The FReeper Foxhole Remembers The Women's Air Raid Defense (1941-1945) - Mar. 9th, 2005

Aviation History Magazine | May 2002 | Ron Gilliam

[SAMWolf]

Lord,

Keep our Troops forever in Your care

Give them victory over the enemy...

Grant them a safe and swift return...

Bless those who mourn the lost.
.

FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer
for all those serving their country at this time.

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The Women's Air Raid Defense: Protecting the Hawaiian Islands

In the dark days after Pearl Harbor, many of the islands' young women joined the Women's Air Raid Defense to help prevent another disaster.

A torrential tropical rain was falling on the evening of January 12, 1942, as a small convoy of cars drove through the main gate of Fort Shafter, headquarters of the U.S. Army's Hawaiian Department. The buildings there were bullet-pocked and fire-blackened from the December 7 air raid by the Japanese. At the end of the road to the Signal Corps yards on the mud flats, an Army Air Forces officer and a dozen young women, saddle shoes and bobby socks visible beneath their raincoats, emerged from the cars. After checking in at a sentry box, they gingerly filed over 50 yards of slotted duckboards to a tall wooden "penthouse" perched atop a low concrete warehouse -- Building 307. Another guard checked their identity badges before allowing them to climb the exterior wooden staircase to enter a blackout vestibule shrouded in rain-damp Army blankets. Then, after hanging up their rain gear, steel helmets and gas masks, they stepped into a cavernous, well-lit room.

Women's Air Raid Defense (WARD) staffers on the job in Oahu's information and control center in 1943. On the right is the radar plotting board, which displays data received from radar stations around the island. Workers positioned markers on the large "shuffleboard" at the center of the room to keep track of contacts.

The room was nearly filled by a huge table -- a plotting board -- with the familiar outline of the Hawaiian Islands superimposed by a grid pattern. Around it, Signal Corps plotters sat or stood, talking intermittently with distant radar operators, code-named "Oscars," over telephone headsets. Using implements like shuffleboard sticks, the plotters -- known as "Rascals" -- were placing and moving small plastic markers on the board to indicate the locations and status of their Oscars' radar contacts. Overseeing the action from a balcony running around two sides of the room sat the senior controller, the officer in charge. With him were military and civil aviation liaison officers, who correlated the markers with their service's flights. If they could not identify a given track, the senior controller would have the pursuit officer, a fighter pilot, scramble interceptors to visually identify the "bogy," and, if it was an enemy plane, shoot it down.

One by one, during lulls in activity, the young women stepped up to the plotters, adjusted their headsets and waited until they heard, "Rascal, this is Oscar, can you read me?" All around Oahu that night, radar operators were astonished when a self-assured female voice replied, "Oscar, this is Rascal. I read you loud and clear." Women's Air Raid Defense plotters had just taken over the night shift at "Little Robert," the Air Defense Command's information and control center (ICC). For the first time, American women had officially replaced male soldiers in a war zone and were directly participating in the defense of American territory.

Little Robert had been built by Signal Corps troops in the autumn of 1941 as the hub of the Aircraft Warning Service. Radar contacts, ground observers' sightings and Wheeler Field's interceptor status came into the ICC via a buried telephone cable running around the island. The system was tested on September 27, with Army pursuit planes satisfactorily intercepting "attacking" carrier-based Navy aircraft. The radars had detected and tracked both Japanese attack waves on December 7, and even two cruiser-launched scout planes that had reconnoitered Pearl Harbor and the Lahaina Roads alternate fleet anchorage just before the raid, but an effective air defense operations system was lacking. Once the shock resulting from the attack had subsided, the Army created the Air Defense Command to control the 14th Pursuit Wing and the Anti-Aircraft Artillery Brigade, plus available Navy and Marine fighters and anti-aircraft weapons. Brigadier General Howard C. Davidson, the commander of the 14th Pursuit Wing, was appointed Air Defense commander, and the ICC became his operations center.


Fort Shafter

Davidson also had to give up ICC staff from Oahu -- where air raids were expected at any time -- to create aircraft warning units for Samoa, Fiji and New Caledonia. The role of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) in Britain's air defense centers was well known, but conservative congressional opposition in 1941 had blocked establishment of an American equivalent. (Created in mid-1942, the Women's Army Corps eventually staffed 27 aircraft warning units.) Davidson appealed to the War Department for an emergency executive order creating a WAAF-like organization for Hawaii. Executive Order 9063 was approved on Christmas Day.

General Davidson telephoned a Honolulu couple he knew, asking for their help in finding some bright, trustworthy and reliable young women. Alexander and Una Walker were kamaainas (lifetime Hawaii residents), and Una knew many local women through her Red Cross work. When Davidson called back an hour later, they had a list of 20 names for him.

The day after Christmas, Davidson met with Mrs. Walker and the 20 young women at the huge pink Royal Hawaiian Hotel. Being kamaainas like the Walkers, the women shared the trauma of December 7 and had personal as well as patriotic reasons for volunteering. To Nancy Hedemann and others, "It was the defense of our home which came clear, then service to your country." Pat Morgan, from a New England medical missionary family that had arrived in Hawaii in 1828, had found the raid "at once exciting and terrifying" and felt they "were all consumed with an urge to do something violent."


