Rough draft of the story of the origin of the D-Day stripe.
A further story of the sinking of a Japanese submarine in the Columbia River may follow later along with other stories of the unit's action near Bremerton, WA. during that time.
Completed physical models of a 1/48 LaGG-3, D.520, Mc.200, and Fiat G.50 may be included over the next year or so as well.
The story is all lies!
Except for the photo of my wife and her grandpa who went through hell in WW-2. He is, however, the character on who ''Gandpa", our story's hero, is based.
Introduction:
Although much is written of the histories that surrounded World War 2, little is left on record of the defenses of the U.S. West Coast. It is slowly becoming apparent just how many German U-boats harried the Atlantic Seaboard and the American West Coast was no different. It is presumed that little was ever publicly noted of these events in order to keep the homeland sense of security high. The random bombings of the US by Japanese balloons was more frequent than what is commonly reported, yet, for example, when a bomb landed near my father’s own farm in N.E. Montana, they were ordered by the authorities to say nothing of the event. Such pattern of confidentiality was not limited to balloon attacks. It also included U-boat attacks close to American and Canadian shores, and indeed, activity from Japanese submarines along the Pacific coastline. But more on that later.
Swan Island, near the confluence of the Columbia River and Willamette Rivers in Portland, Oregon was a busy site of ship building during WW-2. Troutdale located just east of Portland and at the terminus of the spectacularly beautiful Columbia River Gorge was home to a major Alcoa Aluminum plant which had its own antiaircraft batteries and fighter defense squadron. Near Astoria, Oregon 60 miles downriver from Portland and at the mouth of the Columbia, was a Naval Air Station that saw the final land based activity for squadron after squadron of naval aircraft before being flown out to their carriers for duty in the Pacific. Seaside, Oregon has an easily attacked beach and was defended during the war. Gun batteries near Tillamook Bay would fire off from time to time throughout the conflict. Their remnants remain to this day. There are still large bore gun batteries remaining along the Columbia and Willamette Rivers placed to stop potential ship borne invading forces. The huge airship hangars in Tillamook were active, one of which currently houses a museum. There was a secret, high level meeting base for American Generals along the Rogue River in southern Oregon that was considered to be the most secure site on the U.S. mainland. In short, Oregon lived in a continuous state of confidential red alert. An alert largely lost to time.
Oregon was, at that time, largely a logging economy and had created a large number of quite wealthy families. Northwest Oregon was settled by Norwegians and Finns who brought with them their hardiness, creativity, ingenuity, and love of inclement weather putting their talents to use in the logging and fishing industries.
One fact usually glossed over regarding the Lend Lease program with the U.S.S.R. is that the Russians supplied plans for their aircraft to the Americans. And therein lies part of our story, located along the beautiful Columbia River. Another fact, frequently missed, is how many enemy aircraft were returned to the mainland for evaluation. The charismatic aircraft such as the Me-109’s and FW-190’s received the press. The captured Vichy D.520’s and Ms.406’s that were recovered along with the captured Fiat G.50’s and Macchi Mc.200’s, S.M. 81’s, S.M. 79’s, have largely been overlooked. Where did they go? What happened to them? What did the U.S. do about the plans and engines given them by the Soviets? And therein lies another part of our story.
The U.S. Army had a penchant for singling out orphans or young men from very small families for duties such as front line invasions to minimize social impact from the expected high losses. They also selected a few of these men to serve in non-standard defense roles. And therein lies more of our story.
So with that overview, let’s step into our story.
It was Thanksgiving Day in about 2004 or 2005 that a number of guests had gathered for a potluck feast in our home. Family, friends, in laws, over 40 people in all, pies, more pies, heaps of potatoes, savory meats, exotic desserts, jolly laughter, and hunting stories. It was a scene that had been repeated and enjoyed for the better part of 3 decades. My wife’s Grandma and Grandpa were in attendance and although Grandma was in poor health she enjoyed her time thoroughly. The family knew that their time with the older generation was rapidly coming to a close so during dessert, someone asked about the day they were married. 6 December 1941 had seen the young army man marry the woman of his dreams and 7 December had seen him leave in the afternoon not to return until the middle of 1946 while he served in the U.S.Army.
