Lieutenants Kenneth Marlar Taylor and George Schwartz Welch, Air Corps, United States Army. (U.S. Air Force)
On the morning of December 7, 1941, very few American fighter pilots were able to get airborne to fight the Japanese attackers. Ken Taylor and George Schwartz were two of them.
Distinguished Service Cross
Second Lieutenants Kenneth Marlar Taylor and George S. Welch took two Curtiss-Wright P-40B Warhawk fighters from a remote airfield at Haleiwa, on the northwestern side of the island of Oahu, and against overwhelming odds, each shot down four enemy airplanes: Welch shot down three Aichi D3A Type 99 “Val” dive bombers and one Mitsubishi A6M2 Type 0 (“Zero”) fighter. Taylor also shot down four Japanese airplanes.
Although both officers were nominated for the Medal of Honor by General Henry H. (“Hap”) Arnold, they were awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.
During the War, Welch flew the Bell P-39 Airacobra and Lockheed P-38 Lightning on 348 combat missions. He had 16 confirmed aerial victories over Japanese airplanes and rose to the rank of Major.
Suffering from malaria, George Welch was out of combat and recuperating in Australia. When North American Aviation approached General Arnold to recommend a highly experienced fighter pilot as a test pilot for the P-51H Mustang, Arnold suggested Welch and authorized his resignation from the Air Corps.
Aichi D3A Type 99 dive bomber, “Val”. (San Diego Air and Space Museum Archives)
George Welch tested the P-51H, XP-86 Sabre and YF-100A Super Sabre for North American Aviation. Reportedly, while demonstrating the F-86 Sabre’s capabilities to Air Force pilots during the Korean War, he shot down as many as six MiG 15s.
George Welch was killed while testing a F-100A Super Sabre, 12 October 1954.
A Mitsubishi A6M2 Type 0 Model 21, A1-108, flown by PO2c Sakae Mori, takes of from IJN Akagi, an aircraft carrier of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 7 December 1941. (U.S. Navy)
Ken Taylor scored two more victories at Guadalcanal before wounds received in an air raid sent him back to the United States. He remained in the Air Force until he retired in 1971 with the rank of Brigadier General. He died in 2006.
Curtiss-Wright P-40 Warhawk, circa 1940. (Rudy Arnold Collection/NASM)
The Curtiss-Wright Corporation Hawk 81B (P-40B Warhawk) was a single-seat, single-engine pursuit. It was a low-wing monoplane of all-metal construction, and used flush riveting to reduce aerodynamic drag. It had an enclosed cockpit and retractable landing gear. Extensive wind tunnel testing at the NACA Langley laboratories refined the airplane’s design, significantly increasing the top speed.
The P-40B Warhawk was 31 feet, 8¾ inches (9.671 meters) long, with a wingspan of 37 feet, 4 inches (11.379 meters). Its empty weight was 5,590 pounds (2,536 kilograms), and 7,326 pounds (3,323 kilograms) gross. The maximum takeoff weight was 7,600 pounds (3,447 kilograms).
The P-40B was powered by a liquid-cooled, supercharged, 1,710.60-cubic-inch-displacement (28.032 liter) Allison Engineering Co. V-1710-C15 (V-1710-33), a single overhead cam (SOHC) 60° V-12 engine, which produced 1,040 horsepower at 2,800 r.p.m., and turned a three-bladed Curtiss Electric constant-speed propeller through a 2:1 gear reduction. The V-1710-33 was 8 feet, 2.54 inches (2.503 meters) long, 3 feet, 5.88 inches (1.064 meters) high, and 2 feet, 5.29 inches (0.744 meters) wide. It weighed 1,340 pounds (607.8 kilograms).
Allison Engineering Co. V-1710-33 V-12 aircraft engine at the Smithsonian Institution National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. (NASM)
Heavier than the initial production P-40, the P-40B was slightly slower, with a maximum speed of 352 miles per hour (567 kilometers per hour) at 15,000 feet (4,572 meters). It had a service ceiling of 32,400 feet (9,876 meters) and range of 730 miles (1,175 kilometers).
