Hewitt T. ‘Shorty’ Wheless and Boyd T. ‘Buzz’ Wagner: World War II Fighter Pilots

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After the disastrous attack at Pearl Harbor, the loss of Wake Island and the rout of American and Filipino forces in the Philippines, the United States was in desperate need of someone or something to indicate that the country was fighting back in 1942. It needed heroes or heroic deeds to offset the dark headlines that daily dominated every newspaper in the country. Captain Colin Kelly — who died on December 10, 1941, during a bombing mission near the Philippine island of Luzon — was the first such hero. But two other remarkable American fliers, Hewitt T. ‘Shorty’ Wheless and Boyd T. ‘Buzz’ Wagner, came into prominence shortly after that. Ironically, however, few today remember their exploits.

When the war broke out, 28-year-old 1st Lt. Shorty Wheless was a Boeing B-17D Flying Fortress pilot with the 19th Bombardment Group, stationed at Clark Field in the Philippines. After the Japanese attacked the Philippines on the afternoon of December 8, Wheless and others — along with what was left of the original 17 B-17s at Clark — flew south to Del Monte Field on the island of Mindanao two days later. There, they were some 500 miles out of range of Japanese bombers. On the afternoon of December 14 six of the Fortresses were ordered to attack an enemy invasion force at Legaspi, on the southern tip of Luzon. Wheless’ B-17 was one of the six assigned to the mission.

Although the Legaspi attack would be the biggest single raid against the Japanese to date in the week-old war, bad luck and mechanical difficulties, which had plagued the 19th Bombardment Group from the beginning, continued. When the lead B-17, piloted by Lieutenant Jim Connally, began its takeoff run, a tire blew out, forcing the big ship off the runway. As the Fortress slid off the field, its right wingtip dipped to the ground and crumpled. Clearly, that was one less plane available for the mission.

The five remaining planes, piloted by Wheless and Lieutenants Lee Coats, Jack Adams, Elliot Vandevanter and Walter Ford, got off safely, the last plane leaving the runway at 12:14 p.m. About 200 miles out, the group ran into a spot of bad weather. When they broke out of the storm a few minutes later, Wheless was nowhere to be seen. His No. 3 engine had quit, forcing him to drop out.

From that point on, things went from bad to worse. A half-hour out from the target, Ford radioed Coats, who had taken over from Connally, that he was having engine trouble and was returning to Del Monte. At the scheduled rendezvous point, about 35 miles from where the flight was to make its final turn for the target, Coats radioed that his engines were performing so badly that he was unable to make altitude, and was turning back.

That left Vandevanter and Adams to go it alone. Forced to drop down to 18,000 feet because of cloud cover, Adams was the first over the target. After releasing his eight 600-pounders at the line of enemy transports sitting off the Legaspi beach, he was jumped by five Mitsubishi A6M Zeros. Although a Japanese carrier was not spotted in the invasion force, one probably was lurking nearby, given how quickly the Zeros appeared.

Adams dived for cloud cover, with the Zeros right after him. Before he could get far, however, two of his engines were knocked out and two of his crew were wounded. Adams’ crew managed to shoot down two of the enemy fighters during the race for the clouds, but the remaining three Zeros were waiting for them when they came out.

At that point, Adams ‘pulled a cute one,’ according to Harry Schrieber, his navigator. ‘He throttled back suddenly and one Zero overshot us to the left, which our side gunner picked off. Another came up under the stabilizer, and our bottom gunner got his second for the day.’

Losing altitude while still battling the last enemy fighter, Adams decided to try for a beach landing on the nearby island of Masbate, just south of Luzon. Unfortunately, there was no real beach — ‘only jagged rocks with white surf wrapped around them,’ Schrieber recalled. Desperately looking for a place to land, Adams spotted a rice paddy. ‘Cutting the remaining two motors so we wouldn’t have to climb out of her in flames, he made as nice a belly landing as you could hope for,’ said Schrieber. After a couple of passes over the downed bomber, the lone Zero turned for home.

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Tags: Aerial Combat, Aviation History, Historical Conflicts, World War II

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