Hi, I'm the History Guy. I have a degree
in history, I love history and if you love history too this is the channel for you.
In the chaos of the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7th of 1941, only 8 US
pilots managed to get aircraft airborne in order to contest the nearly 400 Japanese that were
attacking the island of Oahu. The story of two of those really does stand out, and it always
surprises me when I find out people who don't know the names of George Welch and Kenneth
Taylor, because their story at Pearl Harbor is really extraordinary but more than that, and
more than the fact that both of them were heroes in every sense of the word, is the great lesson
that what they did teaches about how to respond under pressure. And so today we're going to
talk about the hero pilots of Pearl Harbor. The Japanese attack commenced at 7:48
a.m. 353 planes, in two waves, reached Oahu. The torpedo bombers took advantage of the
surprise and attacked the ships in the harbor, focusing on the battleships, the dive bombers
attacked the army air bases at Hickam Field and Wheeler Field in order to prevent Americans
from taking off and defending the island. While all that was going on two American fighter
pilots in Oahu had been out all night partying. George Welch was a native of Wilmington Delaware
he completed three years studying mechanical engineering at Purdue University before joining
the US Army Air Corps in 1939. After receiving his wings in January of 1941 he was posted to
the 47th Pursuit Squadron, Wheeler Field Oahu, on December 7th 1941 he was 23 years old.
Kenneth Taylor hailed from Enid Oklahoma, he spent two years studying pre-law
at the University of Oklahoma before joining the US Army Air Corps in 1940. After
receiving his wings in April of 1941 he was also posted to the 47th Pursuit Squadron, on
December 7th 1941, he was just 21 years old. Both were good pilots, their commanding officer
General Gordon Austin had made them both flight commanders. The week before the Japanese attacked,
the 47th Pursuit Squadron was temporarily moved from Wheeler Field to the unpaved auxiliary
airstrip at Haleiwa for gunnery practice. The night of December 6 there had been a big dance at
the officer's club, eager to impress the ladies, Welch and Taylor had worn their best mess dress,
the army equivalent of a tuxedo, after the dance they joined some other officers for an all-night
poker game, they were just wrapping up when the bombs started falling. The first wave hit their
home field at Wheeler Field hard, the army hadn't anticipated an air attack so they'd had the
aircraft group up to make them easier to defend from sabotage, that made them easy targets for
the Japanese dive bombers, and now the aircraft that were needed to defend Oahu from this attack
were in flames. But Welch and Taylor realized that the auxiliary base over in Haleiwa might not have
been targeted yet, so they called ahead and asked that their two Curtiss P-40B pursuit fighters be
fueled and armed. Running outside, they jumped into Taylor's Buick, Japanese machine guns kicking
up dust around them, they raced down the 10 mile road to the air base sometimes reaching speeds of
100 miles an hour. When they got to Haleiwa they realized it hadn't been attacked yet and their
fighters were sitting there, fueled, armed and waiting for them. Still wearing their tuxedo
pants from the night before they jumped into their airplanes and took off. The sky was full of
Japanese airplanes, two pilots against hundreds. They saw a flight of dive bombers and charged
in, guns blazing, each of them took down two enemy aircraft before they were out of ammunition.
They returned to heavily damaged Wheeler Field in order to rearm, when they landed Taylor had
been wounded by a bullet that came through his cockpit and one of Welch's guns was jammed.
The ammunition for their planes was in a burning warehouse and the ground crews had to run into
the inferno in order to get ammunition to rearm. Before they could be fully rearmed the Japanese
attacked again and so they took off charging, guns blazing, before they were even in the air.
They took down another three Japanese aircraft before the Japanese attack was over. At the end of
the day, George Welch was credited with four air victories and Kenneth Taylor with two although
some evidence that they shot down at least a couple of other Japanese planes. That's out of a
total of just 10 confirmed air victories for all American pilots at the Battle of Pearl Harbor. A
War Department communique on December 13th 1941 proclaimed Taylor and Welch the first two American
of the Second World War. They were both given the Distinguished Service Cross, which is second only
to the Congressional Medal of Honor, and Taylor won the Purple Heart. George Welch went on to
serve three tours in the Pacific and finished the war with 16 confirmed air victories, an Ace
three times over. After the war he was a test pilot for many years and tragically died in 1954,
when the experimental jet that he was testing, broke up in midair. Kenneth Taylor went on to fly
out of the famous Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, and then trained pilots in the United States,
he ended the war an Ace with six confirmed victories. He served in the active military for
27 years and then with the Alaska Air National Guard and finally retired a Brigadier General,
he passed away in 2006. In an interview in 2003 Kenneth Taylor summed up perhaps the very nature
of heroism, he said, “I wasn't terrified in the least and let me tell you why. I was too young and
too stupid to know that I was in a lot of danger.” So what do we learn from this I mean it's an
exciting story but it didn't change the war, shoot their actions that day didn't even really
change the battle, and yet two guys took on a whole sea of enemies and somehow gave much
better than they got, and there must be something to learn from that. Well what Taylor and Welch
really did was they acted, they took initiative, they had faith in their abilities and their
equipment. They followed their training, they didn't sit, they acted, and that seems to be
a hallmark of heroism. Just a hallmark of success, faith in your abilities, and the
willingness to act on that faith. I'm the history guy, I hope you
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