Quicksand Fans

Here's something for you history and aviation buffs out there.

When watching the film Tora, Tora, Tora - a fav of mine - there is a scene in which someone takes a plane up for a flying lesson and finds themselves right in the middle of the first attack wave of Japanese planes.... now for years I wondered if this is based on a true incident, or just Hollywood invention.

I did ask a fellow who is in connection with history buffs who make studying Pearl Harbor their thing, and he claims apparently this is an amalgam of two incidents... one in which a civilian plane ended up flying into the attack wave but was left alone because of its lack of a radio, and another in which a flying lesson did get tangled up with the Japanese, but had in fact been shot down. But I'm just taking his word on it. I honestly don't know.

Anyone know of this or heard anything to shed light on this? I also heard the film producers got the color of the Japanese planes wrong... they were more mustard colored, and not the greyish white as seen in the film.

Any insight, comments etc. would be most welcome.

I had heard stories of the training aircraft that ran into the first wave, but haven't seen any definitive references on them. As for the aircraft colors, the Type-0 fighters and most of the Val dive bombers were indeed painted the light grey color as depicted in most of the movies and art portraying the attack, while most of the Kate torpedo bombers were painted with green or light grey with mottled green camouflage on their upper surfaces. However, there a couple of variant paint jobs that made an appearance on the Vals. One flown by Lt. Cmdr. Kakuichi Takahashi in the first wave had a fuselage painted "bitter orange," and another flown by Lt. Cmdr Takashige Egusa in the second wave was painted the standard IJN light grey with red tiger stripes.

There was a private student and instructor in the air that morning. The instructor, Cornelia Fort, is well known in local (Nashville) aviation circles. There is a small general aviation airport nearby that is named for her. She died heroically at the age of 24 as a WAFS pilot later in the war. Here in her own words is a bit of her story -

At the twilight's last gleaming
CORNELIA FORT

Here is one of the most remarkable articles ever published- a personal story by the first woman pilot to die on war duty in American history. Shortly after she sent it to us, Miss Fort, twenty-four, of Nashville, Tennessee, was killed when the bomber she was piloting crashed in Texas. But her words here will live - as a moving account of why one woman joined the WAFS and as a testament to all American women who are helping keep America free. (a note from the editor).


I KNEW I was going to join the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron before the organization was a reality, before it had a name, before it was anything but a radical idea in the minds of a few men who believed that women could fly airplanes. But I never knew it so surely as I did in Honolulu on December 7, 1941.
At dawn that morning I drove from Waikiki to the John Rodgers civilian airport right next to Pearl Harbor, where I was a civilian pilot instructor. Shortly after six-thirty I began landing and take-off practice with my regular student. Coming in just before the last landing, I looked casually around and saw a military plane coming directly toward me. I jerked the controls away from my student and jammed the throttle wide open to pull above the oncoming plane. He passed so close under us that our celluloid windows rattled violently and I looked down to see what kind of plane it was.

The painted red balls on the tops of the wings shone brightly in the sun. I looked again with complete and utter disbelief. Honolulu was familiar with the emblem of the Rising Sun on passenger ships but not on airplanes.

I looked quickly at Pearl Harbor and my spine tingled when I saw billowing black smoke. Still I thought hollowly it might be some kind of coincidence or maneuvers, it might be, it must be. For surely, dear God...

Then I looked way up and saw the formations of silver bombers riding in. Something detached itself from an airplane and came glistening down. My eyes followed it down, down, and even with knowledge pounding in my mind, my heart turned convulsively when the bomb exploded in the middle of the harbor. I knew the air was not the place for my little baby airplane and I set about landing as quickly as ever I could. A few seconds later a shadow passed over me and simultaneously bullets spattered all around me.

Suddenly that little wedge of sky above Hickam Field and Pearl Harbor was the busiest fullest piece of sky I ever saw.

We counted anxiously as our little civilian planes came flying home to roost. Two never came back. They were washed ashore weeks later on the windward side of the island, bullet riddled. Not a pretty way for the brave yellow Cubs and their pilots to go down to death.

The rest of December seventh has been described by too many in too much detail for me to reiterate. I remained on the island until three months later when I returned by convoy to the United States. None of the pilots wanted to leave but there was no civilian flying in the islands after the attack. And each of us had some individual score to settle with the Japs who had brought murder and destruction to our islands.

When I returned, the only way I could fly at all was to instruct Civilian Pilot Training programs. Weeks passed. Then, out of the blue, came a telegram from the War Department announcing the organization of the WAFS (Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron) and the order to report within twenty-four hours if interested. I left at once.

Thanks for that! I never encountered that written story before... really helps put everything into perspective.

Just goes to show how dynamic history remains.,.. and how one can still learn something new... like I did.