With less than 24 hours of advanced fight training and no aircraft carrier experience, Utah-born Emmett Davis launched his Curtiss P-36 combat aircraft from the deck of the USS Enterprise and landed in Wheeler Field on the island of Oahu, 12 miles north of Pearl Harbor.
"The flagman gets you to rev up your engine, and as the bow of the ship goes down, he says, 'Go!' and you go full throttle. It looks like you're diving into the ocean, but by the time you get to the end of the ship, the bow backs up and you're launched, " Davis told KUED-Channel 7's for its "Utah World War II Stories."
That was in February 1941, one of the first times an Army Air Corps pilot ever took off from the deck of a fleet ship at sea and "one the scariest two or three seconds I've ever had in my life," he said.
Ten months later, on Dec. 7, Davis woke up to World War II.
"Just before 8 Sunday morning, I looked out the window and saw a Japanese bomber diving down on the flight line," he said.
A quarter-mile away at Wheeler Field, billowing black smoke rose skyward. Adjacent hangars were engulfed in flames and some 150 planes were in peril.
Davis — who earned the moniker "Cyclone" — pulled on his flight overalls, met a fellow officer, jumped into his convertible and sped to the air field.
Shot at twice by Japanese fighter pilots, the officers made it to the hangars unscathed. Davis pulled three airplanes to safety, and was taxiing a fourth for takeoff when someone shouted there were no guns on board.
Breaking into the locked armament depot, Davis and another officer grabbed six machine guns. Two .50 caliber guns went into the fuselage "synchronized to shoot through the propeller," and two .30 caliber guns were fitted into each wing.
As they were loading the guns with ammunition, a "Val" fighter plane flew over them. "We saw a rear gunner sitting in the back of his dive-bomber grinning not more than 50 feet above us," he said. Strafed by bullets, the two men were unharmed — saved, Davis said, by the "miracles of war."
Within hours, more than 350 Japanese fighter, bomb and torpedo planes killed more than 2,500 American soldiers and sailors, wounding 1,100 more, and destroyed 12 American naval vessels, eight of the Pacific Fleet's battleships, and more than 200 aircraft.
Flying out of Wheeler, Davis was ordered to escort two B-18 bombers toward Pearl Harbor. Reaching the perimeter, he quickly retreated. "Every gun in the US Navy opened fire on anything that flew," he said.
Instead, Davis led three more missions that fateful day, scouring the ocean north of the island in search of the Japanese fleet. During the war, Davis, who retired a decorated colonel, survived malaria, crash landings and battle. He flew 267 combat missions and led 264 of them, including a 63 P-38 "low-level, high speed" napalm-bombing mission on Kumamoto. On his last mission, he participated in a small but memorable part of the Japanese surrender.
On Aug. 19, 1945, Japanese envoy Lt. Gen. Torashiro Kawabe and his 16-man delegation departed from Tokyo Bay. They flew to Ie Shima en route to meeting Gen. Douglas MacArthur in Manila to implement the protocols for formal surrender.
Ordered to intercept and protect the group from potential gunfire — the Japanese surrender planes, unarmed Betty Bombers, were painted white with green crosses — Davis accompanied them with three squadrons of P-38s and two B-25 reconnaissance planes.
"We demonstrated the landing direction at the airfield in Ie Shima, [and] put them on a C-54 transport," said Davis. "Escorted by our 8th Fighter Group, they went on to Manila."
On Sept. 2, 1945, peace was officially declared.
Eileen Hallet Stone is the author of "Hidden History of Utah," a compilation of her Living History column in the Salt Lake Tribune. She may be reached at ehswriter@aol.com. Special thanks go to 96-year old "Cyclone" for his telephone interview and J. Tucker Davis for his valuable input.
| Courtesy Tucker Davis Emmett 'Cyclone' Davis in Korea. He helped introduce the first F-84 and F-86 jets into the Korean conflict. This is him in an F-86 toward the end of December, 1950.
| Courtesy Tucker Davis Emmett 'Cyclone' Davis in front of his P-40 (this is the plane in which he shot down all of his enemy planes. This photo was taken at Three-Mile, in New Guinea, in the fall of 1943.
| Courtesy Tucker Davis Emmett 'Cyclone' Davis' P-38 at Ie Shima, late summer, 1945.
| Courtesy Tucker Davis Emmett 'Cyclone' Davis as commander of the 8th Fighter Group, probably taken at Nadzab, New Guinea, in the spring of 1944.
| Courtesy Tucker Davis Emmett Davis as a newly minted 2nd Lieutenant in December, 1940.
| Courtesy Tucker Davis Emmett Davis in Australia, circa 1942-43.
| Courtesy Tucker Davis In this Aug. 19, 1945 photo, Japanese Betty Bombers carry Japanese envoy to Ie Shima, en route to Manila, to arrange for Japan's surrender.
| Courtesy Tucker Davis Japanese Betty Bombers carrrying Japanese envoy land at Ie Shima, on the way to Manila, to arrange for Japan's formal surrender.
| Courtesy Tucker Davis Emmett Davis visits the Hill Aerospace Museum at Hill Air Force Base, and checks out one of his beloved P-38s.
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