Sketches of a Black Cat - Full Color Collector's Edition: Story of a night flying WWII pilot and artist by Miner Ron

Author:Miner, Ron [Miner, Ron]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Riverdale Press
Published: 2017-07-26T07:00:00+00:00

Military map of Kavieng (on left)

Our new skipper continued to feel like a bad fit. A few members of the squadron were still suspicious of his motives and most of his approach to training continued to fly in the face of the reason and expertise we felt we had secured during the first tour. Everything he did since arriving at North Island just rankled us, so much so, that several of us arranged an audience with the base commander. He listened to our story and explained in detail the precarious steps we would have to undertake to accomplish a change. After mulling it over a few days, we had just about decided to take the shot when we were, perhaps mercifully, ordered back to combat. It was July of ‘44 and the squadron was heading south.

Our path from Kaneohe through Espiritu Santo to Guadalcanal included Funafuti instead of Samoa and Fiji this time around. After a few days, we returned to Espiritu and made camp in a huge grove of palms, holed up in the Quonsets near the Buttons airstrip. We began regular search patrols from here, sometimes for enemy activity, once unsuccessfully over the mountains for several hours in hopes of locating a downed plane. In between flights, I set up a drawing board and fiddled with artwork, eventually christening my plane “Frisco Gal,” with paintings of a startling, negatively clad blonde on either side of the bow, including front and backside views. Off-duty afternoons were usually spent at the ‘O’ Club, taking advantage of the facilities and singing a few profane bars of “The Long, the Short, and the Tall.”

There was now another story making the rounds down at the club. Earlier in the year, one of the squads working a little north of us had sent a Cat along with an army bomber group for an attack of Kavieng, a Japanese stronghold on the Island of North Ireland. The pilot, an Arkansas boy, was making his way down the elongated coastline when he received word that a plane was down and fliers were in the water. It was apparently one of those days when seas were uncooperative, swells too large for a safe landing, and tough choices would have to be made. When they arrived at the designated location, a B-25 passing by radioed that a plane was spotted down nearer Kavieng and led them toward the harbor. In they went, popping rivets and shaking the old girl violently. But things were so rough that they couldn’t bring the raft alongside with the engines running, so he gave orders to shut them down and hoped they would restart again in the splash and spray. The good news was the rough sea was making them a difficult target. They got the six airmen aboard and the engines restarted just as enemy fire, which had been a little short up until then, began straddling the plane. Once airborne, his escort radioed that more fliers were in the drink. They climbed and headed about, this time closer to Kavieng.

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