FRANK D. HURLBUT
Age: 87
Born: July 20, 1922
Hometown: Salt Lake City
Residence: Cathedral City
Military branch: U.S. Army Air Corps; 12th Air Force; 82nd Fighter Group; 96th Fighter Squadron
Years served: February 1940-August 1964; Inducted into the American Combat Airman Hall of Fame in September 2005.
Rank: World War II: Flight officer (“3rd lieutenant”); retired as lieutenant colonel from the U.S. Air Force.
Family: Wife Connie; four children, Carroll Russ and Suzy Dail, both of Greenville, N.C., Jolynn Guidera of Santa Rosa, and Jeannette Hogan of Mission Viejo; five grandchildren.
About this series
Staff writer Denise Goolsby will profile desert veterans from World War II through the end of 2010 — the 65th anniversary of the end of the war. Contact her at (760) 778-4587 or via e-mail at denise.goolsby@thedesertsun.com
Coming tomorrow
World War II Navy veteran Bob Chapman of La Quinta.
LEARN MORE: Read about other Coachella Valley residents who served in World War II at mydesert.com/wwii.
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P-38 fighter pilot Frank D. Hurlbut shot down his fifth enemy aircraft — earning the title of “ace” — during the invasion of Sicily on July 10, 1943.
He accomplished this feat 10 days shy of his 21st birthday.
When Hurlbut completed his tour of duty — 50 missions and 210 hours of combat — he was credited with a total of nine confirmed “kills” plus one probable and four damaged enemy aircraft.
He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal with 17 Oak Leaf Clusters, among other decorations.
Hurlbut joined the Utah National Guard in February 1940 and served with the 145th Field Artillery Regiment. The unit was called into federal service in March 1941 for what was intended to be a year of training.
But the war broke out before the year was out, and the men were called to action.
“When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, that threw open the doors,” Hurlbut said. “They needed pilots so bad.”
Hurlbut transferred to the Army Air Corps, and although he didn't have the required two years of college education to qualify as a cadet, he was classified as an aviation student and graduated as a flying staff sergeant pilot in August 1942.
Although the men received the same flight training, the college experience earned the cadets officer standing as second lieutenants.
The flying staff sergeants were the odd men out — they weren't considered to be enlisted men or officers.
Confusion reigned until the men were officially promoted to flight officer status, the equivalent of a “third lieutenant,” Hurlbut said, in December 1942.
Flight officers were assigned to the more dangerous positions in the formation because they were considered expendable — second lieutenants were more valued, Hurlbut said.
“I'd be at the back, that's why I spent so much time fighting,” he said.
Hurlbut scored his first victory on his third combat mission — on April 11, 1943 — over the Mediterranean Sea.
The Germans were trying to evacuate key personnel from Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's retreating Afrika Korps, shuttling them out of the country on JU-52 transport planes.
“On my third mission, we ran into 25 of them out there over the water,” he said.
The transports were heavily armed, blasting cannon fire at the oncoming flight of fighters.
“We dropped our tanks and armed our guns and went after them,” Hurlbut said. “It was almost dark, we were running out of fuel. We went into there and tore into them. They were firing these cannons. With 25 of them, they were putting up a wall of steel.”
He shot down one aircraft and damaged another, but his plane was riddled with holes.
“Here I'm sitting 50 feet off the water, and I'm all shot up, and I lost an engine,” he said.
Limping over the Mediterranean, Hurlbut couldn't immediately get his bearings.
“I'm all by myself, and I wasn't sure where I was,” he said. “I wasn't even sure where Africa was.”
Hurlbut was on the right path, and was soon picked up by the remaining fighters for the return flight to their air base.
Struggling to set the battered plane down, the aircraft went speeding off the runway.
“I ended up in a little lake of water beyond the field,” but escaped injury, he said.
His final victory was scored during a running battle over the sea, “the roughest of them all,” he said, when 26 P-38s were flying cover for 72 B-25 bombers on Sept. 2, 1943.
“It looked like there were airplanes from one end of the sky to the other,” he said.
“Our bombers came off (the bomb drop) and were attacked by enemy fighters,” he said.
The enemies engaged at an altitude of 16,000 feet.
“The fight continued down to 6,000 feet,” he said. “It was nonstop. No sooner did we think the fight was over,” when they were attacked by an additional 30 enemy aircraft.
“We fought our way down to the water so they couldn't hit us from below,” Hurlbut said. “Suddenly, I saw two Me-109s close astern of me dive down and pull up to the right. I broke into them after they came down only to find that I had been ‘suckered in' away from my flight. Immediately, the two attacked me from above. they were closing in. I could see their guns flashing when I looked back and up,” when two more Me-109s appeared.
“There I was, with four enemy aircraft right on top of me and the water below, which was churning with cannon and machine gun fire,” he said.
Hurlbut put his plane into a violent banking maneuver, which caused the plane to slide sideways. A fellow fighter blew up one of the planes and Hurlbut was able to slip away from the other enemy aircraft.
“It was chaos for everyone,” he said. “I'd never seen so many aircraft in the water.”
