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Excerpts from Oral History, National Museum of the Pacific War, Fredericksburg, Texas
December 7, 1941, Where were you?
That’s easy to remember. It was Sunday afternoon and as President of the Junior Congregation of our Synagogue I was conducting a regularly scheduled monthly meeting. A message was handed to me that the Japanese were attacking Pearl Harbor. At the appropriate moment I passed this on to those in attendance. I told them of my draft status and was subject to be called for service at any time. Perhaps this would be my last opportunity to address them as I was considering enlisting. I wanted to get into the Army Air Corp. That is exactly what I did and began my service that latter part of January 1942.
(Wolf was sent to Biloxi, Mississippi at Keesler Field where he received his basic training. He remembers that “Most of the basic training at that point really was first aid, more or less cleaning out the new barracks that the carpenters had left all the debris around. Once we got settled in they started putting us through various test, etc. to find out really what we were capable of doing based upon the information they had previously received. In my particular case, because I was mechanically inclined, and had really enlisted so that I could get into one of the air services. The fortunate part about is was that my scores were so high they decided I would go to a contract school that was to teach those who were interested in airframe and aircraft operation, engines, the whole works of an airplane.”
Wolf was assigned to Tulsa, Oklahoma at the Spartan School of Aeronautics and then went onto Lockheed Aircraft Corporation in Burbank, California. He was assigned to the P-38’s as a specialty. After several state side assignments and training, Wolf was sent overseas to the China-Burma-India Theater of Operation as a qualified Air Traffic Controller.)
China-Burma-India Theater
At that point we had a destination. We knew that we were going to a place called Chabua, in the province of Assam, India. (The aircraft) We had a little bit of everything. We had B-52’s, B24’s, C-87’s some early P-38’s that arrived in the theater, but mostly the first few months there were C-47’s, which is the original airline DC-3’s as they were known in civilian life. The C-47 was so limited in ceiling, and in that particular area, when loaded, it was terrible to try to get is over the Hump into China. We lost more aircraft because they just couldn’t get over the mountains. When they were loaded they would ice up and lose their ability to maintain flight.
So many of the airfields over there were crushed rock and these planes would land and the first time the tail wheel hit the ground the tire would explode. Along with that the wheel itself would be damaged. So we were without tires and tail wheels. A lot of the aircraft were grounded until that could be corrected. I don’t know how many weeks went by until we finally got some relief and they would send a C-54 aircraft, loaded with nothing but mounted tail wheels. I had access to these aircraft when they were there overnight and I did what was known as a little ‘midnight requisitioning.’ I ‘requisitioned’ a supply of mounted tails wheels for our aircraft that were based at Chabua. I don’t know whether anybody ever knew who did it, but I was the guy. Our Aircraft kept in service longer than some of the other bases.
Accomplishments
We did some unusual things to keep them (aircraft) going. Things lightened up a little bit as far as the ability to carry loads and we had less losses because the aircraft were able to climb high enough to get over the Himalaya Mountains, however, it did not preclude a lot of problems because of the weather, yet we had no experience prior to what the flying conditions were in certain areas and on certain routes until you flew it. We had never had anybody over there to say ‘this is a good way to go, so many degrees this way and so much altitude.’ Once we got that settled down then we were able to make extremely fine records. I can remember being so proud because, and I can’t recall the dates now, but somewhere along the way the Air Transport Command was the first and only non-combatant unit during the was to receive the Presidential Unit Citation. We received this blue badge in a gold frame, which you wore on the opposite side to where you wore your normal medals. This is the thing that I’m most proud of because it was a non-combatant award. It has since been awarded to many organizations, but we were out there with no records previously to brag about. We established many records for accomplishment.
Physical conditions
Probably the worst thing that happened to us as far as physical conditioning is concerned was created by the weather, terrible weather! Fortunately when I got dysentery, I never got amoebic dysentery. I stayed away from malaria. There were things you couldn’t control because of the moisture, your prickly heat rash, you had that all the time no matter how much powder you had or how dry you thought you could keep, you couldn’t. Anything that was leather was so badly mildewed that it was green and you could wipe it off one day and the next day it would be back. You had the monsoon period of course, which was the reason for all the moisture. Eventually we had boardwalks that we could walk on around our tents, back and forth to control offices, to mess, etc.
Leave
I did get sent to rest camp a couple of times during the year that I was in Chabua. Wonderful experiences going back to Delhi and up to the mountains. There you almost thought that you were in Switzerland because of the height and temperature, etc. Those days were very much appreciated! Sometimes you didn’t know whether you were going to survive getting there. The Indian trains were just terrible. They were wooden cars and the seating was just solid wooden benches. At the end of the train, when we went to this one lake up there, you actually had to ride a donkey. The natives would walk ahead and you would ride the donkey. Believe me, not having ridden a horse or a donkey is was an experience. You were glad when you got there. When you got up to the lake, the name was Kashmir, you lived on houseboats. The lake was beautiful, luxurious rugs on the floor… It was dry, cool, as close to homeland as I ever experienced in India.
