Phil Hooke
Mr. Phil Hooke is an 81-year-old resident of Cherokee, Kansas. He is a life long resident of the state, and a WW II war veteran. His enthusiastic personality displays his pride and loyalty to this country. Mr. Hooke is a knowledgeable man who recalls his experiences very vividly. During his time in the military, Mr. Hooke went from training to be a fighter pilot in the U. S. Air Force to a position where he had to avoid combat. As a member of the 34th Photo Reconnaissance Squadron, Mr. Hooke played a very important role that many people, including myself, weren’t aware existed.
I
was born in Monmoth, Kansas on May 30th, 1920. I was a single child,
and my parents were farmers. I attended Crawford Community High School, and I
played football and basketball. I remember I’d use to go out at night and my
dad would give me fifty cents. I got a quarter for dinner. I could usually go
over-- there was a restaurant, a filling station there-- and I’d go over. Some
days I'd go and get a hamburger and that was ten cents, and then I could get a
piece of pie for fifteen cents, and a quarter was my dinner. What now could you
buy with a quarter? I drove a Model T, 1927 Model T Coupe that I drove through
one and a half miles of mud before it got to hard top road. I drove it for
three years.
Then, it was just about the time when they was gonna
draft ya. So on my 21st birthday, I come up with number thirteen. I
told my dad that I was gonna go enlist because I wanted to get into something
that I wanted. So, I went down to Joplin and enlisted. This was about July of
’41. I was going to the Tank Core or the Air Force, and I chose the Air Force.
They called me up in October of ’41. I got on a train in Joplin, Missouri and
ended up in Jefferson Barracks, Missouri. It was the first time I’d ever been
that far away from home. People didn’t
get very far from home back then. It’s kind of interesting, there was about
three hundred people at just the time we got there. We went into a room and
they was gonna
give us a test, and so the sergeant
said, “Now anybody who can’t read nor write can go in that room in the back.”
There was probably about fifty people, fifty or sixty kids, that went back
there because they couldn’t read or write. They’d all come out of the hills of
Mississippi and down through there and hadn’t went to school. There was a lot
of people when I went to school that didn’t go to high school. Eighth grade
they quit. Some of them would go to high school a couple three years and then
quit. Everybody didn’t go to high school back in the ‘30’s.
I went from Jefferson Barracks, Missouri to Biloxi,
Mississippi, and I went to mechanic school there. I was shipped out of there to
be the first replacements in Hawaii. I was over there until the end of ’42;
until I returned to the states for pilot training. I was assigned to fighter
training in Pittsburgh, California; and I didn’t know there was a Pittsburgh,
California. It’s right north of Oakland. That was the second Pittsburg I ran
into. I guess there’s a Pittsburg every place. Anyway, [in training] they moved
ya along; moved you right along or moved you out. If you didn’t get with it,
and get with it pretty quick, well then they sent you down the road. If you
made one mistake, you was gone. I remember one guy forgot that the engine
throttle was open, and they started up the engine; and he didn’t get the
throttle back quick enough. The guy cut the engine off, and they washed him out
right there. And anyway, I took training command all over the west coast; that’s
the only place I was. We went down to San Diego North Island with the Navy for
our final training place. [After
training], Charlie [Charlie Hoy is a friend of Phil’s that he met while
serving] and I were the only ones that went to Europe. All the rest of the guys
went to the South Pacific that we were training with. And the reason Charlie
and I got to go [to Europe] was Charlie broke his ankle riding a horse and I
got pneumonia. We were fortunate. They were all down there in them islands, and
we were in Europe.
They had a lot of losses in the photo recon squadron
[Photo Reconnaise Squadron], so they picked out thirteen of us and sent us. The
squadron I went to had trained in Coffeyville, Kansas. It was kinda ironic that
they trained right beside my hometown. About six hundred some individuals [were
in my squadron.] I had no training for
that. They told us when we got in the cockpit, they said, “When you get over
the place you want to take the picture, you flip that switch.” And that was our
training; because like I say, they’d done all the training before. They sent us
out on some easy ones to start with, and we worked our way up from there. The
most important thing was taking the picture and then getting it back to the
base and developed.
