Hollywood has made the entire planet aware of the heroics of Lieutenants George Welch and Ken Taylor as they scrambled to get their P-40s into the air at a moment’s notice. All across Oahu, however, other pilots were also doing their best to react to an attack that caught them completely off guard. These are some of their stories.
In 1941, the U.S. Army Air Force was tasked with the defense of the Hawaii-based Pacific Fleet while in Pearl Harbor. Wheeler Field in central Oahu was home of the Army fighters. the 18th Pursuit Group was the senior fighter unit, receiving enough new P-40s for all its squadrons. the new 15th PG got hand-me-down P-36s for two squadrons and added some P-40s amid the 47th Squadron’s P-36s. Yet training accidents and maintenance for both groups caused squadrons to borrow aircraft. the 15th Group occasionally borrowed P-40s from the 18th to upgrade pilots.
Two outlying training airfields were needed for boresighting guns and conducting gunnery training. A civilian airfield was leased at Haleiwa on Oahu’s North Shore, and the newly built Bellows Field was on Oahu’s southeast coast. Th ese locations helped
