Sunday in hell, p.105
Sunday in Hell, page 105
On Monday, it was back on the flying training schedule, a heavy schedule, with three flights each Monday and Tuesday. After a hard day on Monday, he wrote, “…Received a long letter from Mary, whom I miss more each day. She is the best and loveliest of wives and I expect to spend all my life making her happy.” On Tuesday, the division dive bombed, fought fighters, and practiced carrier landings. He judged his division to be “…very effective against attacking fighters, but it requires one hell of a lot of flying. My division - Border, Gibson, Goddard, Czarvecki, Leonard, and Winograd improves every day and soon we should be a crack outfit…”
Then on Wednesday, 30 September, VB-10 had its first fatality, a sobering event Karl wrote of that evening. Karl had led his second division in a dive bombing attack on a target boat, following Lieutenant Commander Thomas’ division. He pushed over, extended his plane’s dive flaps - speed brakes to keep the aircraft from accelerating beyond its aerodynamically limiting speed - and dove on the target. One aircraft flown by Lieutenant Czarnecki, from the other division, somehow got out of position and pulled up into Goddard’s propeller, which cut Czarnecki’s fuselage apart just aft of the rear cockpit. Czarnecki bailed out but was hit by a piece of the wing, and his throat was cut. His radioman/gunner, Bode, went in with the plane. Karl’s reaction was typical of men who daily would face danger, even in flight training. “…-tough luck for two good fellows.”
The 1st of October was another red letter day. Karl and the men of VB-10 received the words they had been preparing and training for, “The Squadron is preparing to put to sea on the Enterprise loaded for Japs. We are all working like hell and I expect we will be in fair shape by the time we go aboard…” Then, for the next three days, it was more flying, a talk from a representative of the Sperry Gyro about the SBD’s automatic pilot, and yet another on the landing procedure by the Enterprise landing signal officer.
On 4 October, another letter from Mary, and on the 6th he wrote, “Had another wonderful letter from Mary - how I love that gal and wish I were with her. We had squadron tactics for 2 ½ hours this morning and another 2 hours tonight. Tonight was a hell of a mess.”
Not until 7 October did time and events permit him to record the day’s events. Again, the sensitive artist flowed through his pen onto the diary’s page. “VB-10 took a cross country hop to Hilo, Hawaii. We left Kaneohe, passed Molokai, Lanai, Maui, Kahoolawe, and finally picked up the big island. The cliffs and waterfalls of Molokai and Hawaii are beautiful.”55
It was Monday afternoon, 19 October 1942, at 910 4th Street in San Diego, when a knock came at Joey’s and Bob’s apartment door. Bob was on duty, flying that day in the Advanced Carrier Training Group. When Joey opened the door, a Western Union deliveryman asked, “Mrs. Mary Border?”
“Yes,” Joey replied.
“I have a telegram for you, Ma’am. Please sign here.”
Joey signed, handed him the pen with a “thank you,” and closed the door. She was curious about who might have sent her a telegram. Her mother was nearby while her dad was in the Pacific, and Bob’s parents were in Mobile where she had left them in good health less than a month ago. Yet, on more than one occasion telegrams had been used to communicate among the families. Still somewhat puzzled she opened the envelope, and in astonished disbelief read the words, “We regret to inform you that Lieutenant Karl Frederick Border…”
Almost immediately she was overcome with sorrow and tears began to flow. Then abruptly, realizing the intended recipient of the telegram, she regained her composure. She had just accepted the telegram intended for Karl’s Mary. The Navy wasn’t aware Mary C. Border, the person Karl had rightly named to contact in case of an emergency, had moved from the address he listed. “Good God in heaven. What can I do? What must I do?” Mary Border was in Mobile, Alabama, visiting Captain and Missy Border, Mary’s new mother and father-in-law, whom she hadn’t met before she and Karl were married on 20 June. Joey knew what she must do, without hesitation.
The agonizing phone call to Mobile was first, in which she had to attempt hiding the sadness in her voice and ask to speak to Bob’s father first - then tell him and let him tell Missy and Karl’s Mary. Next came the call to Bob’s training squadron. She asked that he come to their apartment as soon as possible. “There is an emergency.” The message conveyed to Bob was troubling.
