Sooo… I’m in Jacksonville for the MPA Symposium, and the speakers yesterday morning after VADM Shoemaker were two veterans of VP-21 and VP-44, from WWII.

AMMF1C (That stands for Aviation Machinist Mate Flight Engineer 1st Class) Clarence ‘Bud’ Lane enlisted at age 16 in March 1941. After boot in San Diego he never got his 30 boot leave, was sent school and then to Hawaii and VP-21 at Ford Island. He arrived in October 1941, and flew various flights in VP-21, leading to a ‘good deal’ flight back to the states in late Dec 1941, to get his 30 day leave…

However, Dec 7th intervened! He told us he had liberty, and was walking down battleship row in his whites, toward the hangar to catch the liberty launch to main base, when he heard explosions. He said he vividly remembers watching a Japanese Kate come down battleship row and drop its huge torpedo into the water. He guesses it is probably the one that hit the USS Shaw, since it exploded within a minute.

He said he ‘hauled ass’ as fast as he could run to the hangar, only to see it explode. He paused for a minute, then went on, the only person killed in the initial attack was his shipmate, Theodore Croft, who was standing watch in the VP-21 side of the hangar when it was hit by a stray bomb.

He talked about the next few days of trying to clean up the place, and then being sent to VP-44, which flew into Ford Island in March of 1942. He was on Midway and later served on the USS NASSAU, then became a flight engineer and got out in 1947. He was pissed that he NEVER got his 30 day boot leave.

The other speaker was LTJG Richard Watson, who was also in VP-44. At the time, Dick Watson was a Aviation Machinist Mate 3C and port waist gunner. He told of flying patrols out of Midway looking for the Japanese they ‘knew’ were out there somewhere. One of the patrols they were jumped by a Betty, which tried to shoot them down, then tried to ‘sink’ them by dropping 500lb bombs from above them. Thankfully they missed!

He showed copies of the flight schedule he’d somehow hung on to from June 2, 1942, shown below.

He pointed out that this was identical to the flight plan the next day, June 3, 1942 when ENS Read found the Japanese.

He also told us the ‘rest of the story’, concerning that flight… If you’ve studied the history of Midway and the battle, you ‘know’ that Reid’s crew discovered the main fleet over 100 miles further out than they were supposed to patrol…

ENS Read and 44-P-4 landed back at Midway with little fuel to spare after 14 plus hours. When asked why they were able to stay aloft for an additional 3 hours, Bob Swan (the navigator) replied, ”Raymond Derouin (the plane captain) has three dependents-a wife and two daughters. He always puts in an extra 50 gallons for each one.”

So, the Japanese Fleet was found because a flight engineer put extra gas on the airplane to get his ass back home… (Nowhere have I ever read this, but Dick was there, so I’d tend to believe it was true, especially since I had engineers that were known to add a few thousand pounds extra for mom and apple pie…

Dick went on to fly from Espiritu Santo, including night bombing with the PT boats, and later became a pilot, continuing to fly both in WWII and Korea.

The VP-24 and VP-44 tracks were 600 miles out, 100 miles south on an arc, then 600 miles back to Midway or emergency fueling at Laysan or Lisianski atolls. The Japanese fleet was a little over 700 miles away from Midway, and ENS Reid was just about to reverse course when he and the co-pilot both saw wakes in the water. The rest is history!

One link to pictures- HERE, another link HERE, and a VP-44 link HERE…