DESPAIR
AND VISIONS: BIRTH OF THE RESCUE HELICOPTER
By
Barrett T. (Tom) Beard © 1998
An
expanded prologue to his book, "Wonderful Flying Machines"
Amidst the chaos of Pearl
Harbor, December 7, 1941, a Coast Guard Officer had a vision.....
The rescue helicopter accounts for the
saving of millions of lives worldwide. The advent of this wondrous vehicle began
as an idea during the carnage at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. United States
Coast Guard Lieutenant, Frank A. Erickson, was an observer and described this
infamous attack from his vantage in the airplane control tower at Ford Island.
It is the image of this carnage that he experienced that drove him over the next
decade to overcome overwhelming opposition and create an entire new wing of
aviation—the helicopter—in his career-long pursuit of a better way to save
lives.
The tropical Sunday morning was quiet. A
few sailors and marines, in addition to those preparing to raise American flags,
stirred lazily about Ford Island and on the nearby moored ships. Erickson, the
off going Naval Air Station duty officer, glanced through the window of the
office at "…about 0753 as the marine color guard marched to the
flagpole…" in front of the U.S. Navy's Ford Island administration
building. In a few moments, the assistant Officer of the Day would start the
record player that would sound colors. Erickson's wife and two infant daughters
expected him home soon. He planned to "…catch the 8 o’clock boat for
the Navy Yard." They were planning to share a rare quiet day together in
their tiny Waikiki apartment.
He continued to watched as Privates First
Class Frank Dudovick and James D. Young, and Private Paul O. Zeller, U.S. Marine
Corps Reserve, stood at attention in perfect stillness—at the ready with the
national ensign. Then he glanced at the clock once more. Waiting. "There
was nothing," Erickson later reflected, "to indicate that this morning
would be any different from any other Sunday Morning in the Islands."
Moments later the languid morning erupted
to the sounds of the first thudding-crumps of exploding bombs. "Almost
simultaneously with the first note of the National Anthem…there were two heavy
explosions." Erickson ran to the door. He saw a plane passing over the
"Ten-Ten" dock in the Navy Yard just releasing a torpedo. Disbelief
turned to reality. "There was no mistaking the marking which looked like
balls of fire on each wing…" of the plane passing overhead. The deadly
fish struck the bow of the battleship USS CALIFORNIA (BB-44), the ship
closest to the administration building, moored along battleship row.
"Within the next couple of minutes, Japanese torpedo planes had poured
three torpedoes into the side of the CALIFORNIA. Every ship down the line
was hit first by torpedoes and then by dive bombers."
The Marine color guard did not wait for the recorded traditional morning
colors. The flag went up immediately and a quickly substituted "…general
quarters…" blared from speakers across the island. "All Hell had
broken loose." The base commanding officer phoned Erickson's office
demanding, "What the hell kind of drills are you pulling down there?"
Pearl Harbor was under attack. Ten days passed before Erickson returned
to his family and a new life; a life now dedicated to a better way to save
lives. His future, like everyone's, changed with the events of that day, but his
changed in a way that would affect millions of people worldwide for decades to
follow.
Among the first of the terror stricken refugees were"…the families
of the chief petty officers whose quarters were just opposite battleship
row….They…streamed up to the Administration Building. Many of the women and
children were hysterical and completely uncontrollable." The captain and
the executive officer arrived a few minutes later and Erickson was relieved as
duty officer. While bombs still rained down on Ford Island, Erickson sprinted
through showers of shrapnel to his general quarter's station in the landplane
control tower. He later exclaimed, "I didn’t think I could run so fast.
Every gun in the fleet had cut loose by this time."
Erickson "…had a grandstand view
of the battle" from his aerie in the tower at the epicenter of attack.
Beneath him, lay all of Ford Island surrounded by the ships of the Pacific Fleet
moored in Pearl Harbor. He watched as nearby Hickam Field to the south erupted
in billowing smoke and flames. Up the slope in the valley to the north between
the forested mountains to the right and dry barren hill in the west, he saw the
ugliness of billowing black smoke blot the morning's deep blue skies over the
Army base at Wheeler. Closer, across the sugar cane fields to the west, more
roiling smoke revealed a similar atrocity at the Marine Corps' air base at Ewa.
As he helplessly watched all this, an attacking Japanese
plane—ablaze—flashed across his view. He saw it crash into the seaplane
tender USS CURTISS less than a half mile away just to the north at the
entrance to Middle Loch. The ship burst into flames. Turning toward Aiea and
looking at the eastern edge of Pearl Harbor, he watched in wonder as a
"…huge flaming oil slick…" drifted down on battleship row.
"The old accumulations of paint…" on behemoths flashed as the giant
flaming amoebae enveloped the battleships rafted in rows alongside the southern
edge of Ford Island and "…burned with a terrific heat." Men swarmed
overboard from fiery cauldrons driven from the internal hells into the
oil-coated flaming water. Others continued "…blazing away at any airplane
in the air…" from their gun stations aboard sinking ships now settling
onto the harbor bottom.
The first wave of Japanese planes attacking the Naval Air Station, on
Ford Island damaged or destroyed all Navy combat aircraft on ramps and parking
areas and in the main hangars. "The Japanese kept up a heavy pounding for
about an hour then the bombing stopped…. Most of the battleships moored along
Ford Island were listing badly. The USS OKLAHOMA had already capsized. In
the Pearl City channel the USS UTAH had also disappeared from sight….