When he arrived, he could tell by the expression on her face something was terribly wrong. She asked him to sit down on the couch, she had something to tell him. Controlling her emotions as best she could, she gently described the arrival of the telegram she had in her hand, and how she mistakenly accepted what was obviously intended for Mary, Karl’s wife. “Karl has been killed,” she said. “Here’s the telegram. I called your father just before I called the squadron to ask that you come home.”56
Typically, like all those before Karl, the death notification from the Department of the Navy gave no details or explanation of the cause, thus Karl’s father, a highly respected senior officer in the Navy, immediately began inquiring of the facts and circumstances, and the outlines of his last flight began to emerge. In the end, the accident presented a set of facts entirely consistent with the strong, caring, duty-bound, conscientious man, Karl Frederick Border.
Sunday, 11 October, Karl, with Aviation Radioman/gunner First Class Arthur S. Margarido in the aft cockpit, took off for a dive bomb training mission to drop live ordnance from SBD-3 Bureau No. 40 6654. The aircraft was carrying a 500-pound bomb, hung underneath the fuselage, on the plane’s centerline, almost directly below the front cockpit. The flight was from Naval Air Station Barber’s Point, a new field built after the attack on Pearl Harbor and before Karl returned to Hawaii.
Once airborne, just past the end of the runway, he immediately retracted the landing gear, and continued in a straight, very slow climb for about ten seconds, after which he made an S-turn starting to the right into Ewa Field, which was about 1 ½ miles distant along the axis of the Barber’s Point runway. The landing at 0910 hours was apparently forced, judging by the nature of the approach and the fact his landing gear was not extended. The landing was good and the plane skidded along the runway 500 feet, resting on the bomb all the way. According to the accident report, Karl and Arthur were just preparing to step out of their cockpits when the bomb exploded, disintegrating the center section and breaking the plane in two at Karl’s cockpit. The bodies of both were thrown about twenty feet by the explosion. The airplane was demolished with only slight damage to the engine, and the cause of the accident was undetermined.57
Bob and Joey were later told that Karl was exiting the front cockpit when he saw Arthur Margarido having trouble getting out of the aft cockpit. He went to help, and they were both killed by the explosion. As well attested to by men who flew in the aft cockpit of the SBDs, the rear seat was always more difficult to escape in an emergency, due to the presence of the .30-caliber machine guns and ammunition, parachute, survival gear, and other complicating factors associated with the swivel seat, which could rotate 360 degrees in a confined space.
Carrier Air Group Ten, on Enterprise, which Karl would have boarded with VB-10 and his second division, entered the fierce battle for Guadalcanal 13-14 November 1942. Though VB-10 lost four airplanes and their crews, one plane and its crew from VS-10, and two pilots in VF-10 received wounds, none of the eight men from VB-10 were from the second division. His former wingman, Lieutenant (jg) “Hoot” Gibson and the crews of second division acquitted themselves admirably, with “Hoot” given credit for badly damaging a Japanese cruiser in a dive bomb attack.58
Karl Border didn’t fight in the war he trained for and longed to enter - and didn’t complete the trip to Tokyo of which he wrote. He didn’t return to Mary, whom he loved so deeply and with whom he had shared so few days in his young life. Neither did he return to his family who were so proud of him, nor did he and Bob serve together again in the Navy as Karl hoped. Bob Border, however, did enter the war in the South Pacific - not as the fighter pilot he sought to be, rather as a dive bomber pilot in the Douglas Dauntless SBD, the same type of airplane Karl was flying when he made the emergency landing at Ewa and died attempting to assist Arthur Margarido to safety.
In August 1942, as Karl was preparing to return to the Hawaiian Islands, the United States had first taken the offensive in the Pacific in a joint land, sea and air campaign to stop Japan’s aggressive moves toward the New Hebrides Islands, New Caledonia, the Samoan and Fiji Islands. The enemy intended to cut the supply lines to New Zealand and Australia and possibly isolate both Allied nations. After the 1st Marine Division landed on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands on 7 August, there followed a series of bloody naval, land, and air battles to retake Guadalcanal from the Japanese, seize the airfield they were building on the island, blunt their advance into the South Pacific, and expand Allied holdings in the Solomons. Joey Border’s father had left San Diego, assigned to support the marines during their campaign.
