Clayton Allan

              Eric Walz History 300 Collection
Clayton Allan – Life during WWII
By Clayton Allan
October 19, 2002
Box 1 Folder 1
Oral Interview conducted by Aaron Clegg
Transcript copied by Alina Mower March 2005
Brigham Young University – Idaho
AC: What role did you play in World War II?
CA: I was a Marine Pilot, I flew course airs. There’s some pictures of the group that
started flying the course airs in Jacksonville Florida. We flew as a combat team, there
was fives second Aleutians and I Major. This guy is a major he was an Indianapolis
graduate he went through Indianapolis and he is a United States Marine Core Major
the rest of us are reserves. This was the Captain Schaffer, and he took us through our
training program at Jacksonville, Florida and then [ we] were all sent from there to the
west coast to El Torah, California where we went through operational training at
Jacksonville Florida as this group and then we were all transferred to El Torah
together and we flew together at El Torah and then 1 April 1945 we were broke up,
they decided they didn’t want us flying together; be too much of a strain on you if one
of you got lost, and while we were at El Torah we did lose one of the boys, Stanley de
Priest went up in a plane one day, he and I flew together as wingmen and we went out
one day and he didn’t come back, we found out later that the plane he had been flying
had been grounded by the pilot that flew before him, intact for three days it had been
grounded after it had been flown with gas fumes in the cockpit, we figured the gas
fumes got the better of him and we were making runs on a target and he flew into the
ground and at that time around the 1 April they split us all up and we went different
directions over seas. I went from there to San Diego and shipped out with about… I
imagine close to 2,000 other people, that were all being transferred over various
positions in the Navy and Marine Core and we left San Diego on the Bonhomie
resard which is a brand new aircraft carrier and it was one of the Essectic Class
carriers and they were the biggest carriers that we had during World War II and it
took us six days to get from San Diego to Pearl, and then I was in a squadron there, it
was a squadron that was used for replacement pilots for the squadrons over seas when
the men over seas where over for ten months why they were rotated back to the
United States. When a rotation would be made why they would pull pilots out of this
squadron at Pearl Harbor and take their place in the squadron that they were in. I got
to… when I got my orders to move out into the squadrons, we got on a transport
plane and there was eight of us that got on the plane and we flew down from Pearl to
Palmyra, from Palmyra over to Canton and from Canton up to Winnetka and from
Winnetka to Guam and Guam was a staging center at that time, United States had that
Island secured, it’s a big island and they were flying B- 29’ s off that Island and it was
a replacement area, they had new planes and everything there when we lost several
planes during the invasion of Okinawa and of course the invasion of Hiroshima which
was a head of the invasion of Okinawa, they used Guam as a staging area to hold and
have in reserved planes as they needed them. The eight of us got to Guam and we
each got a plane and flew from there to Hiroshima, because we couldn’t make it to
Okinawa on one load of gas in the plane, we refuel at Iwo Jima, we were there over
night and at that time they were still… they had Iwo secured, but they were still
getting Japs out of the caves. I arrived on Okinawa on the 6 of May and I was their
from then until the 21 of June, which was about the time the island was secured
during that time I flew cover most of the time, we flew cover for ships out in the
ocean they called radar picket ships. And these are flights that I ended up, whenever
you had a cap on it why that was combat air patrol over a, that’s what we did most of
[ the time], other times we went out, they weren’t caps they were just out of target of
opportunities, we flew… our jobs was to fly cover over these picket ships, that the
Kamikaze where coming down. There was nineteen of them, around Okinawa spaced
about hundred miles apart all around the island and their purpose was to warn a head
of time, give the island a warning when the Japs would send down planes and couple
of times they sent down groups that were trying to get back on the island in the parts
that we had already secured and we flew cover for them and we flew also close air
support for the Marines down on the front lines the ground Marines and ground Army
that was trying to take the island and our job was to fly, they were in caves we would
fly with the napalm tanks and the napalm tanks were actually fire bombs and we flew
a lot of those missions. But generally speaking we flew air patrol we go out and spend
three hours flying around these picket ships and each one had a call number and they
would assign you, before you left Okinawa… a ground air patrol unit would assign
you which one of the picket ships you were to go out to and they all had numbers and
we knew where they were from the numbers and then we would go out and fly cover
over them or fly protection over them in case, out the nineteen of them they lost,
thirteen got hit with kamikazes [ and] were sunk, curse they would be replaced when
they were sunk. It was our job to keep the kamikazes off of them that was our main
purpose up till we secured the island, then after we secured the island they had two B-
25 squadrons on the island, they were twin engine bomber and they made raids up
over Kyushu and at that time we flew cover and support over the bombers to protect
them from the Japs up over Kyushu and I was on Okinawa from the 6 of May until
late in November and that was my experience overseas. I went from Okinawa to
Midway that was quite interesting. This is… we traveled home, we flew from
Okinawa to Midway on a Jeep Carrier or small carrier and we were at Midway for
three or four weeks and then we were picked up by a plane and taken to Pearl and
then we went home on the battleship Colorado. This is the barracks at Midway,
Midway was really during the first of the war, really took a terrible beating, but by the
time that I got there it was near the end of the war and they had rebuilt all these
barracks and this was where we lived we’re in this barracks while we were there, it
wasn’t a very big island, in fact it was a real small one. While we were on Okinawa
when I first landed there why, the Japs had five inch naval guns in the caves, mounted
on railroad tracks and they used Okinawa for a training place for the Japs did. And
they pretty well had these guns set up so they could hit about any place on the island
they wanted to shoot and lots of times they would lay three or four shells… usually
two or three shells right down the runway. And our battleships out in the ocean
surrounding Okinawa, they could get two shots off and then the battle ships would
fire on them and close the caves up, they would roll the guns back. They knew how
much time they had before a battle ship would fire on them, they would make two
quick shots and then they would roll these guns back into the caves and the
battleships would know where they were firing from, they had a firing point. They
roll the guns back in and they shot a couple shells over the two air strips, then they
would pull the guns back and the battleship would close the caves up. You would
know a shell was coming in… you would hear it and then better get for cover. We
had a camp close to [ a] tomb, a Japanese tomb and of course they were empty, they
had to be because we went [ in] them, whenever they start lobbing shells on us, we
head into one of them for protection.
