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In April I wrote about two pilots who took off and engaged the attacking Japanese Zeros on Dec. 7, 1941. Army pilot Lt. Kenneth Taylor and his friend George Welch were still wearing formal clothes from a function at the Wheeler Officers’ Club the night before.
Another pilot, Lt. Phil Rasmussen, took off in his pajamas with three others, shot down at least one Zero and landed safely despite over 500 bullet holes in his plane. He told his story at the USS Arizona Memorial in 2003.
Rasmussen began recounting the story starting with Dec. 6 when he and Joe Powell, a pilot friend, headed for Honolulu in his 1940 Chevy convertible, with the top down.
“We had dates in Honolulu. We picked up the girls, and we went to Blowhole, which is a pretty wild place to be swimming.”
He’s referring to Halona Beach Cove, better known as Eternity Beach, which was made famous in the movie “From Here to Eternity.”
“We spent the afternoon at Blowhole swimming and drinking beer and having a good time. That evening we went to Trader Vic’s, which was the only nightclub in Honolulu at that time.” It opened on Ward Avenue and King Street in 1940.
At about 1:30 a.m. they took the girls home and headed back to Wheeler Field on the two-lane Kamehameha Highway.
“As we rose over some of the hills at the base of the mountain, we could see the whole panorama of Pearl Harbor,” Rasmussen recalled. “There were so many ships in the harbor and they were all lit up, stem to stern, with strings of light.
“This was a weekend custom for the Navy. I was so impressed with the number of lights that I nudged Joe awake and I said, ‘Joe, look down there. Did you ever see so many lights at Pearl Harbor?’
“Joe looked down drowsily and said, ‘Boy what a target that would make,’ and went back to sleep.
“We were staying in the barracks, the Bachelor Officers Quarters, a few hundred yards from the flight line.
“Shortly after 0700 Sunday morning, I was standing in my pajamas at the latrine looking out at this very peaceful scene of the hangar, where the aircraft were lined up wingtip to wingtip.” This allowed a few soldiers to guard the planes against sabotage.
“I was watching, and suddenly this airplane dove out of the sky over the hangar line, dropped an object which exploded into a huge orange blossom and then pulled up sharply. As he passed me, I saw these two ‘meatballs’ on this plane — the Japanese insignia of the rising sun.
“I knew immediately that these were Japanese aircraft, and I yelled down the corridor that we were being attacked,” Rasmussen said.
“I went into my room and put some shoes on, and I strapped a .45-caliber pistol belt around my pajamas and ran down to the flight line to see if I could do anything about salvaging the aircraft, when one exploded.”
Rasmussen feared it would ignite the one next to it like a chain of Chinese firecrackers.
“Three other pilots and I managed to salvage four obsolete P-36 Hawk aircraft, and some armorers came with some .50-caliber and .30-caliber ammunition belts.” During a lull in the attack, they loaded the aircraft with ammunition.
“We took off in formation, the four of us: Lou Sanders, my squadron commander; Gordon Sterling, his wingman; John Thacker in the second element; and I was his wingman.
“The .30-caliber was on my right side, so I pulled it back, charged it, and I pulled the trigger to make sure I could fire the gun. Nothing happened. I pulled it back and put another bullet in the chamber, pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. I had a dead gun.
“I pulled the .50-caliber back the same way, and it started to fire by itself. In other words, I had a runaway gun. I didn’t have to pull the trigger; it would just start firing. I had to stop this waste of ammunition, so I had to keep it cocked, and I was really loaded for bear.
“When we got to about 7,000 feet, we got instructions to go to Kaneohe Bay, which was now under attack. At about 9,000 feet we met a bunch of Zeros” and got into a dogfight.
“One Zero came perpendicular to me, and I let that .50-caliber slide back in again and it started firing by itself. I saw a couple of puffs in his fuselage and saw him smoking.
“Then another Zero came head-on and almost rammed me. I pulled up violently to the right to avoid him, and another Zero got me in his sights and he blew out my canopy, shot up my tail wheel, cut my hydraulic lines and severed my rudder cables.
“I was pretty much out of control, and I tumbled down, trying to regain control of the airplane, until finally at about 6,000 feet I got control of it.
“I was pretty vulnerable to attack because I could barely fly the airplane, but I was lucky to be popping in and out of clouds at that time.
“As I headed back toward Wheeler Field, Lt. Sanders pulled up beside me. He saw that my canopy was shattered; he saw all the holes in my airplane and knew I was having trouble flying. He gave me a signal, asking me if I was OK. I gave him the gesture that I was OK, and we headed back toward Wheeler Field to land.
“As we got over Schofield Barracks, which was right next door to Wheeler, the soldiers there started firing at us.” Fortunately, they missed.
“I tried to lower my landing gear, but the hydraulic line had been shot up. On final approach I was pumping madly with an emergency hydraulic pump. As I flared out to touch down, my gear locked into place and I landed.
“It was very skiddy,” Rasmussen recalls. “I had no directional control. I cut my engine, and I spun around a couple of times and finally came to a stop on the grass runway.
“I was sitting in the airplane trying to collect my thoughts. Everything had been automatic before then. I looked around. The hangars were still on fire, and bullets that had been stored there ignited from the flames and were shooting out over our heads.
“As I looked down toward Pearl Harbor, I saw this giant cloud of smoke covering the whole horizon, and amidst this huge black smoke were these huge orange blossoms exploding.
“I sat there another couple of minutes. My pajamas were soaking wet, and I’m not sure it was just sweat. I got out of the airplane and walked up to my barracks, changed into a dry flight suit and came back to the line to see what I could do.
“Everybody was pitching in trying to salvage the few airplanes that were intact by pulling them away from the flames. We managed to get some together, and we immediately started to arm those aircraft to fly them again.
“We maintained a 24-hour alert for about a day and half until finally the realization came to us that the attack would not be accompanied by an invasion. We were at war.”
Rasmussen shot down a second Japanese aircraft in 1943. He was awarded the Silver Star for his bravery on Dec. 7. He retired from the Air Force in 1965 and died in 2005, at age 86.
Mahalo to Kathleen Ramsden Frazier, Tropic Lightning Museum curator, and Adam Elia for their assistance with this article.
This is my 400th Rearview Mirror column. Mahalo to my faithful readers.
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Bob Sigall is the author of the five “The Companies We Keep” books, full of amazing stories of Hawaii people, places and companies. Contact him at Sigall@ Yahoo.com.
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