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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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Posted on 12/06/2002 11:03:54 PM PST by SAMWolf
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are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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| 'Unless we fail in our objective -- this thread is designed to stir your emotions and memories and to bring out the patriotism in you.' -- SAMWolf, US Army Veteran
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| Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. We hope to provide an ongoing source of information about issues and problems that are specific to Veterans and resources that are available to Veterans and their families. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel free to address their specific circumstances or whatever issues concern them in an atmosphere of peace, understanding, brotherhood and support.
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"This is no drill!"
Military and Naval aircraft at Oahu's airfields were second only to battleships among the Japanese target priorities, though the reason was different. While Pearl Harbor's battleships represented American strategic "reach", and had to be eliminated to safeguard Japan's offensive into Southeast Asia and the East Indies, Oahu's aircraft had to be taken out for a more immediate reason: to protect the Pearl Harbor attack force. U.S. fighter planes, if they could get into the air in any numbers, would be a serious threat to Japanese bombers. U.S. Army bombers and Navy patrol planes potentially imperiled the Striking Force's invaluable aircraft carriers.
 Less than one hour after the attack on Pearl Harbor, USAAF 2nd Lt.’s Ken Taylor and George Welch make an aggressive strike back against the enemy. Taylor, flying his P-40 Tomahawk, is seen bringing down his second enemy aircraft, an Aichi D-31A dive-bomber, on the morning of December 7, 1941. Welch is in close as they chase Japanese planes heading for the open sea. In the background, palls of smoke rise from Hangar 6 housing the naval float-planes, the battleship Nevada, beached off Hospital Point, and the up-turned battleship Oklahoma. The Japanese first attack wave therefore assigned many fighters and bombers to airbase supression, the fighters to set planes afire with machine gun and cannon fire and the bombers to wreck them with high explosives. The second attack wave also had airfield strikes among its tasks. Wheeler Army Airfield, in central Oahu, was Hawaii's main fighter base. It was heavily attacked. Of some 140 planes on the ground there, mainly P-40 and P-36 pursuits, nearly two-thirds were destroyed or put out of action. A similar proportion of the B-17, B-18 and A-20 bombers at Hickam Army Airfield, adjacent to the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard, was also wrecked or damaged enough to keep them grounded. Many men were killed at Hickam when the Japanese bombed their barracks. Smaller Bellows Field in eastern Oahu was also hit, destroying several P-40s, including two whose pilots courageously attempted to take off in the teeth of the enemy onslaught.  U.S. Navy and Marine Corps air stations on Pearl Harbor's Ford Island, at Ewa to the west of Pearl and at Kanoehe Bay near Bellows Field, also received concentrated attention from the raiders. Ewa's aircraft complement, mainly carrier-type bombers and fighters, was reduced from nearly fifty operational planes to less than twenty. Ford Island and Kanoehe, home to several squadrons of long-range PBY patrol seaplanes, were massively attacked, with Ford Island losing about half its planes and Kaneohe all but a few. These very successful Japanese strikes thus prevented any significant aerial opposition, though the few Army fighters that got airborne gave a good account of themselves. Later on December Seventh, surviving bombers and patrol planes were sent out to search for the Japanese carriers. They found nothing and confronted considerable "friendly" anti-aircraft gunfire when they returned to their bases. Ford Island Naval Air Station, in the middle of Pearl Harbor, was headquarters of Patrol Wing Two, and an important target for the Japanese first wave raiders. Reportedly, the initial bomb of the whole attack burst there, prompting the message that electrified the World: "Air Raid, Pearl Harbor--this is no drill.". Several PBY patrol seaplanes and other aircraft were destroyed on Ford Island, and one big hangar was gutted. In all, 33 planes were put out of commission there. Several planes from the aircraft carrier Enterprise, which was approaching Hawaii after a mission to Wake Island, arrived in the midst of the attack. A few were shot down by the Japanese and more by understandably jittery American anti-aircraft gunners. However, several of these planes, and others from Ford Island's own complement, were airborne again within a few hours, sent out to search for the enemy. Some, at the end of a very long day, were shot down by their fellow-countrymen as they returned from these unfruitful searches.
Kanoehe Bay, on the east coast of Oahu, was the site of a major Navy patrol seaplane base. A new facility, with some of its buildings still under construction, this Naval Air Station was home to three Patrol Squadrons. It had 33 PBYs on the ground or floating just offshore when the Japanese arrived. Of those planes, all but six were destroyed, and the survivors were damaged. Only the three Kaneohe Bay PBYs then out on patrol were fit for service at the end of the raid.
