Palm Desert resident Blaine Mack wears his leather pilot's jacket from World War II while holding a leather flying helmet and goggles. Mack, who retired from the U.S. Air Force as a lieutenant colonel, flew P-38s while stationed in the Aleutian Islands in World War II. / Crystal Chatham, The Desert Sun
Blaine Mack was deployed to the Aleutian Islands, where he was assigned a “brand-spanking-new” P-38, twin-engine bomber. / Courtesy of Blaine Mack
Blaine Mack
AGE: 85.
HOMETOWN: Palm Desert.
MILITARY BRANCH: U.S. Army Air Corps, 1943 - 1946; 11th Air Force, 11th Fighter Squadron, 343rd Fighter Group;
RANK: Lieutenant colonel; Mack also served in the U.S. Air Force from 1953 to 1970.
FAMILY: Wife: Helen; three children, one grandchild.
More
After high school in Astoria, Ore., Blaine Mack wanted to fly planes in World War II. But because he was too young he headed off to Oregon State University instead.
The now 82-year-old Palm Desert resident left college after running out of money and, on the way home, stopped by Portland Air Base and enlisted in the Army Air Corps.
“I was barely 19 years old (in 1944) when we got our wings and commissions as second lieutenants,” Mack said.
But he almost lost his life before even seeing battle.
While on a night training flight from Mather Field in Sacramento, the bomber he was piloting lost one engine, then another and he ended up crash-landing in an orange field in Pacoima.
“The left motor conked out as we were over Los Angeles,” he told the Los Angeles Examiner at the time. “It was 10:30 p.m. I put the landing lights on and headed for Newhall.”
After losing the second motor, Mack and his co-pilot, flight officer Raymond A. Martin Jr., 22, prepared for a landing.
“The ground was coming up fast making about 140 mph,” he told the Examiner.
Mack, who sustained only a few bruises, pulled his buddy, who suffered a deep scalp wound, out of the plane.
They spent their recovery time at the Army's Birmingham General Hospital in Van Nuys.
“After crashing in night fighters school, I ended up going back into day fighters,” Mack said.
Mack handles the engines
Mack was deployed to the Aleutian Islands, where he was assigned a “brand-spanking-new” P-38, twin-engine bomber just delivered from Lockheed.
Mack was assigned to the 11th Fighter Squadron — a group of four P-38s — with the 343rd Fighter Group.
The aircraft generally carried four 750-pound bombs and two 150-gallon “drop tanks” of gasoline.
The P-38's range was not quite long enough to make the 800-mile trip to the bombing target on the Kuril Islands located northeast of Japan.
“Charlie Lindbergh worked for Pan Am before the war and his job as an engineer was to figure out how to get better range out of those flying boats that we were flying across there and, in the process, he learned a lot of things that we were doing were wrong,” Mack said.
It had to do with how you handle the engines, he said.
“When we first went up there, we couldn't reach the targets and get home even without bombs,” he said
Shortly thereafter, they received a four-page set of instructions, which they followed perfectly.
“And we found out that he lengthened the distance that we could fly by 40 percent,” Mack said. “Now, all of a sudden, we could not only get to the targets and get back, but we could carry bombs to the targets.”
Mack said he vividly remembers the night before the first day of the preparations for the invasion of Japan.
Mack, who was to lead the 11th squadron the following day, listened — as he did every night — to a little shortwave radio that picked up station KSL in Salt Lake City.
“We got another one that Tokyo Rose was on all the time. We thought it was pretty neat because she played good music, but she always knew what we were doing,” he said.
That evening, Mack and his buddies heard an unbelievable announcement come across the airwaves.
“‘News flash, news flash, the Japanese have just surrendered,'” he said, recalling the radio announcer's words.
“We didn't believe it,” he said.
Once they got confirmation, they called group headquarters to let the lead squadron — scheduled to be up at 3 a.m. to brief for the mission — about the news.
He talked to a friend with the 54th, who was mad because Mack woke him up. He didn't believe what he was saying.
“‘No, I'm not kidding,'” Mack said. “‘Step outside your hut and look over at us on Shemya,'” Mack said.
Mack's group was across the runway where everybody was firing their guns.
“The only fireworks we had were the 50-calibers and the 20-mm cannons we had,” he said.
The Japanese surrender saved many American lives, he said.
“We figured that our losses were going to be absolutely enormous,” he said.
