Oral History: Edwin Eadie 5-Feb-14, 20140205.

Format:

Book

Language:

English

Genre:

Internet videos.

Nonfiction films.

Physical Description:

online resource (video file 2:13:35) : Sound, Colour

Place of Publication:

5-Feb-14,

Summary:

Edwin F. Eadie, Jr. was born on 10 March 1923 in Mount Vernon, NY. When he was two years old his family moved to Little Neck, Long Island, NY where he lived until entering the USAAF on 26 December 1942. Eadie had been drafted out of college. He was inducted at Mitchell Field, NY and after taking, and scoring very highly on, his aptitude test he volunteered for aviation cadet training and was accepted. He was sent to an airfield in San Antonio, TX for Classification and preflight training after which he was sent to fields in Oklahoma, Kansas, and Florida. He was rated as a fighter pilot and after being commissioned was given 10 hours of stick time in a P-40. Edie completed his cadet training and was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant on 5 December 1943 in Eagle Pass, TX. 2nd Lt. Eadie was sent to the 3rd Air Force Training Command in Tampa, FL for assignment to a combat flight training base. The base he was sent to was a P-40 base in Sarasota, FL. On 24 April 1944 Edie boarded the USS H.W. Butner (AP-113) along with about 100 other replacement pilots headed for the CBI. Also on the ship were 60 female nurses who were on their way to Ledo, Assam to set up a hospital. Having them aboard made the trip a little easier. After a short stop in Cape Town, South Africa, Eadie went ashore in Bombay, India after 33 days on the water. From Bombay he was sent through New Delhi to Karachi where he spent six weeks getting acclimated, flying familiarization flights, and learning Chennault Flying. When his six weeks were up he got orders to join the 530th Fighter Squadron (named the Yellow Scorpions by Tokyo Rose who thought she was insulting them but was wrong), 311th Fighter Group in Mohanbari, Assam. To his surprise, when he arrived he saw his first ever P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft. The 570th Fighter Squadron had just transitioned to the P-51 A and B model after flying the A-36 Apache ground attack aircraft. Eadie had never seen a P-51 before but made the transition easily. Eadie did not care much for India and he certainly was not prepared for Indian society when he arrived. When he was in Karachi he never went into town. In addition to the fact that the middle and lower class Indian citizens clearly hated Westerners (and planned to seize control of the country when the Japanese arrived), Indian society simply had nothing to offer him. This was not the case when he got to China. Eadie enjoyed his time in China. Chinese civilians were always very friendly. Eadie found that it was very easy to make them laugh and he enjoyed that. He also enjoyed the accommodations at his base in Chengdu. Eadie flew his first four or five missions out of Mohanbari, Assam. One of those missions was somewhat exciting for him. One days he was sent along with seven other pilots to fly escort for British Field Marshall Lord Louis Mountbatten. Just prior to taking off Lord Mountbatten took the time to meet each of his escorting pilots and shook their hands. This really made an impression on Eadie. From Mohanbari, Assam Eadie's squadron was moved to Chengdu, China where he flew the majority of his mission from. On his first night in Chengdu a flight of Japanese bombers flew over and bombed the airfield. Even though he had flown numerous missions during his 13 months, Eadie did not feel like he had done his part so after having surgery to remove his appendix in mid-1945 he volunteered for a second tour. During his second tour he would take part in a mission that made him feel like he had done what he had gone there to do. Most of the missions Eadie flew with ground attack. They would usually be briefed on a target and would attack it, weather permitting. Many of these ground attack missions were in support of Chinese troops on the ground. On one mission in particular, Eadie was sent along with seven other aircraft to attack a large concentration of Japanese cavalry. This mission was a first for Eadie as it marked the first time he had ever worked for a forward air controller on the ground. They arrived over the target area and began their bomb runs. Eadie was the fourth in line. The first two planes hit their mark but the third plane was hit by flak and the napalm tank, which they were all carrying that day, caught fire. Regardless, Eadie followed him in on his run, the entire time calling the other pilot on the radio telling him that he was on fire. After dropping his own napalm canister and pulling out of his dive, the forward air controller called him on the radio. He had scored a direct hit on the Japanese troops with his napalm canister. By the time Eadie had arrived in China Japanese resistance was on the decline. After the invasion of Okinawa on 1 April 1945, that decline became very pronounced. Even so, Eadie continued flying combat missions all the way up until 16 August 1945, the day after the Japanese surrendered. When the war ended Eadie remained in Chengdu for a few weeks before it was time for the air groups to begin going home. Instead of going home with the rest of the group Eadie asked if he could fly his plane, Excalibur, to Shanghai and leave from there. He was granted permission to do so and flew to the Chinese coast. On 16 November 1945, Eadie boarded a civilian owned and operated C-2 class freighter along with only about 15 other USAAF officers. The freighter had been damaged in a collision off Okinawa and was returning to the US to be scrapped. The captain of the ship only took aboard the few men he had place in the vessel's staterooms for. Eadie settled in and enjoyed the 22 day trip to San Francisco where they arrived on 10 December 1945. Eadie had been in the CBI for 20 months, 14 of them in combat. In January 1946 he was given terminal leave and finally separated from active duty with the rank of 1st Lieutenant on 29 April 1946. Eadie was no longer on active duty but remained in the inactive reserve which allowed him to continue flying USAAF aircraft. He also took advantage of the GI Bill and completed his college degree. On 1 May 1951 he was recalled to active duty. He could have gotten out of it because he had a family by that time but he wanted to continue flying. He spent time flying C-47s out of Lowry Field in Denver and Smyrna AFB in Georgia before being reassigned to Langley AFB as a machine records officer. On 30 April 1953 Edwin Eadie was separated from the USAF. He returned to work at IBM and had a very successful career. He feels that his service during WWII matured him and stated that it never occurred to him to not serve.

Notes:

Description based on online resource (viewed on 12 June, 2019).

Archive Reference: OH.3100.