December 7,1941-7 a.in. All waspeacef ul in the Hawaiian Islands.

At the northern end of Oahu, ArmyPvts. Joseph Lockard and GeorgeElliott were monitoring the.ir scope atthe Opana radar station, part of anew surveillance system not yet fullyoperational on the island

They had already been told theycould shut down for the day. OnSundays, despite Increased interna-tional tension, surveillance wasmainta.ined only from 4 to 7 a.in. But,they'd decided to keep the stationopen and practice with the equip-ment while awa'iting transportationback to their camp.

It was just minutes after sevenwhen a sweep of the.ir radar painteda massive flight of aircraft about 130miles to the north and clos.ing fast.

Quickly the privates trled to con-tact the spotters at the plotting tablein the Fort Shatter InformationCenter some in.iles away But theyhad already gone to breakfast. Lt.Kermit Tyler, a pilot who had beenassigned to the center as pursuit of-f.leer for the day, was the only oneleft in the plotting room. He seemedunconcerned by the discovery. It wasprobably a flight of B-17s arrivingfrom the mainland or perhaps planesfrom a carrier at sea, he reasoned.In any case, he wasn't worried.

The lieutenant was right, if only

partially so. Twelve B-17s weredroning toward Hawaii from themainland, and the planes detectedby radar were in fact carrier-launched. But they were Japanesecarriers and in minutes now, the

' planes would swarm in and poundPearl Harbor and neighboring mill-tary installations into a shambles.

Hawa.ii had been caught com-pletely off guard. But today a groupof dedicated Hawaiians, native andnaturalized, is working hard to seethat it doesn't happen again. TheHawaii Air National Guard (HANG)alone is charged wlth the air defenseof the island state.

Inside a blacked-out, auditori-urn-like room on Wheeler AFB nearthe center of Oahu, members of theGuard's 169th Aircraft Control andWarnlng (AC&W) Squadron maintaina 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-weekradar vigil of the airspace surround-ing the Hawaiian Islands. With anass'ist from their s.ister squadron, the150th AC&W on the lush green islandof Kauai, they track every aircraftapproaching the islands. And nobl.lnd assumptions about their .iden-

20

tity are made.If a "track," as the blip on the radar

screen is called, can't be identifiedwith previously filed flight plans, theGuard's alert birds are ready. Heavilyarmed F-4 Phar}foms of the 154thFighter Group are poised just 100

yards from Hickam AFB's Bunway 08Left, their crews never more than afew hurried steps away.

When they scramble at a klaxon'scall-and they do about twice amonth-Hawaii Air Guardsmen atone of the two radar stations directthem to their targets.

"We [the Guard] have both ele-

ments of air defense-the detectionsystem and the response system,"explained Lt. Col. Kurt E. Johnson,an air technician with the 154th. Of

ready answer."Some people never stop to think

that if there were no manned air de-fense aircraft, Soviet airplanes couldfly over any part of the U S. at anyaltitude and at any time." meaningthere would be no need for the mis-si les.

"The people of Hawa.ii were lulled

once before," he continued, "so we,especially, are not willing to have ourairsp`ace filled with Just anybody whowants to fly through it."

Although he recognizes the I.inkbetween Pearl Harbor and HANG'smission, for Johnson, personally, itis an emotionally weak connection."I was only about 12 or 13," he re-

called, "and to a 13-year-old kid itwas more like cowboys and Indians."

Surprised once, they are not aboutto let it happen again.

3%o¥ossgtbyDfi:}dmghB.raKCoh*'osjan

course, it is a federal mission and,therefore. the Guard comes underthe operational control of the AirForce during an active air scramble,in this case the 326th Air Division.

During the week Johnson, a ro-bust, silver-haired hapa hao/e (halfHawaiian), is the F-4 air technicianoperations off icer for the Guard's199th Fighter Interceptor Squadron.On Guard weekends, however, he isDeputy Commander of the 154thGroup, the squadron's parent or-ganization.

A fighter pilot for most of his adultlife, Johnson remains excited abouthis unit's mission. For the skepticswho question the Guard's value inthis age of high-speed, nuclear-warhead-carrying missHes, he has a

TheJohnsons lived on Waikiki andhe remembers waking up to thevoice of the late Webley Edwardsbroadcasting news of the attack overradio station KGMB. The popularHawaiian radio personality wasrepeating, over and over, the nowfamous phrase "This is no drill: thisis the real Mccoy."