Tragedies
I saw some tragedies, a particular one losing one of our mechanics. Actually, the shoes that we wore, when they were resoled had nails in them. This mechanic was wearing GI shoes that had nails in them and the nails contacted the ground. He was using an ungrounded electric drill to work on some piece of equipment. One of the natives came along and swabbed down the deck. The water went under his shoe, contacted nails and he became the conductor of the electricity being electrocuted on the spot. That was a sad situation. Another time we had a C-46 aircraft with a wonderful crew, two test pilots. The propeller had been through the propeller shop. As a normal operation, a test flight was required. It had just had engine change and this C-46 was up in the air and the next thing we heard, “Whirl…” The plane was spiraling down to earth. It took us two days just to get the aircraft out of the ground to try and find out what was wrong. When we got the engine and propeller out we took them apart. The electric motor that controlled the propeller had rings in it and the rings actually controlled the maximum pitch of the aircraft. It couldn’t go past dead center into reverse. Well, the ring was put in reverse and the propeller went past dead center. What it was doing was one engine was pulling and the other was pushing, so it just spiraled down. At that particular base, those were the two sad situations that I remember. That was a mechanic’s error, but what are you going to do since that was war time. The guy that did it was on the aircraft so you can’t court martial anybody.
VJ Day
I was officer of the day at one point, which ended up being the unofficial VJ Day. You were on duty from 6am to 6am the following day. Of course technically you have complete responsibility for the base at that time. While on duty, and I don’t remember the exact time of day, but through AACS (now they transmit from station to station.), the word came through that the Japanese had surrendered. Well the word spread around the base. The next thing I know, there are flares (each aircraft had very pistols and emergency flares) all over the base. The GI’s had gone into the planes, taken the very pistols and the extra flares and started shooting them in celebration. Not only did they do this outside, but in the barracks they were seeing how many mosquito nets they could fire through. Fortunately I never had a call of a fire in any of the barracks. I never had anybody with a reportable injury that I knew of! Of course, the liquor flowed. We are now getting toward the end of daylight and I was figuring that aircraft had to take off the next morning. What do I do? I rounded up a few of the GI’s who were sober and I told them to go over to this depot, over the hangar. I told them some of the aircraft were over there for maintenance. I told them to go in all those aircraft and get as many pistols and flares as they could and bring them back to head quarters to the operations office. Later on when it quieted down I said, “I want you to go through all of the barracks because the very pistols have to be laying there, they have no use now, they have no more flare.” So we gathered enough flares and very pistols that I knew we could get the scheduled aircraft off. At least I figured that would be safe. I thought, “Oh, I have a flight crew that may not be capable.” So I got hold of the flight surgeon and I had him come down to the Operations Office, and said, “As each crew checks in, I want you to give them a physical check, if they are not capable of flying please ground them.” By daylight we had enough to get off some of the scheduled flights.
In the meantime, I’m supposed to be relieved at 6am by the next officer of the day. He was a no show. Sometime after lunch he showed up. I had been on 24+12 hours, 36 hours, and it was stressful at that time. I was so glad to get relieved and I went back to my quarters to get some sleep. A few hours later, the Chief Clerk from the Base Commander came over and said the Commander wanted to see me. I thought, “Oh, what did I do wrong?” I reported in and he said, “Lt Wolf, I heard what you’ve done. You’ve been in the theater now twenty-seven months, I’m writing out orders tomorrow for you to go back to the United States by air.” He gave me my flight documents, which I still have the ticket, to fly back. So this is now a day after the unofficial VJ Day. I fly back on the same route that I flew over. I had priority aircraft all the way back and arrived in Miami, Florida on official VJ Day. I arrived in full uniform. I got off the plane and they had a welcoming crowd there. They wanted us to stay and be part of the celebration. I said, “Thank you, but no thank you!” I had been overseas and I had a wife that I wanted to see.
(Wolf wanted a flight to Philadelphia, but none were available. He was able to get a ticket on a train. He had to stand from Miami to Washington DC. When he arrived in Philadelphia, there was no one to greet him.)
So, I got up to Philadelphia. Meantime, I had wired by Western Union from Florida that I would be coming home and the train would arrive at 6am. I got to Philadelphia and my father was just recovering from a heart attack, so I didn’t know who would be there. I figured that my wife might be there. I got there and hung for a few minutes. I eventually went to my parents’ house and my wife happened to be there. I opened the door and my Mother heard me. What happened was the message delivered to her was that I would be arriving at 6pm instead of 6am so that is why nobody was there. I surprised everybody.
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