Our Neighborhood Veterans
by Jim Houck, Jr.
1ST LIEUTENANT GEORGE WARREN BAKER, U.S. ARMY AIR CORPS
Born on April 5, 1921, just north of Thurmont at Franklinville, to Roy and Blanche Baker, was a boy they named George. George had three brothers and two sisters: Raymond, Donald, and Leroy, and Ruth and Helen (nicknamed Tootie). In 1940, at the age of nineteen, George decided he wanted to join the military. His brother, Raymond (nicknamed Hun), had already been in the military several months, and was somewhere around Washington, D.C.
George enlisted in the Army Air Corps at Baltimore, Maryland, in November of 1940, and asked to be sent to Hawaii. He was sent to Fort Slocum, New York, for basic training, where it was bitter cold, which made his training very difficult. He volunteered for a “honey dipping” job because he heard he could keep warm. He found out the job was dipping solids out of the sewage; he said it did keep him warm, but he didn’t smell very good at the end of the day.
When it was time to go home on leave for Christmas, George caught the flu; if you had a temperature over 100 degrees, you couldn’t leave. George knew his was high, so he keep ice in his mouth until his temperature was taken; he passed and was allowed to go home. Christmas of 1940 was the last time he was home until January 1943. He stayed at Fort Slocum until the end of January 1941, when he was loaded on a ship; the U.S.A.T. Republic headed for Hawaii.
George arrived in Honolulu in early March and was put in a truck and taken to a small train that took him to Wheeler Field in central Oahu. Some of his friends, “Pipe” Fuss, Jim Adelsberger, and Jack Stoner, were already in Hawaii and wanted to see him, but because they were sick, they were quarantined and did not get to see him until later. When they finally saw each other, they had quite a chat about Emmitsburg and Hawaii. George was allowed to have a pass to go anywhere on the island; while at Waikiki Beach, he got a bad sunburn. He didn’t want to report to the hospital, because it was a court-martial offense to get sunburned. He was digging a ditch from Wheeler to Schofield Barracks, and it would have been bad for his sunburn. Luckily his sergeant allowed him to take it easy until his sunburn healed.
They were forming new fighter groups, and they had P-36s and the newer P-40s arriving frequently. George was assigned to the 72nd fighter squadron, and in September 1941, he was sent to Hickam Field to attend Aircraft and Engine School. It was a three-month course and was going along nicely. At the end of November, he was taken out of school and put on ground defense. George was issued a rifle and pistol and was on guard at different places around the base and then, they were moved from the new barracks to a tent area across from the Post Exchange. On the night of December 6, 1941, George was on guard duty at the water tower of Hickam from midnight until 6:00 a.m., the morning of December 7. While he was walking in from the tower he saw a float plane fly across very high. George just thought it was one of our navy planes and forgot about it, but it could have been a Japanese observation plane.
George decided to go to the barracks and eat breakfast and take a shower. He was getting dressed when there were several explosions. He thought it was the Navy dive-bombing off Pearl Harbor. He raised a window blind and saw a plane drop a bomb into the Hawaiian Air Force Depot Hanger and knew it wasn’t the Navy doing the bombing.
George finished dressing and was going to try to get back to the tent area. When going down the steps a sergeant yelled, “everybody out on the parade ground.” George looked at the parade ground which had quite a lot of soldiers on it. As a Japanese plane came across strafing, he decided that was not the place to be, so he stayed close to the buildings and worked his way to the Post Exchange. By that time, the Jap planes were bombing Pearl Harbor and then flying across Hickam Field strafing. Soon after, they bombed Hickam Field, and from what George understood, several different places in Hawaii.
At the Post Exchange they stood behind concrete pillars and watched the planes fly over. George could see the big red ball painted on their planes, but no one knew what nation they came from. They started to strafe the area that George was in so he ran over to the tent area and got his guns.
There was a rumor going around that the Japanese were landing on the beach across from Hickam, so they loaded George on a truck with some machine guns and took him over to the beach-side of Hickam. They set up machine guns where they could cover the beach and left George there with very little ammunition. From his vantage point, George could see the bombing and burning of Pearl Harbor and Hickam Field. Some planes tried to take off (B-18s and B-12s) and were shot down by our own people. Everything was very confusing and some B-17s coming in from the states tried to land and some made it and some didn’t.
