An Extra Pair of Wings

Memoir Contest Honorable Mention

By Lee Embree

As an aerial photographer in WWII, I was assigned to a crew on a B-17.  On December 6, 1941, we were processed for overseas duty, the Philippine Islands via Hickam Field in Hawaii.

An hour before our departure, I phoned my wife, Betty, to tell her goodbye.  At 9:00 p.m. we were told to load up.  As I climbed into the aircraft, I made sure I had my personal camera, a 4x5 Speed Graphic which  I planned to use for taking pictures to send home to Betty.

Lieutenant Barthelmess, our pilot, asked me to go up forward for takeoff and the first part of the flight.  With the heavy load of fuel, tool boxes, luggage and machine guns on board, it would help to have my weight up front to help correct the center of gravity.  Minutes later we were rolling down the runway.   The nose lifted, and we were over San Francisco Bay, gradually gaining altitude.  Soon we were over the Golden Gate Bridge.  Nothing but black night lay ahead.

I stayed up in front because the engine noise wasn't quite as loud.  As the hours ticked by, I tried to cat nap but without much success.  After a very long, tiring but uneventful night, our navigator said we should be sighting the island of Oahu.  Our pilot was getting worried about the gas supply because we had about one hour supply left.  Looking out the window, I saw only dark cloud formations on the horizon that looked like mountains.  Finally after several minutes, we sighted the island of Oahu.  What a relief to see something besides water. 

As we approached the islands, I left the front and crawled back through the pilots' and crew chief's compartment and along the bomb bay catwalk to the radio compartments.  With my Speed Graphic in hand and loaded with a film pack, I headed for the rear waist gunners' positions – one on each side.  I wanted to try, with my own camera, to get some good pictures of the famous places I'd heard so much about:  Diamond Head, Waikiki Beach, Royal Hawaiian Hotel and Honolulu.

There were no machine guns in place and no Plexiglas in the window openings.  It was perfect for photography!  I saw Diamond Head and then Honolulu.  I thought, Wow!  We really have made it to the Hawaiian Islands!  For an Iowa farm boy, this was living.  I took a shot out the right window.

By now we were about a mile off Waikiki at about 2,000 feet altitude in line for a normal over-water approach for landing at Hickam Field.  Suddenly I saw large clouds of black smoke, similar to a huge oil well fire, rising from Hickam and beyond.  By this time, we were farther out from the shoreline, ready to turn right for the final approach.  I observed hundreds of small black puffs of smoke above Hickam and Pearl Harbor.  I recalled seeing the same thing back home on the movie theater screens of newsreels showing the war in Europe.  I began to sweat, and not just because of the warm tropical air whistling in my face.  We turned on final approach and I jumped over to the left side window opening, camera in hand.  Something crazy was going on.  Up ahead I saw airplanes going in all kinds of directions.  Then I noticed more black smoke.  We were now pretty low, flying directly over the entrance to Pearl Harbor.  Suddenly I saw and felt the bomber pull up with a surge of power and start to gain altitude.

As we flew over the runway, I got a close look at some of those wild flying airplanes and saw the red meat ball painted on them.  Were they really Japanese airplanes?  We made a go-around, turning left around the outside edge of Pearl Harbor.  I couldn't believe what I was seeing.  Many ships in the harbor were burning and exploding.  Airplanes were climbing, turning and diving all over the place.

We continued our slow left turn, coming out over the water again.  Our pilot turned left just off the shoreline for another final approach to Hickam.  As we passed over Pearl Harbor entrance again, I saw a Navy ship coming out of the harbor.  It was firing, all guns almost straight up.  Just then I saw something that looked like a bomb fall in front of our left wing.  I looked up and saw an airplane with those red meat balls on each wing.  The pilot of that plane was obviously trying to bomb the Navy ship just below us, and they in turn were trying to hit the Japanese plane.  And here we were, flying right between the two!  We were lucky and didn't take any hits. 

Again I felt that surge of those four powerful engines.  As we passed over the runway, I saw a B-17 on the Hickam flight line with its tail-end burned off and its nose pointing upward at about a 45º angle.  We did another go-around, using the same flight pattern as the first time.  The anti-aircraft fire became more intense.  Heavy black smoke poured from many of the Navy ships and there were repeated explosions.

I heard what sounded like hailstones falling on a tin roof.  I looked back and saw two fighter-type aircraft on our tail   The hailstone noise was their machine gun fire hitting the sheet metal of our tail surfaces.  It was getting a little too close for comfort since I was in the tail section.  For some reason, they stopped firing and passed us on the left, so close I could see the Japanese pilots grinning from ear to ear.  I took a shot of those two with my Speed Grapic and heaved a sigh of relief. 

We were now on final approach and slowing down considerably, so the planes disappeared very quickly - but not for long.  Moments later, the same two appeared underour left wing, diving and flying in the opposite direction.  A third aircraft in front of them crashed and burned. 

Nick, our radio operator, opened the door and yelled, “We're going to land this time, regardless, because the fuel gauges are showing empty."  I hoped they could stretch the glide path to the runway.  Sure enough they did as the landing gear tires squealed on the runway surface.  We were down at last!