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Pajama-clad pilot took on Japanese at Pearl Harbor

The Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor is remembered for inflicting devastation on the U.S. fleet. But carrier-based Japanese warplanes also struck three Hawaii airfields that belonged to the Army Air Forces, the predecessor of today’s Air Force.

Second Lt. Philip M. Rasmussen, a young American pilot stationed at Wheeler Field, was wearing purple pajamas when he awoke to hear the attack beginning.

“I saw our planes burning at Wheeler Field,” Rasmussen said in a 2002 interview. “But I also saw several P-36s that were intact.”

Rasmussen, still wearing his pajamas, managed to get airborne in a clunky, obsolete P-36. “We climbed to 9,000 feet and spotted Japanese ‘Val’ dive bombers,” Rasmussen said. “We dived to attack them.”

Rasmussen and three other P-36 pilots tore into a Japanese formation. Though his P-36 was slower than any of the Japanese aircraft, 1st Lt. Lewis M. Sanders got behind one of the raiders and shot it down. Second Lt. Gordon H. Sterling Jr. also shot down a Japanese aircraft but was shot down over water and drowned after getting out of his aircraft.

In his cockpit, Rasmussen charged his guns only to have the machine guns start firing on their own. While he struggled to stop them, a Japanese aircraft passed directly in front of him, flew into his bursts of gunfire and exploded.

Shaking off two Zeros on his tail, Rasmussen got his guns under control, raked another Japanese aircraft with gunfire, then felt himself taking hits from a Japanese fighter.

“There was a lot of noise. He shot my canopy off,” Rasmussen said. He lost control of the P-36 as it tumbled into clouds, its hydraulic lines severed and tail wheel shot off.

Rasmussen did not know it yet, but two cannon shells had buried themselves in a radio behind his pilot’s seat. The bulky radio saved his life.

He landed his badly damaged aircraft without brakes, rudder or tail wheel.

Rasmussen was one of eight fighter pilots who got aloft at Pearl Harbor to mount an impromptu defense against the surprise assault. They shot down 10 of the 29 aircraft the Japanese conceded losing.

Awarded a Silver Star for his courage at Pearl Harbor, Rasmussen pursued a career in the Air Force and retired as a colonel in 1965.

He died in 2005, but his feat lives on at the National Museum of the Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, where a pajama-clad mannequin scram-bles into a P-36 cockpit at a display detailing his story. h

Robert F. Dorr, an Air Force veteran, is co-author of “Hell Hawks,” a history of an American fighter group. His e-mail address is robert.f.dorr@cox.net. Army veteran Fred L. Borch is the regimental historian for the Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps and the author of “The Silver Star,” a history of America’s third-highest award for combat heroism. His e-mail address is borchfj@aol.com.