The Japanese hit very hard for a couple of hours. Around noon, the officers asked George and the other soldiers to go over to where the buildings and planes were and see if they could help. They were to see if they could find anyone injured and take them to the hospital. The hospital was already filled and some were waiting outside. George helped several to the hospital and he found a leg and part of an arm and saw some things he couldn’t identify.
George said his hatred for Japanese started at that time and kept up to the very day he wrote about it. He said he would never forgive them and had they declared war first he may have looked at it differently.
George said that that evening they returned to the beach where they had set up. During the night, they were awakened several times and asked their name, rank and serial number. They got very little sleep that night.
They spent a couple of days on the beach “digging in” and reinforcing their positions. On the 10th of December, they were told to go to a place to be paid. When George’s turn came, he was told they couldn’t pay him, as he was listed as dead. A couple of soldiers he knew told them he was George Baker, so they paid him.
George’s parents were notified on the 10th of December that he had been killed. They were not notified until December 24th that he was alive, even though George was told to write a letter home soon after the attack. Due to priorities, mail was very slow leaving Hawaii. All the plaques and monuments listing George’s name as being dead weren’t cleared until 1996.
Several days after the bombing at Pearl Harbor, George was transferred back to Wheeler Field. He was in the 72nd fighter squadron where he went to Hickam to school. The planes were in short supply because of the bombings. They had little use for crew chiefs, so he was assigned as crew chief on the Group Commander Colonel Steele’s P-36. Colonel Steele was a West Point officer and very strict.
George didn’t like Headquarters Group and wanted to get back to the 72nd Squadron, but Colonel Steele wouldn’t transfer him. They hadn’t received many planes. One time, Colonel Steele came down to fly his plane and it wouldn’t start, so George asked him to get out. George tried and it started right up. It was right after a rain and Wheeler Field was a grass strip at that time. When the Colonel landed, George could tell he was mad. He told George he rolled the plane over several times and a piece of dirt hit him in the face, and if that was combat, he could have been killed. George said, “Colonel look at your boots, they have mud on them from the rain.” The colonel said, “Baker how long have you been in the Army? You never have an excuse.”
George decided then he wanted to return to the 72nd Squadron. The next morning George was in his office asking for a transfer. He was told no, so George did that for about a week and the answer was always no.
Finally, he told George that the only way he would transfer him was to be busted. George was Staff Sergeant and hated to lose it but, he said, “bust me!” Colonel Steele did. The next day George was transferred as a private. George was glad to get back to the 72nd and was made crew chief on a P-40. He was allowed one promotion a month, so in several months he was back to Staff Sergeant.
From Wheeler Field, George was moved to Barbers Point on the coast for several months. While he was there, he tried to burn some gas-soaked rags and got badly burned. He was in the hospital a couple of weeks.
From Barbers Point he was transferred to the golf course at Schofield Barracks. While there, George happened to run into Colonel Steele. Colonel Steele told George that since the war started, the requirements for aviation cadets had been lowered from two years at college to a high school diploma. George told him he had lied, and only had two years of high school. Colonel Steele told George if he lied once, he may as well do it again and put in for it. He got George some math books to brush up on. George had no trouble passing the exam.
George returned to the states as a cadet in January 1943 and was stationed at Santa Anna, California, where he was allowed to go home for a few days before pre-flight began. The academics and physical training were tough, but George managed to make it. They wanted to make him a bomber pilot or a navigator or a bombardier, but George said he wanted to be a fighter pilot or be sent back to his old squadron.
They finally gave in. After pre-flight, he was sent to Santa Maria for primary flight training. George said he soloed in a PT-17 and it was one of the greatest thrills he had ever had, being up there by himself. The courses were exciting, as they did a lot of acrobatics, and he was finally flying solo, something George never expected to do. It took 7.46 minutes for him to solo, which was about normal for all cadets. May, June and July he spent in primary flight school; August and September he was in basic training in a BT-13 at Lancaster, California; October and November, he was in Advance Flying School at Chandler, Arizona, where he was flying an AT-9, a twin engine training plane; he also flew an AT-6 and checked out a P-38. He said it was a thrill because the P-38 had 2300 horsepower. George graduated in the class of 43K, December 5, 1943.
…continued in next month’s issue.
