Posted on 03/08/2005 10:10:02 PM PST by SAMWolf
Lieutenant Ardie Konkle led them through their first training session. Nancy Hedemann recalled that, once they had plugged their telephone headsets into stations around the board, they "practiced receiving radar readings from Oscars' who were conveying messages to us, the Rascals.' To place a reading on the plotting board, we took a colored arrow and with a pokerlike, rubber-tipped implement placed the arrow at the reading transmitted by Oscar. The arrows were red, blue and green; the color designated the five-minute interval of a quarter-hour in which a reading had been received."
The sense of urgency was palpable. "During that first two-week period in January 1942," Hedemann remembered, "frequent air raid alarms were heard and, on each occasion, the possibility of a repetition of December 7 became fresh." After 10 days of two-hour training sessions, Lieutenant Konkle felt they were ready for Little Robert.
On the first day of February, 104 WARDs moved into quarters at Fort Shafter and took over plotting duties on all four 6-hour shifts. A few Honolulu women were also trained as substitutes; called "town reserves," they lived at home and reported on call. During February, the SCR-271 fixed-site radars at Mount Haleakala on Maui, at Kokee on Kauai, and at Pahoa on Hawaii came on line, adding more plotting positions. The WARDs quickly became familiar with the characteristics of each radar and its environment. They learned to substitute the intersection of range arcs from multiple radars for the inaccurate azimuth readings. They took over filtering -- "cleaning up" the plot by consolidating apparently separate tracks. As they became familiar with aircraft speeds and turn rates, they took on interceptor vectoring. Senior WARDs began conducting in-house training.
The mysterious aircraft could not be identified as friendly, and the senior controller scrambled interceptors from Wheeler. On a moonless, rainy night they had little chance of visual contact, but the ICC managed to cue searchlights. "When the searchlights cut on," Captain Sam Shaw wrote, "they had in their beams a large flying boat. Later, there were garbled accounts that it had set off photo-flash bombs for night photography. No anti-aircraft guns opened fire. All hands were determined to have no more trigger-happy misfortunes such as there had been immediately after the [December 7] attack."
The flying boats were four-engine Japanese Kawanishi H8K "Emilys." With a range of 4,460 miles, they had flown from the Marshall Islands without refueling. Their crews had no more success locating blacked-out Pearl Harbor that rainy night than the interceptors had finding them. Each plane apparently carried two 550-pound bombs, which were supposed to be dropped on an American aircraft carrier. The Japanese airmen dropped their bombs blindly. One pair exploded off the entrance to Pearl Harbor, the other on the outskirts of Honolulu.
Before the raid there had been speculation about whether the air defense system could go beyond detection and tracking into successful interception. The interceptors' failure to find the raiders left the question unanswered. The WARDs, however, felt they had vectored in the fighters as close as the technology permitted, and they could have intercepted the intruders with better illumination or with airborne-intercept radar, then unknown in U.S. service.
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But by late 1942 many of the original WARDs were leaving. For Hedemann, "the war [had] moved on and we felt safer in Hawaii" following Midway. Married, she became a town reserve early in 1943. When she became pregnant, she recalled, "They moved me out of the WARD with a rapidity that suggested I might have the plague." Lornahope DeClue felt that "the urgency of serving was over" and resigned to continue her education. Chief supervisor Mary Erdman resigned to accompany her evacuated daughter to the mainland; she came home to Hawaii but rejoined the Red Cross. Dottie Beach resigned to pursue her flying and join the Women's Air Force Service Pilots. Joy Shaw left when her husband was transferred to the mainland. "Perhaps I should have stayed with the WARD," she later mused, "as during his three years' absence he was in and out of Pearl a number of times. [But] I had to sign a release with the stipulation that I not try to return for the duration of the war." Bill and Ruth Cope -- now married for 62 years -- served during World War II. Bill was a bomber pilot and Ruth was a Women's Air Defense volunteer on Oahu. At the same time, new radar stations were coming on line. "Every new station or job meant one more girl for each of the four shifts," wrote Bertha Bloomfield-Brown, and "it was not long before all recruiting efforts struck rock bottom in the islands, where the employment situation was critical anyhow." The age limit was officially lowered to 17 to qualify girls just graduating from high school, special shifts were arranged for some University of Hawaii students, and the list of town reserves stretched to 25. But by January 1943, WARD still counted about 110 employees, while the number of positions had increased to 33, for each of four shifts. The 7th Fighter Command reluctantly decided to recruit for the WARD on the mainland. Mainland recruiting started in San Francisco, where Colonel Lorry Tindal of the 7th Fighter Command had gone to see the Air Defense Wing's recruiting officer. Tanya Widrin, who had previously served in the Los Angeles air defense filter center, met Tindal through a friend while on her way to join the