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In humid, midnight skies, the PBY Catalinas of World War II flew low over the waters of the Southwest Pacific.
The black-painted Navy planes had one role: to cut the supplies Japanese ships carried from the mainland to Rabaul, New Britain. The planes were nicknamed “Black Cats” and used radar to find fleet units and cargo vessels. If a crew found a ship, they would turn back, dive and bomb the vessel.
One of the combat aircrewman for the 7th Fleet’s Black Cat Squadron VPB-52 was Jim McDougall, now 95 and a Minnetonka resident. He worked with his daughter Jackie Seemann over the last 4 years to compile the stories he long orated into a book.
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“I had been telling these stories, but I hadn’t really pinned them down to what I had in my log book and what I read from squadron records,” he said. “I wrote this as something my family would have, to know the story correctly.”
“Conflict to Combat in the South Pacific” is separated in two parts. The first is “Conflict in the South Pacific,” followed by “Combat in the South Pacific.” McDougall used flight logs, squadron’s records, official navy records and memories to reconstruct his service from 1942-1946. Seemann recorded McDougall telling the stories and transcribed them for the book.
Before
The reader meets McDougall in Iowa just after Pearl Harbor was attacked on Dec 7, 1941. He joins the Iowa State Guard only 7 months after graduating from high school and is assigned to the company in Le Mars Iowa. At a dance, he meets Yvonne, better known as “Von,” the woman who would later be his wife.
McDougall’s training takes him to Florida where he is told to catch up with his new unit in San Diego.
“To this day, I believe I may actually hold the record for the most miles traveled to join a combat squadron,” McDougall said.
When he arrives in San Diego, the unit had already left for Australia. From ship to train to train, he trekked 16,642 miles to get to Perth in 1943. It wasn’t an easy trip. When he traveled by military train, the car he stayed in was only a boxcar with two sliding doors and stacks of straw to sleep on.
The Black Cats
McDougall arrived at “Honey Hollow” in Namoai Bay, New Guinea, and started work as a waist-hutch gunner among 10 fellow crew members.
One of his first combat memories is the sinking of a Japanese freighter on Dec. 9, 1943. As steam rose from the plunging ship and the prow arched to the sky, he watched.
He thought of the ship he had taken to arrive in Australia.
“I could not help but think of the man sitting in the same spot where I had sat on the Henry V. Alvarado,” he wrote, “and I felt fortunate that I was the aggressor rather than the defender.”
Scattered through the book are lighthearted memories of the Navy, from sliding down stair rails to falling off hammocks. Also recorded are McDougall’s harrowing experiences, and those by proxy when fellow Navy crew members died.
December 1944 was his last month among the Black Cats.
“When we arrived at Kaneohe, Hawaii, with our beat-up, old planes, I stepped out of the port blister for the very last time,” he wrote. “A military pickup truck was waiting nearby to take us to our barracks. I hopped in, and as I rode off in the open bed, I glanced back, and that was the last time I saw a Black Cat, just resting there on the beach.”
After
He was formally discharged Jan. 20, 1946. McDougall went to college in South Dakota, taught vocational agriculture in two high schools and later moved to Minnetonka to work at Cargill, while Yvonne taught preschool children in Excelsior. Besides Seemann, the McDougalls had five other children: Dana, Betsy, Jayne, Sandy and Jamie.
McDougall and Yvonne made a return trip in 1992 to Australia.
Yvonne died nearly four years ago. Her photo — dressed in her Navy storekeeper uniform, with curled hair and dark eyes — is in the dedication.
“For Von, the love of my life,” McDougall wrote. “Whoever was with her felt that the world was a more enjoyable place in which to live.”
Among other recognitions from the Navy, McDougall has been honored with an Award of Air Medal for his work.