General Howard C. Davidson, 1942

General Davidson addressed them in an upstairs meeting room, overlooking white beaches strung with barbed wire. Due to tight security, there was little specific he could tell them, only that they would be doing critical secret work for the Army, replacing men for duty in forward areas. They should be between 20 and 34 years of age and childless, be able to pass a physical examination and an Army Intelligence background investigation, be willing to work any shift and abide by special regulations. They would be appointed to the civil service, with pay of $120 per month, and would be furnished uniforms and quarters at Fort Shafter, with officers' mess privileges. "[We] would be considered officers," Hedemann recalled, "so that in the event of capture by the enemy, [we] would be treated according to the…international law regarding prisoners of war."

For an organizational name, Davidson suggested Women's Air Defense. The women inserted the word Raid to make a more euphonious acronym, and thus the WARD was born. Administratively, it was known as the WARD Detachment, Company A, 515th Signal Aircraft Warning Regiment (Special), reporting to the commanding general, 7th Fighter Command (formerly 14th Pursuit Wing). The WARD was transferred to the Army Air Forces in 1943. The WARDs-to-be were to report to the Army-requisitioned Iolani Palace on January 1 for formal induction and training, and were asked to bring any interested friends who met the standards.

Davidson soon realized that the population of eligible kamaainas was too small. He also learned, however, that some military wives wanted to stay in Hawaii, in spite of air raid alarms and invasion rumors, and he obtained authority to take anyone going into the WARD off the evacuation lists. About half of those who gathered at Iolani Palace on New Year's Day were military wives. Many had witnessed the horrors of the December 7 raid close up. Joy Shaw, wife of a captain at the Marine barracks, remembered driving behind "a truckload of bodies stacked to the top like logs, naked, blackened by oil, smoke and blood, boys from the various ships." To Kathy Cooper, 19-year-old Navy daughter and wife, Hickam Field had looked from her parents' home "like a great sea of flame about a mile long." She felt at that moment that "If a Japanese pilot had walked into the house, I would have tried to kill him."

[Victoria Delsoul]

[snippy_about_it]

Good evening Victoria.

[Victoria Delsoul]

Hi Snippy.

[snippy_about_it]

Because no Rabbi was present?

LOL. I have no idea what's going on but that response was funny!

[snippy_about_it]

I've been searching for your Mongolian General Rule answer but no luck. Maybe it has to do with some Mongolian history. Maybe Ghengis Khan used to run around and shout. LOL. I don't know!

[tomball]

Good Evening Foxhole,

Your thread made my two hours in the dentist's chair a little bit easier to recover from. Most history courses spend more time describing the tasks of the industrial women of WW2, without saying much about the war women of WW2.

[w_over_w]

Thanks for the effort. Hopefully one of our War sages will know. ;^)

Curious minds . . .

[alfa6]

Good Evening w_over_w

I have seen a variation of that known as the Aviators Rule.
"When in trouble or in doubt, fly in circles scream and shout."

And of course there is this gem from Lazaruas Long aka Robert Heinlein..."Always listen to the experts, they will tell you how and why something can't be done. Then you can go out and do it"

Regards

alfa6 ;>}

[SAMWolf]

IMHO, one of the best looking cars ever made.

[SAMWolf]

Evening CT.

We have to call the Republicans to account since no one ever holds the Democrats to account.

[SAMWolf]

Evening w_over_w

Kublai also spelled Khubilai , or Kubla Mongolian general and statesman, grandson of Genghis Khan.

The only Mongolian general I can find. ;-)

[SAMWolf]

Hi Wneighbor.
I get the feeling you would have made a good "Shuffleboard Pilot". :-)

[SAMWolf]

Evening Victoria.

You getting spring weather there yet?

[SAMWolf]

Evening tomball.

Glad we helped you recover from the dentist visit.

[Victoria Delsoul]

Evening, Sam. Not bad, it's pretty good right now.

[SAMWolf]

"When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout." ... from Robert Heinlein's sci-fi thriller The Cat Who Walks Through Walls.

Looks like Heinlein coined the phrase.

[snippy_about_it]

Two hours in the dentist chair. I love our threads but it would have taken more than that to make me feel better. LOL.

[snippy_about_it]

Looks like Heinlein coined the phrase.

Except that book was written in 1985. Your thread puts the saying in the 1940's. I think it is just a well known saying we didn't know about. LOL.

[Wneighbor]

I get the feeling you would have made a good "Shuffleboard Pilot". :-)

Sam, I always wondered what my niche could be in a military setting. I always knew the physical part of military was way beyond me - I am just not and never have been fit. But, I know darned well that "shuffleboard pilot" position is something I would have slid right into and excelled within moments with little training. I love math, physics, geometry, locating and analyzing those vectors, arcs etc sounds like playtime to me. hehehe...

Don't know know if I have mentioned it or not but I teach drafting and design at a college. I tell my students first day, "This career path is applied geometry, if you don't like that topic, you're in the wrong room!" I love it and can usually make it fun for everyone so I don't scare away too many that make it in there.

Of course then, with amateur radio as a hobby the contacts with all those folks in the field sounds like a playday to me too! Serious business those ladies did and I had never heard of this before. I am really glad that you posted this today! :-)

[w_over_w]

Except that book was written in 1985. Your thread puts the saying in the 1940's. I think it is just a well known saying we didn't know about. LOL.

You're sooooo smart! I love your sequential thinking . . .

Anyway, thanks to all of you for your efforts . . . I think I'll sleep tonight. It means a lot to be able to ask questions without someone yelling out, "what a Moron! Did you just step off of a turnip truck! Go back to Pascagoula!" Thank you . . . your very kind. ;^)

I'll wait to see if I7 has any input but I think you three covered it.