cunningh@noscvax.UUCP (Robert P. Cunningham) (12/08/84)
It was 0700am on a bright and clear Sunday morning. Up towards the
northwest edge of the island of Oahu, at Opana Point, Army privates
Joe Lockard and George Eliott were at the end of their lonely three-hour
watch.
They were manning a new, very secret and somewhat unreliable radio
aircraft-detection device, the SCR-270. Six of the new mobile radar units
were spotted around the perimeter of the island of Oahu. Most of the
time, many of them did not work. Even when they did, they were
difficult to operate -- even by a relatively experienced operator like
Joe Lockwood.
Because there were no spare parts and a shortage of trained personnel, the
SCR-270s were operated only for the three hours considered most dangerous each
day, the two hours before dawn and one afterward.
The truck to take them back to Kawailoa camp for breakfast was late, so
they let the generator run and Eliott, who was new to the device, asked
Lockard for a few more minutes of practice.
At 0702 an echo appeared on their oscilloscope unlike any they had
seen before. It was very large and luminous. They thought that something
must be wrong with the equipment. Lockard checked it, found nothing wrong,
and the echo was still on the scope.
He took over the dial controls and Eliott moved over to the plotting board.
By their calculations, a large flight of airplanes was 132 miles off Kahuku
Point approaching at three miles a minutes. They called the information
center at Fort Shafter at 0720 to report. The regular plotters at the
center had already gone off duty, but a private and Lieutenant Kermit Tyler
were there.
The private answered Eliott's call and was told: "A large number of
planes are coming in from the north, three points east," and was asked to
get in touch with somebody who could do something about it. Lieutenant
Tyler took the phone and talked with Eliott, then an excited Lockard. Tyler
told them that a flight of Army B-17 bombers was coming in from the
U.S. mainland. In fact, the commercial radio station KGMB had been
broadcasting all night -- at the request of the Army -- in order to help
guide the B-17s in. Tyler also told Lockard that the airplanes on the
radar might also have been planes from Hickam field or Navy patrol planes.
Tyler refused to issue any kind of alert.
Still concerned, Lockard and Eliott continued to follow the flight on
radar, losing the signal when the aircraft were within 20 miles because of
the permanent echo created by the surrounding mountains. It was then 0739.
They shut down the generator shortly afterwards when the truck came to take
them to breakfast.
At 0755 the bombs began to fall.
--
Bob Cunningham {dual|ihnp4|vortex}!islenet!bob
Honolulu, Hawaii