“The Japanese performed the most perfectly devised operation of all time,” Thacker said. Navy gunners on Ford Island were firing skyward. The smoke? The USS Arizona, heading to the bottom of the harbor. The water spouts? Anti-aircraft shells falling, harmlessly, into the ocean. That, of course, put his crew in the middle of a war zone: 350 Japanese planes, known as Zeroes, were wreaking havoc in two waves of attacks. “He hit Diamond Head right on the nose after 2,500 miles of celestial navigation.” “I had one night flight with that gentleman,” Thacker said. Two planes had to turn back, and the 11 others approached Pearl Harbor from every which way. The crews were green: Each bomber’s navigator was a cadet who had to find their way by the stars. The 13 bombers took off from Hamilton Field, north of San Francisco, on the night of Dec. Now the military was moving bombers to Japan’s doorstep. The United States had already frozen Japanese assets and cut off trade. 1, 1941, while stationed in Salt Lake City, Thacker received an assignment: He and a dozen other pilots would fly the new E model of Boeing’s B-17 bomber, a technological marvel, from California to the Philippines – via Hawaii. He went to junior college, then applied to the U.S.
#Reddit bomber crew for free
In El Centro as a youth, he would wash down aircraft at the tiny commercial airport for free rides into the sky. Thacker was born nine months before World War I ended and has always loved airplanes. Thacker, a retired colonel in the Air Force (that branch was created after he entered the Army), who served in the Pacific and European theaters of World War II, and in the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, recalled that day. About 2,400 American service members died, hundreds of which were forever entombed at the harbor’s bottom.
This week marks the 76th anniversary of the Japanese sneak-attack on Pearl Harbor.
0 kommentar(er)
