Claude Hone entertained and amazed with his stories from World War II and after.  He started by saying he was glad to be here.  He added that at the age of 94 he was glad to be anywhere.

 

Steve Hanson (Compudyne) and Doug Knowland (Metropolitan State University) greeted Rotarians and guests. 

President John Guthmann called the meeting to order so that Bo Aylin (Prairie View Partners, LLC) could lead an upbeat singing of American the Beautiful, Dennis Boom (Henry Holcomb Boom) at the piano. Ken Peterson (Union Gospel Mission) gave the inspirational moment with a moment of silence for all that is happening in the world, St. Louis, the Middle East, and the globe and asking for grace upon all of us.

Ed Coleman (Seven Corners Printing) introduced guests and visiting Rotarians.

Dan McKeown (Specialty Manufacturing) invited everybody to attend the Jim Kosmo Roast on Thursday night.

Carolyn Brusseau (UBS Financial Services-Retired) talked about the program next week.  Our own club member, Joe Beckman, will be talking about the Power of Positive Psychology for lower stress and a new way of thinking.

John Bradford (7 Corners Printing) presented a RYLA beer mug to Steve Gerber (Tarracon Consultants) for chairing Camp Ryla.  This is Steve’s third year as chair.

Carla Hauge, DDS helped raise money for the St. Paul Rotary Foundation by soliciting Happy Dollars from several Happy Rotarians.

Donovan Schwichtenberg (Saint Paul College-Retired) introduced our speaker, Claude Hone (Claude Hone Realtors-Retired) a member of the Rotary Club of St. Paul (that’s us) and a member of the Greatest Generation.

Claude entertained and amazed us with his stories from World War II and after.  He started by saying he was glad to be here.  He added that at the age of 94 he was glad to be anywhere.

Claude wanted to join the Army along with several friends at the start of World War II.  However, the Army recruiter was out to lunch.  They were approached by another man who asked what they were doing.  When they told him he revealed he was the Marine recruiter and asked them to join.  That is how Claude got into the Marines.  (Note to Rotarians:  That is also how people get into Rotary. You have to ask.)

When in the Marines he heard that they were looking for pilots.  He had never been in a plane, but volunteered.  His first training plane was a bi-plane with the instructor sitting in an opening behind him.  They would talk to each other through a rubber tube. 

After training with an instructor for 10 hours, he was told to solo.  His instructor told him that he could tell the direction of the wind for his landing by looking at the rescue trucks on the runway.  They would be facing into the wind.  When he came in for the landing he overshot the end of the runway.  It turned out that the trucks had been there all day and the wind had shifted, but the trucks had not.

He then went to Florida where he trained on the F4F.  This was an armored plane.  But, it was difficult to fly.  To take off you increased the throttle, pulled back on the stick, and had to hand crank up the wheels.  This was difficult to do all at once.

From there he went to California to learn how to fly a Corsair.  This was the plan he flew in the rest of the war.  It was a hot plane.  He liked that it had tracer bullets.  He thought that when he got back to South Dakota he would have to invent tracers for his shotgun.   They practiced carrier landings in California.  He had a chart that showed that to land on a carrier they had to fly the plane only 3 knots per hour over its stall speed.

During training, they could take the planes up whenever they wanted to practice.  One time he and a friend were flying when they saw a crowd below.  They decided to haze them with their planes.  They later found out this was the Rose Bowl.

From California, they went by ship to the New Hebrides near Australia.  There were several people who had trouble getting their sea legs.

They then provided air cover as the Allies moved north to Japan. 

His first experience with war was in Guam.  When he landed in Guam, the front was only a mile from the airport.  There were bodies laying everywhere.  There was a tank that had had its track blown off.  He looked in the tank and there were 6 bodies inside.

He had been told that it was important to have things to trade in the Marines.  So, he bought a case of scotch before he left the United States.  Unfortunately, the day before he landed in Guam, he lost it in a poker game.

While at Guam, the planes used the land based runaway instead of the aircraft carrier.  They would fly out on missions.  Not everybody would return.  One time 16 planes flew out and none returned.  They did not know what happened to them.

His first mission from Guam was to attack Tinian Island where the Japanese were hiding in caves in a cliff overlooking the ocean.  He would have to fly straight at the cliff, firing at the caves, while the people in the caves would be firing at him.  At the last minute, he would pull straight up to avoid hitting the cliff.

