anonymously in the early years of the war in the Pacific. By the time
America turned its full attention to the Pacific war and 11th Group B-24 Liberator
bombers reached striking distance of Japan, the glamorous new B-29 Superfortress arrived
and took center stage.
My dad flew strike missions as a radio operator and gunner on a Liberator, staging from
Hawaii to strike tiny Japanese-held island targets from island bases too small and poorly
equipped to serve as permanent bases. These bombing missions were filled with the perils
of enemy fighter interception, concentrated antiaircraft fire, and unforgiving distance. The
11th Group B-24s flew the longest missions of the war, over great expanses of featureless
ocean where there was no room for the slightest navigational mistake and no alternative
landing field for struggling aircraft.
My father’s squadron and the rest of the 11th Group worked their way up the Central
Pacific. As American forces invaded and took Japanese islands, the 11th advanced and
began flying missions against the next enemy target in the chain, battling closer with each
step to the Japanese home islands. The goal for American bomber crewmen was to get
credit for forty strike missions, a goal that seemed impossibly out of reach in the
beginning. Some, like my dad, finished forty and got home, but many men weren’t so
lucky.
This book was constructed from interviews and correspondence with long-lost squadron
mates and other B-24 veterans, along with personal visits with my father’s former pilot
and Squadron Commander Joe Deasy in Boston, crewmate Ed Hess in Chicago, crewmate
and best buddy Jack Yankus in Tempe, and the surviving family of crewmate Bob Lipe in
Columbiana, Ohio. Interviews and correspondence were supplemented by many hours of
research at the Air Force Historical Research Agency in Montgomery, Alabama, and the
National Archives in Washington, D.C. In some cases, names have been changed to
protect the identity of individuals.
The book includes reconstructed dialog, which is based on the memories of the men
interviewed for the book. Dialog is faithful to their recollection of events and true to the
personalities of men I met and others they remember. The clarity of their recollection was
sometimes so perfect that separate individuals remembered the same exchange of dialog
after more than sixty years.
This book is also the product of a World War II veteran’s son trying to learn all he could
about his dad’s war experiences, beginning when I was a little boy riding along in the car
with him, listening to his stories. I loved riding with my father, it didn’t matter where,
because during those car rides it was just me and Dad and his stories. The stories
transported me in my imagination and I never grew tired of hearing them. During those
rides Dad would say, “I’ll let you be the radio operator.” Looking back on those years
today, I can’t say when I realized what it really meant to be the radio operator. But I do
sense the familiar feeling of wanting to ride along.