A large simulated plotting board dominated the room where they met with General Davidson, who told the women he needed them to work in the Air Defense Command Center, replacing men for forward area duty. They would be taking part in the defense of the Hawaiian Islands, and it would be the most important work done by any women in the country. Training would begin immediately after they filled out civil service applications and were photographed for identification badges. He then introduced supervisors Gwendolyn Williams and Mary Erdman, who had trained the previous week in Little Robert, and the new WARDs were fitted for pale-blue, Red Cross–style dress and fatigue uniforms, the same kind the two supervisors were wearing. They were also issued World War I–era helmets and gas masks, as well as armbands signifying they were noncombatants.
Many of the young women who volunteered to serve as WARDs were barely out of high school. Here, a group of bobby-soxers enjoys a coffee break in December 1942 after coping with the tensions of the plotting room.
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.
Base Headquarters, Wheeler Field. Constructed in 1933 at a cost of $79,000, the base Headquarters was the headquarters of the 14th Pursuit Wing, commanded by Brig. Gen. Howard C Davidson. During the attack, Gen Davidson left the protection of this building to join his troops out on the flight line and helped push aircraft away from the burning hangars towards dispersal sites.
By early March, though the WARDs had gained confidence in their new skills, 12 weeks had passed without an air raid, and the women were wondering how they would perform if one came. In the early morning of March 5, 1942, they found out. At 12:15 a.m., the Kokee site on Kauai called on VHF radio. Two aircraft were approaching from the southwest, headed for Oahu. The ICC handed over the track to the Opana site, which picked up the aircraft 20 miles east of Kauai. Jean Fraser was plotting for Opana, and the liaison officers on the balcony bombarded her with questions. More WARDs joined the action as their Oscars picked up the bogies. Colonels and generals suddenly appeared en masse. To shift captain Joy Shaw, it seemed that "everybody [was] following the Mongolian General Prudential Rule: ‘When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!'"
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.
Kawanishi H8K "Emily"
About 1:30 a.m., awakened by supervisors or the undulating wail of the Fort Shafter siren, WARDs struggled out into the rain with helmets and gas masks to the air raid shelters. Nancy Hedemann recalled "two very loud explosions in quick succession…over by Makiki Heights and lower [Mount] Tantalus. It was shortly after 2 a.m. Good Heavens! What was that? Was there more to come? Soon the ‘all clear' was heard, and we trudged back to our quarters to talk and then sleep." Kathy Cooper "heard from…Little Robert how they had put on their helmets and plotted-in the enemy planes with their gas masks beside their chairs."
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.
By May 1942, the WARDs could see signs of preparations for the Battle of Midway in the intense air traffic, which frequently required extra shifts or no relief, and in the false air raid alarms caused by new pilots missing approach corridors. On May 15, the military governor of Hawaii, Lt. Gen. Delos C. Emmons, warned the public in the Honolulu Advertiser of possible attacks on Hawaii. Civilian evacuation plans were developed and publicized. Later that month, Maj. Gen. Clarence L. Tinker, Hawaiian Air Force commander, and General Davidson briefed the assembled WARDs. "General Tinker…provided general outlines of a major encounter that might bring the action to Hawaii," Hedemann later recalled. "General Davidson said that, since there would be no assistance available to us during an attack, the WARDs would be required to stay on post and prepare with fire fighting equipment (ladders, buckets of sand and water), practice litter-bearing and generally get ready for independent self-care." Davidson's flight surgeon provided WARD supervisor Mary Erdman with some of the new sulfanilamide wound powder.
By June 4 the women knew the battle was on. "They asked us to stay put," shift captain Joy Shaw wrote, "and I gave no relief to the girls on the [plotting] board. As a matter of fact, they did not want to be relieved. The usual procedure was to relieve each plotter at least four times each shift." Katie Huber recalled that they vectored "Air Force bombers -- many with injured men aboard -- into blacked-out airfields with voice direction through UHF radio. We received a citation for a job well done."
Nell Larsen remembered that she was plotting "records from a desk above the board, so I was aware of military movements shaping up from actions on the board....When the news came in that we had won a great victory at Midway…the Air Force threw their hats in the air....Not too long after…WARDs were told that the handsome and very personable General Tinker had been lost…on a bomber attempting to attack Wake Island."
