ML148447
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Subject: (Interview). Subtitle: Jefferson J. DeBlanc. Timecode In: 00:01:23. Timecode out: 00:55:50. Notes: World War II Pacific Theater; Guadalcanal. Equipment Notes: Two-Channel Mono. Show: Jeff Deblanc Interview Log of DAT #: 1 Engineer: Date: July 16, 2002 World War II Pacific Theater; Guadalcanal JD = Jefferson J. DeBlanc NC = Neal Conan 1:59 NC Tell me about..what did Henderson field look like as you arriving the first time you saw it. 2:08 JD Well it was.. I got a glimpse of it when I stepped off of dc three as we were shoveled in there as replacement pilots as others lost their lives.. And we opened our doors to a junk pile of aircraft that had been beaten up. The runway had metal spits to hold the weight of the aircraft dc 3, but the fighter strip, fighter 1, which was adjacent to Henderson field, was a muddy pasture. We called it the cow pasture 2:41 NC Give me a little more description of it, muddy, when it rained? How quickly did it turn to dust when it didn¿t rain? 2:47 JD That is a good question, it was close, adjacent to, not water lined¿ parallel to Henderson field, the cow pasture, because they could not build a runway conducive enough to handle the heavy planes.. So only light fighters landed there, which means the wildcat, the p40s, the p39s, the p400s, we were a mixture of pilots and within I would say, 48 hours once we had a heavy downpour we had a runway that was having dust, which was a very bad thing for us, for this reason, when we were scrambling to meet the Japanese fighters planes escorting the bombers, we kicked up a lot of dust off of fighter one, when we kicked up a lot of dust from fighter one which was a perfect target for pistol pete to zero in with their artillery. The first people off the deck were great, they were the ones with more rank than we were. .. the 2nd lts, my we were always the low man on the totem pole and the last to take off when they scrambled and they got all of the rounds they missed from zeroing in and correcting to us so they could hit the fighter one strip.. When it was raining it was an awful thing you had a slipper outfit and you slid with the wheels almost locked for about ten feet before you could get traction to get the wheels to going and enough power with the flaps down to get you off the deck and to clear the coconut trees at the end of the runway which is close to the ilu river, which was called the alligator river. 4:33 NC so it was not exactly a fun place to fly in and out of? 4:37 JD negative, as a matter of fact it was a horrible place, for the simple reason, that potholes was very detrimental to the wildcat. Although the wildcat, although it was a flying brick, it was one put well together, the midwing and the square wingtip, which was a good wing to shoot from¿ Henderson field, fighter 1, prefer? Always were locked in.. we never landed on Henderson field, we were the fighters who escorted the bombers, on the b 17s and the commercial aircraft, the dc ¿ 3 because they were heavier, they could not land on anything other than metal strips over Henderson field which is coral reef. The reason why we were flyer lucky about it we would use the old carrier takeoff, full flaps, full power, and let her go. There must be a distinction between Henderson field an fighter wone, they are not synonymous. We had fighter 2 that came up in the latter part of December, fighter 2 was another field that they built but it was much more stable than fighter wone, it was not a cow pasture. 7:01 NC Where were you living at that point when you arrived at Guadalcanal? 7:07 JD We were quartered right off of fighter one, between fighter one and the beach; we were bivouacked right at that particular point. Actually it was a nice place to be because we controlled the air during in the daytime and the Japanese controlled the sea... (Notes truncated)
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- Cataloged
- 11 Feb 2010 - Ben Brotman
- Digitized
- 11 Feb 2010 - Ben Brotman
- Edited
- 11 Feb 2010 - Ben Brotman