He was a part of the attack on Iwo Jima.  He never landed, but he would strafe the enemy.  He felt bad that he got to fly back to an aircraft carrier, while the troops on the ground had to stay and fight and die.  18,000 American soldiers were killed at Iwo Jima.  180,000 were wounded.  He compared this to current troop deaths and injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

He next talked about the attack on Tokyo.  The Allies plan was to burn Tokyo.  They sent the fighters in ahead of the bombers to eliminate the Japanese Zeros.  It was snowing when they left the carrier and they had to come in low to avoid radar.  When they got to Tokyo he had never seen the sky so lit up with gunfire.  They managed to make their pass and when leaving Tokyo Bay they flew at the top of the waves.  The Japanese gunners could not depress their guns enough to shoot them.  He could see their faces as he flew by.

Eight planes left for Tokyo in his flight.  Only five returned.

In order to find their way back to the carrier, they had to estimate their speed and direction and the carrier’s speed and direction.  When they go to the spot, there was no carrier.  Because of radio silence, they could not call to the carrier.  However, the carrier would transmit a small signal every minute.  They were able to use this signal to find the carrier.  They got there just before their fuel ran out.  If they had ditched in the ocean, they would have died because the water was so cold.

They were fed and allowed to take a shower.  They were then told to get back in the planes for another run at Tokyo.  They had a different target this time.  When they got there they saw a lot of plane on the runway.  Each Corsair had a 500 lbs. bomb attached.  However, they had no sights, so dropping the bomb was like throwing a rock and trying to hit something from the air.  When they saw the planes on the runway, they all dropped their bombs. 

Later, a reconnaissance plane flew over the airport to assess the damage.  That plane found that the planes they had seen on the runway had been painted onto the runway.

He later was part of the plan to invade Okinawa.  On one run, after dropping his bomb he felt his plane get hit and he lost control.  He managed to regain control and return to his base.  He found that he had not been hit and his plane was not damaged.  The artillery shell had come so close to his plane that the concussion blew it out of control.

In March of 1945, he was given leave to come home for a few months.  He married his wife on July 14.  On August 14, Japan surrendered.  His wife told him that if she had known that the war was going to end, she wouldn’t have married him.  They were married 67 years until her death.

On August 6, the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.  70,000 people were killed instantly and another 70,000 died within 5 years from injuries and radiation poisoning.  On August 9, the United States was supposed to drop the second atomic bomb on Kokura.  However, the pilots were required to make a visual sighting of their target.  Kokura was clouded in, so the bomber when to its secondary target, Nagasaki.  (Recorders note:  Think about this whenever you want to complain about the weather.  At least, it is not resulting in an atomic bomb being dropped on you.)

At Nagasaki, another 70,000 people died.

An August 14, Japan surrendered.

Claude was sent to Florida for his discharge.  When he was there, he found a job as a crop duster.  He would spray for mosquitoes at the golf course.  Rather than go around in a wide arc, he would fly to the end of a fairway, pull his plane up into a stall and then turn it to the ground for another pass in the opposite direction.

He was also hired to test some new dive bombers.  There was a particular model of dive bomber that would have its wings collapse when the bomber was brought out of a dive.  So, they had some new models that were supposed to correct this problem.  His job was to take the planes up, put them into a dive, and then pull up sharply to see if the wings would hold up. 

When he got back to Sioux Falls, he joined the National Guard.  One time he and others were coming to the Twin Cities to Wold–Chamberlain Field (now Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport).  The all decided to land in formation.  Unfortunately, the runway was covered with ice.  One plane landed on top of his plane.  The propeller cut the straps on his back to his parachute.  It also punctured the gas tank and cut the controls in front of him.  He walked away with a cut to his cheek. 

They had to fly back to the Twin Cities for a hearing on the accident.  After the hearing, they were going to fly back to Sioux Falls.  When they got into the air they realized that there was gas on the floor of the cabin.  There had been a mistake in fueling the plane.  They returned to Wold Chamberlain Field.  When the plane was cleaned out and fueled properly they were told that there was a blizzard and Sioux Falls was socked in.  They spent the night and wanted to try again the same day.  They were told that they still could not fly.  They were told they could fly to Sioux City, Iowa.  When they got in the air, the leader of their group decided to try to fly to Sioux Falls anyway. 

They lost power in one engine and it made it very difficult to fly the plane.  They tried to get the dome off the cabin so they could bail out.  Part of it came off Imageand took off their tail.  They could not get it open enough to get out.  They ended up flying at ground level where they just missed a barn and took out a farmer’s fence.  They eventually got back to Wold Chamberlain Field and he hitch-hiked home. 

President John closed the meeting by leading everyone in the 4-Way Test.

Al Zdrazil, Scribe