Emmett Reagan Interview

              Emmett Reagan Interview Transcript Page 1
John A. Adams ’71 Center for Military History and Strategic Analysis. Military Oral History Project. Interview with Emmett Reagan by Cadet John Curtis. February 27, 2009.
©Adams Center, Virginia Military Institute
About the interviewer: Cadet Curtis (Class of 2010) is majoring in History.
Curtis – The following interview is being conducted for the John A. Adams ’71 Center for Military History and Strategic Analysis as part of the requirements for History 393—World War Class class. The interviewer is Jack Curtis. The interviewee is Emmett Reagan. Today’s date is 2/29/09. We are meeting at Mr. Reagan’s home.
Curtis – I would like a little background information like basic training and did you volunteer for the Navy? Just a few aspects before the war.
Reagan – Right after I got out of high school I went to work at the Naval Air Station in Norfolk and got familiar with aircraft and liked it. I had no idea, at that point, that there would be a war, or for that matter that I’d ever fly. When the war started I turned 18 and I enlisted on July 8, 1942. They could not accept me right then so I had to wait a while. I went on active duty on the 26th of November 1942.
Curtis – You said you liked naval aviation and that’s one of the reasons you wanted to be a pilot?
Reagan – Yes.
Curtis – On what type of platforms were you able to train when you were in flight school?
Reagan – The basic training, which we called N3N or N2S which was a Stearman bi-plane. That was in Peru, Indiana. First, we went to pre-flight school at the University of Georgia for three months. I went there November 26, 1942, and then in February we went to the naval air station in Peru, Indiana for primary training. That was a bi-plane, the Stearman. We did that for a couple of months and then went to Pensacola for basic training—single-engine, North American SNJ. Then we did instrument training for a couple of weeks, and then on to our final squadron. I selected multi-engines seaplanes; you did that just before you graduated. I graduated from Pensacola on 1 September 1943.Emmett Reagan Interview Transcript Page 2
Curtis - How difficult was flight school and was the drop-out rate pretty high among people?
Reagan – About 20%.
Curtis – You said that lasted a few months. What was the exact length of flight school?
Reagan – Actually, I got there in January, after pre-flight, and got out in September, so it was about nine months.
Curtis – Once you finished that original flight school, did you have any additional training that you had to do?
Reagan – We went to San Diego to something called TLU—Transition Land Plane Unit. I trained at Pensacola in sea planes—PBYs. The Navy wasn’t doing away with them but the accent was with heavy land-based aircraft. So I went to TLU, from sea planes to land planes, after which I was assigned to a squadron.
Curtis – At what point were you deployed to the Pacific theater?
Reagan – I believe that was February of 1944.
Curtis – What were you and the other young pilots feeling when you were deployed for the first time and getting out in the Pacific theater? Did you talk about what you thought or what was going to happen?
Reagan – Not a whole lot. We didn’t talk much about it. We were very young—too young to be scared.
Curtis – Where were the majority of your missions flown from? Did you fly from aircraft carriers or from land bases?
Reagan – I was a land based pilot, multi-engine. I started in the Solomon Islands. We landed in the Solomon Islands at Guadalcanal. The fighting was over at Guadalcanal. We were then sent to New Georgia—a place called Munda—and then, from there, to the northern most of the Solomon Islands. We flew patrols all over the South Pacific, from the northwest all the way straight north to Truk. That was a Japanese naval base at the time. We did that until about the middle of May, and then we transferred to the southwest Pacific, General MacArthur’s command. We used to call it the KKK of the Southwest Pacific—Kenney, Kincaid and Kruger. General Kenney had the 5th Air Force and General Kruger had the Emmett Reagan Interview Transcript Page 3
ground force and Admiral Tom Kincaid had all the naval forces. We reported, indirectly, to Admiral Kincaid.
Curtis – What platforms did you fly when you were in the Pacific and which one did you like the best?
