 |
Interviewed by: Bodie Manly |
| I was in the Air Corps, which
is now called the Air Force. I was in college at Baker University before I joined the
service. We heard about Pearl Harbor at school and we said "Oh no, looks like were
going to have to go to war, and we’re just the age that we’ll be going." Instead of being drafted I enlisted so that I could choose the service that I’d be going into. You asked me what training I received before I went overseas. My father had served in the Signal Corps in the First World War and had a great love of aviation, as I did. I was trained as a navigator and we had to learn how to shoot the stars with an instrument to find your plane's course, and how to use a log and figure out where you were at that moment. It was a nine-month training with a heavy emphasis in math and I graduated as a 2nd Lieutenant. I’m proud that I was able to navigate the pacific four weeks after I graduated from training. I flew with this plane I have here (Mr. Hull
showed us models of the planes he flew) Our crew was assigned to 13th Air Force Service Command, 403rd troop carrier and we did many unusual things. We filled in voids in just any sort of thing. You wanted to know about my first
mission? We went to Espirtu Santo and Guadalcanal and supplied the Marines with food and
personnel. Then we carried back wounded in our plane. In the B-25 I flew over the
Philippines and dropped matchbooks and pencils with General MacArthur’s famous words
"I will return". I never personally fired a shot or dropped a bomb. Even so, I did go on secret missions and flew generals and other ranking officers around. I was credited with 62 missions over enemy territory. There were five major battles I was in. My first battle was in New Guinea. The Marines were landing and we supported them. How did I feel in combat? You are so trained that during the battle you have no feeling—only afterwards do you feel a little apprehensive. It was hard to navigate during the battle, because the plane would take evasive action and I’d have to keep track of all of our turns an maneuvers so we’d have the right point to turn back on to head for home. There were many casualties in the Philippines at sea, but not so much on land. We were trying to force the Japanese back, pushing them northward back towards Japan. When we were flying once, our plane dove rapidly from 25,000 feet to sea level because Japanese aircraft attacked us. It broke both my eardrums and I still have problems today. You know the expression "We threw everything at them but the kitchen sink"? One of the guys thought he would be funny and while we were in Australia he got a kitchen sink to throw out of the plane on our next mission. The Army did everything on a standard. This meant that when we graduated from flight school they gave us fur-lined boots and jackets. Well, in the South Pacific that’s the last thing you need, and so there were just plies upon plies of those things rotting away at our camps. A lot of people today think that the whole world is like
where we live. In Solomon Isles there were no roads, no telephone poles, and no buildings
at that time. I got to ride a water buffalo while I was in the south Pacific. In the
markets there were dogs in cages, and I wondered why, until I was told that that was part
of the local menu! They said that the lighter colored dogs were the best. I'll show you some pictures of the shack On a typical day you would fly for maybe, eight hours. We played volleyball and we lived on the ocean so we could swim or go fishing. Our official mail was sent electronically, just like today but personal letters were sent on paper. While it might take 3 or 4 months to get a letter it might have some perfume on it from momma. We didn’t get homesick because we melded into a group, and were part of a team. A letter would make you get a lump in your throat but you wouldn’t dwell on it. You asked me if our mail was censored? Because I was an officer it was expected that I knew better than to write about where we were stationed. But when you had time off or were in the hospital, you’d go through the mail of the enlisted men and take scissors and cut out what shouldn’t be there. Bob Hope pulled my toes while I was in the hospital, that’s my claim to fame anyway. My happiest moment was when we got a rest leave after
flying 12-15 hours. We would fly as a group to Sydney, Australia. Our squadron had an
apartment on Bondai Beach and we’d go swimming. I liked to ride the trolleys to the
end of the line and then go into a tavern and talk to the local people. The saddest one is
when you’d lose a crewmember or a good friend in another airplane. I lost a
crewmember and had to write his parents. I was sitting under the wing of my airplane when I heard of the German surrender on BBC radio. I knew that because they wouldn’t send me anywhere else in the South Pacific that I’d get to go home. You asked me what my biggest fear was—being shot down! You don’t have many fears because in all the services you’re considered expendable. You have a job to do and so you just go ahead. In total I've crash-landed four times but never broke a bone! It was the good guys versus the bad guys. The loss of Japanese people in Japan didn’t really affect me. Hiroshima bombing made me think that we wouldn’t have to lose any more of our men. The Japanese were strange people and they were driven. They would rush at the Marines, even though they knew that they didn’t have any chance. They’d just keep coming. There isn’t much of a morality about war. It’s "I’m right and you’re wrong" and a country has to protect itself from aggressors. Not that much had changed in the 18 months while I’d been gone. Though I’d been overseas for 18 months I’d been in the service for nearly 4 years. Things have changed in the years since the war, though. There’s a need to make sure that history doesn’t repeat itself. Some people today don’t have any respect for the flag or the national anthem—and that makes me angry. They don’t appreciate the benefits that Americans get in life. Permission Granted for Use by Carl Hull ©
2001 |
Thanks for visiting! Do you have any questions?
Comments?
E-mail us nbosch@aol.com,
web editor
Last update 03/25/01 08:37 PM
Copyright © 2001 Nieman Enhanced Learning Center
Carl Hull
called the C-47, with
extra fuel tanks in the cargo area, for the trip from San Francisco to Australia and it
took 17 ½ hours. Now they make it in five hours. 
s that the natives
lived in. I traded some candy bars for this native idol. The idol depicts the face of the
white missionaries that brought them Christianity and this is their image of the Virgin
Mary. The natives were headhunters until 1940! 