WW II fighter pilot, local businessman remembered

To the Editor:

Fighter Pilot, Walter Thies

My office was just around the corner from Walter's State Farm office. This was on South Broadway. We had coffee at times at the Town & Country Restaurant next door to his office. Walter related to me some of his navy pilot experiences.

It seems that at the beginning or World War II, America didn't know much about the Japanese Air Force. The Zeroes shot down at Pearl Harbor were pretty much demolished. As luck would have it, a Japanese Zero was forced down and captured in the Aleutian Islands near Dutch Harbor early in the war. It was shipped intact to the Naval Air Base in San Diego for test runs. The captured Zero was found to be superior in every way to any fighter in our air force. Nothing we had could match it. The navy turned the plane over to the Grumman Corp. to build us a plane to perform and exceed over the captured Zero. The Grumman Company copied the Zero in every respect except two.

One exception was steel plating behind the pilot seat. Another was a 600 H. P. engine for more power. Grumman named its plane, "Hell Cat." The plane was designed to operate off of mostly aircraft carriers. Young navy pilot, Walter Thies, was trained on the first "Hell Cats" to come off the assembly line. His squadron was stationed at the naval base in San Diego. The only experience Walter had landing on carriers was landing on a converted flat top vessel and never landing on a carrier at sea. Walter's squadron was assigned a new carrier just being built. It was on its way to San Diego.

One morning at breakfast, a call came in from the carrier at sea to bring out the planes. Walter was the pilot of the third plane to take off for the carrier. As the sun was coming up, Walter saw the carrier turn into the wind and run up the flags which said bring in the planes.

This was quite an experience for a twenty-year-old country boy from Poplar Bluff, Mo. Being the third plane to land on the carrier, Walter didn't make a good landing, but was saved by his tail hook. A young sailor ran up with a flag and yelled, "Great landing, Sir."

The carrier and its "Hell Cats" saw action in the South Pacific to war's end. After the war, Walter returned home to become a State Farm agent in Poplar Bluff. The tail hook from Walter's "Hell Cat" lay in his office window for years.

Bob Manns

Poplar Bluff, MO