WWII 'Hump' pilot flew in China
By
Tom Gillispie
Special
to the Journal
Bill
Minish of Winston-Salem flew about 50 missions during World War II, but his
biggest adventure didn't happen in his usual haunts - China, Burma and India.
It
happened as Minish and another pilot were flying on a mission to photograph
parts of the southern Arabian peninsula. Suddenly, Minish lost visual contact
with the other plane.
Minish,
who died Dec. 16 after an 11-year bout with Parkinson's disease, told his story
to his grandson, Jordan Patterson, on Feb. 27, 2000, and the interview was
taped and transcribed.
"He
went under my plane and came up and hit me in the side and took one engine
off," Minish said in the interview. "The radio was all gone, and it tore
off part of the fuselage. Luckily, it was about 150 miles to the nearest air
base, and I turned around and came back and landed safely."
Minish's
wife, Ernestine, said that her husband didn't mention in that interview that
one of his crewmen panicked when the plane caught fire.
"That
was the biggest scare I had the whole time I was in the service," Minish
told his grandson.
Minish
was one of the "Hump" pilots who flew the C-26 cargo planes between
India and China. It wasn't a glamorous job, but the Chinese, then an American
ally, desperately needed the food, gasoline, ammunition, canned goods, tents,
chickens and other goods.
Why
were they called Hump pilots? The Hump was the Himalayas, the tallest mountain
range in the world.
"It
was the forgotten theater," Ernestine Minish said yesterday. "People
forget that people served in India, China and Burma, too."
Minish
and Ernestine, his second wife, were married 29 years. They often attended
reunions of the Hump Pilot Association, and the couple went to Taipai, Taiwan,
in 1985 to attend the 40th reunion. Many of the mementos of Minish's service
are collected in a frame that includes a war-time picture of Minish, his medals
and the Chinese flag that Hump pilots wore on the back of their flight jackets.
Among
the medals are the Distinguished Flying Cross and two wings that the Chinese
presented Minish at the 40th reunion.
Minish
joined the Army in March 1942 at age 23, and he was assigned to the 6th Armored
Division in the California desert. He had ridden in a plane only once, flying
over Winston-Salem, but he decided to become a pilot. He applied for flight
training and went to Santa Ana, Calif., as a student officer in the U.S. Army
Air Corps. Minish received training in California, New Mexico and Missouri, and
he and his crew left Baer Field in Fort Wayne, Ind., in 1943.
He
had said he cherished the memories of the rain forests of Brazil, the river at
Belem in Brazil, Ascension Island in the South Atlantic, the confluence of the
blue and white Nile at Khartoum, the Taj Mahal in the moonlight, the
snow-capped Himalayas at sunrise and Kipling's road to Mandalay.
Minish
told his wife that the happiest day of his life was Aug. 6, 1945, the day that
the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. He knew, she said, that the war was
nearing an end in the Pacific.
He
traveled home on an aircraft carrier, Kadoshan Bay, and landed in Wilmington,
Calif., on Dec. 23, 1945.
Minish
worked for the U.S. Postal Service for many years, but his three years of
service stuck with him for more than 60 years. He often quoted John Gillespie
Magee Jr.'s poem, High Flight, which begins with "Oh! I have slipped the
surly bonds of earth and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings."
Minish
obviously rode those silvered wings over and over in his mind.
"He
always said that this was the most exciting time of his life," Ernestine
Minish said, "and he'd do it again if asked."
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