Biography of Frank W. Nadeau Jr.
Gunner, VB-84, AG-84, USS Bunker Hill, US Navy WWII & Col., 11th Airborne, U.S. Army, Korea, Vietnam
My dad, Frank W. Nadeau Jr., graduated high school in 1943 and was enrolled in the Navy V-12 program and arrived at Bates College, Lewiston, ME right after the July 4th weekend and got bumped out (most did) and ended up in the active Navy and nine months later was flying backwards in Navy dive bombers.
Dad did not like to talk to much about WWII in part because he LIED. In 1947 he met a pretty in college and told her he was a Navy PILOT to get a date with her. My mother's parents told me he had been a Navy pilot but it was not until the 1970s I saw the picture of my dad below and he was NOT the pilot. My dad is on the left and the obvious pilot is in the center. The man on the right is a Plane Captain which we Army guys would call a crew chief. Also, the plane in this picture is a Douglas Dauntless.
VT-84, the torpedo squadron of Air Group 84, ended up on Saipan. VB-84, with my dad, went to Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands. I have a highly redacted letter from my dad to his parents from Johnson Island. The SBD had a ferry range if 1,700 miles and Kwajalein was 1,500 mile to Johnson which did not make much room for error. It was another 900 miles to Hawaii. His unit returned to Hawaii in Dec. 1944 where his squadron was issued Curtiss Helldivers .The letter was written in early Dec. 1944.
It was my understanding that on long ferry flights they were usually lead by a PBY which had celestial navigation an d if one plane had to ditch, they could land and pick them up. The USAAF usually had C-47s lead flights of P-38s, P-51, etc. on ferry flights but, unlike the PBYs, could not land to pickup the downed pilots.
Oh, the P-38 had two sizes of drop tanks. The combat drop tans were two 150 gal. as the ferry tanks were two 318 gal but the planes were not suppose to carry ammo. On the raid that shot down Admiral Yamamoto, the P-38s had one 150 gal and one 318 gal, drop tanks which would have made the planes about a thousand pound over weight.
I do not know how the planes got to Saipan or Kwajalein but I am sure their support personnel and equipment went by ship. But I do know the USS Bunker Hill had two squadrons of Marine Corsairs and when the island would be captured, and the airfield repaired or built, the Marine squadron would fly to the new airfield and continue operations while the carriers would return to a staging area for repairs and replacement.
In Jan. 1945 his squadron went aboard the USS Bunker Hill. He was on the attack of the Japanese Ten Go operation which sank the IJN Yamato. Then on May 11th he was wounded in the Kamikaze attack which crippled the ship and he spent the remainder of the war in hospital. BTW, The future actor Paul Newman was in his sister squadron.
He returned from the war and in 1947 he went to college and met my mother. While at Boston College he enrolled in Army ROTC to help with expenses and in Jan. 1950 graduated with a degree in business and went to Fort Sill, OK for artillery basic school just in time for the Korean War. He was an artillery forward observer and after returning went to Army flight school and was assigned to Camp Campbell (later Fort Campbell), KY in late 1954 and in Jan. 1956 went with the 11th Airborne Division to Germany on the USNS Maurice Rose.
My father was a captain and we had five children at the time and our mother was pregnant with #6.. We were all on the Rose in January 1956 with the 11th Abn Div. Or cabin was small and we had four bunks on either side.
I really do not remember much but I remember leaving NY harbor and seeing the Statue of Liberty and then we had to go below deck. I do not remember going back on deck for the rest of the trip until we reached Bremerhaven, but it was January and probably no one was allowed on deck.. I also had my fifth birthday on the ship and it looked like a very large three-tiered cake and there seemed to be a lot of kids. I also remember the voice of a black steward yelling, "Rise and shine, Six O'clock" in the morning and that the dining tables had raised edge to keep the plates from falling off it. I also remember my older sister said the table cloths were damp but I am not sure if they just could not dry them or they wanted them damp to keep the plates from sliding about. My older sister said she would sit on the floor of our cabin and as the ship would roll, she would slide around on the floor. The next thing I remember was the train ride to Munich.
My day retired as a colonel in 1979 and besides the Pacific in WWII and the Korean War he also did two tours in Vietnam. My dad and I were in Vietnam in 1970-71. He was a colonel by then and I was a 19 y/o WO1 Huey pilot..
Below is a picture of my dad getting out of an OH-13E (post Korean War model). Also note the ambulance kit also post Korean War. The Korean War version had no front window and some wounded men thought they were being buried alive so after the Korean War they put the front window in so the could see the pilot. The picture was taken in 1956-57 in Bavaria. .
----- Tom Nadeau
Email: RogueScholar AT hotmail.com
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My dad, Frank W. Nadeua, is on the left, his pilot is in the center. The man on the right is a Plane Captain which we Army guys would call a crew chief. Also, the plane in this picture is a Douglas Dauntless. His unit returned to Hawaii in Dec. 1944 where his squadron was issued Curtiss Helldivers.
Captain Frank W. Nadeau, Jr.m 11th Airborne, Germany, 1956. At the time the photo was taken was probably in 1956-57 in Bavaria, near Munich, Germany. The helicopter was an OH-13E. My dad was a captain at the time but retired in 1979 as a colonel.
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