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Scuttlebutt
Casey Kuklinski (102) emailed me this you tube address which is the film of the Japanese surrender aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945. <https://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=vcnH_kF1zXc&feature=player_embedded>
SQUADRON WEBSITES
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sdasmarchives/
VPB-106 & VPB-102/14
https://members.tripod.com/~vpb_102
VPB-102/14
Facebook
VB-106 Wolverators
Facebook Navy Squadrons 106/102/14 Assn
VP/VPB-102
Video, From Crew #9, July 44- May 45, HW ... Also, check out these websites for
information on our squadrons and members: www.VPNavy.org
www.NavyLog.org
* The memorabilia from squadrons 102/14 and 106 are archived in San Diego at the San Diego Air & Space Museum. Pictures from the collection are posted on the flickr website above. A Personal Story... Harold ‘Hal’ L. Mayo VP-14/VB-102
This is Hal’s story taken from various newspaper articles with his
interviews and integrated into the following.
In high school, my real interest was aviation.
From the time I was a little kid, I built model airplanes and read
everything I could about flying.
In 1940, after listening to a recruiter’s promise that he’d
“see the world”, he signed up for a six-year hitch in the Navy.
After boot camp and Aviation Machinist’s Mate school, he joined the
crew of the USS New Orleans, a cruiser stationed at Pearl Harbor.
He was transferred to the Kaneohe Bay PBY squadron just six days
before the Japanese attack.
On December 7, 1941, Hal Mayo was 19 years old and a Navy crew chief
in VP-14 assigned to a PBY Catalina flying boat (PBY-5) used for
anti-submarine patrol. He was stationed at Kaneohe Bay on southeast Oahu,
where a first wave of Japanese Zeros tried to wipe out all the planes at the
American airfield.
We were on the other side of the island and they hit Kaneohe and
Wheeler Field first. I was on
duty that morning. We were in
the hangar getting ready to take over the watch at oh eight hundred.
We heard machine guns and our first thought was the Air Corps was
playing games on a Sunday morning, which didn’t make sense.
So we ran out of the hanger just in time for the first Strafing
attack. They were about 30 feet
off the deck, firing their guns all the way in.
They were low enough I could see the grin on the pilot’s face.
He had the canopy pulled back and he was obviously enjoying himself.
That’s one thing I’ll never forget.
That face.
The enemy pilots were shooting at U.S. planes inside the hangar
behind Hal and his crew, but Hal was sure they were shooting at him.
He focused on the one with the grin.
I pulled my .45 and he was low enough I was shooting right at him,
but I didn’t lead him. I
emptied the clip, nine rounds wasted. I
wanted to throw the gun at him. Bullets
were ricocheting off the tarmac about six feet from me.
He and his crew needed a machine gun.
One man went to a plane on fire and grabbed the .50-caliber waist
gun, and Hal broke into a carpenter’s shack to make a mount.
He used a bit-and-brace hand drill to bore a hole in a chunk of
lumber for the machine gun, then went back to the hangar for ammunition.
I put together as many ammo belts as I could.
There looked like 12 Zeros in that squadron.
Bombers came in 15 minutes later, concentrating on the hangars and
the airfield. We had three
squadrons so there were 36 planes assigned to us.
Three of them were on patrol. One
was in the hangar. The rest of
them were lined up wingtip to wingtip. Perfect
targets.
While Hal was in the hangar making ammo belts the hangar next to him
blew up. One Japanese pilot was
focused on the plane in the hangar and the rest concentrating on shooting up
the rest of the planes, setting them on fire.
We pulled that one plane out of the hangar just in time for the
bombers to hit it. That was my
plane and honestly I felt worse about losing my brand new flight leathers
than losing the plane. To me the
flight gear was sacred.
The second wave was there to bomb more than strafe.
They were too high for us to do much damage with our guns.
We didn’t know where they came from or how soon they’d be back.
It wasn’t until late in the day that we learned what the Japanese
had done at Pearl Harbor after they left us.
Somebody came and said they wiped it out.
Finally, on Wednesday,
after three days without action, we returned to the barracks for showers and
a meal. We spent a couple of
months cleaning up the debris.
It took weeks before the base was functional.
Shock, he said, is a “mild
way” to put what he felt during and after the attack.
It was just totally unbelievable.
We thought, “What’s going on, and why?”
Looking back
on that day, Hal doesn’t remember being afraid.
“When things start happening,
you don’t really have time to be scared.”
18 sailors and 2 civilians were killed at Kaneohe Bay.