Following Bob Border’s assignment to the Advanced Carrier Training Group at Navy North Island, where Bob began flying the SBD on 20 November 1942, he completed carrier qualification training in the SBD on 16 February 1943. In early March, with others in his class, he deployed to Tongue Point Naval Air Station, Astoria, Oregon. The Navy was forming a new squadron, VC-60, Composite Squadron 60, equipped with SBDs and the FM-1, an F4F Wildcat fighter built by General Motors. Joey went with him, and they lived in a small, single, motel-like housing unit on the coast. Equipped with an old pot-bellied, wood-burning stove, the new quarters didn’t include exactly the kind of cooking equipment Joey loved.
But Bob was excited about his new squadron’s airplanes. It included fighter aircraft. He believed he might finally achieve his goal. On 24 March he flew an FM-1 for the first time. A fighter! What he had always yearned to fly. The next day it was another training mission in the FM-1. Then, in the weeks leading to 31 May, he flew 30 more training sorties in the FM-1, intermixed with flights in the SNJ-4 and the SBD-4, newer models of the SNJ trainer he flew at Pensacola, and the SBD, which he began flying at Navy North Island.
On 1 June 1943, circumstances changed again, and Bob had to leave his dream of flying fighters behind. Another squadron was being formed in San Diego. Bob’s squadron commander in VC-60, Lieutenant Commander John H. “Red” Pennoyer remained his squadron commander, but was given command of the new Composite Squadron 40 (VC-40) equipped with newer SBD-5s and TBMs, the new, larger Avenger torpedo bombers. Bob and all the SBD crews were abruptly ordered back to San Diego, to join with the TBMs and begin training in their new squadron organization. They rapidly packed up and flew their SBD-5s from Tongue Point to North Island Naval Air Station, and were told to be prepared to leave at a moment’s notice.
He began training in earnest again in the SBD, and on 9 June flew his first mission with Ordnanceman First Class R.W. Walcott, the man who in the weeks and months ahead became the primary crew member to fly missions with him in the Douglas Dauntless dive bomber.
Joey arranged to leave their rental bungalow near Tongue Point, packed their car and followed him to San Diego. She drove alone, late into the two evenings, using headlights - blackout lights - the small slits through which light filtered from blue painted headlamps. The trip was far less pleasant than the drive north to Tongue Point.
She decided to stay with her mother in the rented home her parents had moved into in San Diego. The “hurry-up” notice resulted in a lengthy wait before the entire squadron, in early August, went aboard a “jeep carrier,” which would take them from San Diego to Espiritu Santo in the New Hebrides.
This time Joey and Bob parted with a passionate kiss and an embrace filled with the certain knowledge he was leaving to fight a war that had already cost so many thousands of lives and savaged the lives of the families who lost their loved ones. Karl, who lost his life in an accident and would never make his trip to Tokyo, had been gone ten months. A wrenching blow to the Borders, Chubbocks, and only slightly less to the Springers, time had lessened the pain’s intensity - but the memory was still present. Nevertheless, both Bob and Joey, deeply in love, ever optimistic and positive in their determination to be together whenever possible - for a lifetime - pushed aside every notion of fear, and held tightly to the ones that would hold them together. Joey, “Write every day humanly possible. I will do the same. Take care of yourself. I will be waiting.” Bob, “I will, and I will come home safely. Plan on it.” Then he was gone.
After VC-40’s long voyage to Espiritu Santo, the squadron resumed training for combat operations on 28 August, and in the period 28 August through 13 September Bob flew 15 sorties from “Buttons,” a large airfield on the huge and growing staging base at Espiritu Santo. The squadron was concentrating on gunnery, bombing, navigation and search. Among Bob’s missions with R.W. Walcott in the rear cockpit was the delivery of live ordnance - in one instance, a 1,000-lb. bomb. They were now ready to join the fight, but they weren’t going to be flying combat from an aircraft carrier. They would be flying from a South Pacific island airfield.
