Paul McGrew
World War II
I was in charge of the Operation Shack at the airport. Each morning at 6:30 AM, I greeted the pilots with the Skipper's Orders and a copy of the weather report before they took off to patrol their "Pie Sector". We were patrolling the Chinese Mainland. The pilot of this story, a senior lieutenant, peeled off his kid gloves, read the orders, crumpled them, and then tossed them into the wastebasket. (This was his usual daily procedure.) Approximately two months before VJ day, all of our pilots were dropping their bomb load in the ocean shortly after take-off. The war had moved north to IWO JlMA, so we were no longer a vital arm of the conflict. On patrol, the pilot, who threw away his orders during this period, spotted a Japanese freighter sneaking out of the mainland. "Look,” he told his co-pilot, a junior grade lieutenant, “we are going to get that guy." "With what?” asked the JG. "We will dive into it," said the Senior Lieutenant. "Like hell you will," said the JG, pulling his side arm out and calling the crew for help. The JG called me immediately, telling me to have our four-striped captain waiting on the strip with an armed guard truck to arrest his prisoner and any of the mutinous crew. I called our Captain who had the truck on the runway waiting. The next day, the entire crew flew to Manila where a court-martial fined each of the crew $1.00 for mutiny and gave them a carton of cigarettes. The pilot in question was shipped to the States for psychiatric evaluation. This was Navy justice in 1944.