BILL HARVEY
Age: 89
Born: Nov. 3, 1920
Hometown: Des Moines, Iowa
Residence: Desert Hot Springs
Military branch: U.S. Army Air Corps; 14th Air Force; 81st Fighter Group; 93rd Fighter Squadron
Years served: December 1941- May 1966
Rank: World War II — captain; retired as lieutenant colonel.
Family: Wife Jane; seven children, Anne Harvey of Del Mar, Lynne Achterberg of Santa Cruz, Lee Mahler of Houma, La., Mel Harvey of Cape Cod, Mass., Christi Herber of North Bend, Ore., Teri Dollar of Del Mar and Troy Baker of San Clemente; five grandchildren.
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Bill Harvey was working the Sunday shift at an ordnance plant being built near Des Moines, Iowa, when news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was announced over the PA system.
The “flag-waving 21-year-old” wanted to enlist, but wasn't sure which military branch to join.
“My dad, a lieutenant in the tank corps in World War I, and by this time an infantry major in the reserves, advised me, ‘If there's a country club in the service, it's the air corps. Take the air corps,'” Harvey said.
After passing the required tests in January 1942, he was assigned to the Aviation Cadet Center at San Antonio for pre-flight training.
He was pegged early on as a leader, but was reluctant to play that role.
Appointed a cadet lieutenant — a task he didn't want — he was in put in charge of a barrack.
He had to have these men “fall out” for fully-dressed roll call on the barracks street at 6 every morning.
“Cadets carried rifles, and cadet officers carried sabers, so I quickly had to learn the saber manual.”
After five weeks in pre-flight, Harvey was sent to primary flight school at Coleman, Texas, for instruction in PT-19 Fairchild trainers.
Harvey had never been in a plane until the first day he went airborne with his instructor.
“With my instructor in front and me in the rear cockpit, after several days and about six hours of instruction, he landed one afternoon, got out on the wing beside me and said, ‘It's all yours — take it up, fly around a few minutes, and bring it back. Good luck.' Nervous time. But I did it.”
“The second best thing was that I was no longer a ‘dodo,' which we were until we soloed. My goggles could now be worn up on my helmet, no longer around my neck like a dodo.”
Next, it was basic flying school where the men learned to pilot Vultee BT-13's, a bigger, more powerful plane. Then came advanced flying school, with AT-6 Texans.
Graduation was at Brooks Army Airfield in San Antonio on Dec. 13, 1942.
“On stage and in uniform, Dad pinned on my new silver wings and gold bars,” Harvey said. “A proud day for both of us.”
After graduation, he was stationed at Drew Field in Tampa, Fla., and assigned to a fighter unit, flying P-39 Airacobras.
After several more months of training, the airmen took a troop ship from Virginia on an eight-day voyage to Casa Blanca, North Africa.
After disembarking, the men marched with full packs — everything they owned, they were carrying — about three miles, in the rain, to Army Camp Don B. Passage.
“There it was 10 days in tents, cold, rain and mud,” Harvey said.
In North Africa, Harvey was assigned to the 93rd Fighter Squadron, flying convoy patrol over Allied shipping operations in the Mediterranean.
“The 93rd had taken considerable damage in the effort to stop the advance of the Desert Fox, Field Marshal Irwin Rommel and his Panzers of the Afrika Corps,” Harvey said.
“A few months after I arrived, the squadron was ordered to the China-Burma-India theater of operations, our planes to be left behind. We hadn't heard of them at the time, but later heard that Tuskegee Airmen had taken over our planes.”
In Karachi, India, the squadron was supposed to receive a shipment of P-63's — a slightly larger version of the P-39 fighter planes.
For nearly three months, the men made daily treks to the docks, looking for their planes.
“When the aircraft carriers finally arrived, they were loaded with P-47s,” he said. “We'd never even seen a P-47. Our airmen spent about two months assembling and learning to crew them, while we transitioned into them. Three months waiting, two more training — five months lost.”
When the P-47s were finally ready, the men headed for their new base at Guskhara, India.
When the squadron left Agra — a refueling stop — Harvey and his wing man stayed behind with a rough engine.
“When we left Agra, I couldn't resist,” he said. “I ‘buzzed' the Taj Mahal's long reflecting pool, then pulled up sharply over the Taj and was quickly out of the area, hoping no one had seen our numbers. It was never mentioned.”
In India, much of his time was spent in defense of the B-29s on the ground, but he would rotate between there and a base in Chengtu, China.
“Our primary mission was to keep the Canton-Hankow railway — Burma supply route — from operating.”
He said the enemy operations usually ran at night.
“We'd leave ‘early-dark-thirty,' fly out about two hours, and try to catch them in the open at daybreak. Sometimes we were lucky.”
On his last mission in China, after pulling away from a target, his plane took a hit.
He could see a hole in the aircraft the size of a softball; heavy oil was spattered on the windshield.
“It seemed almost certain that the engine would seize up, and doubtful that I'd make the two hours back home,” all of it over mountains and Japanese controlled territory, he said. “But the old ‘jug' kept running, and got me home — again.”
Harvey remained in active duty following the war. After 24 years of service in the Air Force, he retired in 1966.
Over the years, annual reunions of the 93rd Fighter Squadron pilots were held, but the ranks slowly dropped.
“At our last reunion two years ago, only four pilots — and wives — attended,” he said. “Now, with only two of those couples still able to travel, our reunions have become a pleasant memory, a bit of history.”