Women's Army Corps. She later said, "When Colonel Tindal told me that the WARDs operate a filter center and do the same type of work as the Women's Auxiliary Air Force in England I was on my way [to Hawaii] within ten days." The Army still classified air defense top-secret, however, and later recruits experienced cloak-and-dagger meetings, loyalty tests and FBI background investigations. But one Army personnel specialist in the Presidio was able to process her own application. "As I shivered in the fog," wrote recent Stanford graduate Jean McKellar, "I thought about what I told young women in my recruiting work for the WARD; Hawaii is so beautiful, so warm; the work is vital to our security.' Hawaii seemed to offer several solutions in one!" Pearl Harbor veterans Ruth and Bill Cope speak to an Advanced Placement American history class in North Canton, Ohio, via a videoconferencing link from Hawaii. The first 34 mainland recruits arrived in Honolulu in February 1943 aboard a crowded U.S. Navy transport after a stormy passage in a zigzagging convoy. They had signed a one-year contract, renewable for another year. With 143 women, plus four to eight replacements arriving each month, Hawaii's WARD had adequate strength for the first time. By early 1944, with the war distant from Hawaii, and Oahu's operations center able to cover the whole territory, the Army closed down the neighbor island centers -- first the Kauai unit on January 15 and then Maui's and the Big Island's on April 1. V-J Day seemed to arrive suddenly. Four days before, on August 11, 1945, the Air Defense commander, Brig. Gen. John Weikert, notified the WARD, "It is expected that military personnel will take over all WARD duties within fifteen (15) days after V-J Day and that the WARD as an organization will be completely disbanded within twenty days after V-J Day." The War Department offered the WARDs equivalent civil service positions in the islands. Of approximately 165 on duty, 87 elected to return to the mainland. Responding to a May 1945 editorial in the Honolulu Advertiser praising the WARDs, General Howard Davidson, their first commander, wrote chief supervisor Kitty Coonley, "I have seen many fighter control [centers], have several under me now, but the one in Honolulu manned by the WARDs is the best I have seen. I understand that the war has moved on and left Honolulu behind ... but you can take great pride in the fact that while it did threaten Hawaii you maintained the best Air Raid Defense system in the world." Nell Larsen's appraisal of her WARD experience was more personal, yet offers a telling insight into the prevailing attitude toward women in the American workplace in the 1940s. "The most memorable aspect of my service was the respect and admiration for American women I came to have as a result of my total war experience in Hawaii," said Larsen. "We were so often pictured as spoiled, hysterical and shallow. The women I came in contact with disproved all of that in spades." The WARDs stood their last shift in Lizard on September 27. More than 650 women had served in Hawaii's control centers, representing all the islands' races except the Japanese and nearly all the states in the Union. For the most part young, hastily trained and not widely appreciated, the "shuffleboard pilots" who volunteered to help protect the Hawaiian Islands by staffing its plotting boards had filled a vital need at a critical time. |
To all our military men and women past and present, military family members, and to our allies who stand beside us
Thank You!
Back on the night shift Bump for the Freeper Foxhole
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
Speaking of Bugles Across America:
High School Student Helps to Meet Need for Buglers
Andrew Fefer
The tunes are lively during the Chippewa Falls High School's "10:30 Jam."
"We're not here to try and create music majors, but to create well- rounded individuals that are going to be future leaders," Band Director Doug Greenhalgh said.
So while many of her classmates put their instruments away after class, Brianna Seidlitz prepares for veterans' funerals and holidays that honor veterans, where she regularly plays "Taps."
"One of my friends was playing," Seidlitz said, "And I got asked to because they wanted to play echo taps, and I had been playing for two years."
The Patriotic Council in Chippewa Falls relies on Brianna to play at veterans' funerals, as they have with Chippewa Falls students for nearly five years.
"The guys are amazing, they're just like another family to me."
She's played at about a half-dozen funerals in the past month, and when she's not available, council member Robert Boettcher fills in with an electronic bugle that the group was given in 2001.
"Previous to that, we used a boombox, which was, to me, not very reverent," Boettcher said.
With a flip of a switch and the touch of a button, a recording of a bugler's rendition of "Taps" at the Arlington National Cemetary is played.
"It works out real well."
Though veterans' families seem to appreciate Brianna's rendition even more.
"You just realize how important that person was and how much they deserve it," she said.
Brianna says she'll go to UW-Eau Claire next year, and the state will pick up $25 of that tab with every funeral she plays, but that's not why she does it.
"It's such a respect and honor to do this, and i will hopefully keep doing it forever, till i can't do it anymore."
That's when another recruit from Chippewa Falls High School will likely honor fallen vets with their own rendition of "Taps."
http://www.weau.com/home/headlines/1343132.html
That was important work.
