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By Al Zdon
There were two major Navy patrol bombers in World War II. One of them, the PBY Catalina, might be regarded as the celebrity of the two.
It was a PBY that spotted the Japanese
fleet at the Battle of Midway. It was a Royal Air Force PBY that spotted the German Battleship Bismarck and led to the sinking of the famous warship. And it was a PBY that was featured so prominently in
the movie South Pacific.
The other patrol bomber, the Martin PBM Mariner, never quite got the notoriety of its older brother. In fact, only the most dedicated World War II history buffs know much
about the airplane.
It's a situation Jack Christopher would like to correct.
Christopher knows all about PBMs. He knows that they were bigger, faster, better armed, better protected and had a
longer range than the PBY. He knows the PBM played a critical role in the war, particularly in the Pacific as the U.S. slowly dismantled the Japanese empire.
He knows all these things because he flew
on PBMs during World War II.
Jack Alfred Christopher grew up in south Minneapolis, not too far from the Navy base at Wold-Chamberlain. "In those days, there were no fences and you could climb
right up on the airplanes and look in the cockpit. They were all bi-planes in those days. From an early age I wanted to be a Navy pilot."
His childhood dream almost came true. As he graduated from
Roosevelt High School in January of 1943, he headed off to be a pilot. He had taken extra math and science in high school, and had passed the Navy tests for pilot training.
His last obstacle was his
flight physical, which he thought would be routine. It was -- except for one small problem. He failed the blue-green colorblind test. The Navy sent him home.
"I can't even tell you how I felt. My
dreams were crushed. I didn't know what to do."
Uncle Sam had an idea about what he could do, and three months later, in the spring of 1943, he got his draft notice. This time, he had no problem
passing the physical, and he was offered the opportunity to enter the Navy rather than the Army.
After boot camp at Camp Farragut, Idaho, his high test scores again enabled him to get some choices,
and he picked aviation ordinance, hoping again that he would be able to fly. "I figured I'd be in an airplane somehow."
Ordinance school was a Norman, Okla., and after graduation in December of 1943,
he volunteered for aerial gunners school. Again, he had to take a flight physical, but this time he passed the blue-green test. In fact, he passed it three times.
"Either God didn't want me to be a
pilot, or the balanced diet I got in the Navy corrected my deficiency."
He had graduated in the top 10 percent of his ordinance class and so he showed up at Purcell, Okla., for gunnery school as a
third class (E-4). The next stop was Banana River, Fla., where he met the first love of his life, the PBM.
But it wasn't love at first sight. The first Martin PBM Mariner Christopher encountered was
an anti-submarine warfare version, and it contained very little firepower, not a happy situation for an ordinance expert.
Soon thereafter, though, he met the real PBM, the one he had in mind. This
version contained twin .50 caliber machine guns in the nose, tail and top turrets, and two more in waist gunner positions. It was also capable of carrying bombs and torpedoes of all kinds.
Christopher's job was to take charge of all the ordinance on the plane. His place on the aircraft was in the bow of the aircraft, below the nose gunner, where he could run a bomb site if necessary. It
was also his job to secure the PBM to a buoy when it had completed its flight. This was accomplished by slipping a rope through a ring on the buoy, not an easy task when one minute the buoy is down at
your feet and the next minute it's at chest level.
Other members of the crew of nine included three pilots – a chief pilot who flew the plane, and two co-pilots who took turns acting as
navigator – a radar operator, a radio operator, a flight engineer, a bow turret gunner, a top turret gunner, a tail turret gunner, and a waist gunner. The radio and radar men also took turns at being a
waist gunner.
At the beginning of June, 1944, exactly a year since he had "volunteered" for the Navy, his squadron, VPB 27, was formed up in North Carolina. It consisted of 15 PBMs and 15 crews.
Later, three more crews were added.
The squadron did torpedo training in Key West, Fla., and then headed off to San Francisco via Jacksonville, Eagle Mountain Lake in Texas, and San Diego.
One of
the PBMs had to make a forced landing in the desert. "They attached beaching gear (wheels) to the floats, but to this day I don't know how that worked. It's only for getting the airplanes up a ramp. It's
not very strong. I'm glad I wasn't that pilot or crew that tried to do that. But somehow they made it."
By October, they were at Alameda Naval Air Station, but at that point they had to take a break.
The Navy needed their aircraft more than it needed them, and so the planes were taken away and sent overseas while the squadron waited for new planes.
Was he afraid the war was going to be over before
he got a chance to participate? Christopher only laughs. "No, I didn't worry about that very much. I wasn't that gung ho to go off to war."
