Never Call Me A Hero

A Legendary American Dive-Bomber Pilot Remembers The Battle of Midway

By N. Jack “Dusty” Kleiss, Timothy Orr

My dispute with Jean lasted into August, and it grew worse with each passing week. At first it appeared that I had just misinterpreted her. She did not want me to convert, but I had to accept a Catholic wedding and Catholic children. “After all,” she later wrote, every man has a right to his own opinion. The only thing I wanted to make clear was that you have no objections to being married in a Catholic Church. How do you stand on that score?” This did not settle matters. I believed that if we married, one or the other had to convert, and I could not accept Catholicism. I explained: “According to my very meager knowledge of the Catholic religion, it exacts too many promises for people like me, and I doubt if I could believe in Confessions or miracles by Saints. … The thing I can’t promise to do, Jean, is to promise to make someone else believe them. I guess we’d better try to forget the whole affair unless you can come over to my side. That looks cold, cruel, and demanding the impossible.” To this day, I don’t know why I was so stubborn. I guess my father’s words had gotten to me and I worried about the scandal that would ensue in Coffeyville if he learned that I married a Catholic. Oh, the stupid decisions we make to appease our parents! I said and wrote many ugly things that demeaned Catholicism, and today, decades removed from those awful days, I regret what I said.

(Kleiss, Orr, and Orr 2017, 63)

… On one beautiful day, I sent my ACTG squadron to attack a tow target out on the ocean. As usual, a Navy with a camera pulled the target, recording the bomb strikes.Not long into the exercise, a division of SB2U-38 returned to Cecil Field Visibly shaken, the pilots exited their planes, swearing loudly. Soon I noticed that some of their aircraft had sustained battle damage. One plane had a couple of holes. I asked the trainees what happened. The pilots explained that the tug pulling the target had fired on them. Unwilling to dive near a firing ship, the pilots came home, scrubbing the exercise. I wondered, Who was in the previous attack? A quick communication to the tug revealed the problem. The first division to practice dive bombing had attacked the tug, not the target. Unwilling to risk another such attack, the tug crewmen fired on the next wave of bombers, scaring them off.Sure enough, the squadron leader who had mistakenly attacked the tug was Student M. He stupidly attacked the ship-endangering the lives of the poor sailors on it—and the rest of the planes simply followed their leader. Luckily, Student M also possessed exceptionally poor aim, so when he and his division attacked the tug, they missed. Somehow we still won the war.

(Kleiss, Orr, and Orr 2017, 255)

Other incidents proved even more ridiculous. One evening the telephone rang (the telephone company having finally installed my line). I answered it. I recognized the crisp, clear voice of one of the on-duty WAVES, the female naval auxiliary corps. Calling from Cecil Field’s air control tower, she explained quickly that one of the crew chiefs wished to see me about an unusual landing that had just taken place. I made haste for the field. There the crew chief replied, “No, wait pointed to a recently landed SB2U-3.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“What’s wrong?!” exclaimed the chief. “What’s wrong is that no rear-seat gunner came back with this plane. It took off with a pilot and gunner, and it landed with only a pilot.”

I must have looked befuddled. “Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

I asked, “Is there anything wrong with the plane?”

The chief replied, “Well, yes. There are some strange markings on the tail.”

I examined the stabilizer. Sure enough, a massive heel print marked up the rudder. It seemed the gunner had either fallen out of the plane while it was in flight, or had purposefully jumped out of it.

“What’s the name of the missing gunner?” I asked.

“Radioman Bale, sir.”

I questioned the pilot, who looked terribly embarrassed. When the pilot had landed his plane, he had dismounted it happily, chart board in hand, not even bothering to check the rear seat. Ashamed he had lost his rear-seat gunner and not even noticed, he stammered as he tried to answer my questions.

I asked, “Did you notice anything wrong with Bale?”

The pilot swallowed, “No sir, I called to him through the interphone every so often, just to see if he was all right.”

“Did he answer?”

“Yes, he did!” The pilot paused. “Well, maybe he didn’t answer the last time.”

For a while, there seemed to be no solution to the mystery of the missing gunner, but then a farmer contacted Cecil Field by telephone.

The farmer explained, “I’ve got an airman who landed in my field. He’s a little shaken up, but he’s all right. Do you want to talk to him?”

I replied, “No, wait. First off, what’s his name?”

“He says his name is Bale.”

I sighed in relief. The gunner had parachuted safely. I asked, “What did he tell you? How did he come to parachute into your field?

The farmer replied, “He said he thought the plane was going to trash and his pilot told him to jump. Do you want me to put him on the phone?”

I replied, “No, no. Just keep him there, and we’ll talk to him at your place.”

With that, I drove to the farmer’s house, finding the shaken gunner waiting patiently, still wearing his flight gear. I asked him what had happened.

He explained, “My pilot shouted over the interphone, and I realized we were going to have a collision with another plane. He told me to jump.”

I was perplexed. The pilot had not mentioned a possible midair collision. I asked him to confirm his last statement: “Wait, your pilot told you to bail out?”

“Yes, sir. He practically shouted it into the interphone.”

“What did he say, exactly?”

“He shouted, ‘Bail!’ sir.” I blinked. “Isn’t that your name?”

“Uhm?”

(Kleiss, Orr, and Orr 2017, 255-257)

References

Kleiss, N. Jack “., Timothy Orr, and Laura Orr. 2017. Never Call Me a Hero: A Legendary American Dive-Bomber Pilot Remembers the Battle of Midway. N.p.: HarperCollins.

ISBN 978-0-06-269205-4