"I I.an outside and could see a

great black column of smoke coming `<out of Pearl Harbor," Lt. Col. John-son said. "lt just dominated every-thing. Japanese airplanes were fly-lng around south of the island andthere were black puffs of smoke fol-lowing them." Then, as the cityawakened, he recalled people be-came frantic, and "you could seeseriousness and gr.imness on their

AIRMAN

L'. Col. Hurt Johnson helps h!® wifeClalre pack flowerS tor shipmentto the malnland.

+tjEE+_i_ T±¥=--ii`.-..--.-.='-JT=Ti=

giv4. iffi-`

faces.„But for young Kurt Johnson, Sun-

day was a day to pile into the familycar and ride over the historic PallHighway to the country. And thatSunday was no exception.

For more senior guardsmen, theemotional I.Ink is stronger. Msgt.Beniamin Goo, noncommiss.ionedofficer in charge of the fighter

group's simulator section, spent thebetter part of December 7 pullingwounded soldiers from the burningtop floor of Hickam's big barrackscomplex. The then 19-year-old basecivilian employee, who later servedwith Patton's army in Europe, hadnever, of course, seen an attack be-fore and "didn't realize just howscared I should have been. Anyway,we were too busy to be scared."

The building that today housesPacitic Air Force's headquarters stHlbears the deep pockmarks left byJapanese bullets and shrapnel. Goo,now a full-time a.ir technician withthe Guard, passes the building on hisway to work-and he remembers.

F.irst Lt. Peter S. Pawling .ls too

young to remember Pearl Harbor.Yet he, too, feels a special pride inbeing a member of the home guard.Pawling, a transplanted mainlanderfrom California, is a full-time alert

pilot-alert pro-with the 199th."When the klaxon sounds, it stops

your heart and you think, `This isit,' " related the pilot, seated .in aneasy chair inside the alert facility."We never know what to expect and

always treat it as the real thlng." Likethe scramble he was .Involved in last

' October.Pawling and his weapons system

officer, Maj. James T. Magee, werefill.ing out routine paper work ontheir aircratt over a morning cup ofcoffee when the horn went off.

In minutes they were roll.ing theloo yards to the runway while go'ingthrough their preflight checklist. Al-ready they were cleared for takeoffand a United Airlines jet on final tothe runway shared with Honolulu ln-ternatlonal A.irport had been told toslow down or go around.

"We had been given `gate' [after-

burner] climb to 25,000 feet and werevectored 100 degrees, which took usright over downtown Honolulu," re-lated Pawling.

Quickly ground control of theiraircraft was passed from the towerto departure control and finally toMaj. Walter 0. Watanabe, the 169thAC&W duty controller, who vectored

22

the Phantom north toward .Its target.This time it turned out to be afriendly aircratt whose pilot had notfollowed proper fl.ight planning pro-cedures and the F-4 returned home.

Occasionally alert aircraft arescrambled to assist CMI.lan planes introuble. Once an F-4 was launchedto aid a private plane that was lowon fuel, hitting 50 mph head winds,and was oft course over Kauai. ThePhantom was directed to a holdingarea and provided information aboutwinds and other data to the pilot ofthe light plane, who was guided toa safe landing. But most of the timethe scrambles are in response to AirDefense Identification Zone viola-tions. "And that is a rather seriousthing," said Lt. Col. Johnson. "A

pilot if he ls mil.itary can be removedfrom flying status and an airline pilotcan be f ined."

ln the early days "there were 30 to40 scrambles a month," rememberedJohnson. "Those were in the propdays of the DC-6s and the DC-7s. Buttoday's jets can meet the.Ir estimatedtimes of arrival much better and nowwe are scrambled on the average oftwice a month."

CMsgt. Bobert Choi was part ofthe un.it in those early days. TheChief of Quality Control for the 154thConsolidated Aircraft MaintenanceSquadron joined the organizat.Ionwhen the Air Guard's f irst units wereactivated as part of Hawaii's ArmyNational Guard in the late summerof 1946.

"We didn't have any airplanes,"

recalled the sergeant, "just some oldrundown buildings and two runwaysat Bellows Field." Initially Choi, ana.ircraft mechanic since 1939, andother unit members spent their timelaying roofing paper and painting inan effort to renovate the facilities.

It was six months before they gottheir i.irst a.ircratt, a B-26C. Eightother planes arrived during the nextseveral months. But, although des-ignated a fighter squadron, theyhad no fighters. And they were shortother supplies and equipment, too.

Under the leadership of theirCommander, Maj. William F. Nolan,the guardsmen made "scrounge"raids on Hickam halfway across theisland. They used a newly acqu.iredC-46 to carry home the spoils. "Weknew where everything was sincemany of us used to work there," saidCMsgt. Chol, "and we would beg,borrow, and steal what we needed.We became known as Nolan and his

Forty Thieves."Improvisation was a key word. Un-

able to obtain maintenance stands towork on the aircraft, they used 55-gallon drums and 2-by-4s. And theycarried oil for their planes from the"h'ills" .in five-gallon cans.

