Presentation Date: October 23, 1997
Bob Swan
First Pilot and Navigator on PBY-5 Catalinas, Spotted Yamamoto's Fleet Steaming for Midway First Pilot and Navigator on PBY-5 Catalinas, Spotted Yamamoto's Fleet Steaming for Midway
"Eyes of the Fleet"
Bob Swan graduated as a naval aviator from Pensacola Naval Air Station in September, 1941. His promotion took him from Squadron One, primary training, to Squadron 2, formation flying. There, pilots flew obsolete SBUs and O2Us. "The government had them on the board at one dollar apiece," Swan says, "and our instructions were "if you think something's wrong, bale out. Because we've got you on the books for more than that. Not a lot, but more.' "
"We were well paid. The cadets got 105 dollars a month. They took 30 bucks out for room and board, so we got 75 bucks a month." With that big money, Bob says cadets were prime to buy a car, and dealers had specials for them - - payments of 25 bucks a month for the first three months and then a balloon payment up to 75 a month. A naval commission would bring gross pay up to 205 a month, so "we all had new cars."
Swan, First Pilot and Navigator on PBY-5 Catalinas, was ordered to VP 44, based at Coronado's North Island. The peacetime Navy, with cars (Bob says they were all convertibles), extra money and weekends off, saw Bob and his crew mates regularly on the road to Los Angeles.
December 7th, 1941 changed all of that. On that day, Bob saw a bomb for the first time - - loaded onto his PBY - - as he was sent out to hunt for submarines. The next day his squadron was ordered to NAS Alameda for anti-submarine patrols on the northern California coast, where the weather was "lousy".
"We flew under the Golden Gate Bridge and under the Bay Bridge most days," Bob says, both when departing from and returning to base. "One time we landed outside the "Gate and taxied in. I had more taxiing time that day than I did flight time, and it was a long flight."
Ask Bob about one of his favorite aviators, and he'll tell you about "Jigs" Lyons, who lost five PBYs during the war. The first of those came after a twelve-hour patrol, on a beautiful day when the water was smooth as glass. At about 500 feet elevation, getting into the landing pattern Jigs commented he didn't trust his altimeter. He wanted his copilot to let him know when he spotted the water's surface. The co-pilot reportedly said, "I think we're right close. There's a couple of ducks swimming by." Swan says the wingtip then hit the water, tearing off the wing and the arming pins from bombs set for a depth of 50 feet. Their charts showed the water there was 50 feet deep, but fortunately, there was no further mishap.
Swan was sent back down to San Diego to sign out for the squadron's six new PBY-5As, which rolled off the assembly line at $120,000 apiece. The flying boats were flown back to Alameda, checked out and then sent to Coronado. Fairings were placed over the wheel wells and the landing gear removed to lighten the ships for the trip to Hawaii. Twenty-one hours in the air, under radio silence and blackout conditions, and VP-44 was over Pearl Harbor. Swan took in the scene of devastation as they flew into Ford Island.
For the next month or so, Swan flew patrol around Hawaii. One of the missions was to escort a small convoy of ships, one of them a strangely loaded carrier. Swan says, "We tried to get close enough and every time we get close they'd shoot at us. And they were our friends, we thought." Swan found out later the carrier was the Hornet, its crew acting under orders to prevent knowledge of the secret of Doolittle's B-25s aboard.
Shortly thereafter, intelligence reports noted movements of the Japanese fleets, showing they were assembling for a major mission towards the northern-central Pacific. May 22nd, 1942 was the day Swan and his crew was ordered to Midway Island. The island had been determined to be the target of Admiral Yamamoto's fleet and VP 44 was to fly 1500-mile search circuits. Swan says they began patrolling pie-shaped sectors - - 680 miles out from Midway, about 100 miles across, and 680 back to base.
"We'd take off before daylight and we'd fly all day (about 1500 miles) at ninety knots, and we had to get home before dark or we'd never find the island, because it was radio silence and blackout."
The Japanese, meanwhile, had their own armed reconnaissance "Nells", twin-engined fighters based at Wake Island, seeking PBYs. Swan's plane was vectored on a daily course toward Wake, with Swan navigating. The Nells had been appearing like clockwork, right as the PBY's made the turn at the end outbound leg. On June 3rd , having made no enemy contact, Swan suggested extending the outbound leg by fifteen minutes. Still nothing. So Swan asked for fifteen more minutes.
The crew had stowed an extra 150 gallons of fuel that mission, giving them extra range. About five minutes into that second fifteen, the general quarters horn sounded on the flying boat. Swan had expected to see a Nell, and instead was told to look down, where nine Japanese ships (of nearly 90 in the fleet) were steaming towards Midway. The contact, which was to prove to be one of several keys to the Battle of Midway, was radioed in.
Historians have noted the irony that one of Admiral Yamamoto's reconnaissance floatplanes, scheduled to fly that same vector was delayed due to a catapult failure. The Japanese also made critical tactical errors, including the rearming of carrier bombers after the first air strike on Midway's airfields. The decks of the carriers Akagi and Kaga were full of rearming bombers when American planes began attacking. The spotting of the Japanese fleet by the PBY crew had given twenty hours advance notice to Midway and to the Enterprise, Hornet and Yorktown, whose planes sent four Japanese carriers to the depths of the Pacific.
Frequently, only the passage of time bring the significance of an historical event to the public's attention. Time allows all the stories to be told and and evidence to be sifted and analyzed. It was only on the 25th anniversary of the Battle of Midway that Bob Swan fully realized the importance of their sighting of the Japanese fleet that June 3, 1942.
Naval historian Samuel Morrison has called the Battle of Midway a "victory of intelligence", and Mitsuo Fuchida and Masatake Okumiya, two Japanese naval officers who authored their account of the battle, write in their book Midway , "it is beyond the slightest possibility of doubt that the advance discovery of the Japanese plan to attack was the foremost and single and immediate cause of Japan's defeat."