Note: A special thanks to George’s daughter, Connie Baker Fisher, for providing all the information and photos about George and granting me permission to write his story.
Born on April 5, 1921, just north of Thurmont at Franklinville, to Roy and Blanche Baker, was a boy they named George. George had three brothers and two sisters: Raymond, Donald, and Leroy, and Ruth and Helen (nicknamed Tootie). In 1940, at the age of nineteen, George decided he wanted to join the military. His brother, Raymond (nicknamed Hun), had already been in the military several months, and was somewhere around Washington, D.C.
George enlisted in the Army Air Corps at Baltimore, Maryland, in November of 1940, and asked to be sent to Hawaii. He was sent to Fort Slocum, New York, for basic training, where it was bitter cold, which made his training very difficult. He volunteered for a “honey dipping” job because he heard he could keep warm. He found out the job was dipping solids out of the sewage; he said it did keep him warm, but he didn’t smell very good at the end of the day.
When it was time to go home on leave for Christmas, George caught the flu; if you had a temperature over 100 degrees, you couldn’t leave. George knew his was high, so he keep ice in his mouth until his temperature was taken; he passed and was allowed to go home. Christmas of 1940 was the last time he was home until January 1943. He stayed at Fort Slocum until the end of January 1941, when he was loaded on a ship; the U.S.A.T. Republic headed for Hawaii.
George arrived in Honolulu in early March and was put in a truck and taken to a small train that took him to Wheeler Field in central Oahu. Some of his friends, “Pipe” Fuss, Jim Adelsberger, and Jack Stoner, were already in Hawaii and wanted to see him, but because they were sick, they were quarantined and did not get to see him until later. When they finally saw each other, they had quite a chat about Emmitsburg and Hawaii. George was allowed to have a pass to go anywhere on the island; while at Waikiki Beach, he got a bad sunburn. He didn’t want to report to the hospital, because it was a court-martial offense to get sunburned. He was digging a ditch from Wheeler to Schofield Barracks, and it would have been bad for his sunburn. Luckily his sergeant allowed him to take it easy until his sunburn healed.
They were forming new fighter groups, and they had P-36s and the newer P-40s arriving frequently. George was assigned to the 72nd fighter squadron, and in September 1941, he was sent to Hickam Field to attend Aircraft and Engine School. It was a three-month course and was going along nicely. At the end of November, he was taken out of school and put on ground defense. George was issued a rifle and pistol and was on guard at different places around the base and then, they were moved from the new barracks to a tent area across from the Post Exchange. On the night of December 6, 1941, George was on guard duty at the water tower of Hickam from midnight until 6:00 a.m., the morning of December 7. While he was walking in from the tower he saw a float plane fly across very high. George just thought it was one of our navy planes and forgot about it, but it could have been a Japanese observation plane.
George decided to go to the barracks and eat breakfast and take a shower. He was getting dressed when there were several explosions. He thought it was the Navy dive-bombing off Pearl Harbor. He raised a window blind and saw a plane drop a bomb into the Hawaiian Air Force Depot Hanger and knew it wasn’t the Navy doing the bombing.
George finished dressing and was going to try to get back to the tent area. When going down the steps a sergeant yelled, “everybody out on the parade ground.” George looked at the parade ground which had quite a lot of soldiers on it. As a Japanese plane came across strafing, he decided that was not the place to be, so he stayed close to the buildings and worked his way to the Post Exchange. By that time, the Jap planes were bombing Pearl Harbor and then flying across Hickam Field strafing. Soon after, they bombed Hickam Field, and from what George understood, several different places in Hawaii.
At the Post Exchange they stood behind concrete pillars and watched the planes fly over. George could see the big red ball painted on their planes, but no one knew what nation they came from. They started to strafe the area that George was in so he ran over to the tent area and got his guns.
There was a rumor going around that the Japanese were landing on the beach across from Hickam, so they loaded George on a truck with some machine guns and took him over to the beach-side of Hickam. They set up machine guns where they could cover the beach and left George there with very little ammunition. From his vantage point, George could see the bombing and burning of Pearl Harbor and Hickam Field. Some planes tried to take off (B-18s and B-12s) and were shot down by our own people. Everything was very confusing and some B-17s coming in from the states tried to land and some made it and some didn’t.