AC: Did you come home before they dropped the Bomb?
CA: No, after the 21 of June till late August we were flying cover on the bombers who
were going into Kyushu and dropping bombs on Kyushu and then 6 November,
somewhere on in there we dropped the first bomb on Hiroshima and then two or three
days later they dropped the second on Nagasaki and that ended the war and we had a
transport plane that we had access to in the squadron after the war was ended. We
flew up and we did land in a field in Kyushu and why we were there… Nagasaki was
on the island of Kyushu where they dropped the second bomb and we circled around
it and it was a big hole in the ground, it was kind of in a little valley and [ I] imagine it
was about five or six miles across and there was a bay there where they did a lot of
shipping out of and the hills all around it, just like a bowl where they dropped the
bomb and it was just, you can’t imagine the devastation. The only thing left standing
of Nagasaki was a few cement pillars that were sticking up, [ it] looked like a
building, big cement pillars down on the docks that was all that was left of it. The
sides of the mountains were burned rust color.
AC: How did you feel when President Roosevelt came on the radio announcing that Pearl
Harbor was attacked on December 7, 1941?
CA: I remember very well the day, Sunday morning that Pearl Harbor was hit. There was
five of us that was going to college we were freshmen in college we were living in
Logan in an apartment. Five guys my age and it was my turn to wash the dishes that
day and I was standing at the sink washing dishes when it came over the radio that
Pearl Harbor had been hit and that was in December. I had finished that year as a
freshman and lot of the boys were being drafted and lot of them were enlisting and in
July or August I enlisted on a prevision enlistment I had to have an operation before
they would accept me in the Navy V- 5 program, but I enlisted on 31 August of 1942
and then from then on in December of that year I started flying down in Fillmore,
Utah in what they call the Civilian Pilot Training, I was there three months,
December till March and then in March I went to the University of Utah and what
they call Secondary Civilian Pilot Training, we didn’t have uniforms or anything we
were just civilians, but they had a service flight instructor and that was secondary, I
got fourteen hours there, how they log what you do this was the fifth lesson in A and
there was four A, B, C, D, phases of secondary pilot training, they would grade you
on what you did, each day, for three months I was [ at] the University of Utah and
then I left there in September they sent us all home from Secondary and it took them
about a month or month and half… we were just waiting to be called to active duty in
the service. I got my call at Preflight school and Del Monty which is in Monterrey,
California and that was all physical and book work there was no flying or anything
there, that was three months of dog gone tough callosities and learn to do navigation
and learn weather, learn how to recognize all the planes of the enemy, both German
and Japanese we had to recognize with a blink of an eye what you were looking at.
Then at the end of that time, I was sent to Hutchinson, Kansas or Primary training and
that took about three months and then from there I went to, that put us in close to the
end of 1943, and then I was shipped from Hutchinson, Kansas. I had log book here,
which is primary training, we had uniforms and everything else and at that time I was
a navy Cadet and from Hutchinson, Kansas, I went [ to] Corpus Crystal, Texas, I was
there six months and we flew training planes there. I was there for six months till 31
May 1944, as we got through the basic training, we went through instrument training
and I went to advance training in Kingsville, Texas, as I got out of that I was
commissioned a second lieutenant. From there I went to Jacksonville, Florida and
when I got to Jacksonville, Florida that’s when I got with this group and flew together
all the time until I went overseas. That was a good experience, I got a real good
education out of it and I wouldn’t want to do it again, but I wouldn’t trade [ it] for
anything in the world.
AC: How did your religion help you, during the War… during your flights?
CA: Well they didn’t have religion by denomination we were all protestant even though I
was LDS that is what I had on all my records why our religion was protestant was just
we had a service pastor and we had every Sunday, going in the service, we had
church. There was times overseas when I felt like my religion was a great help to me,
there’s times when I was in difficult positions and I think the Lord had a lot to do
with me getting out of, as far as front lines fighting and that I was always flying off
an air field. I did on Okinawa I had a kid that grew up with [ me] and I knew he was in
a battalion there on Okinawa and I was able to look him up and he was down on the
front lines, I went down there one day to visit him and I was darn glad to head back.
Right close to the front lines and there was 105 gun battalion was back must have
been a mile or two back on the island from him, he was pretty much on the front line,
because his job was a heck of a job they had these big open tanks like machine they
called them amphibious tanks and his job was to go down and bring out the wounded
and the dead when they had a fight, that would have been a heck of a job, and on the
other hand when I go down there, they knew that I was flying course air support for
the front line down there, they didn’t want any part of my job, we were all where we
wanted to be.