33 of the 36 planes were destroyed or damaged.
Following the Pearl Harbor attack, as part of a bombing squadron, Hal
and his crew hunted Japanese ships and made bombing runs in the Solomon
Islands. Occasionally they were
on the other end of bombing raids.
We were housed in Dallas huts on Guadalcanal and outside each one was
a foxhole where we’d go if we were under attack.
I was never afraid unless I heard a bomb that was calling my name.
Those sounded different – they kind of scream or screech as they
come at you. Once when I was on
top of a water truck, I heard a bomb calling my name.
I scrambled under the truck, and when the bomb hit about 50 yards
away, I didn’t get a scratch.
Those were probably the best years of my life.
I learned so much in the Navy. I
think everybody should spend some time in the service.
Then they’d be ready to go out in the world.
After the Navy, Hal took a job with the Board of Fire Underwriters in
San Francisco. Transferred to
Fresno, California in 1948, he invited older brother Don, sister-in-law,
Evelynn, and their three children to live in his house.
Don asked Hal to make sure his family was provided for should
anything happen to him. Something
did. In 1952 Don died of a heart
attack, and Hal supported Evelynn and the kids as promised.
They married six years later and Hal adopted the kids.
In 1998 he retired after 51 years in the fire insurance field.
With Evelynn in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, the couple moved
to Groveland, California to be near Hal’s daughter.
Shortly After Evelynn’s death in 2002, Hal met Sonja and the two
were married in 2011.
Hal says he graduated with 30 to 40 young men in the class of 1939 at
Herkimer High School before he joined the Navy. Most of his classmates chose
to enlist with the National Guard and ended up in Europe. Three
or four of us survived the war. We
never had class reunions.
28th Reunion Review Sunday, September 9 – Thursday,
September 13, 2018 Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania
Well, we got some rain again this year but nothing that an umbrella or a
hoody couldn’t take care of……except for the water leak in the Embassy
Suites’ banquet room which caused us to move our dinner to another hotel.
In the whole scheme of things, it was nothing compared to the deluge
that some of the country experienced later from the hurricanes.
Our
Squadron Members We Honored
Keith Birks
Bob Kirk
Casey Kuklinski
Marvin Theroux Squadron Members, Families, and Friends in Attendance
In appreciation…… The following generous donors gave cash
donations to supplement the Reunion funds.
Frank Lencioni, Russel Hoff, Ron Birks & Kathi Douglas, Mark &
Mike Kelly, Andie & Billy Howeth, and Rick & Dottie Sausen.
We thank you!!! …..2019 Reunion to be in San
Diego……2019 Reunion to be in San Diego……2019 Reunion to be in San
Diego……
GROUP TOURS
We toured the Battleship New Jersey
followed by lunch in the Ward Room with singing entertainment by the Roman
Sisters. Marvin Theroux and
Carol Zito added to the entertainment by swing dancing to the 40’s music.
Our last tour took us up the road to
Valley Forge where we learned about George Washington commandeering the
Revolutionary War from the encampment for about a year.
The British occupied Philadelphia at this time.
THE BANQUET
u
The first enemy plane shot from the sky by Americans in World War II is
believed to have fallen at Kaneohe Bay.
John Finn (VB-102), who set up a machine gun 50 0r 60 yards from Hal
Mayo (see Personal Story), was wounded several times and became the first
Medal of Honor recipient of World War II. v
The Greatest Generations Foundation is dedicated to honoring veterans of all
conflicts by preserving the freedom for which they fought and the patriotism
that they epitomized by perpetuating to other generations their stories of
duty, honor, and sacrifice and their love of country through the avenue of
youth education so that their greatness and our promise to ‘Never
Forget’ engenders a more interconnected and harmonic world.
The foundation helps veterans return to their former battlefields, cemeteries,
and memorials for closure and to ensure that their legacies are
recorded.
YOUR VOLUNTEERS
The
volunteers intend to represent the squadron members in the best way
possible.
Memoriam With sincere regrets we wish to report that since our last
newsletter we have received information that the following shipmates have
passed away. The great bond these
men had that tied them together with their squadron members can never be
broken. They served their country,
their squadron and their families in the highest tradition of the Navy.
May they rest in peace. VB/VPB/VP 106 VPB 102/14 Gordon
'Jonesey' E. Jones 8/24/18
There
may be more of our members who have passed on *******AS ALWAYS YOUR NEWS, COMMENTS, UPDATES, ETC. ARE WELCOME*******
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