Armament consisted of two air-cooled Browning AN-M2 .50-caliber machine guns mounted in the cowlingabove the engine and synchronized to fire forward through the propeller arc, with 380 rounds per gun, and four Browning M2 .30-caliber aircraft machine guns, with two in each wing.
Curtiss-Wright produced 13,738 P-40s between 1939 and 1944. 131 of those were P-40B Warhawks.
A flight of six Curtiss-Wright P-40B Warhawks of the 44th Pursuit Squadron, 18th Pursuit Group, over the island of Oahu, Territory of Hawaii, 9:00 a.m., 1 August 1941. (U.S. Air Force)
Cornelia Clark Fort, with a Fairchild PT-19A Cornell trainer. (U.S. Air Force)
7 December 1941: Cornelia Clark Fort was an instructor in the Civilian Pilot Training Program at John Rodgers Airport, near Honolulu on the island of Oahu, Territory of Hawaii. Early on this Sunday morning, she and a student, a Mr. Suomala, were practicing touch-and-goes at John Rodgers Airport in an Interstate Cadet, NC37345, a two-place light airplane owned by the local flying club.¹
Shortly before 8:00 a.m., Miss Fort saw a silver military-type airplane approaching her Cadet at high speed. She took over the flight controls from Mr. Suomala and put the trainer into a steep climb. The other airplane flew directly under, close enough that she felt the vibrations of its engine. She saw that its wings carried the “rising sun” insignia of the Empire of Japan.
Fort landed the Cadet at John Rogers Airport, which was being attacked by Japanese airplanes. Another trainer on the ground was destroyed by machine gunfire and its instructor killed.
A page from Cornelia Fort’s pilot logbook with her remarks for December 7, 1941. (Texas Women’s University)
Fort’s logbook entry for 7 December 1941 reads: “Cadet, 37345, Cont. 65—Flight interrupted by Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. An enemy airplane shot at my airplane and missed and proceeded to strafe John Rodgers, a civilian airport. Another airplane machine-gunned the ground in front of me as I taxied back to the hangar.” The logbook shows her total accumulated flight time at the end of this flight as 893 hours, 25 minutes.
Cornelia Clark Fort. (Tennessee State Library and Archives)
Cornelia Clark Fort was born into an affluent family in Nashville, Tennessee, 5 February 1919, the fourth of five children of Dr. Rufus Elijah Fort and Louise Clark Fort. Her father was a prominent surgeon who co-founded the National Life and Accident Insurance Company. The family lived at Fortland, an estate east of Nashville.
Cornelia Clark Fort. (1936 Milestones)
Cornelia attended the Ward-Belmont School in Nashville, then studied at the Ogontz School in Philadelphia. (Amelia Earhart had also attended Ogontz.) In 1937, Miss Fort transferred to Sarah Lawrence College, Yonkers, New York, where she studied Literature. She graduated 10 June 1939.
After taking a flight with a friend, Jack Caldwell, in January 1940, she pursued an interest in aviation, starting flight lessons the following day. She had earned her pilot certificate and flight instructor certificate by June 1940, which made her the first woman to become an instructor at Nashville. With the Civilian Pilot Training Program, she first went to Fort Collins, Colorado, where she taught for about three months, then went on to Honolulu.
Pilots of the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron at Long Beach Army Airfield, 7 March 1943. Left to right, Barbara Towne, Cornelia Clark Fort, Evelyn Sharp, Barbara Erickson and Bernice Batten. The airplane is a Vultee BT-13 Valiant. (Texas Women’s University)
Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, all civilian aircraft were grounded. Cornelia Fort was able to return to the mainland United States in early 1942. In September she was one of the first 25 women accepted into the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Service. She was assigned to the 6th Ferrying Group based at Long Beach, California.