The good news was that when the new planes arrived, they
were the latest models. The crew gave up their PBM-3Ds for brand new PBM-5s. The major improvement in the new model was going from a 1,900 horsepower engine to a 2,100 horsepower engine.
"The planes
didn't necessarily go any faster because they were heavier. But then PBMs were never very fast to begin with. We would normally fly at about 110 knots, which was about 10 knots faster than the PBY."
The squadron made its way to Oahu, Hawaii, and lost its first aircraft with six crew members killed in an accident on Christmas day 1944. "I didn't know those guys very well, and I didn't see it happen,
so it didn't seem to affect me too much."
The crew practiced using sono-buoys, small detectors that could be dropped into the ocean to pinpoint the location of an enemy submarine, and FIDOs, an
acoustic torpedo that had just been developed. They also trained on dropping depth bombs, which are similar to depth charges except they have aerodynamic fins.
The squadron island-hopped its way to
Saipan and arrived on Feb. 13, 1945. The crew was stationed aboard the USS Onslow, a destroyer escort that had been converted into a seaplane tender.
"Mainly we flew anti-submarine patrols, and we
just made sure the Japanese weren't doing anything in the area."
The PBMs would also fly "Dumbo" missions to rescue pilots and aircrew that had crashed into the sea. The missions were named after the
popular Disney cartoon featuring a flying baby elephant. "Mainly we used radar to find them, but there were times where everyone on board the airplane would be looking. It's awfully hard to spot a life
raft in the sea."
Sometimes, the PBMs would land and pick up the downed airmen, but often the seas were too rough. "We'd fly over them and waggle our wings to let them know we saw them. We'd drop them
a float light if they needed one, or a raft. Usually we'd just circle until a ship would come to pick them up."
The circling often went on for hours, but that was one of the PBMs strengths. It could
fly for 14 hours or more. If a rescue ship still hadn't come before the gas ran out, another PBM would be called to take up the vigil.
Christopher's PBM, designated E-2 in the squadron and named
"Dinah Might" by the crew, never was able to land to pick up survivors, and so the crew never met any of the airmen they rescued. At one point, though, they rescued a group of high ranking officers who
had been along for the ride in a B-29 on a bombing mission. The PBM crew was invited to a party on Tinian to celebrate the rescue, but they had to leave for Okinawa.
With the battle still going on at
Okinawa in March, 1945, the PBMs settled into a small group of islands nearby called Kerama Retto.
"The Japanese had been cleared out – somewhat," Christopher said. "But they were still up in the
hills. We'd have to sit on the wings all night with our tommy guns in case they decided to swim out."
The squadron's missions varied from day to day. Sometimes, they would fly up and down the Chinese,
Formosa or Korean coastlines searching for Japanese ships that might try to sneak across to the homeland.
They also did ASW work, flew Dumbo missions, and flew picket duty around Okinawa to make sure
the Japanese didn't try to sneak in reinforcements.
"One time we thought we'd made a sub contact. The pilot called us to battle stations, and we were all ready to go. It turned out to be a whale. We
didn't shoot at it."
On a day the Dinah Might was not schedule to fly, a report came in that a convoy of Japanese ships had been spotted. Volunteers were requested, and Christopher's pilot agreed to
go. Three PBMs were chosen from one squadron and three from another because the mission was considered so dangerous the Navy didn't want to decimate one squadron.
"We went out to the airplane in the
arming boat, and they had already loaded in the bombs and torpedoes. And they told us they'd laid in new ammunition for the .50 calibers. We knew this was going to be interesting."
Christopher only
had one problem with the mission. He was sick. "I had a terrible headache and I was nauseous. I unhooked the cable and got us off the buoy and singled up the line, and then I just laid down in the bow
with a bucket beside me."
The enemy convoy was in the mouth of the Yangtze River. "We were still about 50 miles from the target when the pilot said, 'Look at all that anti-aircraft fire.' Both groups
were supposed to go in at the same time, but the other group had arrived first and went in ahead. They woke up the Japanese pretty good."
Christopher answered the call to battle stations, but he was
still very ill. "I prayed to God to make me well, and I was well, just like that."
The PBMs made their attack, and all survived the defenses of the convoy, but not without some souvenirs.
Christopher's airplane was hit with a 5-inch shell that passed completely through the fuselage.
"We must have been too close for the shell to arm itself. It came in one side of the airplane and went
out the other. One of the crewmen was sitting on the back of his seat rather than in it, and the shell went right where he should have been sitting. After it exited, it went right through the arc of the
propeller." Amazingly, the prop was not damaged. "It was just like it had been synchronized."
