Hellcat Ace Describes How He Shot Down the Enemy over Europe and the Pacific

our guest this week on veterans chronicles is retired u.s navy commander dean diz laird a veteran of three different wars he is an ace aviator and is the only one known to have recorded kills in both the european and pacific theaters of world war ii and commander thank you very much for being with us my pleasure let's start at the very beginning for you where were you born and raised i was born in a little town of loomis california which is about 30 miles east of sacramento and in 1921 i was born from a long line of lards and smites my family had been settled there for since before the gold rush wow and participated in the gold rush and [Music] my grandparents both were born there and my dad was born there we had a had a lot of layers that lived in that area for a while but now there's none now the nickname diz did you get that as a kid or after you joined the service and is it because of the pitcher dizzy dean it is because of the pitcher dizzy dean and it and dean was what my mother named me and i played baseball when i was in high school and of course as soon as the kids knew my name was dean i became dizzy and they called me dizzy a lot and i got in the navy when i became my first first fighter squadron my co i went in for an interview with him and he said do you have a nickname and i told him not really i didn't know i used to be called dizzy or dizzy [Music] in high school and he said that's good enough for me because you're dizzy from now on aviators you got to have the handle right yeah so you joined just after pearl harbor was attacked correct yes what was your reaction to the attack well i was i was kind of shocked i never expected it of course i guess a lot of other people didn't expect it either and [Music] i found out about it i got up in the morning at that sunday morning and drove out to the auburn airport i was going to rent an airplane and go flying i had a pilot's license at that time and they thought i was crazy do you know what's going on and what's going on i know i wasn't doing ran an airplane and well we're at war pearl harbor's been attacked and uh everything was news to me and that's when i found out about the war would you have joined the service anyway or did that make your decision for you no i was planning on joining the army air corps [Music] i had papers out for it my brother and i were both talking about it and i it was about the same time that i saw a newsreel in which they had a showed a battleship that was a a makeshift flight deck on it and an airplane taking off and then they showed a picture of our our first carrier the langley and an airplane landing aboard it and i thought damn that's got to be more fun than anything i think i'll just go join the navy so i did nice very nice so where did they send you first to train i started out at oakland oakland california the the navy had what's called the navy naval reserve air base on the air airfield at airport at oakland and that's that's where i reported and stayed for about two two months okay what planes were you flying at first well we were flying the n3ns there entry in was built by the navy the navy had an aircraft factory in philadelphia and it was built it was pretty much a copy of the of the stearman which was i forget who built that i knew um and then both the navy and the and the army air corps used the steering and trainer and but the navy ended up using more n3ns which they built themselves in their factory in philadelphia did you like flying the m3ns oh yeah it was it was fun to fly yeah and then how soon did you get deployed oh well it took it took me almost a year to get get to my first squadron i stayed in oakland for about as i say january into february and then they sent me to dallas naval air station i was in a pool there with a whole bunch of other guys from different bases they call them elimination bases like oakland seattle long beach st louis kansas city all over the country they had these elimination bases and then when people would finish there they'd send them to a pool usually in dallas and and then from there they would send them to the two main training stations which is corpus christi and pensacola after a month in dallas i was sent to pensacola where i did most of my training and so that pensacola was the last stop well no uh i did primary training there and basic training there and uh instrument training i got an instrument card and then they sent me to advanced training which was done in in miami uh opalaca naval air station down there and they're we had the advanced training in snj's snj texan and when we finished that we went into [Music] a service type airplane which was the brewster buffalo the f2a and that was the first real airplane that i flew and had one of those great big round engines you know and made a lot of noise and it had about 1200 horsepower and a little more pop a lot of airplane tough adjustment or no no no i found even no matter what airplane it is they all have a throttle over here and a stick and if you want to go fast you pull on a throttle you want to go up you pull on the stick and you all go down you push on the stick and it doesn't matter whether it's a an n3n or a uh an f4 phantom or or what they all fly the same few little little things different but yeah i figured you'd find one and it wouldn't take you very long to learn how to fly the other so you're sent to the european theater first correct well yes i finished miami and i think it was about the 5th of august october rather of 42. i went to norfolk i had to go through carrier qualifications um which we did in the snj texas excuse me and and then i reported to my squadron [Music] which was uh fighter squadron 441 and [Music] we were attached to the carrier ranger which was cv cv4 fourth carrier we had the first carry we had that was built from