Right after Midway the Army decided to establish air defense operations centers on Maui, Kauai and Hawaii (the "Big Island"), where it had already located radars and where there also were fighter airfields. Although smaller than the Oahu ICC, which had moved into a location known as "Lizard," an underground facility a short walk from the WARD quarters, the new centers were no less labor intensive. Maui, for instance, required six plotters, a record plotter, a filterer and a supervisor, plus a switchboard operator and a teletype operator on a direct line to the Puunene Naval Air Station for each of three shifts. The WARD organization was asked to staff these centers, and two senior WARDs accompanied each team of Signal Corps training officers and sergeants, led by an Army Air Forces lieutenant colonel, to set up each one.
SCR-271 fixed-site radar
Recruiting had to be by word of mouth, as it had been on Oahu, but was more problematic on the neighbor islands. The Oahu WARDs had been drawn from Hawaii's 105,000 haoles (Caucasians), plus military wives. The Army had put the island's 160,000 Japanese -- more than half the population -- off-limits for sensitive jobs, even the 60 percent who were Hawaiian-born. The neighboring island populations were heavily Japanese, with few haoles and no military dependents. Recruiting from the close-knit Hawaiian, Filipino, Chinese, Korean and Portuguese communities, with unnumbered houses on unnamed streets, would have to follow personal recommendations from local teachers, physicians and clergymen. The key was to quickly identify a respected local woman willing to serve as head supervisor.
Kauai, with the smallest population, presented the greatest challenge. Judge and Mrs. Philip Rice, second-generation kamaainas who were active in Hawaiian folklore, the church and a benevolence society, were esteemed by all the island folk. Florence Rice was appointed head supervisor, while Judge Rice donated their estate for an operations center and WARD quarters, moving into an apartment in Lihue. Mrs. Rice and her three new supervisors quickly discovered that to fill a quota of about 50 girls without lowering standards, younger girls would have to be accepted. The Army had to hire a scholastic tutor and provide guards for the dormitory, which Mrs. Rice personally supervised.
The neighbor island operations centers were located in main towns, so most WARDs could live at home. They could not reveal what they did or even where they worked, however, and had to be dropped off for work away from the centers. On Maui the recreation building and rectory of Wailuku's Good Shepherd Church, sandbagged and camouflaged, served as the ICC. Before moving to the Rice estate, the Kauai WARDs spent two months at the Lihue Grammar School learning plotting, filtering and how to vector Barking Sands airfield's Curtiss P-40 fighters.
After Midway, the threat of another attack on Hawaii receded. Everyone breathed easier. Social life picked up, and the WARDs found themselves in great demand for armed forces' parties and dances. However, Lizard was busier than ever coordinating the increasing air traffic headed for the western Pacific, air-sea rescue operations and interceptor pilot training. "Pilots drill night and day with the operations unit until they are sent to the forward bases," wrote Tanya Widren. "As WARDs we get a tremendous satisfaction out of the role we play in rescue work. There isn't a WARD who hasn't been, at one time or another, partly responsible for saving the life of a young airman in distress."
Additional Sources: www.financial-book-review.com
www.army.mil
www.skylighters.org
www.fishbowltours.com
www.earlyaviators.com
www.innatschofield.com
www.detnews.com
www.pinetreeline.org
avions.legendaires.free.fr
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)
Deaths which occurred on March 09:
1620 Aegidius Albertinus German writer (Lucifer's Kingdom), dies at 59
1706 Johann Pachelbel (52), German organist, composer, died.
1913 Eberhard Nestle German biblical scholar, dies at 61
1962 Dr Howard Engstrom Boston MA, a designer of Univac computer dies at 59
1965 Anthon van der Horst Dutch organist/composer, dies at 65
1969 Richard Crane actor (Surfside 6), dies at 50
1974 Earl W Sutherland Jr US pharmacologist (Nobel 1971), dies at 58
1988 Kurt Georg Kiesinger West German chancellor (1966-69), dies at 83
1989 Robert Mapplethorpe US photographer, dies at 42
1992 Menachim Begin Israeli prime minister (1977-1983, Nobel 1979), dies at 79
1993 Bob Crosby swing-era bandleader (Bobcats), dies of cancer at 79
1994 Fernando Rey Spanish actor (French Connection), dies of cancer at 76
1994 Lawrence E Spivak journalist (Meet the Press), dies at 93
1995 Ian Ballantine publisher, dies of heart attack at 79
1996 Comedian George Burns dies in Beverly Hills, Calif., just weeks after turning 100
1997 Terry Nation writer (Dr Who, Blake 7) at 66
Reported: MISSING in ACTION
1966 COLLINS WILLARD M.---QUINCY IL.
[KIA AT CRASH SITE 3 RECOV]
1966 FOSTER ROBERT E.---LOCKPORT NY.
[KIA AT CRASH SITE 3 RECOV]
1966 PETERSON DELBERT R.---MAPLE PLAIN MN.
[NO TRACE SUBJ 3 RECOV]
1967 GRAENING BRUCE A.---KENMORE OH.
1967 PUTNAM CHARLES L.---KEY WEST FL.
[REMAINS RETURNED NOV 3 1988]
1969 REX ROBERT F.---ODEBOLT IA.
1969 TINSLEY COY R.---CLEVELAND TN.
[11/05/69 RELEASED]
1969 WALTERS TIM L.---SOUTH BEND IN.
[REMAINS IDENTIFIED 08/11/99]
1970 COTTEN LARRY W.---NASHVILLE TN.
1970 PARCELS REX L. JR.---BERKELEY CA.
1970 ROBINSON EDWARD---KANSAS CITY MO.
1970 SCHOEPPNER LEONARD J.---CANTON OH.
1970 TERLA LOTHAR G.---SCRANTON PA.
POW / MIA Data & Bios supplied by
the P.O.W. NETWORK. Skidmore, MO. USA.
On this day...
1452 Pope Nicolaas I crowns Frederik III Roman Catholic-German emperor
1496 Jews are expelled from Carintha Austria
1497 Nicolaus Copernicus 1st recorded astronomical observation,
1562 Kissing in public banned in Naples (punishable by death)
1617 Sweden & Russia sign Peace of Stolbowa
1697 Czar Peter the Great begins tour of West-Europe
1721 English Chancellor Exchequer John Aislabie confined in London Tower
1741 English fleet under Admiral Ogle begins assault on Cartagena
1745 Bells for 1st American carillon shipped from England to Boston
1788 Connecticut becomes the 5th state.
1796 Napoleon Bonaparte marries Josephine de Beauharnais
1798 Dr George Balfour becomes 1st naval surgeon in the US navy
1820 James Monroe's daughter Maria marries in the White House
1822 Charles M Graham of New York patents artificial teeth
1839 Prussian government limits work week for children to 51 hours
1841 US Supreme Court rules Negroes are free (Amistad Incident)
1842 Giuseppe Verdi's opera "Nabucco" premieres in Milan
1844 Giuseppe Verdi's opera "Hernani" premieres in Venice
1858 Albert Potts of Philadelphia patents the street mailbox
1860 1st Japanese ambassador arrives in San Francisco en route to Washington DC
1861 First hostile act of the Civil War occurred when Star of the West fires on Sumter, S.C.
1861 Confederate currency authorized-$50, $100, $500, $1,000
1862 "Monitor" (Union) & "Merrimack" (Rebel) battle in Hampton Roads
1864 Ulysses S Grant is appointed commander of Union Army
1889 Battle at Gallabat (Metema); Mahdi's beat Abyssinian emperor John IV
1889 Kansas passes 1st general antitrust law in US
1893 Congo cannibals killed 1000s of Arabs (Lunch!)
1897 Indian fans start calling the team Indians (in 1915 becomes official)
1904 Brandon's Lester Patrick becomes 1st hockey defenseman to score a goal
1907 Indiana enactes the nation’s 1st involuntary sterilization law based on eugenics. Intended "to prevent procreation of confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles, and rapists."