One of the planes in the group had so many holes in it that it landed and taxied right up to the seaplane
tender and was hoisted aboard before it sank.
The Dinah Might had a confirmed report that one of her 500 lb. bombs had landed on the fantail of a tanker. "We didn't see it. We were taking evasive
action and heading into the clouds."
What if the propeller had been shot off? "We practiced quite a bit flying the PBM with one engine. You'd have to get rid of a lot of stuff, like all the extra gas
and the ammo. You'd have to throw a lot of stuff over the side."
When the crew got back to the seadrome and had tied up, the crew was given little bottles of brandy for the boat ride to the tender.
Christopher, who didn't drink, gave his to a crewmate.
On another mission, Christopher's aircraft attacked a formation of twelve Japanese transports and two destroyers.
"The weather was clear when we left, but it got soupy and misty and rainy as we got closer. We were able to pick up the targets on the radar. The anti-aircraft fire was bursting around us, but we got closer and closer and we dropped our torpedoes."
Well, all but one. The last torpedo, which was hanging from the wing of the Mariner, got hung up and refused to drop.
The plane could have called it a day, but the pilot quickly informed the crew
that they were going back in to drop the final torpedo. "You don't even react to something like that, you just do it. Heck, we're all 19 years old. You don't get scared at that age."
But how to drop
the recalcitrant torpedo? The only way to do it was for somebody to crawl up into the wing and drop it manually with a screwdriver in the manual release mechanism. The problem with that was how to let
the volunteer out in the wing know when to release.
"We formed a human chain. I was out in the wing with the screwdriver. Another guy was stretched out behind me, and the waist gunner, with head
phones on, was stretched out behind him. When the pilot gave the word, the waist gunner tapped the other guy on the leg, and he tapped me on the leg. I jammed the screwdriver into the torpedo release and
the torpedo dropped. We heard that it was running hot and true before we got back up into the soup."
The mission wasn't over yet, though. On the way back, the crew spotted a group of "sugar dogs,"
small Japanese trawlers. "We strafed them and got in a lot of hits with our .50 calibers. It was like a shooting gallery. You know there are people down there, but you don't think of that. You are
taught to hate them anyway. It's part of the training."
Sometimes the threat to the PBMs didn't come from the Japanese. "We got fired on one time by the 5th Fleet. We had a device on board called an
IFF that tells our guys that we're a friendly. But the IFFs always seemed to get knocked out by the rough water. The Navy way of referring to a PBM is Peter-Baker-Mike, but we got fired on so often they
began calling us Peter-Bogey-Mike."
In the end, the crew of the Dinah Might flew 49 missions. Was there a top end for PBM crews? "If there was, we didn't know anything about it." The Navy rewarded
the crew by giving every one of them a Distinguished Flying Cross. Christopher also received an air medal and Combat Aircrew Wings with three Gold Stars. He had advanced from E-2 to E-6 in two years.
As the war wound down, the squadron was moved up to Buckner Bay seaplane base on the island of Okinawa. "One day we were standing the normal buoy watch. The radioman had a speaker rigged up so we could
listen to the radio, and one of the guys came running up. He said the Japanese had surrendered and were seeking a cease fire. We were all so happy. We were hugging and jumping up and down. We prayed."
On Okinawa, the troops fired weapons into the sky. "Everything was shooting into the air. It was quite a fireworks display."
At the end of September, the crew was moved to Sasebo, Japan, as part of
the occupation force. In October, the Dinah Might was lost when it ran into a reef while taking off. "We were barely able to save Dinah Might from sinking."
The crew got a new, all black PBM-5. Their
last flight together was a journey around the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, including a low level view of the atomic bomb destruction at Nagasaki.
They were sent home in a ship. Christopher went
back to LaMaur Inc., a manufacturer of shampoos and other hair products, where he had worked part-time before the war. He worked his way up to production supervisor. He also did a stint in the Naval
Reserve, but got out just before the start of the Korean War.
He retired from LaMaur in 1987 at age 63. "I retired because of the computers. I used to do all the production planning myself, and now
the computer was telling me what to do. I didn't like that."
He married in 1949, and he and his wife, Irene, had two children, a boy and a girl.
One room in the Christopher household is called the
PBM room, and it contains a score of photos of Jack and his aircraft and several scale models of the Mariner. He is happy to show off his memorabilia, the stories he wrote for various veterans
publications, and even his wartime logbook.
"I've got to keep telling the story of the PBM. Not enough people know about it."
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