the ground keel up as a as a carrier and it was it was not the greatest carrier in the world i'll say that it was better than some but where were you where was the ship over i was in norfolk okay we we trained out of norfolk for uh let's see december january february march but we did a couple of short little deployments local deployments on the ranger just to build up a little carrier experience and then in early april we departed norfolk and we eventually ended up a month or so later in argentina newfoundland where we stayed for another i don't know forget three four months five months maybe um i'd have to go back and check my logbook make sure and we we left there we went back to quonset point rhode island and i don't know why but we did and said goodbye to our wives and and uh we took off again and we didn't know where we're going until we we're halfway there that we were told we were going to we're going to great britain and so we we ended up uh in scotland flow scapa flow was the anchorage for the british home fleet and we operated with and and actually [Music] we were controlled by the commander of the bishop fleet for several months while we were over there we had been there for a couple of months and some bright fellow and our staff got the idea that we should be night carrier qualified um we complained about it and explained that we we loved carrier operations during the day but we preferred the company of women during the night and we were not too thrilled about going out and flying off a carrier at night we lost our argument they decided to brief us we would call us all down to the officer's wardroom the briefing officer was the executive officer of the ship who was the only one aboard the ship who had ever made a night carrier landing it turns out that he made one and it was not the best landing in the world and that was a about eight or nine years earlier and when we finished his briefing they said okay you guys man your airplanes and instead of sending off you know like they do now maybe four or five or six airplanes to just keep them in this pattern and let them make landings it launched the whole air group all 72 of us and we i was near the last of the of the fighters the fighters were first to go to go start planning the first night i didn't get into the landing pattern even i we ran low on fuel after circling for two or three hours and we had to go into argentina to land in fact almost every airplane we launched ended up in argentia and we flew back the next day and they proceeded to tell us what lousy aviators we were and and told us to manage airplanes again and we went through the same same routine again that night and for several more nights after that and we got to know our genji at night pretty well but uh that's where we spent it and so i think they finally gave up on qualifying everybody and i'm not sure if anybody might have been one or two pilots in each squadron that got qualified the rest of us had maybe two landings or three landings or some people maybe not even any but let's go back to great britain because that's where we left off at the end of the last segment how long were you there before you got engaged in the skies over europe well uh let's see we got over there in june let's say june june of 43 yes okay and uh we would go out did a lot of operating up along the norwegian coast and which wasn't the greatest it was in october when we first got our our first our first uh combat action what was that like after all this training after all this anticipation when you actually engaged with the enemy well uh as it was i wasn't scheduled to fly that that day and uh they had a combat air patrol out and they were looking for a target which our radar showed was on this showed on the screen and they this flight couldn't find it the weather was kind of crummy and they were bringing them back aboard and going we're going to send a relief flight out well i i should tell you that i i used to get seasick i had ship it wasn't a you know this type of thing it wouldn't bother me but it was just a gentle thing like you might get in a row boat out on the bay and i don't know if you've done that or not but i was always subject to motion sickness even in the car as a little kid so uh i used to volunteer for every flight i could get and i i found out finally that there were two or three pilots that seem to have more engine trouble before takeoff than than the rest of us and i found that if we always had a spare pilot up there we had a flight of four say we had five airplanes ready to go and we'd put a spare pilot in there and if one of these went down this guy would go so i got the smart idea well it's a good way to get flight time and almost always spare pilot gets help so i used to volunteer to be the spare pilot whenever whenever i could all i did this day and sure enough i got airborne when we went out we relieved that other group that have been out there looking for a couple couple of hours and they say the weather was rather crummy and they vectored us around looking for this bogey out there and um we couldn't find it either finally they were started they said well come on back to the ship and they started back and he and they said gives a signal buster buster mint everything forward get back as fast as you can my airplane uh buster was about 10 or 15 knots slower than anybody else's buster and i couldn't keep up with them and but when they told us to come on back i knew that there was a bogey out there somewhere because this radar operator we had aboard the ship was was excellent and if he i never known him to be wrong if he thought he had a little problem a target out there there was a target there it was an airplane so while we were heading back towards the uh fleet again i kept looking backward i was falling behind anyway full full throttle kept looking backward back where we'd come from and sure