Utility aircraft in from the old Army hangars on the Luke Field side of Ford
Island, were the only flyable aircraft spared after the initial attack."
During this lull a few Grumman J2F and Sikorsky JRS amphibians got out to scout
for the enemy armed only with "Springfield's, shotguns, Tommy guns or
anything available to throw into the ships before they took off."
They just got airborne "…when the second wave of the Japanese
attack came. This attack was even heavier than the first." The USS Nevada,
"…which had managed to get underway, took a terrific beating as a full
squadron of dive bombers worked it over." There was a terrific explosion as
it came opposite the seaplane ramp. From his unique vantage Erickson further
observed, "It looked as if it would go down on the spot…." This
blast, however, was the USS SHAW exploding in its nearby dry dock. The NEVADA
moved on slowly until it grounded. "…The battleship USS ARIZONA
blew up in the meantime killing over half her crew."
World War II is credited with many
scientific and technical achievements. Ironically, a major aviation triumph can
be attributed to the excruciating apparition viewed that fateful morning by
Erickson. He witnessed the suffering victims in their attempts to reach shore,
many unaided, struggling and dying in oil coated waters. Typical was one
rescuer's observation as she described "…a young man, filthy black oil
covering his burned, shredded flesh…" laboring for aid unassisted.
"He had no clothes on, his nudity entirely obscured by oil. The skin hung
from his arms like scarlet ribbons as he staggered.... He couldn’t speak. Oil
clogged his throat." This was the vision a thousand times
over—Erickson’s image—of helpless men besieged in the blazing harbor that
ignited his lifelong quest for a better method to rescue the endangered from the
sea.
The following years did not erase these devastating events, which
surrounding him, seared into his memory on this morning. Erickson witnessed more
than two thousand men killed within a radius of a mile-and-a-half plus many
thousands more wounded.
Erickson, a Coast Guard officer—trained
and dedicated to saving lives with Coast Guard amphibian airplanes—was
frustrated on this fateful morning and swelled with emotions beyond the ignominy
of the assault in his eagerness to rescue ships’ crew. He had no methods to
recover the hundreds of sailors struggling and dying in the flaming waters of
Pearl Harbor—a duty he dedicated his life to and performed for the previous
ten years. This vivid scene of barbarism played repeatedly in every direction as
he watched from his lofty perch on this once peaceful morning. Erickson could
only witness—impotent. The feeling of total ineffectiveness he experienced in
the few hours following the attack constantly re-ignited the fuel of his
dedication throughout the following dozen years. Erickson’s memory of that
morning of all its terrors became the catalyst eventually forcing a unique new
device into the aviation stable. This new wonder was the rescue helicopter.
It was during the ten days following the attack when Erickson reflected
heavily on the absurdity of his situation. He, too, was soon flying
patrols in the innocuous (weaponless) amphibians—from among the planes
surviving the raid—searching for an armed Japanese battle fleet. A few months
earlier, this young aviator discovered what he considered the perfect rescue
vehicle for the U.S. Coast Guard. But now he was caught in the middle of the
Pacific and in a war where he feared he could not explore what was already an
embryonic dream. In August 1941, the Navy absorbed Coast Guard units in the
Hawaii area from the Treasury Department. At that time Erickson was assigned to
the Coast Guard Cutter (CGC) TANEY, in port in Honolulu flying the ship's
Grumman J2F "Duck." With this new assignment in the Navy, he moved
from the ship to Ford Island at the Navy Fleet Air Operations Base at Pearl
Harbor. He came with the ship's J2F and acquired a Coast Guard Grumman JRF-2
"Goose." His new job was "…as base assistant operations officer
and officer-in-charge of the Navy's observation squadron."
Erickson’s greatest fear was not the war itself, but that its duration
would keep him in the Pacific unable to pursue his new dream to effect a way to
rescue victims at sea. He already had the solution. He discovered it just weeks
before after reading the August 1941 magazine Aero Digest. In it, an
article described a small helicopter invented by Dr. Igor Sikorsky. It was the
development of this revolutionary new vehicle, in Erickson’s mind, that was
unquestionably the ideal tool for Coast Guard Aviators. In the smoking aftermath
of the butchery he witnessed at Pearl Harbor, a vision emerged. Erickson did not
relinquish his quest from this moment on despite obstacles to his military
career plus obvious dangers to his life flying a highly experimental aircraft
during the following decade. The specter presented to him on this day of infamy
drove him with inspirations that only chaos could illuminate. He, with a handful
of dedicated followers, established against enormous odds, the first of many
generations of successful rescue helicopters. As a result of this pioneering, he
also led the way for the development of helicopters for all purposes. His costs
were, like those of other perspicacious military officers, disgrace amongst his
peers and an abbreviated career.
But he succeeded.
The Rescue Helicopter—now a
common image, an icon to human survival—was Erickson's vision created in 1941
in the frustrations of battle. The newest helicopters today dedicated to
humanitarian service reflect Erickson's aspirations inspired in despair by the
attack on Pearl Harbor and contrived in frustration and humiliation through the
next decade. Today, a legacy lives with the millions of saved lives accountable
to Captain Frank A. Erickson's dream born in carnage as he viewed the attack
from the control tower on the tiny island in the middle of Pearl Harbor on
December 7th 1941.
Reprinted
by permission of the author.