Ed Dover

In the Fall of 1942, when I was 18 years old, I completed a course of study at the Frank Wiggins Trade School in Los Angeles and earned my FCC Second Class Telegrapher's License. Now comes one of those serendipitous moments in my life that sets me to wondering about the fickle workings of fate. Just as we were completing the course work, a personnel representative from Pan American Airways visited the school. He announced that Pan Am was hiring licensed radio operators to train as Flight Radio Officers for assignment to flight crews flying with Pan Am under contract to the Navy. Pan Am had entered into a war contract with the Naval Air Transport Service (NATS). All of Pan Am's flying boats had been turned over to the Navy, but Pan Am was still providing the flight crews to operate them as logistics flights to Hawaii and the South Pacific in support of the war effort. Along with the Martin and Boeing Clippers, Pan Am would also operate Navy Consolidated PB2Y3 and Martin PBM flying boats on the supply runs into the South Pacific all the way to Australia. The increased schedules of flights required many more flight crew personnel in order to meet the contract schedules. When this announcement was made at the school I signed up immediately, along with three other fellow classmates. Most of the other guys (there were no girls in our class) eventually wound up as radio operators on board surface vessels or enlisted or were drafted into the army or navy. Those of us who went with Pan Am were enlisted into a special division of the Naval Reserve created for the express purpose of keeping NATS contract crews from being subject to the draft. It was just like being in the military anyway. Each of us was assigned a military rank according to our level of education and experience. I was given the rank of Navy Radioman First Class. The first couple of months were spent in training classes at Treasure Island. We became acquainted with the radio equipment on board the Clippers. We spent many hours improving our skill at using Morse Code so that we could qualify at the 30 words per minute speed required of all Pan Am radio operators. We learned to draw the electrical schematic diagrams of each piece of radio gear by heart. And we each got an orientation flight on board one of the Clippers as an introduction to our eventual working environment. My very first time aloft in an airplane was an orientation flight over San Francisco Bay on board one of the Martin M-130 Clippers. The flight deck of the Martin was rather cramped compared to the Flight deck of the Boeing B-314. The radio operator sat at a small desk directly behind the co-pilot and the flight engineer sat on what amounted to a small shelf just above and behind the radio operator. If the radio operator was in his seat, he had to get out and step down to the main deck in order to allow the flight engineer access to or exit from his operating location. One other assignment was to get outfitted for our uniforms. There were two styles of uniform. When we were assigned to fly on the Pan Am Clippers we wore the standard Navy blue double-breasted suit with white peaked hats and a small half-winged badge pinned to the breast pocket denoting our status as a Flight Radio Officer. When we were assigned to fly on the Navy PB2Y3 or PBM aircraft we wore light khaki uniforms with soft campaign caps as headgear. As soon as we were outfitted in these uniforms they took our pictures. These were filed in our personnel folders for use by the company as public relations photos when needed. We called them our "obituary photos". You can guess why. Despite the advances in air transportation, commercial flying - especially over the oceans - was still a risky business. I was soon to learn just how risky. On January 20th, 1943 I received my first assignment as a flight crew member. I came on board one of the Boeing B-314 flying boats as the Second Radio Officer on a regular schedule flight from San Francisco to Honolulu. We departed Treasure Island at about three in the afternoon. As we headed west we encountered a strong storm that created very strong headwinds and heavy turbulence. After about three hours the Captain decided that the headwinds were too strong to make it all the way to Honolulu, so we turned around to return to Treasure Island. By the time we arrived back over the Bay, the storm was going full blast. In low clouds and rain, with poor visibility, we made either two or three attempts at landing in the seaplane channel alongside the Oakland Bay bridge before we got down safely and tied up at the dock. The crew was ordered to stand by while the operations office examined the weather reports to determine if we could try again later, when they thought the winds would die down enough. By this time it was very late at night. I decided to take a nap on one of the couches in the terminal, assuming someone would awaken me in time to depart again if they had decided to give it another go. But they never did. On the morning of January 21st, when I woke up it was just daylight. The storm was still raging. Our flight had been canceled. But the terminal was abuzz with news about another Pan Am Clipper overdue on a flight from Honolulu. It was the Martin M-130 Philippine Clipper. Under the command of Captain Robert Elzey, it had flown through the same storm, but the winds that were headwinds for us had been tailwinds for the Martin. It had made the crossing from Honolulu in a record nine hours - unheard of in those days. But the quick crossing brought it to the California coast much earlier than anticipated. Due to the bad weather the captain had elected to try landing at the alternate landing site at Clear Lake, near Ukiah, California, a short distance up the coast where he hoped the weather would be better. It was not. Upon attempting a let down to Clear Lake in heavy clouds, the Clipper crashed into a mountain and all aboard were killed. This was my introduction to flying over the ocean. While awaiting my next flight assignment I caught a bad cold. I developed a severe case of laryngitis. Upon getting over it I was sent to the Pan Am flight surgeon for a thorough examination to be sure that I was okay for flight duty. When they examined my throat they found a small cyst on my epiglottis. I had to have it removed before they would clear me for flight duty. The operation was performed at a hospital in either Berkeley or Oakland - I can't remember which. By the time I was well enough to fly again I was given a different assignment. Besides working on board the aircraft, Pan Am's radio operators also did duty as ground station operators at their various en route stations. I was assigned temporary duty as a ground station operator at the Pan Am base at Pearl City in Pearl Harbor. I do not recall the date, but my next flight was on board one of the Navy PB2Y3s from Treasure Island to Pearl Harbor. This flight was uneventful and routine. It took about 18 and a half hours. I settled quickly into the routine of shift work at the Pearl City radio desk. The Pearl City base was located right on the shoreline