I was stationed on Guam with a weather reconnaissance squadron. 1965 was a busy year for typhoons and for our fleet radar coverage.
My crew was sent out to track a typhoon moving toward Truk, an island approximately 700 miles southeast from Guam one at the end of September 1965. Truk, or its proper name, Chuuk translates to mountain in the Chuukese language. Germans and then Americans had tweaked the island’s name over two hundred years to Truk. The typhoon was headed northeast past Truk, past the Caroline Islands, the Marshall Islands and we were sent to track it until it was no longer a threat. This picture is an actual Navy photograph from our squadron taken tracking a typhoon but not the one in this story. It does give you an idea of what we faced in a day’s work.
There is mountain on Truk listed as 1500 feet high on our navigational charts. We were flying at 1200 feet tracking the typhoon. The CICO (combat information center officer) came up to me when I was on radar weather watch and told me to find the island on the radar. Some of the islands in the area are quite small, there are perhaps a hundred of them and the ground clutter return on the radar added to the typhoon return made being sure of anything difficult, but he wanted to know where the island was and wanted me to keep an eye on it through my entire watch. It seems he had a fixation on us flying into that 1500-foot high mountain. I personally thought, the chances of actually hitting a small mountain in the vast Pacific, in the middle of the night, with 100 plus miles-per-hour driving rains was very difficult to near impossible. But it made him happy to know I was watching that mountain on the radar. As I think back on it, we had a chart, we had a radar image and we really had to guess at which blip of light on that screen was actually Truk. The good news is, we missed it, failed to crash, and were back on Guam in a few days after a rest and refueling stop on Wake Island after nearly 20 hours in the air..
Wake Island is about 1500 miles northeast of Truk. Throughout my time in the Pacific I was always enthralled with the World War Two history of the many battlegrounds. (I still am interested in WW-2 history). In this trip I was able to be on two well-known battlegrounds, Wake and Guam, and fly over others, Truk, and the Marshall Islands. The stop on Wake was a two-day event and we had a great time roaming the ruins of the still intact battleground. The Marines who defended Wake had little more than raw courage and a few second-hand weapons to fend off a large Japanese invasion fleet. The defensive guns they had were old and when you see my personal pictures that I’m adding it’s easy to tell the guns were ripped right off a ship turret and dropped on the island in a hurry. Wake was attacked the same day as Pearl Harbor and the Marines held out for 15 days before being overwhelmed by the Japanese. The Japanese actually held Wake until September 4, 1945, almost a month after the official end of WW-2.
Many of the defensive positions were still just like 1941. It was like a religious experience pouring over those parts of the island.
After our day of fun exploring we had to settle down at the Drifter’s Reef, right by the bridge from Wake to Peale atoll. (Wake is actually made up of Wake, Wilkes and Peale atolls.)
The Navy had an enlisted men’s club there and we were able to drink beer and catch fish right at the bridge. We didn’t keep any of the fish because we weren’t sure of what they really were, preferring to grill steaks on the grills behind the club and by the bridge. It was a really great time for me to be there. It was one of the few places we ever went that didn’t have some nightclub-infested arena designed to milk every nickel a sailor had.
There wasn’t much of anything else on Wake then but a runway, fuel farm and a Coast Guard Loran station.
It was a great time on Wake and a long flight from Guam over Truk and on to Wake, but I was young and it was real adventure in those days.
I’ve spent the last 30 years working in factories and there’s no discredit, no dishonor in doing so. In fact a real man is he who has the guts to faithfully face a difficult job for forty or more years with a determination to provide for those he loves and has taken a vow to take care of them; but a young man also needs some adventure in his life so he has a few memories to look back on when he’s an old man. I get excited just remembering those days even though they weren’t all sunshine and happy faces.
Copyright Bill Weber 2006-2019 and beyond.
My crew was sent out to track a typhoon moving toward Truk, an island approximately 700 miles southeast from Guam one at the end of September 1965. Truk, or its proper name, Chuuk translates to mountain in the Chuukese language. Germans and then Americans had tweaked the island’s name over two hundred years to Truk. The typhoon was headed northeast past Truk, past the Caroline Islands, the Marshall Islands and we were sent to track it until it was no longer a threat. This picture is an actual Navy photograph from our squadron taken tracking a typhoon but not the one in this story. It does give you an idea of what we faced in a day’s work.
There is mountain on Truk listed as 1500 feet high on our navigational charts. We were flying at 1200 feet tracking the typhoon. The CICO (combat information center officer) came up to me when I was on radar weather watch and told me to find the island on the radar. Some of the islands in the area are quite small, there are perhaps a hundred of them and the ground clutter return on the radar added to the typhoon return made being sure of anything difficult, but he wanted to know where the island was and wanted me to keep an eye on it through my entire watch. It seems he had a fixation on us flying into that 1500-foot high mountain. I personally thought, the chances of actually hitting a small mountain in the vast Pacific, in the middle of the night, with 100 plus miles-per-hour driving rains was very difficult to near impossible. But it made him happy to know I was watching that mountain on the radar. As I think back on it, we had a chart, we had a radar image and we really had to guess at which blip of light on that screen was actually Truk. The good news is, we missed it, failed to crash, and were back on Guam in a few days after a rest and refueling stop on Wake Island after nearly 20 hours in the air..
Wake Island is about 1500 miles northeast of Truk. Throughout my time in the Pacific I was always enthralled with the World War Two history of the many battlegrounds. (I still am interested in WW-2 history). In this trip I was able to be on two well-known battlegrounds, Wake and Guam, and fly over others, Truk, and the Marshall Islands. The stop on Wake was a two-day event and we had a great time roaming the ruins of the still intact battleground. The Marines who defended Wake had little more than raw courage and a few second-hand weapons to fend off a large Japanese invasion fleet. The defensive guns they had were old and when you see my personal pictures that I’m adding it’s easy to tell the guns were ripped right off a ship turret and dropped on the island in a hurry. Wake was attacked the same day as Pearl Harbor and the Marines held out for 15 days before being overwhelmed by the Japanese. The Japanese actually held Wake until September 4, 1945, almost a month after the official end of WW-2.
Many of the defensive positions were still just like 1941. It was like a religious experience pouring over those parts of the island.
After our day of fun exploring we had to settle down at the Drifter’s Reef, right by the bridge from Wake to Peale atoll. (Wake is actually made up of Wake, Wilkes and Peale atolls.)
The Navy had an enlisted men’s club there and we were able to drink beer and catch fish right at the bridge. We didn’t keep any of the fish because we weren’t sure of what they really were, preferring to grill steaks on the grills behind the club and by the bridge. It was a really great time for me to be there. It was one of the few places we ever went that didn’t have some nightclub-infested arena designed to milk every nickel a sailor had.
There wasn’t much of anything else on Wake then but a runway, fuel farm and a Coast Guard Loran station.
It was a great time on Wake and a long flight from Guam over Truk and on to Wake, but I was young and it was real adventure in those days.
I’ve spent the last 30 years working in factories and there’s no discredit, no dishonor in doing so. In fact a real man is he who has the guts to faithfully face a difficult job for forty or more years with a determination to provide for those he loves and has taken a vow to take care of them; but a young man also needs some adventure in his life so he has a few memories to look back on when he’s an old man. I get excited just remembering those days even though they weren’t all sunshine and happy faces.
Copyright Bill Weber 2006-2019 and beyond.
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