Reagan – I guess probably the safest was flying out of the Admiralty Islands—Los Negros. It was pleasant because it was safe and we didn’t have any enemy air attacks. Shortly thereafter we kept moving out on into the southwest Pacific to the northern coast of New Guinea. One night there was the toughest night I ever spent in my life. The Japanese would come over every night—nuisance raids—to try and keep us awake. This one night was the 5th of June—almost the same time when they landed the troops in Normandy. The guy came over to keep us awake and he dropped a bomb and he hit our ammunition dump and 250,000 pounds of TNT went up at one whack, and I’ll tell you, that was scary. More so than fighter planes or anything else. We were pursued by fighter planes, attacked by fighter planes sometimes, but that was the toughest night I ever spent in my life.
We kept moving west on the coast of New Guinea. The objective was that MacArthur wanted to get back to the Philippines so we just kept going and going and going. Finally I remember we were still there and that’s when we went into Leyte. The next day after the Leyte Gulf invasion, I went to Australia for R&R. When I came back the squadron was relieved and we were coming home.
Curtis – What were the experiences and circumstances of the first time you really flew a mission of any kind in the Pacific?
Reagan – It was pretty much routine. I remember one time we broke out of the overcast and we were right over Truk. That wasn’t where we were supposed to be so we got out of there. The tail gunner said “We’ve got some twin-engine fighters at 6:00.” Somebody said “There are 22 more at 5:00.” There were 36 aircraft chasing us. There were 32 Zeroes and 4 Nicks They didn’t attack but they just kept pursuing us. The intelligence people figured they thought we were leading them to a rendezvous where there would be bigger targets and so they just followed us. Finally we ran them out of gas and they turned around and went back. However, we were low on gas so we had to land. Joe Foss—he was a captain then and one of the all-time aces—was the commanding officer of the Marine Corps squadron Emmett Reagan Interview Transcript Page 4
VMF-226. We had to refuel there to go back to the Solomon Islands so we had enough gas to get back home.
Curtis – On an average mission, what would they tell you to do? What was the plan before you went out, and did they differ really?
Reagan – We were looking for enemy submarines, enemy ships and freighters. On the way out, we probably would not attack because the object was to search. We were looking for the enemy fleet. All the time we were looking for the enemy fleet. Now, on the way back, if we saw Japanese ships we’d go in and get them but you didn’t want to run the risk of getting shot down and missing your mission. It was search and destroy—search on the way out, and destroy on the way back.
Curtis – On an average, did you have a lot of contact with Japanese fighters?
Reagan – Most of the time not, but we ran into them several times. That time over Truk there were 36 of them.
Curtis – What was your most dangerous mission that you had and what were the circumstances behind that?
Reagan – The most dangerous time—and of course we couldn’t do anything about it because those were the orders—we were based on west New Guinea there and we had a patrol that went straight down the coast of New Guinea, down to the Celebes Islands and you had Celebes on one side and Borneo on the other. If the enemy attacked with fighters, there was no way out. You were just gone. That was scary but it had to be done. We were lucky. We never ran into enemy fighters but we were close enough that, on the Borneo side, we got hit by anti-aircraft fire.
Curtis – As the war went on and the Japanese were getting closer and closer to defeat, did the missions become any easier at all, or did they still fight hard until the end?
Reagan – It became pretty difficult. It wasn’t as dangerous as it was with the Kamikaze but they were getting desperate and that’s when they started the Kamikaze attacks around Leyte Gulf. Then they were throwing all kinds of aircraft at you. At that point—the Kamikaze thing—they didn’t care if you shot back at them. We ran into a lot of them.
Curtis – Do you remember what happened on your very last flight mission?Emmett Reagan Interview Transcript Page 5
Reagan – Everything was confidential. We were coming back on the 19th of October from a patrol and, of course, you always had your radar going. We saw this huge fleet moving. That was 7th Fleet and MacArthur’s amphibious forces coming up for the Leyte invasion. We felt good about it. We knew we were really taking the offensive this time. The next day we went to Australia for R&R. We went to Sydney and as we were leaving to come home, we took off and ran into a gull and that knocked the number three engine out. We couldn’t go all the way back to New Guinea on three engines and we were too heavy to land so we went to Brisbane. By that time we had burned enough gas that we could land O.K. and it took about ten days for us to get an engine. Finally we got the engine installed and that morning we were getting ready to go back and a sailor came running out, waving something, and said “Squadron relieved. Report immediately.” We knew were headed back to the United States. That was in early November.
