Walter E. Bolssen US Navy Kaneohe Bay |
Walter Bolssen enlisted in the Navy in 1939 from Green Bay, Wisconsin. He attended Aviation Mechanics School in San Diego. Eventually he was stationed at the new Naval Air Station at Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii in October 1940. He was assigned to VP-12, one of three squadrons of PBY planes. These planes could land on water and were used for patrol duty and rescue. He was a crewmember. They were called "Black Cats" because they flew at night. The morning of December 7, 1941, he had finished breakfast and was leaving the chow hall when he saw the many Japanese planes diving and strafing all of the planes on the ground and those anchored in the Bay. Three of the squadron hangers were destroyed also. At first he took shelter in a hanger but moved to a civilian workshop maintenance building where he discovered another Navy man with a wounded leg. He applied a tourniquet and hailed a jeep to take him to sickbay. Walter just sustained a small wound from a piece of shrapnel. There were three waves of planes that attacked all the military installations from the north of the island to end at Pearl Harbor. Afterwards they expected a land invasion so were moved up into the hills to set up guns and lookout posts. Later he viewed all the damage done to the ships at Pearl Harbor and remembers the utter devastation, smoke, and oil in the water. His squadron later moved to New Hebrides, Fiji, and Guadalcanal. They flew night patrols, had no fresh food, just dried or canned foods. In Fiji, they slept in native huts but on Guadalcanal they were in tents and used nets to ward off the mosquitoes. During the Korean War, he was aboard the carrier USS Leyte to spend 53 days in the China Sea. He returned to the United States in 1943 and was made a Chief Petty Officer where he was stationed at the Naval Air Station in New Orleans. He stayed in the Navy for twenty-one years and retired in 1960. |
Information provided by Walter E. Bolssen. |