He had never spoken of his service. It was in the past and to be forgotten forever we presumed. Given the stories we’d heard from his peers, we had never pressed him. We had presumed he’d been through hell. But this day turned out to be different. We were to find out he’d been part of a motley crew of pilots flying foreign aircraft as part of a mainland defense force. They’d been committed to secrecy because the degree of danger the U.S. actually faced was not to be discussed. Ever. They were not to give the enemy one single psychological toe hold on American Soil. And they didn't.
We got to the part the family all knew so well where Pearl Harbor had been bombed the day after their wedding and he was called immediately to leave for duty when his wife, now wracked with Alzheimer’s Disease, said ‘’What did you do then Dearie?”
What he said kept the table silent for the better part of an hour. The following is written from memory and is a summary of his monologue that day. We wish now that the Flip video camera had been invented or we’d be happy to link you to YouTube and listen to his talk in that media.
He paused and said ‘’Well I suppose it has been long enough so I can tell.’’ And he began to speak.
We had known him to be immensely practical, even more creative, honest, hard working, and tough. There was nothing he couldn’t fix. If a part needed repair and it didn’t exist, he’d make it. Wood. Metal. Resins. It didn’t matter. The Army had noticed his unique talents and by some fluke had singled him out along with a few selected other young men. The rest of them went on into the 41st Infantry, who later was the front line invading force on New Guinea and suffered tremendous losses. He was, like his peers, an orphan abandoned by his mother at age 2 and raised at an orphanage. He had been trained in the U.S. Army Air Corps for pilot duty with the P-36 and then the P-40. He had presumed he would be heading out for duty in the Pacific when, one day, he was given a new task.
The group of pilots he was with were to be given the duty of defending the Pacific Northwest. It was to be confidential. It was to be lonely because of the secrecy surrounding their mission. It was to be boring. “If you can call barreling through the sky inverted at 300 miles per hour boring, it was boring!” he’d declared. “There just wasn’t much action.....most of the time. But more on that later.’’
“Since the risk of aerial invasion was considered to be present but low, both the Army and the Navy took all the aircraft they could to combat. There was a greater concern of land invasion and they wound up being correct. We were given captured aircraft to rebuild, fly, and maintain since the total number of aircraft necessary was not all that high. Enough machinery had been captured in Europe and sent back for evaluation that we could operate and not interfere with the wartime supply of our own aircraft. We even built some airplanes from scratch using plans the Russians had given us along with some of their engines. '’ They were based on a randomly rotating basis at Troutdale, Astoria, and Coos Bay, Oregon. “If we needed any aluminum, Alcoa was literally just across the street from the base in Troutdale and they were under orders to give us what we needed in the fabrication shop. Weyerhauser was under the same orders and it worked out quite well for the wooden Soviet machines. We didn’t bother them all that much and they were grateful for the protection.”
“We had some French machines out of Morocco, a couple of Russian ones, and a few Italians as well. The Russian aircraft we got a bit later because they were built up at Weyerhauser from plans the Russians had sent us as part of the Lend Lease. They were heavy but really rugged and well suited for duty in our circumstances.” Grandpa was clearly annoyed that this was considered part of the payment by the U.S.S.R for their American machines, but when pressed, he felt the aircraft were actually quite good but would be clearly outclassed in a more typical combat field. “Their rough field capability served us well more than once. The French aircraft could *really* dance though the sky and were easily my favorite. But we started with the Italian aircraft we’d rebuilt in the shop. Most of them were from the Battle of Britain that had crash landed and skidded along the ground. As the Army didn’t need more than one or two for evaluation, we got the rest of them. There weren't many, but there were enough for what we did. At first, we had a few Macchis, a Fiat or two, and some triple motor jobs that we’d use for coastal patrol. Those older bombers were what saw the most action by the time hostilites had ceased. We’d have liked to have B-17’s and some P-40’s but they were all being used in Europe and deeper into the Pacific. There was just no way Boeing or Curtiss was going to oblige us since we were lower priority.” “We’d heard the Finns were flying Fiats so we gave Kjel Koikkinnen from Astoria those to fly. He took right to the G.50 and could make that aircraft do things we didn’t think it could do! Those Finns are crazy!" Grandpa and Kjel remained friends until Kjel passed away in late 2009. He continued " The Fiats are quite good at flying knife edge with that sturdy build. He’d head up the Gorge to make certain all was well, and it always was so, being the kind of guy he was, we’d see him heading back to the Troutdale airport on his side. That was Kjel for ya.” He then diverted his conversation to the adventurous and enthusiastic nature of his Finnish friend for a while. But we understood well that Hood River, Cascade Locks, and The Dalles became accustomed to a sideways flying or inverted flying airplane.
