Veteran's History Project - Billy D. Hammond

Billy D. Hammond

Chief

U.S. Navy

1942-1945

EDITOR'S NOTE: This story is one of many American Veteran accounts published in The Sidney Sun-Telegraph. The writer, who is from Potter, is conducting the interviews as part of the Library of Congress' Veterans History Project.

When he was 23, Bill "Billy" D. Hammond worked at the Great Western Sugar plant in Sterling, Colo. He had been married about six weeks.

He had gotten a call from the local draft office. The caller suggested that Bill take advantage of being able to make a choice as to which branch of the military he wanted to join. In the view of the caller, the U.S. Army had room for him!

Bill considered that for a bit. The choice was to join the U.S. Navy, so he wouldn't have to sleep on the ground. Soon, he was on a train heading for the training station in San Diego.

The usual greeting committee met the new sailors-to-be when the bus dropped them off. The men pretty much knew they were in the Navy now.

Fairly soon after arrival, large groups of men were taken to a nearby facility. The building looked like several others in the area. The men were directed to a large room and told to get out of their clothing so a final inspection could be made. They did.

The doctor was conducting the review. A door to the room opened and a female clerk from a nearby office mistakenly entered the room – and realizing her mistake, quickly left!

It was three months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The U.S. military was constantly scrambling to make decisions about training, equipment, war plans, raw materials for making war materiel and few things were the same today as they are today.

There was constant activity for this part of Bill's boot camp. Here, Bill got the basics of marching, customs and courtesies, how to wear the uniforms of the Navy, where to eat and where to sleep. He was paid $21 a month, with $6.60 taken out for insurance. Bill kept the insurance policy intact – very smart.

The next landing spot was the Great Lakes Naval Training Station near Chicago. Yep, another long train ride. While here, Bill continued his training especially in learning the ways of the Navy and the importance of the various ranks. He was there for a short while then sent on to the Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Mich., where he would learn to be an aviation mechanic.

Bill was somewhat confused. When he was in San Diego, he had volunteered for submarine duty. Now he was learning to keep aircraft in the air. Oddly, Bill's father had been in Camp Funston, near Fort Riley, Kan., during World War I.

One of the men his father served with was still in the Navy and remembered Bill's father. The man was a personnel specialist. He remembered Bill's dad and so asked Bill if there was anything Bill wanted to do. Bill told the man that he wanted to be a pilot so the man classified Bill in the aviation field.

Back to the Ford plant in Michigan ... the men were quartered in a building where the sleeping bed was actually a hammock. Sleeping in these took some getting used to. On occasion, when sailors would come back to their barracks, some had consumed too much. The ornery ones would walk the aisle and trip the hammocks causing sleeping men to fall out! Dang!

Bill was trained on the radial airplane engine and the four-cylinder Ford motor used in Jeeps. The work was on land vehicles and on aircraft engines. When this four-month school ended, Bill was promoted to "3rd class."

He was sent on to Johnson Field in Florida. Here, he worked on the SNJ aircraft, or commonly known as the "Texan". Another name for it is the AT-6. It was a single engine, two-seat aircraft used to train pilots for war fighting in the air and for dive bombing. The other aircraft there was the PBY Catalina. The base had "wet operations" where this aircraft was used for training as well. The PBY became the most versatile aircraft used in WWII.

Here, Bill worked on the engine repair line that was charged with keeping the engines of the aircraft in top condition. If an airplane developed engine trouble during a flight and they were able to land it, Bill's crew would get to the plane, trouble-shoot the problem and if necessary, take the engine off the plane and fix it. They could actually change an engine on a PBY in less than 30 minutes and have the plane mission-capable!

In that this was a training installation, some of the new pilots got airsick while flying. The practice was that if a pilot got sick, he had to clean up his own mess. One pilot thought that he was above that responsibility. The men challenged the man's decision and it would up going up the chain of command. The men won. The new pilot had to get humble and clean up after himself.

At this assignment, Bill had been promoted to Petty Officer 1st Class. Things were going well. The Navy administration there shipped out all the Chief Petty Officers to different assignments where they were needed more. Bill had plenty of time in his current rate.

The Base Captain said that if the remaining senior sailors were doing chief's work, they should be promoted to chief. Well then! (Most sailors would agree that the chief is one of the most important rates and positions in the U.S. Navy. If a chief is asked, he will tell you that the chiefs run the Navy!)

Bill found out he was going to be sent overseas. He was shipped to California. A records snafu was found out. For a short two-week period when Bill was signing up, he could opt for a two-year enlistment. He took advantage of it. The unit's Yeoman (admin person) told Bill that he had actually been out of the Navy for six months. Bill told him he thought he should go on home. The Yeoman cancelled that idea.

The unit moved from San Diego to Treasure Island then to Pearl Harbor (PHTH or Pearl Harbor Territory of Hawaii). There were 90 sailors in his charge. They worked on dive bomber aircraft. They were the SBD plane made by Douglas Aircraft.

In this assignment, Bill was also charged with making test flights to make inspections on the work that had been done. This provided for flight pay – thus an increase in income. On one of the return landings, the pilot had not checked his parking brakes. The plane flipped over, leaving both the pilot and Bill hanging upside down. Both survived.

Another assignment was picking up planes that had crashed. The main task was to bring back the pilot and engine. They found a plane that had been missing two weeks. When the group got to the site, they found the pilot was deceased.

It took days to get the engine out of the swamp. One member of the group carried the shotgun to shoot the snakes and crocks while the others worked.

Contact with home was by letter writing and an occasional phone call, which cost about $25. Bill did get a chance to tour the island fairly often. One thing the Navy did was provide the gunnery practice for ships' crews. The bigger planes would get cabled to a smaller training plane. The bigger plane would take off and fly to the area of a destroyer or battleship then would release the cables and fly on. The gunnery crew would then practice shooting down the unmanned dummy aircraft.

It was time to be discharged so Bill was sent to Schumacher Navy Base in California. He earned the medals commonly provided to sailors. His dog tags were round ones and one had his thumbprint in the metal.

He got all his final paperwork finished, then shot and won some crap games. He and his young family went by train Sterling, Colo. They arrived at 8 that night. His dad was still working at the sugar plant then and told Bill that his job was waiting for him and he had to report for work at midnight – that night. Soon, Bill was working two shifts a day.

He moved his family to Sidney where he was a commercial painter. His children graduated from Sidney High School. Bill is a member of the VFW, the American Legion and the Disabled American Veterans. Bill's father was in WWI; Bill in WWII; his son, Chuck, served in Vietnam; and a grandson has served in Afghanistan.

Good job, Chief Hammond! Thank you for your service.