The Japanese hit very hard for a couple of hours. Around noon, the officers asked George and the other soldiers to go over to where the buildings and planes were and see if they could help. They were to see if they could find anyone injured and take them to the hospital. The hospital was already filled and some were waiting outside. George helped several to the hospital and he found a leg and part of an arm and saw some things he couldn’t identify.
George said his hatred for Japanese started at that time and kept up to the very day he wrote about it. He said he would never forgive them and had they declared war first he may have looked at it differently.
George said that that evening they returned to the beach where they had set up. During the night, they were awakened several times and asked their name, rank and serial number. They got very little sleep that night.
They spent a couple of days on the beach “digging in” and reinforcing their positions. On the 10th of December, they were told to go to a place to be paid. When George’s turn came, he was told they couldn’t pay him, as he was listed as dead. A couple of soldiers he knew told them he was George Baker, so they paid him.
George’s parents were notified on the 10th of December that he had been killed. They were not notified until December 24th that he was alive, even though George was told to write a letter home soon after the attack. Due to priorities, mail was very slow leaving Hawaii. All the plaques and monuments listing George’s name as being dead weren’t cleared until 1996.
Several days after the bombing at Pearl Harbor, George was transferred back to Wheeler Field. He was in the 72nd fighter squadron where he went to Hickam to school. The planes were in short supply because of the bombings. They had little use for crew chiefs, so he was assigned as crew chief on the Group Commander Colonel Steele’s P-36. Colonel Steele was a West Point officer and very strict.
George didn’t like Headquarters Group and wanted to get back to the 72nd Squadron, but Colonel Steele wouldn’t transfer him. They hadn’t received many planes. One time, Colonel Steele came down to fly his plane and it wouldn’t start, so George asked him to get out. George tried and it started right up. It was right after a rain and Wheeler Field was a grass strip at that time. When the Colonel landed, George could tell he was mad. He told George he rolled the plane over several times and a piece of dirt hit him in the face, and if that was combat, he could have been killed. George said, “Colonel look at your boots, they have mud on them from the rain.” The colonel said, “Baker how long have you been in the Army? You never have an excuse.”
George decided then he wanted to return to the 72nd Squadron. The next morning George was in his office asking for a transfer. He was told no, so George did that for about a week and the answer was always no.
Finally, he told George that the only way he would transfer him was to be busted. George was Staff Sergeant and hated to lose it but, he said, “bust me!” Colonel Steele did. The next day George was transferred as a private. George was glad to get back to the 72nd and was made crew chief on a P-40. He was allowed one promotion a month, so in several months he was back to Staff Sergeant.
From Wheeler Field, George was moved to Barbers Point on the coast for several months. While he was there, he tried to burn some gas-soaked rags and got badly burned. He was in the hospital a couple of weeks.
From Barbers Point he was transferred to the golf course at Schofield Barracks. While there, George happened to run into Colonel Steele. Colonel Steele told George that since the war started, the requirements for aviation cadets had been lowered from two years at college to a high school diploma. George told him he had lied, and only had two years of high school. Colonel Steele told George if he lied once, he may as well do it again and put in for it. He got George some math books to brush up on. George had no trouble passing the exam.
George returned to the states as a cadet in January 1943 and was stationed at Santa Anna, California, where he was allowed to go home for a few days before pre-flight began. The academics and physical training were tough, but George managed to make it. They wanted to make him a bomber pilot or a navigator or a bombardier, but George said he wanted to be a fighter pilot or be sent back to his old squadron.
They finally gave in. After pre-flight, he was sent to Santa Maria for primary flight training. George said he soloed in a PT-17 and it was one of the greatest thrills he had ever had, being up there by himself. The courses were exciting, as they did a lot of acrobatics, and he was finally flying solo, something George never expected to do. It took 7.46 minutes for him to solo, which was about normal for all cadets. May, June and July he spent in primary flight school; August and September he was in basic training in a BT-13 at Lancaster, California; October and November, he was in Advance Flying School at Chandler, Arizona, where he was flying an AT-9, a twin engine training plane; he also flew an AT-6 and checked out a P-38. He said it was a thrill because the P-38 had 2300 horsepower. George graduated in the class of 43K, December 5, 1943.
…continued in next month’s issue.
Note: A special thanks to George’s daughter, Connie Baker Fisher, for providing all the information and photos about George and granting me permission to write his story.