 A tribute to the Americans who got airborne on the "date which will live in infamy". A thrilling image of a lone P-40B and Japanese Val Despite the effective Japanese counter-air effort, a few Army P-40 and P-36 pursuit ships got airborne, including some from the small, and untargeted, airfield at Haleiwa on Oahu's north coast. These shot down perhaps as many as eleven enemy planes of the second attack wave, losing four of their number in return, two while taking off and one to American anti-aircraft fire while returning to base. In the midst of the raid, twelve unarmed B-17C and B-17E four-engine bombers arrived over Oahu after a long flight from California. Unaware of the events then unfolding at their destination, several of these were attacked. Though unable to fire back, only two B-17s were destroyed, both after landing, an early indication of the toughness of the "Flying Fortress" in combat. Two Navy SBDs flying into Oahu from the carrier Enterprise, were also downed by enemy action during the raid. One of these may have been the victim of a mid-air collision with its opponent near Ewa Field.
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JUST A MATTER OF TIME! - OPERATION KEELHAUL
By Albert Burns
In our last column, we discussed a bit of the history of the 20th century as it pertained to our government. I believe that it would be valuable to consider more of that history as a means of better understanding what is happening today.
NOTE: I shall be dealing strictly with FACTS, demonstrable, provable facts although I doubt that one American in a thousand has ever heard of many of them. That fact alone gives mute testimony to the effective control of the mass media which can bury unpleasant or embarrassing facts by simply not reporting them. If some of the history you read in the next few columns makes you angry, please direct your anger at those who MADE the history, NOT the person exposing it.
We just passed a significant anniversary. On October 16, 1933, Franklin Roosevelt granted diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union. The Communist government was about to collapse for lack of financing. Granting them diplomatic recognition literally saved the Soviet government which had been ostracized by virtually every other government in the world. Throughout the rest of the 1930s and the 1940s, two disparate groups infiltrated dozens of agents or members into the executive branch under Roosevelt. Those two groups were the Communist Party and the Council on Foreign Relations. While these two groups had radically different motivations, they both had the same ultimate goal, i.e., to weaken and eventually destroy American freedom and independence.
Very few people today remember that World War II started in 1939 because Germany AND RUSSIA invaded Poland at the same time. The Soviet Union was exactly as responsible for STARTING that war as Germany was. This was known and condemned at the time. However, in 1941 when Hitler attacked Russia, suddenly our mass media made a 180 degree about face and Russia became our "noble ally" in fighting the war. Of course, it was up to the United States to supply Russia with the armament to fight the war. The world went to war to "save" Poland and the other countries of Eastern Europe. Yet, at Yalta, before the war was over, the United States State Department AGREED that the Soviet Union would be allowed to add Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, half of Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and Bulgaria to its territory in Europe. Before the addition of those countries and peoples, at the end of the war, Russia had a population of about 160 million people and controlled a land area smaller than the Russia of the Czars. Soviet industry had been almost totally destroyed by the Nazi war machine. Communism was a third rate power, militarily, industrially and economically. There was, literally, no reason for Eastern Europe to be handed over to the Communists other than the influence of the Communist agents in OUR State Department.
We have all seen, over and over, the movies of the trains of freight cars loaded with Jews and others being hauled off to Hitler's extermination camps. To the best of my recollection, I have NEVER seen ANY still or moving pictures of similar trainloads of men, women and children which OUR government was responsible for shipping off to a similar fate.
In 1945, General Dwight Eisenhower ordered that "Operation Keelhaul" be put into effect. This involved rounding up and shipping back to "their countries of origin" ALL the refugees from communism: men, women and children, soldier or civilian, male or female — even though many of them had been fighting on OUR side during the war. Since all of Eastern Europe was then under Communist domination, sending these people back was, quite literally, a sentence of death, some by immediate execution and the rest by slow extermination from overwork and malnutrition in the Soviet slave labor camps in Siberia. These people were rounded up at bayonet point, forced into freight cars and shipped off to a terrible fate. There was no accurate count kept but the MINIMUM figure was 2,000,000 people and a maximum of 5,000,000. The elimination of all these anti-Communist people made the Communist domination of Eastern Europe MUCH easier. And the American people were kept blissfully unaware of this action which Eisenhower enforced rigidly, even though it violated international law, the laws of his own country and laws of humanity. Germans were prosecuted at Nuremberg for similar crimes but control of the news ensured that Eisenhower, and those under his command who took part in this outrage, were never even officially accused of wrong doing.
Facts like these may be unsettling but they MUST be faced if Americans are to fully understand WHY the almost universal respect and admiration which foreigners had for Americans gradually turned into hatred.
I just saw the scene which commemorated his heroism, today, on AMC, in the excellent docudrama "Tora! Tora! Tora!"
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