Engineer drafted to Navy, stationed at Pearl Harbor

U.S. Navy Ensign Herbert H. Halperin designed aircraft propellers and provided post-invasion support between Okinawa and the Philippine Islands during World War II.

On the day Pearl Harbor was attacked, Halperin was completing his Bachelor of Aeronautical Engineering degree at New York University.

“Graduation was pushed up to April 1942 to facilitate making engineers available for industry and/or the military,” Halperin said. “Most graduates were offered outright officer commissions in both the Army and the Navy. Some accepted, others chose industry, as I did.”

Halperin was granted an industrial deferment which excluded him from being drafted for a couple of years.

Halperin was soon employed in Baltimore as an aeronautical engineer and was heavily involved in designing “new technology” propellers for military applications.

His first assignment, the Grumman Widgeon amphibian, required a propeller design that enabled the otherwise civilian aircraft to be able to carry out anti-submarine activities, carrying small bombs along the Atlantic coast.

After about two years, Halperin applied for a commission in the Navy, believing his industrial deferment would soon expire.

He was right. Soon after, his draft status was changed and he was drafted into the Navy as an apprentice seaman.

After eight weeks at the Navy's Sampson boot training school in upstate N.Y., he was discharged and a minute later sworn-in as an officer, Halperin said.

He was soon ordered to proceed to Pearl Harbor to report aboard the USS Orion AS-8 — an anti-submarine tender for a squad of subs out of Saipan.

There, he helped establish a submarine station for Submarine Squadron 12 operating in the west Pacific from the South China Sea up to the Japanese islands, Halperin said.

After several months, the Navy began to concentrate on increasing officers in their amphibious fleet for the final push from Okinawa to the eventual invasion of Japan.

Halperin was reassigned to LST 949, a tank landing ship, where he performed various duties, including standing as “officer of the deck,” he said.

The 325-foot ship delivered Marines, soldiers, tanks and trucks in post-attack support in the Philippine Islands.

The invasion of Japan never materialized.

On Aug. 15, while Halperin was taking a shower before dinner, he heard a sound like the heavens were exploding and he rushed out on deck with just a towel around his body.

“I saw the entire sky covered with bullet tracers going in all directions from all ships and shore bases,” he said.

He thought the Japanese must be attacking in force, but his shipmates told him the Japanese had surrendered.

“Elation continued well into the next morning when we learned 29 American servicemen had perished from falling ammunition,” he said.

Halperin, who started flying in 1939 and got his pilot's license in 1950, is the author of the book “The Sky's No Limit — Round the World Air Race: 1994.” The story and photos detail his around the world adventure at the age of 73.