enough they uh uh i i saw this airplane come out from behind a big cloud huge cloud and there were clouds all over but came out in line the big cloud went around the front of it and went around and went around the back on the back side right on the right so i called tally ho and told him what i saw and my my section leader turned immediately and i went with him because we were this way so i was caught up with him on the turn and i explained to him exactly what i saw and so we headed towards the side of this huge cloud from which this airplane had appeared and uh sure enough here he came again and uh it was a junkers 88 one of germany's best bombers and he apparently saw us about the same time we saw him because he turned immediately and headed south which i think was the direction of germany and we went chasing after him and finally caught him and my my leader went up on the right side to sit in a position to make a high side run and i went up to the left side and vader came in he fired and i came in and i i fired and we had him smoking and came up and peter came back again and i came in again and this time i i tried to aim where i thought the most likely place that they would have a fuel tank and i think i guessed right because while i'm firing this exploit this airplane the ju-88 just exploded in a big ball of fire and a lot of extraneous airplane parts flying in every direction and that was the end of him anyway we headed back towards the fleet and they gave us another vector out in the opposite direction and this time we'd gone oh maybe 25 30 miles and we came to a just a black wall of water rain and we were spread out like this again the meter was going full full blower and i was tail and charlie i couldn't keep up at all and and he got to this alliance quality turned left and paralleled it he and the second guy went with him and the third guy did and about then i saw in the inside that squall and a strange airplane going in the opposite direction and i called tallyho told him what i saw went up there and i turned and started following him i don't know i hoped i was following him i couldn't see anything invisibility was terrible but i was flying down fairly low probably ceiling high off the wall off the water i had to try to keep keep the water visible so i wouldn't run into it and there was the visibility was really bad so i've gone along there for a few minutes and and all of a sudden at about 11 o'clock position to me here came an airplane and i was pretty close and i got a chance to see what it was it had it was a twin engine and had twin floats right underneath the engines um a monoplane one wingman whatever that means and uh i didn't i didn't have too much time to aim or get any real assessment on on it i had pulled up and put my gun side up trying to hit the port or yeah his port engine i pulled up and i pulled the trigger into the burner and just a short burst of all i got and i went by him like that and i had to duck and i thought i thought my my tail sticking up was going to hit him i was that close wow i missed him except i blasted the hell out of his his pontoon that was underneath that that port engine and i was going to turn around to follow him and i've figured out that he he was doing somewhere around 300 knots and so was i and then i got behind him and i could not catch him it was just this airplane that airplane was was a fast fast moving bird and the wildcat wasn't known for its great speed but it would do 300 or better knots that is well anyway i'm gonna i'm behind him but i know i'm out of range our machine guns were good we're 50 calibers were good for about about a thousand feet anything over that you were it was just look if you hit anything when you hit what you were aiming at and i gave a couple of bursts and i couldn't tell where they went we were both going about the same speed and and i figured i was out of range anyway and the tracers would burn out before they ever got cut up there so i was sure i wasn't hitting him i kept following him trying to catch him and i'd drop down and pick up some speed this way and and try to pick up a few hundred yards on him and i i just it was almost impossible i pulled back up and of course i'd lose speed when i pull up and i'd lose that distance too so finally i did myself why don't you [Music] you know that the bullets dropped and with a thousand feet they drop about three feet and why don't you go up and aim maybe 10 or 15 or even 20 feet above him and see if you can lob some up there and hit him and i didn't know how high to shoot or anything this was a real real guesswork and i we're still both going same air speed and i finally i pulled up aimed over the top of him and i squeezed off a long burst and i don't know if it hit him or not i couldn't tell the tracer burned out before they got there and i i couldn't tell whether the bullets dropped behind him or went over the top of him or hit him or anything and then all of a sudden he he seemed to slow down dropped his flaps and was heading down the land and not or we'll make a water landing on his floats and i thought well maybe i did hit him well he he touched down and when he did that that port float just collapsed there wasn't much left of it to begin with when i hit it that first first time and he uh it collapsed the left wing dropped hit the water and he just cartwheeled and came to a stop the time i got up there the three crewmen had gotten out they were all together beside the fuselage and they waved to me and i gave him a salute and we circled and where a leader came along and he he called back home base see if they'd send a destroyer over to pick these guys up and they said no they didn't want them well we wouldn't have done any good that water was so cold that they probably were dead within 15 minutes anyway 20 at the most the reason i say that is just a week or so below before that we had