On 13 September VC-40, composed of SBD-5 Douglas Dauntless dive bombers and TBM Avenger torpedo bombers, led by a navigation guide R-4D aircraft, the Navy version of the Army Air Forces’ C-47 “Gooney Bird,” flew four and a half hours to Henderson Field on Guadalcanal Island in the Solomons. The squadron was now under the operational command of COMAIRSOLS (Command, Aircraft, Solomons), a Navy command of land-based attack aircraft reporting to Admiral Nimitz at Pearl Harbor. The Pacific Command was steadily building its forces, driving the Japanese further to the northwest up the Solomons’ chain, toward their homeland.
The next day he flew with VC-40 on their first combat mission, a raid on Ballale Airfield, on a small island off the southeast tip of the heavily defended island of Bougainville. The mission lasted over five hours, and due to the approximate 290 nautical mile outbound flight to the target area, weather encountered on the return flight, and fuel limitations, landed at Munda Airfield on New Georgia Island. The next day, in an hour and a half flight, the squadron returned to Henderson Field, over-flying friendly-controlled Segi Airfield on southern New Georgia en route to “Cactus,” the call sign given Guadalcanal’s Henderson Field by the Americans.
On the 16th, he flew with VC-40 on another lengthy, nearly four and a half hour bombing mission against Ballale, recovering this time at Segi Airfield to refuel before returning to “Cactus.” He was excited about the prospect of frequent strike missions against the Japanese, but once again frustrating circumstances and his Naval Academy background intervened.
A message from the Pacific Command arrived directing that two Naval Academy graduates be assigned to the COMAIRSOLS’ joint and combined staff. The staff, initially formed at “Cactus” was to manage day-to-day flying operations in behalf of the Navy command’s boss. Army and Army Air Force representatives were part of the command, primarily as liaison officers, as well as Australians and New Zealanders, with the intent of integrating air operations of all Pacific Command services and the three allies in the campaign to secure the Solomon Islands, including the northernmost island of Bougainville. A primary objective of the campaign was to eventually isolate and bypass the large, heavily-defended Japanese base at Rabaul, on the island of New Britain.
Bob was clearly disappointed at being taken out of flying duties and placed on a staff. On 18 September it was back to “Buttons” to prepare for setting up the staff operation. With R.W. Walcott in the rear cockpit, he returned to Espiritu Santo on an SBD ferry flight lasting over four hours.
On 24 October he managed to fly one strike mission against Kahili Airfield on the southern tip of Bougainville, after flying an SBD-4 into “Cactus” on 5 October by way of the Russell Islands and Tulagi, then hitching a ride on an R4D to Munda Airfield. From that day forward into January, it was all staff duty and flying time was scarce to non-existent, with only one flight each in November and December - and no more strike missions until January 1944 when he flew two more. One was a raid on Japanese ships in Rabaul Harbor, a seven and one half hour mission, the other against Lakunai Airfield near the enemy base at Rabaul, a tough seven-hour mission.
The missions were much longer, but at least his flying hours and sorties were increasing in January, with nearly 38 hours and six sorties in the SBD. Two of the other four were missions labeled as “false starts” due to weather or some other complicating factor, in which the raiders returned home after extended periods airborne.
After a one-week R&R (Rest and Recuperation) in Sydney, Australia, he returned to Espiritu Santo on 7 February and began training to rejoin VC-40, which had moved forward to Piva Uncle strip at Torokina, Bougainville, near the Navy’s recently-seized anchorage at Empress August Bay on the west side, center of the island. After flying six training sorties out of Espiritu Santo, R.W. Walcott rejoined him and on 24 February they ferried an SBD to Segi, on southern New Georgia.
By the time he and Walcott were ready again to begin flying strike missions in early March, the men of VC-40 had given themselves the nickname “Red’s Raiders” for their highly respected skipper, Lieutenant Commander “Red” Pennoyer, who had brought them together at Tongue Point Naval Air Station, Oregon, taken them to war, and aggressively led and leapfrogged his raiders up the Solomon Island chain to Torokina - with Japanese ground forces still occupying positions on the island.
The still unresolved ground battle on Bouganville made life more than uncomfortable on several occasions, with night time Japanese infantry attacks on the field’s defense perimeter and artillery rounds frequently fired into the airfield. At one point, some of the men in aircraft engineering (maintenance) decided to join the marines’ infantry battle and returned early the next morning with a number of battle souvenirs, including Japanese officers’ swords. They suffered no casualties, and word spread of their easy success in obtaining infantry experience, along with noteworthy war souvenirs.