and we had a good view of the harbor. Most of the wreckage from the December 7th attack had been cleared by then but there were still some bits of it visible. The Pan Am personnel were housed in a large mansion on the waterfront. I was assigned an upstairs bedroom. The Navy ran the commissary and mess hall. Movies were shown in the mess hall in the evening after supper. As I had some experience with movie projectors, my projectionist skills were called into play as I took on the assignment of running the projectors for the movies whenever I was not working the evening shift. After a couple of months at Pearl City I was transferred to another ground station at Noumea, New Caledonia. This was my introduction to the small atolls and islands of the South Pacific. Our flight route took us to Palmyra Island, Canton Island, Suva, Fiji and Noumea. It took three days, island hopping from Pearl City. I thought it was a wonder of modern technology! My time at Noumea was fairly routine. There was one incident, however, that was far from routine. I was on duty in the radio room on the midnight shift. This was normally a very quiet shift but we had to maintain 24 hour communications capability. I was seated at the desk with my back to the open window which faced the harbor. Suddenly there was a loud explosion and a concussion that sent me flying out of my chair onto the floor. I was not hurt, but after a few seconds of crouching, not knowing what to expect next, I slowly rose up and looked out the window. Far across the bay there was a huge fire. Something had apparently exploded. It was not until sometime later that we learned that an ammunition ship had exploded. Apparently they were unloading live ammunition from the ship onto the dock. Some of the shells had slipped or fallen from the ship's crane onto the dock and exploded, causing a chain reaction amidst the ordnance already on the dock. The entire place went up in one gigantic blast. I don't recall exact figures, but there were many casualties. And the loss of all that ammunition was a severe blow to the military supply. I don't know if this incident ever received news coverage back home. Most likely it was kept secret as a security measure. I was assigned to flight duty sometime around the end of 1943 or the beginning of 1944; I do not recall an exact date. By the time I returned to San Francisco Pan Am had moved its base of operations to the Marine terminal at Mills Field, south of San Francisco. Treasure Island was now strictly a Naval base. The housing accommodations at Berkeley had long since been vacated as each of the original four of us went to various other assignments. I had to look for other accommodations. Berkeley was now too far out of the way. I had to find a place closer to San Francisco. I located a rooming house just south of downtown San Francisco. The address was 900 Ashbury Street. It was about a three block walk down a very steep hill to the streetcar line that ran on Haight Street. I was three blocks from the intersection of what was to become known as "Haight-Ashbury" to legions of hippies that invaded the neighborhood after the war. While I lived there it was a very quiet neighborhood. It was walking distance to Golden Gate Park. I spent many hours exploring the park on my free time. I also resumed my interest in photography. Sometime earlier I had purchased a new camera. It was called a Robot. A small 35mm camera that was one of the first to offer automatic film advance. It had a large spring that you wound up. After each shot, it automatically advanced to the next frame. I got in the habit of carrying it with me everywhere, even while on flight assignments. I had it with me on one of my Honolulu flights. As we began the return flight to San Francisco I took it out of my carry on bag and went to the navigator's dome in the rear cargo compartment of the B-314 to see if I could get a good shot of Diamond Head as we came around the eastern tip of Oahu. I fired off several shots and returned to the flight deck. Apparently one of the other flight crew members saw me do this and reported it to the Captain. When we got back to San Francisco I was called into the office and received a royal chewing out for doing that. Apparently, any photography in or around the Hawaiian Islands was prohibited as a war time security measure. They confiscated my film but let me keep the camera. A few history sidelights: On the morning of April 12, 1945 I returned from a long flight, went to my room on Ashbury Street and settled in for some much needed sleep. When I awoke I turned on the radio and heard the news about the death of President Roosevelt. I was on one of the South Pacific runs in the Martin PBMs in May, 1945. While overnighting at Canton Island on May 8, 1945 we received word that the Germans had surrendered and the war in Europe was over. In June, 1945 representatives from many nations met in San Francisco to begin work at creating the United Nations. I remember seeing many foreign uniforms while walking the streets of downtown San Francisco. The Russians were particularly noticeable by their numbers. With the European war at an end and the war in the Pacific winding down, the Navy was cutting back on its contract operations with the civilian airlines. The NATS contract was terminated and Pan Am instituted a mass transfer of many of its flight personnel to other assignments. We had a choice of transferring to either New York or Miami where the contracts with the Army Air Transport Command were still in effect. Since I had relatives in New York and it was a more familiar place than Miami, I opted for a transfer there. In July, 1945 I boarded the train for the cross-country trip to New York. I wound up renting a room in a home in Woodside on Long Island that was fairly close to LaGuardia Field where Pan Am had its flight operations. This change was not only a great geographic change, but also an operational change. Pan Am was no longer using flying boats but had made the transition to land planes. The first of these that I flew on was the Douglas DC-4, or, as the Air Transport Command referred to them, the C-54. It took me a while to get used to landing on hard runways instead of on the water. Now, to make a long story short.... By the Spring of 1948 aircraft communications equipment had improved to the point where pilots could communicate with controllers and operations bases by voice and the use of Morse code was being phased out. The need for flight radio operators was coming to an end. I resigned from Pan Am sometime in March or April, 1948 and eventually got a job with the CAA (now the FAA) as a communications specialist. My first assignment was at the communications station in Honolulu. There followed a number of career moves within the CAA/FAA during which time I worked as a communications specialist, or air traffic controller at a variety of locations including Midway Island, Wake Island, Maui, Kansas City, St Louis, and finally Albuquerque. I retired on January 1, 1982 as a station supervisor from the Albuquerque Flight Service Station after 33 years with the FAA.