Cornelia Clark Fort’s military identification card. (Nashville Public Library)
On 21 March 1943, while ferrying a new Vultee BT-13A Valiant basic trainer, serial number 42-42432, from the factory at Downey, California, to an airfield in Texas, her left wing was struck from behind by another airplane. With its wing damaged, the BT-13 rolled over and entered an inverted dive. It crashed approximately 10 miles (16 kilometers) south of Merkel, Texas, and Cornelia Fort was killed.
Cornelia Clark Fort was the first female pilot killed while on active military duty. She was 24 years old.
Air & Space/Smithsonian quoted from a letter written by Fort in a January 2012 article:
“I dearly loved the airports, little and big. I loved the sky and the airplanes, and yet, best of all I loved the flying. . . I was happiest in the sky at dawn when the quietness of the air was like a caress, when the noon sun beat down, and at dusk when the sky was drenched with the fading light.”
—Cornelia Clark Fort, 1942.
Interstate Cadet S-1A NC34939, s/n 34, the same type airplane flown by Cornelia Fort on 7 December 1941.
The trainer flown by Cornelia Fort and her student on the morning of 7 December 1941 was a Cadet S-1A, serial number 188, built by the Interstate Aircraft and Engineering Company, El Segundo, California. It was a high-wing monoplane with a tandem cockpit. The fuselage of the Cadet was built of a welded tubular steel framework. The wings had two spruce spars with Alclad metal ribs. The leading edges were covered in Dural sheet and the complete wing then covered in doped fabric. The wing support struts were made of tubular steel. The S-1A was 24 feet, 0 inches (7.315 meters) long with a wingspan of 35 feet, 6 inches (10.820 meters) and height of 7 feet, 3 inches (2.210 meters). The airplane had an empty weight of 720 pounds (327 kilograms) and maximum weight of 1,200 pounds (544 kilograms).
The Interstate Cadet S-1A was powered by an air-cooled, normally-aspirated 171.002-cubic-inch-displacement (2.802 liter) Continental A65-8 horizontally-opposed four cylinder direct-drive engine, with a compression ratio of 6.3:1. It was rated at 65 horsepower at 2,300 r.p.m. at Sea Level, using 73-octane gasoline. The engine turned a two-bladed fixed-pitch wooden propeller with a diameter of 6 feet, 4 inches (1.930 meters).
The Cadet S-1A had a maximum speed of 103 miles per hour (166 kilometers per hour) in level flight, and 139 miles per hour (224 kilometers per hour) in a dive. The service ceiling was 14,500 feet (4,420 meters). The S-1A’s fuel capacity was 15 gallons (57 liters). Its maximum range was approximately 350 miles (563 kilometers).
Approximately 320 Cadets were built by Interstate in 1941–1942. They were sold for $2,095. With the onset of World War II, Interstate switched production to the L-6 Grasshopper.
The fuselage frame, c/n 188, is owned by a retired airline pilot, Kent Pietsch, who owns and has restored four other Cadets.
Interstate Cadet S-1A NC37266, flown by Greg Anders. (Wikipedia)
¹ Greg Anders, Director of The Heritage Flight Museum, Burlington, Washington, owns an Interstate Cadet that he believes was the one flown by Cornelia Fort on 7 December 1941. It carried the registration number NC37266. In an article in Air & Space Magazine, November 2016, he stated that he believes that Fort’s logbook is actually a copy, and that Fort incorrectly listed NC37345.
Mitsubishi A6M2 Type 0 Model 21 (“Zero”) fighters ready for takeoff aboard an aircraft carrier of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 7 December 1941. (Imperial Japanese Navy)Mitsubishi A6M2 Type 0 Model 21 (“Zero”) fighters prepare for takeoff aboard IJN Akagi, 7 December 1941. (Imperial Japanese Navy)A Mitsubishi A6M2 Type 0 Model 21, A1-108, flown by PO2c Sakae Mori, takes of from IJN Akagi, an aircraft carrier of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 7 December 1941. (U.S. Navy)
Boeing YB-17 36-149 nosed over on landing at Seattle, 7 December 1936. (Unattributed)Lieutenant Colonel Stanley Umstead
7 December 1936: After its third test flight, the first YB-17 service test aircraft, 36-149, landed back at Boeing Field, Seattle, Washington. The pilot was Lieutenant Colonel Stanley M. Umstead, Air Corps, United States Army, who was considered to be the Army’s most experienced and capable pilot.