a pilot come in making a landing and he he got in very close and he started drifting from left uh right to left and he landed and he went over the side well he got out of the airplane right away we had a destroyer this british destroyer was flying a plane guard position back here at about a hundred yards he was right there within 20 30 seconds at the most threw him a line and he was already so cold he couldn't hold on to it so they put a boat in the water with four sailors and a coxswain the sailors they got to them they they went in the water and they got him out and they got each other back aboard the boat got back to the destroyer and they they it was so they were so cold from the hypothermia that all five of them four sailors and our pilot died wow hypothermia wow so i was pretty sure those those germans were not going to survive very long not long enough to for a destroyer to come for an hour or so away to get them sir let me just in our last couple of minutes here uh so i want to get to a couple different parts of your story uh real quickly how did you end up getting transferred to the pacific well well we we came home and let's see that was in october october 3rd as a matter of fact we came home i got back to concert point on the 5th of december we traded in our wildcats and got hellcats we moved up to air massachusetts where we trained for a couple of months in our new planes and then we went to san diego got on a jeep carrier which carried us out to hawaii and and we went to we went down to hilo where we spent a couple of months in training again in our new airplanes and then we were transported again by a jeep carrier out to saipan where we met up with the carrier i thought i'd never forget it anyway a new carrier and went aboard it and we had just received all brand new airplanes brand new f6 f5s and and while we're on that jeep carrier going out to saipan each pilot had an airplane and we we waxed them the whole airplane head to toe we found that we could we could with a good wax job we could increase our our air speed by 10 to 15 knots and so we had we really really worked on those things a skipper that ship that picked us up told us we he already had a whole bunch of airplanes aboard and he didn't want those so we had to leave them somebody else got the benefit of our work so we got aboard that carrier went down the philippines joined up with uh with halsey and we stayed on that ship for about a month and then we moved over to the essex and the other ship went home had to have a few little things fixed before it came back in january so we spent the rest of our crews on essex that was see that was [Music] we got aboard ethics about the first of uh of october and uh we stayed on there and until april they kicked us off replaced us with another air group and i i didn't want to go because i knew damn well that the next big operation had to be okinawa and i wanted part of that and all right so i went up to my squadron commander's office car cabin and i don't like citizens and i i don't want to go i want i'd like to get a transfer to this new group that just replacing us right now and stay aboard the essex and jesus he he flipped his lead told me i was crazy screamed that everybody in the ship could hear him i think and uh suffering from combat fatigue that i did all this crap he said i won't approve anything like that you're you're crazy you're crazy i thought i'd gonna have to creepy muffy overhead and anyway he said you go down and get your gear and get down to the quarter deck we're leaving this ship and you're going with us well i went with them and we came back to san diego that was the end of that cruise uh from there on i didn't do my well i got orders to a new squadron up in brunswick maine called experimental fighter squadron 200. i don't know where the other 199 were but there's we have 200 now and and [Music] our our job we worked with them with units of the atlantic fleet destroyers cruisers people like that two and we we we acted as as kamikazes we'd make kamikaze runs on them and pull out at the last minute they were trying to develop tactics to beat the kamikaze and we had a lot of fun doing that just buzzed the hell out of those guys and sure they were scared more than we were and then then the end of the war camp and they didn't need that training for kamikaze so they they moved us down to norfolk and changed us into a regular elite squadron we stayed there for another six or eight months and moved to atlantic city and was there for a little over a year and that's when i got orders to the navy's first jet squadron real quickly what does it mean to you to be an ace pilot i i i i i i i guess except for the fact that not everybody becomes an ace it doesn't really mean much at all you're it's it proves one thing that that that you had to be a pretty good pilot and a good gunner and really that's about all it does proof well sir we thank you for your time here we thank you most of all for your service to our nation and uh as folks will know if they they read more on you it wasn't just world war ii it was korea vietnam all the way to the early 1970s so thank you very much for your time and your service all right des laird retired u.s navy commander veteran of three wars ace aviator and the only man to record kills in both the european and pacific theaters of world war ii this is veterans chronicles

Channel: American Veterans Center

Views: 116,334

Keywords: AVC, American Veterans Center, dean diz laird, commander dean diz laird, diz laird, commander, ace pilot, wwii ace pilot, pacific theater, european theater, us army air corps, us army air forces, pilot, fighter pilot, veteran, wwii veteran, wwii history, american veterans center conference, history, world war ii veteran, greatest generation

Id: jEoxONGXOnk

Length: 43min 3sec (2583 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 31 2017