To bad the ladies hadn't been there for December 7th. And about fifty more P-40s and F4Fs. Would have been excellent practice in vectoring in fighters. Sweet dreams....
Good morning, Snippy and everyone at the Foxhole.
by U.S. Army
February 24, 2005
President Bush thanks Soldiers at Wiesbaden Army Airfield, Germany, for their service and dedication. This photo appeared on www.army.mil
March 9, 2005
Have you ever locked your keys inside your car? Mailed an envelope without putting the payment check inside? Baked a recipe without adding one of the main ingredients?
These are the kinds of things we all do when we don't give careful thought to what we are doing. Careless thinking means we either do something we shouldn't do or fail to do something we should. These wrong actions or irresponsible inactions can be minor inconveniences-or they can have serious lasting consequences.
You would think the people in Haggai's day wouldn't have committed thoughtless mistakes. Just 20 years before, they were living in exile in Babylon because they had disobeyed God. Now they were back in Jerusalem, but they were living as if that whole exile episode had never happened.
So through the prophet Haggai, God told them, "Consider your ways!" (Haggai 1:7). Then He told them their mistake: They were living selfish lives of luxury instead of completing God's temple. Careless thinking had led to wrong decisions and inaction.
God wants us to give careful thought to our actions, words, and relationships, and make decisions that bring glory to Him. Whatever you do today, give it careful thought. -Dave Branon
Keep your thoughts in line, or they'll lead you astray.
On This Day In History
Birthdates which occurred on March 09:
1454 Amerigo Vespucci explorer
1564 David Fabricius Essen Germany, astronomer (discovered variable star)
1568 Aloysius "Luigi" van Gonzaga Italian prince/Jesuit/saint
1758 Franz Joseph Gall German/French physician (frenology)
1791 George Hayward US, surgeon, 1st to use ether
1814 Taras Shevchenko Ukraine, national poet/painter/professor of Kiev
1824 Leland Stanford (Governor/Senator)/found Stanford University
1839 Felix Huston Robertson Brigadier General (Confederate Army),died in 1928
1839 Modest P Mussorgsky Russian composer (Boris Godunov)
1881 Enver Pasja Turkish General/politician
1885 Ringgold "Ring" Lardner baseball player
1890 Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov Soviet foreign minister (UN)
1902 Will Greer Frankfort IN, actor (Grandpa Walton-The Waltons)
1912 Alan David Melville polymath
1918 Mickey [Frank Morrison] Spillane Brooklyn NY, mystery writer (I the Jury)
1920 Carl Betz Pittsburgh PA, actor (Alex Stone-Donna Reed Show)
1923 André Courréges France, fashion designer (introduced the miniskirt)
1923 James Buckley (Senator-Republican-NY)
1926 Irene Papas Corinth Greece, actress (Moses The Lawgiver)
1930 Ornette Coleman, jazz saxophonist.
1933 Lloyd Price Kenner LA, singer (Lawdy Miss Clawdy, Misty, Just Because, Come to Me)
1934 Yuri Gagarin Russia, cosmonaut, 1st man into space (aboard Vostok 1)
1936 Glenda Jackson Birkenhead Cheshire England, actress (Hopscotch, Touch of Class)
1936 Marty Ingels Brooklyn NY, comedian (I'm Dickens He's Fenster)
1936 Mickey Gilley Ferriday LA, country singer (Urban Cowboy)
1940 Raul Julia San Juan Puerto Rico, actor (Addams Family, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Eyes of Laura Mars)
1942 John Cale Welsh/US bassist/violinist/singer (Velvet Underground)
1942 Mark Lindsay Eugene OR, rocker (Paul Revere & the Raiders)
1943 Bobby Fischer US, world chess champion (1972-75)
1945 Ray Royer rocker (Procol Harum-Whiter Shade of Pale)
1945 Robin Trower London England, rocker (Procol Harum-Whiter Shade of Pale)
1955 Teo Fabi formula-1 Indy-car racer (rookie of year-1983)
1959 Barbie doll (Mattel)
1964 Phil Housley St Paul MN, NHL defenseman (New Jersey Devils, Team USA Olympics-98)
1970 Melissa Rathburn-Nealy US soldier (Iraqi POW)
1972 Sara Nicole Williams Miss Washington-USA (1997)
Good Morning Radu.
Back on nights again?!?!?!
Morning Grzegorz 246.
LOL! We have that picture on our "Critter Crunch" bin.
It seems the very least that we can do
Thanks Quiettolong.
Morning Iris7.
Great tagline.
Morning E.G.C.
We hit 70 yesterday. Feels like we skipped Spring and went right to Summer.
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