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by CAPT N. J.”Dusty” Kleiss, USN-Ret
Note:
the following is a letter from VS-6 pilot “Dusty” Kleiss in response to
a Roundtable member seeking information on her uncle. The subject is Aviation Ordnanceman First Class Thurman Swindell,
who was killed in his SBD as it dove on the Kaga at Midway.
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Tracy Lewis asked the Roundtable if it could
give her more information about her great uncle Thurman Randolf Swindell,
AOM1/c, who was KIA in the Battle of Midway.
Tracy is interested in knowing this man not only as a relative, but
because she is taking a history class in college and must have a paper about a
famous person of WWII. The Roundtable
passed Tracy's request to me to determine if I could give any additional
information other than that given to her by the Roundtable.
I first met Thurman Swindell in the fall of 1941,
when I was given a collateral duty as Education Officer of Scouting Six. One of my first assignments was scoring the
official (closely secured) tests for enlisted personnel to meet qualifications
to a higher rating. One of the first
official tests I examined was for determining the necessary qualifications of
moving from 2/c to 1/c status. There
were only two enlisted men of Scouting Six who met possible advancement to that
difficult promotion. Meeting official tests was not enough. The contenders also had to score on petty
officer ratings, approval from their division officer, their executive
officer...and they had to obtain approval of Chief Myers. Gaining approval from Chief Myers was about
as difficult in reaching Mount Everest without stopping for breath.
Chief Myers, with a small crew, could repair a
shot-up plane brought in on an afternoon and have it ready for flying at 0400
next morning; that was after replacing a wing or a tail and checking all items
including the compass. If the plane was
beyond repair, he would hoist it onto the overhead and bring down a new one and
make certain that everything worked.
Then he would repaint the plane and put in all markings and insignia. He would do everything except replacing an
engine. That chore was left to Chief
Dodge. Before the Pearl Harbor attack,
Chief Myers’ hair was black. A few
months later it was totally gray.
My little black book shows that Swindell made 3.54 on
the official exam, 3.8 on petty officer ability, good ratings from all
commissioned officers, and an OK from Chief Myers. That was the highest rating ever given by Myers. In contrast, the other applicant for
possible advancement to first class made 3.1 on the official exam, a 3.2 rating
for petty officer ability, and was not recommended for advancement by the
division officer, the executive officer or by Chief Myers.
Now let me give some indication of what an
AOM1/c [Aviation Ordnanceman First Class] was expected to do, and how he must
train those under him. On the night of
7 December 1941, our Torpedo Squadron Six and five of us in SBDs (carrying
hydrofluoric acid for TBD smoke screen), and some F4F fighters searched late
into the night to hit Japanese carriers.
We couldn't find any. Those F4F
fighters were shot down by our people on Pearl Harbor. We SBDs landed on our ship ahead of the
TBDs. One new TBD pilot, who had never
landed on a carrier at night, made a rough landing. The torpedo broke loose, its propeller started twirling, meaning
that it was armed and needed only a little bump on the nose to explode. "Slim" Townsend, the flight deck
officer, saw it coming towards him at high speed. Slim jumped on it like a bucking bronco, steered it away from the
island, and stopped it. Two ordnance men ran to it, disarmed it in two or
three seconds, and helped place it on a cart, out of the way, allowing the next
plane to land without circling.
Swindell was not on any SBD of those 7 December 1941
flights. He and his crew were too busy
putting depth charges, bombs and ammunition on aircraft. On 20 February 1942, AOM2/c Swindell flew
with ENS M. A. Merrill in 6-S-19 on our attack against Wake Island, which had
been captured by the Japanese. We sunk
one ship in the harbor and damaged another ship as we made a "dog leg"
heading back to our Enterprise.
(We never went directly back to our ship because that would show the
enemy our position.) We were tearing
that ship apart, using left over ammunition, when a U.S. cruiser several miles
away saw what was happening. She fired
one salvo, sinking that ship. Only four
Japanese survived. We captured them,
interrogated them, and made them the first Japanese prisoners of war. Lots of damage was done to Wake Island from
our dive bombers and from shells from our cruisers.
On 4 March 1942 Swindell flew with ENS Merrill in
6-S-3, making an attack on Marcus Island.
Based on heavy cloud cover and many AA batteries aiming at us, it was
hard to tell how much damage was inflicted on their hangars, storehouses, and
oil and gasoline tanks. One thing we
knew for certain: we clobbered their radio station. We heard Tokyo repeatedly calling Marcus to answer. They continued for the next 24 hours. Marcus never replied.
A photograph of 13 May 1942 has a caption showing
that Swindell was now AOM1/c.
Apparently a vacancy had opened for that petty officer slot. Almost always a slot opened only when the
previous recipient was lost in battle.
On the morning of 4 June1942, Swindell flew with ENS
J. Q. Roberts. I watched them dive on
the Kaga, two planes ahead of me.
They were in the fifth plane to dive.
I never saw them again. I was
too busy aiming my bombs on the Kaga.
The official battle report states, "forced landing near Kaga." Neither Roberts nor Swindell were ever
found. All available evidence indicates
that their plane was shot down by AA gunfire.
It took only four hits, only seconds apart, to
demolish the Kaga. Each of us
carried a 500-pound bomb and two 100-pound incendiaries. Additional hits were made, but many SBDs had
to select other targets because flames and smoke obscured the carrier. The Battle of Midway was won in less than
five minutes. That's all the time it took to make three of the best Japanese carriers
into balls of flame.
It might be noted that only the very best people
occupied the rear seat of our SBDs in battle.
Don Hoff, of Fresno, California, who was a Radioman 3/c at that time,
assures me that AOM1/c Swindell had flown numerous previous flights. He was an expert in gunnery, and was capable
of operating all the numerous radio equipment in our SBDs. That included knowing how to operate the new
YE-ZB homing equipment. Not all SBD
plane crews from other carriers were able to operate the new YE-ZB homing
system. They landed on the ocean. Fortunately, most of those crews were picked
up at the end of the battle.
Statistics show that our dive bombers were the best
in the world and they sunk more Japanese military ships than any other method, including
attacks by submarines and surface ships.
That great method paid a high price.
More than half of our original Scouting Six crews were lost in the first
six months of WW II. Just imagine
sitting on the back seat of an SBD during combat. You would face to the rear, holding twin .30 caliber machine
guns, scanning the sky for Zeros, ready to shoot them down before they shoot
you. Then, suddenly, you are plunged
downward vertically at 250 miles per hour, pushing downward on your seat with a
force of one ton at eight "G’s" after the pilot has dropped his
bomb. Then you must be ready to aim at
more Zeros. Then the pilot tells you to
go on the air, or switch to the homing frequency, or give hand signals to
nearby crews in Morse code. All of this
requires securing the guns, reaching forward, changing radio coils, and moving
dials accurately and quickly.
We pilots always received medals when our airplane
and crew did something important. The
enlisted man in the back seat was rarely mentioned. I would have been killed long ago had it not been for the skills
of my RM3/c, John Snowden. As
Educational Officer, I had selected him before other pilots noticed his
abilities. He scored number one in all
categories for promotion, the highest ever recorded in my little black book.
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