‘’What did you fly?” I asked.
“Most of my time was in the Weyerhauser LaGG-3. We took the Klimov completely apart and rebuilt it. It was a bit clunky but it was reliable and could deliver a punch to the ground. But my favorite ones to fly were the Fench aircraft, the D.520 and MS.406. We’d keep pretty familiar with them but we spent more time in the LaGG’s because we were expecting ground activity, not air. The LaGG was more suited for that. Once we had completely used up the Klimovs we did convert a couple airframes to utilize an Allison V-12. We should have done that sooner but we couldn’t get the engines.”
“Did you ever worry about the wood coming apart?” I asked further. After all that had been a problem with the Russian built aircraft. His very blank and inquisitive look at me answered that question quickly. American materials and craftsmanship were clearly superior and had negated that risk.
“Since we were Army Air Corps, but quite off the mainstream as far as aircraft were concerned, we did have quite a bit of latitude on how we painted our aircraft. We had to have the appropriate American markings which, on the West Coast, avoided all things red since Americans were trained to shoot an anything and everything in the sky that had red on it.” “Our commanding officer, Ole Olson was this Norwegian guy out of Astoria and he was always saying ‘It’s as simple as Black and White!’ whenever he’d get to describing something. ‘It’s black and white this’ and ‘It’s a simple as black and white that’ over and over and over again.”
“We heard him say that so often we decided to make black and white our unit’s identifying markings. Against the usually gray skies we’d decided a light grey would serve best for the undersides and used various greens for the tops but we weren’t required to use standard issue Olive Drab. It was pretty easy to identify which aircraft was ours and which was a Naval aircraft being delivered to Astoria.”
“So the aircraft were never painted the same?” I asked.
“No, each one had it’s own paint. We’d painted black and white stripes here and there on the aircraft so we could instantly tell if it was one of our aircraft or if it was a Navy Wildcat or Helldiver passing on to Astoria. It worked pretty good really.”
‘Were they always the same pattern?” I asked again. After all, I’m a geek and it was a refreshing change from all the hunting-speak that usually surrounded our table during Thanksgiving.
“No. They were different. Every one of them. There were stripes on the noses or the wings or the tails. Where-ever we wanted to put them. And we’d change them from time to time because we were pretty bored not being able to go off base.’’ “When Ole was transferred to England in early 1944 he saw to it that idea was used on D-Day. He used what he felt was our simplest idea and made them implement it. It worked pretty well.’’
I stopped him and said ‘’What was that?”
‘’Yeah...they took whatever they could get their hands on and painted up all these airplanes with black and white stripes like we had.’’
I held the floor silent for a moment. To the rest of the family, that meant little. But to an airplane fan, this was a moment.
“So your unit essentially invented D-Day stripes.’’
Grandpa grinned.
‘We did.’’ said he.
Photo of Grandpa now 94 years old taken 25 December, 2011 with my wife of 20 years:
I hope to get out of him what he knows of the capture, shipping across the Atlantic, and repair of the European aircraft some day. He's never done more than allude to it. Opportunity for that discussion has never arisen. My bad.
