From this time forward Jim was practically glued to the cockpit of one Douglas aircraft or another. He could have called home Long Beach, or Mines Field, or Clover Airfield near Santa Monica (Douglas had an aircraft plant at Clover and the entire complex was covered by a mock city suspended on high poles as a camouflage for the industry below).
Odd as it seems for war-time - Jim began working with DC-3 NX33608 on February 16, 1942 to prepare it for a Pacific crossing for delivery to Hawaiian Airlines. This is the same plane, numbered NC33608 and named the Waialeale, which crashed on Kauai not long after its delivery to Hawaiian. The plane must have been shipped back to Douglas for repair and Jim was returning the aircraft to the airline on this passage. Jim's logbook lists this plane as NX33608. The Douglas Company copy of Jim's flying activity lists the plane as NC33608. In N number aircraft registration nomenclature "C" is a commercial aircraft and "X" is an experimental aircraft. Jim's use of NX33608 instead of the Company's NC33608 may suggest his feeling that an airplane patched up like it was after sustaining the kind of damage like Waialeale did should indeed be considered experimental.
Regardless, Jim climbed into the cockpit and flew the DC-3 to Oakland on February 22nd and then departed solo for Honolulu on the 28th. He was now basically flying in a war zone to deliver a resurrected commercial airliner. His thoughts about such a trip must have been different than those he had when he described the "beautiful crossing" the year before.
Rodgers Field was adjacent to Pearl Harbor so the view from the cockpit flying in and out of Rodgers must have been very different now than what Jim would have often seen while flying the clippers for Inter-Island just a couple of months before. It is likely that Jim was able to see, first hand, the destruction of Pearl Harbor from the December 7th attack.
His flight time? – 13 hours and 52 minutes – three minutes faster than the 1941 run. There was no media blitz this time, however. The world was now a far different place. Jim returned home with Pan Am in a S-42 Clipper and was back at the stick of an A20 light bomber by March 11th. There was no time for flying clippers on passenger runs around paradise any more.
Jim’s wartime flight logs are filled with notations like "First flight; Stack Test; Ferry; Gun Check; Check Flight; Tank Test; Acceptance; Radio Compass Check; Dispersal" as he flew shakedown flights of 'fresh off the line' planes and transported various aircraft to where they needed to be.
A typical seven day period is represented by the October 17th thru 23rd (1942) entries where in 15 flights that week Jim put through their paces five different A20’s, two B-17 F's and two C 47’s. He was a very busy man racking up large numbers of hours in the air.
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A20
B17 F
C 47 Skytrain
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Jim flew to Des Moines for some vacation on August 16th and it is assumed that he visited his Aunt Ethel at the Harper homestead near Ankeny.
But, come September 1st, he was back in the cockpit of yet another A20.
Jim also notes in his log that on July 18th he bought a nine week old Doberman Pinscher named Dobie. He was living at 4500 Harvey Way, Long Beach at the time.
Jim's affinity for assorted mutts and strays will become local legend during the later years in life. On December 10th Jim and Irene became home owners having purchased the property at 4409 Greenbrier, Long Beach.
The references to Irene in the logs began to drop off during this period. Part of this may be because Jim's logs from 1943 through some of 1945 were company transcripts of originals where only the facts of dates, aircraft, origins & destinations, time flown and other things like that are entered. The logs are not in Jim's hand and are devoid of any personal comments. This is a departure from Jim's flight log style during all the other periods of his flying life. Regardless, his marriage was possibly started to disintegrate through the war years such that Irene is rarely mentioned by name from 1943 forward.
One final sidelight to 1942 was the entry of December 16th where Jim flew a C 47 to Tulsa to deliver a priority cargo of "B-17 parts & Whiskey." Jim finished 1942 with 584 hours logged in Douglas Aircraft.
The flying activities logged for 1943 and 1944 were virtual carbon copies of 1942. As can be seen in the Planes Jim Flew link - he tested and ferried a very large number of aircraft during the war years.
On Victory in Europe Day, May 8, 1945, Jim test flew two A26 C "Invaders" and on Victory Over Japan Day, August 15, 1945, Jim was flying a DC 3. Just business as usual. While so many years of doing the same thing in the same airplanes (one possible aviation definition of a "job") may have become a grind for Jim, things were soon going to start becoming much more interesting.
