JERRY PETTIS
Age: 89
Born: March 27, 1921
Hometown: Santa Fe, N.M.
Residence: Cathedral City
Military branch: U.S. Coast Guard
Years served: June 1942-June 1945
Rank: Radioman second class
Family: Wife Frances (deceased); three sons, Greg Pettis of Cathedral City, Stephen Pettis of Marion, Ind., and David Pettis of Lompoc; 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
U.S. Army Air Corps veteran Orville Abbott of Palm Desert
LEARN MORE: Read about other Coachella Valley residents who served in World War II at mydesert.com/wwii
More
U.S. Coast Guard radioman Jerry Pettis was part of a construction detachment that set up radio-based Long Range Navigation stations on tiny islands in the Pacific during World War II.
Pettis, a member of Construction Detachment C (Unit 80), built LORAN chains in Hawaii, the Mariana Islands and Japan, according to U.S. Coast Guard historical reports.
“We were building the guidance (systems) for the B-29s to go into Japan,” Pettis said.
The 30-man unit hauled all of the transmitters, antennae and gear needed to set up a station, which took about six months to construct.
Before being shipped overseas, Pettis spent about a year guarding Catalina Island and the surrounding area, including San Pedro.
Soon after enlisting, Pettis said the coast guard was looking for volunteers to patrol these offshore waters.
He volunteered and was immediately put aboard a ship — without any prior training.
“No boot camp,” he said. “I'd never shot a gun.”
Staring hour after hour into a dark sky — watching and waiting for the enemy to appear — was a whole new experience for a boy who grew up in a small town near Los Angeles.
“I lived in Alhambra, he said. “We didn't have watches. We didn't shoot guns. We didn't have any bad guys there.”
After about a year, he left the ship to attend radio school in nearby Point Vicente, then transferred to San Francisco where he was assigned shore patrol duty near the shipyards of Richmond, armed with big Billy clubs, he said.
The men received just minimal weaponry instruction.
“They took us for training, once — down at the ocean,” he said.
A plane, pulling a target, known as a “sleeve,” flew above the sea.
“They were teaching us how to shoot a .50-caliber machine gun on the ship I shot it and I hit the wire that went from the sleeve to the plane,” he said.
The target, detached from the plane, fell from the sky.
“That was the end of practice,” Pettis said, laughing.
Pettis joined the construction detachment in San Francisco, sailing to French Frigate Shoals — considered to be the largest atoll in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands — to set up the first of many stations.
As soon as the team arrived, they set up a radio station to establish contact with the mainland.
“We stayed on the island until they sent a manning party to maintain the station,” he said.
“Then we went to Guam and we built a LORAN station there,” he said. “It was still occupied by the Japanese.”
“We were fortunate in that Unit 80,” he said. “Our cook was Walt Disney's personal cook. We had ice cream when no one else did.”
While stationed on Guam, Pettis got a glimpse of the ravages of war.
“Here's a bunch of dead Japanese scattered along the road. They were really tall. We were told they were the emperor's guard.”
Pettis and the construction detachment were also assigned assorted odd jobs while stationed on Guam.
Some B-29 bombers, sitting on a nearby airfield, needed their bellies camouflaged.
“The gave us the paint and we painted the bottoms of the planes silver,” Pettis said. “We found out a couple of days later we had put too much paint on them.”
The bomber crews weren't too happy about having to scrape off the paint, he said.
Pettis said they were just told to do things without receiving much instruction.
“They said, ‘Here's the stuff. We want this done.'”
After Guam, the men installed a LORAN station on a small, rocky island island known as Kangoku Iwa, about a mile-and-a-quarter from Iwo Jima.
“We didn't go on to Iwo Jima, but it looked like you could lean over and touch it,” he said.
One time, when Pettis was just coming off watch, he heard over the radio frequency a plane was coming into Iwo Jima carrying a wounded pilot.
Over the radio, he heard someone on the island saying, “You can't land on Iwo Jima. It's all bombed out. You'll just have to drop him (by parachute),” Pettis said.
The man piloting the plane said, “He's wounded. I can't do this.”
It was decided the pilot would fly around the island to burn up the plane's fuel before attempting a water landing.
The men all held their collective breaths.
“It was going 100 miles per hour when he hit the water,” Pettis said, his voice cracking as he described the scene.
“It just stopped. You could see the guys and hear the guys on the island” watching and waiting a guy climbed out of the plane and pulled the (wounded) guy out. They sent a small boat out to get him. It was quite an experience. It was something you don't forget.”
