American Valor Quarterly Issue 4 - Autumn 2008 | Page 5

which was in reality the entire fleet. And this is how the fleet came they still kept shooting trying to fight back. We only lost one man.
to be based at Pearl Harbor by the time of the attack.
Strange enough, he had been on watch the night before, and was
asleep when he was hit by a bullet and killed. He never even knew
There were no airfields on the small islands in the Pacific in those there was a war.
days. The only means of flying to the Orient was on a Boeing
Clipper, which is a big seaplane. The United States sent a number Before we were able to even try to launch a plane, we had to go
of B-17s to Clark Air Field in 1941 as things heated up. The B- through all of the checks – you can’t take a chance with planes,
17s used 100-octane fuel which was a rarity at the time, so the B- and we had to check the hydraulic lines, the fuel lines, the electric
17s had to go down to Australia then up to the Philippines because lines, etc, before we were able to get up in the air. Not until that
there were no airfields in Wake or Midway, and so on. It took night did we get two planes ready to fly out of there, and I took
quite a bit of negotiating to get that 100-octane fuel, and so two off in one of them.
colonels were to be sent down to Australia to contract for the
fuel. But they didn’t know how to get there. So my crew got in Kimmel’s staff thought that the Japanese would be heading
on the act and took them down to Rabaul then on to Port southwest toward Kwajalein. So they decided that if I flew toward
Moresby and Darwin and so on. When we returned, my squadron Kwajalein all night long, I could make it further than the Japanese
was immediately ordered to Midway, arriving there in October, ships could reach. Then, at daylight, I would turn around and
1941. We remained there as things started heating up until Friday, pass over them. We had no radar – if we had radar we would
December 5, when we were ordered to Hawaii and Pearl Harbor. not have had to worry whether we could see them or not. People
We got in late Friday night, and the war started Sunday morning. who have written books on Pearl Harbor overlook the fact that
the technology that existed at the time is not what we have today.
I do not know why I was ordered back, other than there were so They make the assumption that we live in a static world, but the
many messages going back and forth between Washington and world is changing like hell all the time.
Hawaii - but unfortunately not the right one. I still have a copy of
the message that they sent to us, which I really think is an eye I never did see the Japanese fleet. They actually went north – they
buster. It said, “Be prepared to take six planes east or west.” So had come in from the north, as we found out, and never were
we did not know whether we were going to Wake or Guam or down to the south. But since we only had two planes available,
sending six and leaving six, or what. We were prepared for we were doing our best to estimate where they might be.
anything, but they ended up sending all of our planes east, so we
went to Hawaii.
Two and a half months later, I found myself flying a mission in
On that Sunday morning when the attack began, we were not the Dutch East Indies. Mr. Roosevelt had earlier announced that
able to get any of the planes of our squadron up. The Japanese we would be sending reinforcements to the Philippines. Of course
strafed our planes, which operated from the western tip of Ford the Japanese had already captured Wake Island, so the only way
Island. The first step the Japanese took was to attack all of our you could get to the Philippines was to go down to the Fiji Islands,
planes, including the fighters. Fortunately all of our aircraft carriers around and over to Java, and join the remnants of the squadron
were out, which saved them and their planes. They were escorting that had come down from the Philippines. There were two PBY
the Marine fighters to Wake Island. As a matter of fact, the day
before we left Midway, I escorted those fighters myself from the
carrier to the island, because the fighters had no navigation
equipment to speak of, and Wake Island is about as high above
sea level as a table top. Unless you get right on top of it, you can’t
see it.
I was getting ready to go to work on the morning of December
7 when I saw the Japanese planes in the distance. They came in
three ways – from around the east side, from around the west
side, and right through what we called the “saddle,” where the
island of Oahu dips to the south.

A PBY-5 Catalina patrol bomber similar to the plane flown by thenLt. Moorer at Pearl Harbor and his later adventures en route to Darwin.

AMERICAN VALOR QUARTERLY - Autumn 2008 - 5

U.S. Navy

I grabbed my co-pilot, who was right around the corner from
me, and we raced out to the base. I got there just after the first
wave of the first attac