The mechanics, who were not li-censed pilots, used to test-hop theiraircratt on a back runway. "Weld tell`Ops' we were going to make a`high-speed check' and they'd say,`O.K.,' " recalled Chol. "Actually they

d.idn't know what we were talkingaboiit. We would take the plane off

PIGHT: Msgt. Ben|amln Goo revlew9photos in a scrapbook acqulred as hemarched through Germany wlth theArmy !n World War 11.

ABOVE AND RIGHT: Alillne pllotJamo8 Lockrldge 18 a captaln ln hl8clvlllan lob and when flying loi theHawall All National Guard.

[fly .it a short distance] and set itdown again."

Under the cloak of darkness theywould also "test-hop" their cars.

Despite maintenance difficulties,the crew chiefs were proud of theiraircraft. When a pilot would show upto fly, the crew chiefs would try tosell him on flying their airplane bytelling him it was better than any ofthe others.

Finally, in 1947, the unit receivedits first fighters, the P-47N rhunder-bo/f or "Jug," as it was nicknamed.That year the unit moved t6 Hick-am. But supply problems continued.

AIRMAN

EF

JdJ

Then in 1949, the 81st FighterGroup at Wheeler, also equippedwith the rhL/nderbo/f, was deactivat-ed. The National Guard Bureau inWashington, D.C„ wanted the P-47parts for other Guard units on themainland and HANG got the job ofreclaiming the aircraft. However,during the process the better air-f rames and engines somehow endedup with Hawaii Air National Guardidentification numbers on them. AndHANG also got control of a 150-yearsupply of parts.

The parts were stored in fourwarehouses at Honolulu Internation-al Airport, and crew chiefs "rat-

holed" parts for their own aircraft.Then a sugar strike forced consoli-dation of the contents of the hangarsto make room to store sugar. Indi-vidual stashes were disturbed andthe result was chaos. "Trying to tinda part you had ratholed was a realjob," said Choi. Mechanics had torummage through mixed piles ofparts to find what they needed.

In the mid '50s the Jugs were re-placed by the Korean War-vintageF-86 Sabre jet, and the Guard as-sumed its air defense role.

Later, while flying the F-102,guardsmen volunteered to partici-pate in Palace Alert, a program to

augment Air Force air defense unitsin Southeast Asia. Lt. Col. EdwardF`ichardson, Commander of the199th Fighter Interceptor Squadron,was instrumental in getting the pro-gram established.

While returning from Thailand in1968, he learned that because the AirForce was phasing out the F-102, itdidn't have enough pilots to meet itsalert commitment in Vietnam. "Sowe made a proposal and in July theprogram was initiated," said Rich-ardson. "Everyone in our squadronvolunteered but because of our ownalert commitment here, we couldn'tsend the whole squadron."

Over the years, much of theGuard's ef.fort has been community-oriented. The unit's members usedB-26s to spread salt water and dryice in an effort to -bring about rainon the drought-plagued islands ofMaul and Molokai, "bombed" thetourist ship "Lurline" with loo,000orchids upon her arrival duringAloha Week in 1954, and once tookpart in a rather unusual pilot-trainee

. recruiting effort.Guardsmen towed an F-86 across

town for display at the University ofHawaii. The trek was made at nightto avoid traffic and th-e caravan wasled by a Guard wrecker, which was

used to uproot trees (they were laterreplanted) and move parked carsthat obstructed the path.

Even today HANG is activelyreaching out into the community,though perhaps its projects aresomewhat less dramatic.

Members of the Guard haveformed HANG Ohana, a musicalgroup that performs for unit func-tions, recruiting events, and com-munity activities. "Through the groupwe are trying to revive and preserveour traditional Hawaiian culture,Hawa/./.ana," explained Sr. Amn.Louise Sharpe, a management in-ventory specialist and a hula dancer

i-= - i. I-* `=--_='--...-_-

with the group. Other HANGmembers have formed an outriggercanoe racing team and still othersare teaching cardiopulmonary re-suscitation.

The list of community projects islong and meaningful. But, then,that's not surprising. Out of uniformthese guardsmen are Hawaiians-banana I armers, state repre-sentatives, local airline pilots, po-licemen, firemen, janitors, students,secretaries, and professional huladancers. In uniform, though, they re-main Hawaiian, pulling together toprotect their community, their cul-ture, and their homeland. ES