Memoir Of A WW II Navy Seaplane Pilot Haunting Insights About The WWII Experiences Night Bombing Ww2

World War II witnessed tremendous growth in the size of American military aviation. The Museum's collection of 30 World War II-era American military aircraft ranges from propeller-driven trainers, fighters, flying boats, and bombers to the nation's first generation of jet-powered fighters to take to the air. They represent the pilots of the Army Air Forces, Navy, and Marines, as well as the crews who flew them, the support personnel on the ground and at sea who maintained them, and the people who made these weapons of war on the home front.

This coming-of-age story follows the exploits of a WWII Navy seaplane pilot who, flying in huge planes painted entirely black, became one of the first to fly night missions. From boxes of journals, photos, and artwork comes a true story filled with colorful descriptions of exotic locations, sea rescues, and the humor that was intrinsic to a Navy squadron's daily life while at war in the South Pacific.

His is a tale of seven buddies, all pilots who flew at night, slept and got into mischief by day, then repeated. Wartime was unpredictable, and whether landing on a tropical isle where the women he saw from the air turned out to be topless, or dropping wing tanks containing a strange new substance called "Napalm," this was clearly a very different world than he had known as a college student in Indiana.

Their seaplane odyssey stretched from the Solomon Islands to the northern tip of the Philippines and included a full range of missions, from search, attack, and bombing runs, to daring sea rescues. Howard's journey through training and tours of duty is skillfully captured in his art and narratives. The descriptive verse from the artist's viewpoint gives us a creatively told and intriguing portrayal of WWII's Pacific Theater.