Civil traffic airborne over Pearl Harbour 07/12/1941

[tubby linton]

I used to be based at an airfield in Central Florida in the 1980s and one of the local characters was well known for allegedly having been airborne over Pearl Harbour during the Japanese attack on the islands in 1941. I never did ask the chap whether this was true and I can no longer remember his name. He was also well known locally for flying a Beech-18 equipped with spray bars which was flown at treetop level at night to suppress the local mosquito population. Can anybody perhaps provide any detail of civil traffic over the islands on the day of the attack?

[treadigraph]

This any help?

https://www.flightjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/SundayRide.pdf

[tubby linton]

Many thanks for that but disappointingly it hasn’t made me remember the name.

[Jhieminga]

There's a name or two in this article: https://warbirdsnews.com/warbird-articles/pilot-report-mosquito-mashers.html
Don't know if it helps, wrong part of the country of course. I saw some other articles pop up in my Google search but not all of them were available to me.

[treadigraph]

Whereabouts in central Florida were you Tubby? I remember seeing several Beech 18s which might have been sprayers at Lake Wales during a touch and go there. (Thought we did another T&G at Lehigh Acres which was home to spraying Daks, but no...)

[tubby linton]

I was based at Kissimmee. The chap I am thinking of would have been late 60s or older in the mid 1980s.He would occasionally pop in the flying school for a coffee.

[treadigraph]

Looking at the map and my pax log, looks like the Beech 18s were actually have been at Bartow, vaguely recall one was an AT-11. We stopped for coffee at Lake Wales after touch and goes at Winter Haven and Bartow; I definitely saw them from a T&G otherwise I'd have wandered over for a closer look! This was 1988.

[GAXLN]

Not quite present at Pearl Harbour but almost. It still makes an interesting read.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/12/07/pacific-clipper-pan-am-pearl-harbor/