The big problem
in England was you had lots of bad weather. You’d fly into the continent and
when you come back it might be socked in. It ain’t too big, a lot of water
around it. They lost a lot of planes that missed 
England. In fact, we had one plane that
was gone for seven days; and he rode in on a jeep. Come to find out he had
missed England, and he had hit Ireland. He came over a big flat area, and
he landed there. It was a peat bog. And so he brought it in on what he though
was a flat pasture, and it was mud. He
flipped it and said he could see about an inch upside down. He could smell
smoke. It was burning and some people come over and dug him out, and took
him about a week to get back.
Luckily, he found Ireland. Most of the
[photo recon] missions were four to five hours long. Lots of times it was areas
in front of the lines of the German defenses. They wanted that everyday,
everyday was about the front lines. Then we did some work for the bomber
squadrons that had bombed a town or railroad yard. Maybe they’d want some intelligence about a town so we’d go a
long ways in to see what was going on. I didn’t know a lot of information; but
I suppose that if there were bombs or production in a factory, they’d want to
bomb them. We got a lot of work [taking pictures] when they were making German
rockets. About everyday we’d have to go over there to see how far along they
were on the
rockets.
Most of the
time we worked with the 3rd Army, General Patton, and then the
French Army. We had this plane and what looked like a Kodak camera. It had two
twenty-four inch cameras and one twelve-inch camera that went out the side. And
we took pictures, and then had to bring them back and develop them just like
your Kodaks. It automatically took the picture because it had to be at a
certain height. Most the time it worked all right. They’d send another guy to
take them if the first ones were no good. [The 34th Photo Recon’s
main goal in WW II was to fly out and take pictures of enemy territory and
their progress. It is a task that many people might not realize exists.]
When I was in London, one of the interesting things, I
was at London the day they had the largest bomb raid of the war. These were
buzz bombs that they had that were kinda interesting. I thought I’d tell ya. They would come over and sound like a
motorboat. When the motorboat quit, that’s when it sounded and blew up. You
always listened to see how close that motor was before it blew.
We moved from England over to France into Munich, Germany
for occupation, and that’s when I came home. I had more points than I guess
anyone in the squadron because I’d served in the Pacific too before I served in
Germany. [I retired from the service in 1946 because] my father was sick at the
time. I thought I’d come home and take
over the farm; but he died shortly after I got out, and things didn’t work out
like I’d expected them to. You never know what’s gonna happen in your life. So
ya got to be ready when it does happen. [After my time served, I] returned to the
farm and farmed and raised cattle. I had two daughters on the farm. I moved to Cherokee in 1991. Of course at
the time, I was also a salesman for advertising specialists since 1969.
My grandpa was in the Civil
War, and I had cousins in WW I. My dad was in the wrong age group, and so
he never went. I have cousins with kids who were in Vietnam. The only one
we missed I think, our family missed, was the Korean War. I think that that
was the only war we missed. I guess maybe the Spanish American War too. Yep,
WW II was the turning 
point of
this country, I think. After WW II, nothing was the same. Land prices went
up, buildings started every place, science created and went faster and forward.
But it seemed to be the turning point the ‘50's and on.
I think it’s [the military] a real
good career; and if you are interested in any branch or doing anything, it’s a
real great career that you can put your time in and learn lots of things.
[There were] some bad times, but most of them were good. No, [I have no regrets
about serving] I really enjoyed it. For an ol’ country boy, it was quite a
shock. I couldn’t believe it. When I went in the army, they had hot and cold
running water and the bathroom was inside. I could switch a light switch on the
wall, too. It changed my life completely. I went from a country boy in Kansas
to the army, and started traveling the world. [If I could live again,] I’d a
probably stayed in the service. [My advice to others is] just be persistent and
stay out of trouble; look to the future. There’s always a better day down the
road.
This
Oral History was researched and prepared by Kendra Rakestraw, Spring 2002.
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