When the airplane touched down, the main wheels locked and after skidding a short distance, the B-17 nosed over. The bomber’s brakes had welded. No injuries were reported. 36-149 suffered moderate damage.
Boeing repaired the bomber. On 11 January 1937, the YB-17 was flown to Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio, for continued testing. 36-149 was then assigned to the 2nd Bombardment Group at Langley Field, Virginia, 1 March 1937. In October 1940 the bomber was transferred to the 19th Bombardment Group at March Field, California. On 11 February 1942 it was transferred to the Air Park at Amarillo Army Air Field, a B-17 training base in Texas. 36-149 was written off 11 December 1942.
A contemporary newspaper article reported the incident:
Landing from a test flight in Seattle, Wash., the new 16 ton army bombing plane YB-17 nosed over and was badly damaged. Capt. E.R. McReynolds, an army air corps observer who was aboard, said the air brakes locked, preventing the landing wheels from rolling when the plane touched the ground. It was reported subsequently in Washington, D.C. that the accident might result in suspending construction of 13 bombing planes of similar type pending an investigation. The YB-17, largest land plane ever built in America, was designed to carry a ton of bombs and had a cruising range of 3,000 miles.
—Chicago Sunday Tribune, 13 December 1936, Part 2, Page 8, Column 8.
Boeing YB-17 36-149 resting on its nose after its brakes locked while landing. —LIFE Magazine, 21 December 1936, at page 15.
The YB-17 had several improvements over the Model 299, which had been retroactively designated XB-17. There were long carburetor intakes on the top of the engine nacelles, which visually distinguishes the YB-17 from the follow-on YB-17A. The main landing gear has one strut rather than the two of the Model 299.
The Boeing Model 299B was designated YB-17 by the Army Air Corps. It was 68 feet, 4 inches (20.828 meters) long with a wingspan of 103 feet, 9⅜ inches (31.633 meters) and an overall height of 18 feet, 4 inches (5.588 meters). It had an empty weight of 24,465 pounds (11,097 kilograms), gross weight of 34,880 pounds (15,821 kilograms) and maximum takeoff weight of 42,600 pounds (19,323 kilograms).
Instead of the Pratt & Whitney engines installed on the 299, the YB-17 had four air-cooled, supercharged 1,823.129-cubic-inch-displacement (29.875 liter) Wright Aeronautical Division Cyclone 9 R-1820G5 (R-1820-39) nine-cylinder radial engines with a compression ratio of 6.45:1. The R-1820-39 was rated at 805 horsepower at 2,100 r.p.m., at Sea Level, and 930 horsepower at 2,200 r.p.m., at Sea Level, for takeoff. The engines turned three-bladed Hamilton Standard constant-speed propellers through a 16:11 gear reduction, in order to match the engines’ effective power range with the propellers. The R-1820-39 was 3 feet, 9-7/16 inches (1.154 meters) long, 4 feet, 6-¼ inches (1.378 meters) in diameter, and weighed 1,198 pounds (543.4 kilograms).
The cruise speed of the YB-17 was 217 miles per hour (349 kilometers per hour) and its maximum speed was 256 miles per hour (412 kilometers per hour) at 14,000 feet (4,267 meters). The bomber’s service ceiling was 30,600 feet (9,327 meters) and the maximum range was 3,320 miles (5,343 kilometers).
The YB-17 could carry 8,000 pounds (3,629 kilograms) of bombs. Defensive armament consisted of five .30-caliber air-cooled machine guns.
Boeing YB-17 36-149 after landing accident, 7 December 1936. (Unattributed)