Curtis – Is that when your tour ended—in November of 1944?
Reagan – Yes. We all came home. I had been a junior officer—co-pilot—and then you came back and trained to get a crew of your own and go back again. That’s what I did. I had a 30 day leave and I was home for Christmas, up into 1945. Then I went to Hutchinson, Kansas for training as a command pilot. That took about four months. That was in May and I was transferred to Alameda to a Bombing Squadron 101. We were there preparing to go to the fleet and back to war again. Then they decided to de-commission that squadron and I was sent down to San Diego to Bombing Squadron 197, getting ready to go back to the fleet again. By this time it’s getting into August, and the war ended. I was in San Diego.
Curtis – When the war ended, you were still in the Navy. When did your tour in the Navy finish?
Reagan – They sent us back out to the Pacific. The war was over—no question about that—but there were still some things that had to be done. I went to Wake Island. The Japanese sanitary system left a lot to be desired and the mission was to disinfect that island. The extra gasoline tank we filled with disinfectant and we flew over the island—200 feet, 200 knots—spraying the disinfectant to get the place ready for complete occupation.
Hurricane hunting. We didn’t know about flying into hurricanes, you know, the way they do now. A big hurricane hit Okinawa and I remember we plotted that one. I was identified on paper as a hurricane Emmett Reagan Interview Transcript Page 6
hunter. I was a reservist and was recalled during the Korean War. They sent me to Miami to be a hurricane hunter and you know as much about hurricane hunting as I did. Fortunately, before I could report to the squadron, they changed that to an anti-submarine squadron so I didn’t have to hunt hurricanes. That was another thing we did.
We flew supplies into some of these islands where the water was terrible, such as Iwo Jima. I didn’t fly into Iwo but I flew into other places. That’s just some of the things we did. We were just killing time.
Curtis – You said you were a reservist. When did you actually get out of the Navy?
Reagan – I did 24 years so it was in 1976 I guess.
Curtis – What rank were you when you came out?
Reagan – Lieutenant commander.
Curtis – I know you talked about it earlier, before we started the interview, can you just go over the awards or commendations that you received for your service during World War II?
Reagan – I got the Distinguished Flying Cross, four awards of the Air Medal, the Philippine Liberation Medal. The rest of them were just area things, like Asiatic Pacific. They were just campaign ribbons.
Curtis – You were a reservist, but just for post-war career, what did you get into after the war?
Reagan – I went back to school at the University of Alabama. From there I went into the office equipment business—retail—in Norfolk and I did that for a number of years. A customer of mine gave me the best piece of advice I’ve ever had in my life in terms of business. Small company, good product, national distribution--join them, and if anything happened to that company, it will happen to you. I forget the name of the company but the product was peanut butter and the name of the company later was Skippy Peanut Butter. He gave me that piece of advice. I went to work for this company called Haloid Corporation. Then later it became Haloid Xerox Corporation, then it was Xerox. I worked for Xerox for 28 years. Curtis – You said in Norfolk. Both my parents are from Norfolk.
Reagan – Yes, I was born in Norfolk.Emmett Reagan Interview Transcript Page 7
Curtis – Both my parents went to Maury High School and both my grandparents live in the Ghent area, so I know Norfolk very well. Do you have any additional comments or any stories or things from the war that you remember that you’d like to talk about that I didn’t cover.
Reagan – One thing. After the war I spent a lot of time in the Pacific and I got a chance to go to a lot of places where, as an aviator, you couldn’t usually get to see. I was at Peleliu and Saipan and Tinian and Guam, Manila—places like that who had just been beaten to death during the war and I got a chance to see those, and it made war a lot more realistic to me. War on the ground is far different from war in the air.
Curtis – Could you talk about getting the pictures over there?
Reagan – We were just on a routine patrol and all of a sudden I saw this dot way out there and about that time the gunner in the bow started hitting this bell—panic bell—and he said “I’ve got a spot out there at 1:00.” We kept closing and by this time we had everybody alerted with their guns, and it was like flying wing on the Japanese plane, and they started letting him have it. As you can see, he began flaming we were still close and I looked at the pilot and said “We’d better get out of here, he’s getting ready to blow.” Sure enough, we turned and he blew up just as we made the turn. That was exciting.
