Above the Thunder by Raymond C. Kerns

Army Transport
Hunter Liggett.
    Except for a ten-minute ride in a Kinner-powered Waco biplane with a barnstormer in 1939, I had never flown. But I was conscientious, believed in keeping my nose clean and doing what I reasonably could to make the folks back home proud, so I did well as a soldier. By October 1941, I was financially able to get some flight training at John Rodgers Airport, located where Honolulu International is today. I got thirty minutes in a Fleet biplane, but at $16 dual (tandem controls) it was too much for my $66 a month salary (a buck private drew $30 a month in those days, but I was a private first class with a specialist third-class rating on top of it), so from there on it was $8 dual in an Interstate “Cadet.”
    Wednesday afternoon was recreational time for us lucky redleg GIs at Schofield. I had usually spent it at Soldiers Beach at Haleiwa, but for Wednesday, 3 December 1941, I scheduled an hour with my instructor in the fifty-five horsepower Interstate. That would make the required eight hours of pre-solo dual, and my hopes were high. We went up over Keehi Lagoon, between the airport and Honolulu, and McVey had me do spins to the left and spins to the right, one turn, two turns, one-and-a-half turns—all that good pre-solo stuff they used to do and should still do.
    After about half an hour of that, he told me to give him a spin to the right and hold it until he told me to pull out. “And when you come out,” he said, “I want the nose right on Diamond Head.”

    PFC Raymond Kerns in the carefree prewar summer of 1941, aboard the yacht
Ebb Tide
about forty miles south of Oahu. A group of soldiers had rented the craft for deep-water trolling. It was owned and operated by a Captain Salazar, with his daughter as crew.
    The Cadet was a very light airplane, and it would spin a lot of times in the 4,500 feet we had beneath us. We must have spun more than a dozen turns before he gave me the word. I reversed the rudder, let off the stick, and got out of the spin, then started pulling up and putting on power. Diamond Head? I had no idea where it was.
    â€œWhat in the hell are you doing?” asked McVey.
    â€œGetting the nose up to the horizon, sir. Returning to level flight.”
    â€œHorizon, hell! You’re about to stall out on top of a loop.”
    After he got the plane back to a suitable attitude he gave it to me and told me to climb back to 4,500. Halfway there, he asked how I felt. I told him I felt just a little woozy, and he said, well, there was no need for us to do more spins if I was feeling bad, so we might as well call it a day. He asked when I was scheduled next.
    â€œSunday at 9:30, sir.”
    â€œOK, Sunday we’ll do a few more stalls and spins, and if you don’t get sick I’ll let you solo.”
    Sweeter words I had never heard. “Thank you, sir!”

    The old Hawaiian Division had just been broken up to make the new 24th and 25th Infantry Divisions, and my battery had become Headquarters Battery of the 89th Field Artillery Battalion, 25th Division Artillery. On Thursday, we went into the field to reconnoiter new positions in the Kailua-Kaneohe sector on the eastern side of the island, our old position at Pearl City to be ours no more. We returned to Schofield at noon on Saturday, which, in the staggered payday system then in effect, happened to be our day for the eagle.
    After being paid and getting dressed in our slacks and sports shirts, Bill Gibson and I walked over to Wahiwa and saw a Japanese-language movie in which a father, from a distance, shot his daughter with a rifle to prevent her leaping from a high cliff. Then we attended a carnival on the post, where we saw an interesting demonstration of hypnotism—you know, all the hell-raising things that tough, rowdy soldiers do on payday night. And just about the time the bugler of the guard was playing “Taps,” we arrived outside our barracks and said