Page 4 - Aerotech News and Review 3-18-16

Tora Tora Tora re-enacts Pearl Harbor attack
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Aerotech contributor
You’re going to want to be listening to some Big Band music
when you’re reading this. You know the good stuff, Tommy Dorsey,
Benny Goodman and, most of all, Glen Miller of the Army Air
Corps Band.
For good reason. It’s more than a “sentimental journey.” It’s a real with ammunition, then they jumped in a pre-war Buick and drove
deal. The “Tora Tora Tora” Pearl Harbor aerial re-enactment team of
the Commemorative Air Force is coming to the Los Angeles County
Air Show March 19-20, at Fox Field in Lancaster.
It is a stirring re-enactment. Nobody who has ever been in the
midst of a war wants more of that. But history is important, and
living history is a way to get eyes on what our fellow American
family members survived, and what hundreds of thousands of them
did not survive.
On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, George Welch and his friend,
Ken Taylor, were still engaged in a poker game that followed a
rooftop party that started on the night of Dec. 6. In other words,
they were dressed.
Mess dress is the closest thing to a tux and tails in the military
wardrobe department, and Welch and Tailor were still in their
slightly rumpled mess dress dealing the cards and playing them
when the attack “by forces of the Empire of Japan” commenced
as President Franklin D. Roosevelt noted in his Day of Infamy
speech to declare the war that the United States was in, effec-
tively, when the bombs started falling on Pearl Harbor.
The LA County Air Show, in its third annual observance, is go-
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they are show-stoppers. But the “Tora Tora Tora” re-enactment
is not to be missed. There will be noise. There will be explosions.
There will be piston-engine aircraft making attack runs.
With that in mind, talk to your friend or family member if they
have deployed in any of the wars that Americans have been tasked
to serve in, during, say, the last 75 years.
But that said, there is little more thrilling than the observance
of vintage “War Bird” aircraft doing what they were built to do,
which was to attack and maneuver. In other words, they were built
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for war. For dealing death. That is where the solemnity of historical Alvis recalled that after Welch was awarded the Distinguished
observance comes in. It is less an “ooh and ahh” moment, than it is Service Cross (the highest award in the Army Air Forces, just one
to understand how deadly serious the work of war is to the ones who level from the Medal of Honor), he went on to do distinguished
must perform when duty calls. work as a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base after World War II.
Welch and Taylor performed in the highest traditions of service. $VDQ$UP\$LU&RUSV¿JKWHUSLORWGXULQJ:RUOG:DU,,:HOFK
They were Army Air Corps pilots assigned to the 47th Pursuit downed 16 Japanese aircraft, ending the war as a “Triple Ace,”
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OLQHFUHZWRKDYHWZR3%7RPDKDZN¿JKWHUVJDVVHGDQGORDGHG Korean War, as a test pilot, he was reported to have shot down
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WRWKHDLU¿HOG²ZKLFKZDVDOUHDG\XQGHUDWWDFN pilot status.
They jumped into the cockpits still wearing their party clothes. “George is part of the history of our Antelope Valley,” Alvis said.
Welch and Taylor were the American pilots who got airborne and 6RWKH7RUD7RUD7RUDSLORWVZLOOEH]RRPLQJRYHU)R[)LHOGÀ\-
show down Japanese attack aircraft the morning of the “Day of LQJYLQWDJH0LWVXELVKL³=HUR´¿JKWHUVDQG³=HNH´DWWDFNDLUFUDIW
Infamy.” In the re-enactment, the simulations will include explosions and
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“What is not remembered as much is that George Welch went on but sobering enough to remember the history.
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historian Bob Alvis, himself an Air Force veteran of Cold War vintage. Another feature of
the day will be a his-
torical forum about
the Pearl Harbor at-
tack, sponsored by
High Desert Medical
Group, that I will be
participating as mod-
erator. All efforts are
being made to bring
in some of the gallant
veterans who actual-
ly were at Pearl Har-
bor on the “Day of
Infamy” on Dec. 7,
1941. The youngest
of them are at the 90-
plus mark nowadays.
They, too, are his-
tory. Living history!
A MIRACLE
SHOULD NOT BE A
MATTER OF DISTANCE
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March 18, 2016