Six Weeks in Santa
Rosa
After six weeks in
Fresno, Jack was assigned to Santa Rosa from 23 August to 8 October 1943. Home! The Santa Rosa Airdrome served
the U.S. Army Air Force for training of pilots, mechanics, and associated personnel.
The men were lodged in hastily built tar-paper-covered barracks in a eucalyptus
grove.[1] Now they would put into practice what they
had learned in their Dallas and Indianapolis courses.
Again I had a married man’s pass, and I was able to come home to Santa Rosa, and it was really a nice situation.[2] Jack was able to spend a lot of the summertime with Alice, his family, and hers. His father worked seasonally in the sawmill in Pino Grande, California, 165 miles from Santa Rosa, so they made a trip to the the Sierras to visit Papa. Alice's parents were just twenty miles away.
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| Jack on the log pond, Michigan-California Lumber Co., Pino Grande, California |
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| Alice's parents, Ben and Julia (Lewis) Streeter (wearing Jack's garrison cap), at their El Verano, California, dairy |
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| Alice, her father Ben Streeter, and Jack's parents, John and Idella Kellar, Pino Grande, California |
Reuniting with
Derrick and Winkler
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| Erwin Derrick, Jack Kellar, Wallace Winkler |
Losing P-39s
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| P-39 at Hamilton Field, July 1943[4] |
At Santa Rosa we actually got airplanes and started working
on them. We had P-39 Airacobras, a pretty maneuverable plane, but for some
reason or another, it had a lot of vibration problems. Its engine sat behind
the pilot and had a long tube going out to the propeller. Through this tube
they shot a 37mm cannon, and the [engine vibration would cause the] propeller
shaft [to] vibrate and send these planes into spins. They also had inexperienced
pilots and inexperienced mechanics. We lost an awful lot of airplanes out of
Santa Rosa.
Even just going through training they crashed. We had planes
that had crashed strung all over, up around Booneville [sixty miles north of
Santa Rosa] and over on the coast [twenty miles west], all over. It was not a
pleasant thing, you know. We lost pilots. Of course we didn’t know the pilots
then because we were just training. You could have any pilot.[5]
Newspaper and
historical accounts of the crashes during Jack’s time in Santa Rosa confirm his
recollections. In six weeks the 380th lost five planes. All of their
pilots survived, while some from the other two squadrons did not.
September 7: “Lt.
McKinney, on a routine flight, bailed out of his plane one mile Southeast of
Santa Rosa following engine failure. The plane was demolished.”[7]
September 13 “Bailing out
of a fighter plane, a young military pilot escaped injury late yesterday when
he landed in a bean field on the Cotati Seed Farm acreage, north of Cotati . .
. near the Filipino settlement.”[8]
October 7: “Lt. Johnson
was forced to bail out of his ship near Florence Lake, California because of
engine cut-out, and Lt. Fryer was forced to bail out when he ran out of gas in
an overcast between Las Vegas and Santa Rosa.”[9]
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| Jack's cutaway Model T with his 1941 Pontiac in the background |
Jack's time belonged to the Army Air Corps, but in keeping with his entrepreneurial spirit, he figured out how to use his second car to advantage
at the airdrome.
I had an old Model T Ford I had bought years before for ten
dollars, [laughs] a good little rig. I had that out at the airport as an
auxiliary car for use out there. No car has been treated better because it had
hundred-octane fuel to be burned in it. That was a gift from the Air Force for
us to have transportation back and forth from the line [where the planes were
parked] down to our barracks. [10]
Jack’s six weeks in
Santa Rosa would be followed by a stint in nearby Oakland, California, a
transition point that inspired many serious questions about the future.
[1]
Jack J. Kellar and Alice (Streeter) Kellar,
interview by Judy Kellar Fox, December 1993; cassette tape recording and
transcription held by the author.
[2]
Jack J. Kellar, “Autobiography,” 1998; two
ninety-minute cassette tape recordings; held and partially transcribed by the
author.
[3]
Jack J. Kellar and Alice (Streeter) Kellar,
interview, December 1993. Also, Jack J. Kellar, “Autobiography.
[4]
“P-39N_Airacobra_of_the_357th_Fighter_Group_at_Hamilton_Field_in_July_1943.jpg,”
digital image in the
public domain, USAAF - WWII in color; USAF Historical Research Agency via
http://www.airfields-freeman.com/CA/Hamilton_CA_P-39_43.jpg; https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2050995 : downloaded 14 January 2018.
[5]
Jack J. Kellar, “Autobiography,” 1998. Also, Jack J. Kellar, interview about his first years after high school
by Judy Kellar Fox, 12 April 1993; cassette tape recording and transcription
held by the author.
[6]
380th Fighter–160th Tac. Rcn. Squadron
History, February 1943–August 1945 ([unknown place]: [unknown publisher], printed
by A. Roßbach, Eschwege, Germany [1945]), 8. Probably written by the squadron
historian, this account of the 380th Fighter Squadron (later the 160th
Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron) of the U.S. Army Air Force, was written right
up until the squadron was about to return to the U.S.
[8]
“Parachute Leap Saves Pilot as Military Plane
Crashes Here,” The Press Democrat (Santa Rosa, California), 14 September 1943, p. 1, col. 5.
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