Curtis – Is there anything else that you would like to talk about, either about your training or anything at all?
Reagan – I think that I was well trained and I think that’s one of the great things about naval aviation, is the heavy emphasis on fine training. That goes back a long time, not just the war but before that. Naval aviation is just a place to be if you wanted to learn to fly, and wanted to do it well. The Navy insisted on you doing it well and insisted on themselves doing their job well too.
Curtis – Is that what drew you to the naval aviation aspect before the war?
Reagan – Yes, and it keeps you there too. There is no such thing as an ex-naval aviator. Once you do it, that’s it. Before you leave, read that thing by Jimmy Forestall. It made you very, very proud to have served. That went to all naval officers, but I think he took great pride in sending it to an aviator because he had been a naval aviator in World War I.
Curtis – You said earlier that a lot of times you were looking for submarines as well. Did you ever have any contact with any Japanese submarines?Emmett Reagan Interview Transcript Page 8
Reagan – Once. He submerged and we dropped a depth charge but I don’t think we got him. That’s the only time we saw a Japanese submarine. Our squadron shot down almost 100 aircraft, but we sank 98 ships. We did alright.
Curtis – From your squadron, what type of ships would you hit?
Reagan – They would be freighters, but a lot of times they would be ammunition ships. For instance, the Japanese had massive forces who were involved. I give General MacArthur credit for this. He didn’t want to go in and invade and fight them. Instead of doing that, we would just ignore them but don’t let them get any food or patrols. We had submarines around the place and any time a ship would come close to delivering food, we’d sink them. They would come in with aircraft and we would have our aircraft go in and knock them down. We just scarred that bunch. There were 250,000 troops there, and these were crack troops. The Japanese had gotten there to reinvade the Solomons after they were kicked out of Guadalcanal and they just starved. We’d go after the ships that were carrying food. If you hit a tanker, you’d set it on fire.
Curtis – Did the Japanese ever try real hard to break through that almost American blockade with any ships or any fighter planes to supply their soldiers?
Reagan – After Guadalcanal and the Solomon campaign, they kind of backed off. They had some forces there but we just starved them out. I’m reading a book now called Pacific War and it’s got a lot of detail about how we handled the Japanese in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. That was part of the deal. Just lock them out and not let any of the ships get through there and they will starve to death. They ended up eating pineapples and that’s about it.
Curtis – Did they end up surrendering? Once the war was over, did those troops surrender there?
Reagan – I don’t know. I went to Wake and we sent ships in there and let the Japanese people come in and take them out and send them home. Some of them, though, went to war crime trials. We didn’t send those home.
Curtis – Did you ever have any contact with a Japanese destroyer or freighter or any of their actual naval ships?Emmett Reagan Interview Transcript Page 9
Reagan – Oh yes, we attacked. We sank about 100 ships and we knocked out a lot of enemy aircraft.
Curtis – From your standpoint, did you suffer a lot of losses on any missions?
Reagan – We had 15 planes, 18 crews. When we were in the Solomons we lost three—three crews and three planes. That night I was telling you about when the nuisance raid came in and hit the bomb depot. You got the picture of that airplane with the twin tails. When that explosion went off, it twisted the tails and so it was of no value to us. The word went back, VB-115s lost half their planes. Technically, we had lost half the planes but we didn’t lose any of the crews. It was all on the ground and twisted the tails like that. We were out of business for a few days but the Pacific Fleet got us some replacements right quick.
Curtis – So when they raided and lost half their planes, were they thinking crews?
Reagan – They were lucky. These were nuisance raids to keep us awake and that bomb hit the bomb dump that night and it all went off.
Curtis – Is there anything else that you’d like to talk about at all?
Reagan – No. Anything else that you would like to know about?
Curtis – No. We covered a lot of good stuff I think.
Reagan – I don’t like to talk much about the war but what you are doing here I think is very important.
Curtis – I think it is a very good thing. We are trying to preserve this history and there’s no better source than people who actually lived it.
Reagan – And there’s no better organization to keep it than VMI. I think that is just great and that goes back to George Marshall and John Lejeune and people like that. I think it’s great what you are doing.
Curtis – Thank you sir.