1914 US Senator Albert Fall (Teapot Dome) demands "Cubanisation of Mexico"
1916 General Fransisco "Pancho" Villa leads Mexican band raid on Columbus NM (17 killed)
1918 Russian Bolshevik Party becomes the Communist Party
1918 Ukrainian mobs massacre Jews of Seredino Buda
1932 Eamon De Valera becomes President of Ireland
1932 Former Chinese emperor Henry Pu-Yi installed as head of Manchuria
1933 Congress is called into special session by FDR, & began its "100 days"
1936 Babe Ruth turns down Reds to make a comeback as a player
1942 Construction of the Alaska Highway began
1943 Greek Jews of Salonika are transported to Nazi extermination camps
1945 334 US B-29 Superfortresses attack Tokyo with 120,000 fire bomb
1945 Japanese proclaim the "independence" of Indo-China
1946 Ted Williams is offered $500,000 to play in Mexican League, he refuses
1950 Willie Sutton robs Manufacturers Bank of $64,000 in New York NY (Cause that's where they keep the money)
1953 Josef Stalin buried in Moscow
1954 1st local color TV commercial WNBT-TV (WNBC-TV) New York NY (Castro Decorators)
1954 Edward R Murrow criticizes Senator Joseph McCarthy (See it Now)
1956 Archbishop Makarios of Cyprus arrested & exiled to Seychelles
1957 8.1 earthquake shakes Andreanof Islands, Alaska
1959 1st known radar contact is made with Venus
1959 Barbie, the popular girls' doll, debuted, over 800 million sold
1961 1st animal returned from space, dog named Blackie aboard Sputnik 9
1962 Egyptian President Nasser declares Gaza belongs to Palestinians
1962 US advisors in South-Vietnam join the fight
1964 1st Ford Mustang produced
1964 Supreme Court issues New York Times vs Sullivan decision, public officials must prove malice to claim libel & recover damages
1967 Svetlana Allilueva, Stalin's daughter, defected to the West
1974 Last Japanese soldier, a guerrilla operating in Philippines, surrenders, 29 years after World War II ended
1976 1st female cadets accepted to West Point Military Academy
1977 Admiral Stansfield Turner, USN (Ret), becomes 12th director of CIA replacing acting director Knoche
1977 Hanafi Moslems invade 3 buildings in Washington DC, siege ended March 11th
1979 Bowie Kuhn orders baseball to give equal access to female reporters
1979 France performs nuclear test at Muruora Island
1980 Flemish/Walloon battles in Belgium, 40 injured
1981 Dan Rather becomes primary anchorman of CBS-TV News (Courage!)
1986 NASA announces searchers found remains of Challenger astronauts
1986 Soviet probe Vega 2 flies by Halley's Comet at 8,030 km
1987 Chrysler Corp offered to buy American Motors Corp for $1 billion
1989 Senate rejects Bush's nomination of John Tower as Defense Secretary
1990 Dr Antonia Novello sworn-in as 1st hispanic/female US surgeon general
1993 Rodney King in court says he thinks he heard cops yell racial slurs
1994 IRA launch 1st of 3 mortar attacks on London's Heathrow Airport
1999 Energy Secretary Bill Richardson fires Wen Ho Lee, a Los Alamos weapons designer, who was under suspicion of handing nuclear secrets to China in 1988.
2002 Jamil Abdullah al-Amin, aka H. Rap Brown (58), was convicted by an Atlanta jury for the murder of a sheriff’s deputy on Mar 16, 2000. he was sentenced to life in prison on Mar 13.
2004 In Chad 2 days of fighting broke out as the army battled Islamic terrorists near a remote village on the country's western border with Niger, killing 43 terrorists of a group suspected of links with al-Qaida.
Holidays
Note: Some Holidays are only applicable on a given "day of the week"
Belize : Baron Bliss Day
Ukraine : Taras Shevchenko (Ukrainian poet) Day (1814)
World : Amerigo Vespucci Day (1451)
New Mexico : Arbor Day (Friday)
US : Federal Employees Recognition Week (Day )
US : Iditarod Race Week (Day )
US : Aardvark Week (Day 4)
American Woman's History month
Religious Observances
Anglican, Roman Catholic : Commemoration of Gregory, bishop of Nyssa
Roman Catholic : Memorial of St Frances of Rome, patron of motorists, housewives
Religious History
1839 Birth of Phoebe Palmer Knapp, American Methodist hymnwriter. She published more than 500 hymn tunes during her lifetime; her most famous melody comprises the tune to Fanny Crosby's hymn, "Blessed Assurance."
1843 Scottish clergyman Robert Murray McCheyne wrote in a letter: 'You will never find Jesus so precious as when the world is one vast howling wilderness. Then he is like a rose blooming in the midst of the desolation, a rock rising above the storm.'
1930 Pioneer linguist Frank Laubach wrote in a letter: 'It seems to me...that the very Bible cannot be read as a substitute for meeting God soul to soul and face to face.'
1931 The World Radio Missionary Fellowship (WRMF) was incorporated in Lima, Ohio, by co_founders Clarence W. Jones and Reuben Larson. Today, this interdenominational mission agency broadcasts the Gospel in 15 languages to South America and throughout Europe.
1965 Three white Unitarian ministers, including the Rev. James J. Reeb, were attacked with clubs on the streets of Selma, Alabama, while participating in a civil rights demonstration. Reeb later died in a Birmingham, Alabama hospital.
Source: William D. Blake. ALMANAC OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1987.
Thought for the day :
"If you always postpone pleasure you will never have it."
