We do a symposium every year for the MPRA community, one in Jacksonville, FL for the east coast, and the west coast version at Whidbey Island, WA.
One of our WWII vets who attended told the story of having to go ‘somewhere’ in the south Pacific to pick up a new PBY to replace one that had been shot down for the Black Cats (VP-71) when they were flying out of Manus. It wasn’t until years later that he learned the location was the Ulithi Atoll.
If Admiral Chester Nimitz hadn’t spotted it on a map, Ulithi might have gone completely unnoticed by US forces as it island-hopped across the Pacific. Such an oversight would have cost the Americans the largest and best anchorage in the world and the perfect location for staging its final assault on the Japanese Empire.
Full article, HERE from the Vets Breakfast Club.
Here is a video of the anchorage taken from the air during the war.
The story he told was ‘interesting’ to put it mildly. This is my recollection of the way he told it-
The four men (2 pilots, he was an E-6 flight engineer, and an E-4 plane captain), were flown to Ulithi arriving late in the day. They found out it was an R&R site, and apparently had ‘less that $10’ between all of them. The next morning they were scheduled to fly out with the new airplane (PBY-5). But first they loaded 200 cases of beer aboard (he claimed he had ‘no idea’ where the beer came from, but the pilots were pissed they had to climb over the beer to get to the flight station). They took off, headed south for their base at Manus Island, and halfway across the Bismarck Sea they lost an engine. They chose not to dump the beer, did a water landing and got radio contact with a destroyer that came and towed them across the Bismarck Sea in the middle of the day, until a crash boat could come get them. He said they gave the destroyer crew a ‘few’ cases of beer for the tow. The crash boat towed them in and they were met by the CO, who was pissed they hadn’t continued on one engine… Until they started passing cases of beer out of the bird, and ‘all was forgiven’. He said that got them 24 hours off, then back on the flight schedule.
I do remember his wife fo 64 years was there and commented, “He still drinks too damned much beer.” Which cracked all of us up.
Aircrews never change. There used to be a “rumor” floating about the VP community that during annual cross country pilot training flights, crews would fly to Lajes Azores and fill the plane with cases of vin rose’. Or fly to Brunswick Maine and buy lots of lobster. And if they were really ambitious, do both over a long weekend. Of course, I would NEVER participate in such shenanigans.
By the way, what was the brand name of the rose’. My old memory is failing me.
Was it Mateus?
The lobster runs are the real deal. Used to fly Army Helos back in the day when you could take one up with another pilot and a crew chief to see if states were actually where they were on the map. Ft Drum to Texas but that’s another story.
Took a UH-1H to Portland Maine and refueled after lunch at an old passenger ferry turned into a restaurant, DiMillo’s on the Waterfront. It was a shock to the pearls and ascot crowd when 3 flight suits walked in. We then went to the seafood pier to a wholesaler for a quantity of lobsters. If I remember correctly, we were at max gross weight and totally cubed out. Got them cheap because the owner used to fly Birdogs during the big war in Europe. If we ever crashed, the lobsters would have attacked a town like a B movie. 2 more refuels and we were home. Those days are long gone when there was money for training. CHEERS!
Flight crews probably had the most fun, back in the day, but even seagoing commands had some good times, too. Our destroyer pulled into more than one port to spend the next 24 hours unloading taxi load after pickup loads of various consumables. The skipper was usually aware of it, of course.
Usually.
I’ve spent time on Johnston, Wake, Guam, the Philippines, Okinawa, American Samoa, not to mention Oahu for 4 years, but I’d never heard of Ulithi Atoll until I began World War II research after my retirement in 1993. Hard to believe the beehive such a place became.
You might be interested in the third episode of Deep Sea Detectives, and in a humorous/somewhat cultural vein, see ($0.99 Kindle) Coast Guard Follies by Ken Smith, Chapter 8, to include a beer story in later years. Also see https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-ii/hidden-ulithi-naval-base.html?chrome=1
Mid 60’s, whenever we bridged the Rhine at Oppenheim, a five day exercise, we had our beer trailer. The beer came from a local wholesaler. On Sunday we would bridge the entire river and many locals would come. Naturally, we sold them beer. If memory serves, we paid a quarter for a liter flippertop and charged the civilians a Mark.
Our 1st Sgt would lay out a tarp and have a M2, a M14 and, while we were still issued them, a 3.5 rocket launcher. It was humbling to watch some 40 year old man with his young sons in tow field strip a weapon while explaining the process to his sons.
We lowly grunts didn’t have opportunities for much but we always had a lot of booze with us.
Ray/Nodak- Lancers or Mateus… LOL Not that ‘I’ ever did that… or the lobster runs, or the rum runs to Puerto Rico… Nah… 🙂
Jim- LOL I can just imagine the looks on their faces to have dirty aviators spoiling their views!
Rev- And carriers loading cars on the hangar deck in Germany or Japan!
Bob- Thanks! Yes, Ulithi was a ‘hidden’ gem for many years.
WSF- That’s great! And those things were still happening in the late 80s according to some folks that might have been there… LOL
“He still drinks too damned much beer.”
Yes.
And your point?
Juvat- That’s what he said…LOL
I know of Ulithi only because I’ve read a couple books on the Battle of Leyte Gulf. The invasion of the Philippines was staged, at least in part, out of Ulithi.
On a VX-1 lobster run the P3 ran into some pretty hefty turbulence and a styrofoam cooler wound up going into the bilges next to the galley. Not all the lobsters were found right away and the Key West heat took care of the rest. That plane stunk for months afterward.
Ulithi was known to War Plan Orange planners for quite some time prior to December 07, 1941. I would assume (hope?) Nimitz and his staff were aware of it as well and didn’t just stumble upon it while looking a map.