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 enjoyed this edition of my channel,
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