A Citizen Soldier in the Air - a B-24 Liberator pilot's story.

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A Citizen Soldier in the Air.

On October 19, 1942, Charlie and his crew took off from San Francisco in the still-unnamed "Cookie" as one of thirteen Liberators bound for Hawaii, a 14 hour flight.

"One of our planes never made it there - we never found out what happened to them."

Once they reached Hickam Field, they flew their first combat missions, which were long-range patrols looking for enemy ships.

"Not much happened on those flights", Charlie recalls. They also did even more training, practicing takeoffs and landings from short jungle and beach-side airfields, including air strips made from metal panels quickly laid down by combat engineers.

At one of these bases, Charlie recalls swimming in the beautiful clear Hawaiian waters with hundreds of small "octopussies". They also got to see the devastation caused by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor just eleven months earlier, and they were ready to go to war.

The nose art applied to the B-24 known as "Cookie"

Cookie’s side art. Name and art were applied after arrival in New Guinea.

In November 1942, Charlie and his crew departed for Australia, island-hopping to the southwest to avoid Japanese-held areas. After passing through a huge thunderstorm over the Great Barrier Reef, they arrived in Brisbane, Australia. They were only there a short time before they were sent up the coast to an air base on the York Peninsula called Iron Range.

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