"GOING DUCK HUNTING"

 J2F4 DUCK

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A MOST-FASCINATING WORLD WAR II AIRPLANE!
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One of the most interesting planes of WWII was the Grumman J2-F
DUCK.

The J2F-1 first flew on 2 April 1936 and was delivered to the U.S.
Navy on that day. It was powered by a Wright-Cyclone engine. A
J2F-2 model soon followed with an engine increased to 790 HP. This
plane was a search and rescue type aircraft, capable of being mounted
on cutters or destroyers, lifted to the water with a boom, and taking off
from the water---and landing there as well. It apparently had no
regular weaponry, such as machine gun, cannons or rockets.

An interesting thing is that twenty J2F-3 variants were built in 1939 for
use by the Navy as executive transports with plush interiors. (There was
extra space in the lower part of the fuselage for two passengers or a
stretcher.)

All in all, 584 planes were built from 1936-1957, running to six or
more variants. The final model was the OA-12, a "rescue conversion"
for the AAF (later the USAF). The J2F Duck was used by all branches
of the military---U.S. Navy, Marines, AAF, and U.S. Coast Guard, for
which it was particularly suited.

The J2F was an equal span single-bay biplane with a large monocoque
central float which also housed the main landing gear (wheels). It had
strut-mounted stabilizer floats under each lower wing. A crew of two
were carried in tandem cockpits, pilot in front, observer in the rear, with
"room for a radio operator" if needed. It is not clear where this third
crewman sat. As already noted, there was a compact "cabin" in the
lower fuselage for passengers.

The later models increased the power of the plane to 1,050 HP,
which we can see might be necessary with a full load of people.

They say we are all products of our times. "YOU ARE WHAT YOU
WERE WHEN," was the title of an excellent documentary put out about
35 years ago by the U. of Colorado. It is certainly true that boys who
grew up in WWII have never lost their love of and dedication to the planes
of the era. Most boys then, had old card tables filled with model airplanes,
X-acto knives, pieces of balsa wood, and glue (spilled and dried over the
table! Finished model planes were hanging from the ceilings in their rooms.

So when recently I saw and read about the DUCK, ( for the first time), it
was a love affair at first sight! I discovered this plane while reading Mitchell
Zuckoff's splendid and compelling page-turner, "FROZEN IN TIME," the
story of a U.S. Coast Guard J2F-4 on a rescue mission in southeast
Greenland, becoming lost in a snow storm and crashing.

Such a useful plane it was, having landing capabilities on land, on water,
and as it turned out---on ice. With 584 planes produced, and their having
ship-board capabilities, there must be hundreds of stories out there---if we
could just find them.

A most-gripping story of the Duck is this: At the beginning of WWII, a
squadron of J2F's was destroyed at Maravieles Bay, Phillippines, on 5
January 1942, in a Japanese air raid.

However, one J2F-4 with a dead motor was concealed at Cocoban
airfield during the battle of Bataan. Mechanics managed to recover a cylinder
off a sunken plane in the bay and installed it in the last Duck. This became
the final aircraft to leave Bataan before the surrender of the Phillippines
to the Japanese only hours later.

Among its passengers was the noted Fillipino diplomat, politician, soldier,
journalist, and writer---Carlos Romulo---who later told of his flight in his
1942 best-selling book: "I Saw the Fall of the Phillippines," for which he
received the Pulitzer Prize.

The story of the J2F-4 Duck lost on November 29, 1942 in Greenland,
and related so well in Zuckoff's book "Frozen In Time," is yet to be closed.
Operation "Going Duck Hunting" was the name given to a joint search for
the lost Duck (buried under forty feet of ice and snow) by the Coast Guard
and North South Polar.

This story began when a C53 transport with five crew went down on the
east coast of Greenland. This was not uncommon due to the vagaries of
weather and wind in Greenland. B-17's and other aircraft were often
diverted from their trips to the war theater in England and borrowed for
search efforts.

Accordingly, B-17 PN9E, en route to England with seven crewmen and
piloted by Lieutenant Armand Monteverde, volunteered to search for the
five missing C53 men. Two other airmen agreed to go along and lend more
eyes to the mission.

Caught in a vicious and unexpected snow storm during a search,
Monteverde opted to turn the plane in a new direction and not knowing his
altitude, his left wingtip dipped and struck the ice, throwing the fifteen ton
Flying Fortress into a crunching crash and two hundred yard skid---finally
coming to rest, broken in two, and resting next to a giant crevasse.

All nine men survived though several were injured more or less. In trying
to find ways out of this disaster, some crewmen and rescuers were lost to
crevasses. The men found cold lodging in the tail section and eventually, trying
to escape 125 mph winds, dug a large room into the snow underneath a wing.

A J2F-4 Duck, carried on the rear of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter
Northland, anchored in nearby Kuge Bay, took off on November 28,
1942, piloted by John Pritchard with radioman Benjamin Bottoms riding
with him. They landed on the ice wheels-down, near to the wreckage of the
B-17. They loaded two of the most-seriously injured men into their Duck,
took off successfully and made it back to the Northland, landing alongside.
The plane was then lifted to its cradle by a special boom.

Dedicated to their jobs and determined to rescue the whole crew with two
or three trips, they returned on November 29, 1942, this time landing
directly on their pontoon and ripping an eighteen inch deep ditch in the ice.
Finding the weather closing in on them, soon after they landed. They
hurriedly took the radioman, Lolly Howarth, from the B-17, loaded up
and took off into a snow storm.

Pritchard's Duck with Bottoms and Howarth aboard radioed for signal
guidance from the Northland, but they never made it to the ship. They
crashed into the ice several miles from the wrecked B-17. For a number
of years during and after WWII the wreckage of their Duck was visible
to other planes, and was marked on various maps. Then all traces
disappeared under an estimated forty feet of snow and ice.

(How the remaining Flying Fortress survivors were all finally rescued
makes a most readable story by Zuckoff. Twin-engine PBY's are
brought in to land on the ice on their floats. Several of the survivors
were actually living on/in the ice up to nearly five months.)

In the summer of 2012, a joint expedition was mounted by the Coast Guard
and North South Polar. Various metal and radar detectors were used to scan
eight or ten possible locations where the remains of Pritchard's Duck were
suspected to be. Near the expedition's end, as some members were leaving,
an anomaly was detected in the ice---holes were drilled, a camera was
inserted and the plane's remains were seen at 38 feet.

In the history of the United States Coast Guard, it is said that Pritchard
and Bottoms are the only two servicemen ever unaccounted for. Zuckoff,
himself a dedicated member of the 2012 expedition, states: "The Duck's
heroic story is braided into Coast Guard lore." There is a 2013 expedition
planned to bring back the remains of Pritchard, Bottoms, and Howarth and
possibly even the plane. (A P-38 fighter plane was buried much deeper than
the Duck; a room was thawed around it, it was dismantled, brought to the
U.S., rebuilt, and is flying.)

"GOING DUCK HUNTING" was an unofficial, but serious way of saying:
"We're going to find our men."

The saying in the Coast Guard, which is called upon for all manner of
dangerous rescues, many in stormy seas, is: "We have to go out...but we
don't have to come back."

I learned the Coast Guard song in La Casita School...and the motto:
"SEMPER PARATUS"---"ALWAYS READY."

B-17

PBY

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 BY MIL
7/15/13