Enoch E. "Buttsy" Vaughn US Navy |
I enlisted in the US Navy in July, 1940, went to boot camp in San Diego, California. Transferred to a supply ship named USS Argonne. Traveled to Pearl Harbor Hawaii and relieved the supply ship USS Antares. Stayed aboard a few months and the ship's command requested volunteers to transfer to a aircraft utility squadron (US-1) on Ford Island air-base. I raised my hand and received the job. I learned to never raise my hand too soon. Reporting aboard to US-1 the question was asked by all, "who could type?" I raised my hand and was transferred to the central on board "disbursing office" which handled all records for everyone in all squadrons and station personnel. Learned a hard lesson! Stayed at that office for about four months and then went back to my squadron (US-1). Studied and worked hard at becoming an aviation machinest mate. I became a plane captain of an amphibious aircraft named SRS-1. This sikorsky aircraft was built in 1929 and 1930 for inner island transportation but restricted to three foot swells. So it was used by our squadron for photography and towing targets. This was a twin engine plane and was utilized as best we could. We had about thirteen of them plus some J2Fs single engine plane also for towing and photos. During the Pearl Harbor bombing, we had about five of them damaged, but we were able to repair them. We mounted 500 ob depth charges under each wing (wasn't designed for this) and installed a belly fuel tank in each one, which allowed us to fly for 9 hrs. and 37 minutes max. Our squadron was lucky to have this many planes in service and the bombing knocked out all the PBYs (search aircraft with flight time from 12 to 14 hours). So our squadron assumed the role of search aircraft dividing up the whole island chain into segments and each plane flying one segment. By the way, I was sleeping on the leenar overlooking the Arizona and all the rest on the only cement barracks on the air base. We had studied Japanese aircraft and symbols and we knew right away who it was when we saw those rising sun emblems on the wings. Needless to say we immediately put our clothes on and responded to the squadron. Everything was pretty much in chaos, accessing damage, belting ammunition and trying to restore order. We got our planes in shape and started air and sea search right away. In February 1943, I was in the hospital, because we crashed at sea about 90 miles off of Hilo, Hawaii and stayed in the ocean for eleven hours and was very lucky to get out. We had nine men on a four man raft, so we alternated with those inside, the rest of us just hanging on in the ocean. In 1944, our squadron moved back to NAS Moffett, Field California (that's located between San Jose and San Francisco), the old blimp base. After that, I just did my duty almost everywhere but mainly in Naval Air Transport Squadrons where we flew around the clock 24 hours. But I got used to it. I did one stint of recruiting duty in a little town named Victoria, Texas. My area covered seven counties, so I was on the move. NOTE: My nickname is "Buttsy". When I was a little shaver, they said "biscuit behind," and turned to finally "Buttsy". Information provided by Enoch E. "Buttsy" Vaughn |
