Harry Haase Kaneohe Bay

I was assigned to my unit along with 20 to 40 recruits from Naval Trade School around November 1, 1941.  School was at NAS Sand Point, Seattle, Washington.  Transportation was USS Lexington to San Diego, from there USS Wright to Pearl Harbor.  VP-11 was scheduled to go to advance base in a few weeks November 25th, however it was cancelled.  Advance Base was Wake Island (I could kiss somebody for that cancellation). I was an aviation metal smith and on December 7, 1941, at 7:00 a.m., I had just gotten off a night shift from the Hangar we operated from.  We were installing armor plating in the first of our 12 PBY's I had just gotten to bed that morning when I heard machine gun fire and airplane motors whining outside the barracks.  I got up to see what the ruckus was about and it looked like the US Air Force was target practice over the bay.  At least that's what we all thought until we saw dense smoke coming from the Hangar we had just left.  We also saw, or by this time, we noticed the "rising sun" insignia on the wings.  After strafing and setting on fire the PBY's parked on the area outside the hangar they left and we were all ordered to the hanger area by inter-com to fight the fires. When I got there, we did the best we could to fight the fires, yet in the meantime, the first of the nine attacking zeros had left for about 20 minutes.  All of a sudden they returned again and we all took cover in the hangar.  I stood by the open hangar doors watching them make strafing runs on the hangar coming in so low you could almost touch them.  They were firing machine guns and nose cannons.  The Hangar offered fair protection, but when someone yelled, "Bombers are coming" I looked out over the horizon and could see a V formation coming right for the Hangar.  The V formation consisted of nine light bombers carrying 100 lb. Bombs and flying at the lowest safe altitude for dropping said bombs.  Realizing the Hangar was the "target", I ran to a freshly dug ditch 50 yards out and watched their direct approach.  When they got directly overhead, they simultaneously dropped one 100 lb. Bomb (up to this time, they had absolutely no opposition).  These bombs should have been direct hits on the hangar, but fortunately the Japs hadn't figured the trade winds, which were blowing and the bomb was blown into the bay harmlessly. It appeared the bombers were going to make another run on the Hangar, so I started running for the hills as I passed the corner of the Hangar, some guy yelled for me to come over to the parking lot and help him set up a 30 cal. Machine gun he had pulled from one of the planes.  I did so and found he had no ammunition.  By this time, another fellow had joined us and he and I ran into the Hangar where the ammunition was stored.  We each picked up a case of belted 30 cal. ammunition, noticing that there were an awful lot of personnel in the hangar for protection.  We had to dodge strafing planes like pedestrians dodge cars trying to cross streets in heavy traffic. We both made it back to the guy with the machine gun and set it up, one guy aiming and controlling the firing, the other guy feeding the ammunition and me holding the barrel to steady it as it had no stand, all in prone position.  We fired at every plane that made strafing runs on the hangar.  We could see the tracers go right into the planes, but they still kept coming.  We were so busy with the zeros, we didn't notice the bombers returning.  They had the range this time and all 9 bombs counted, some exploded inside the hangar and some in the parking lot where we were.  Our machine gun was blown several yards out of our hands and when I got up to retrieve it, I noticed all the cars parked around us were riddled with shrapnel from top of the fenders up.  Thank the Lord we were in prone position or we would have been cut in two.  We got the machine gun working again as the strafing never let up.  (Thanks again that the zeros didn't carry machine guns that swiveled.  The guns could only fire in the direction the planes were flying and we were just outside of their range of fire.

Information provided by Harry Haase.