On Memorial Day, Remembering An Ironic Wartime Tragedy

Lieutenant Harold Winecoff with other U.S. Navy fighter pilots during World War II. Winecoff is third from the left in the second row. The photo probably was made in Vero Beach, Florida in 1944.

On September 27, 1944 U.S. Navy Lieutenant Wade Harold Winecoff, a farm boy who grew up near Rockwell, North Carolina, climbed into the cockpit of his Grumman F6F-5 "Hellcat" fighter plane. He and three other pilots aboard the aircraft carrier USS Franklin were beginning their shift of combat air patrol, an airborne version of guard duty.

The Franklin was supporting the U.S. invasion of the Palau Islands east of the Philippines. Winecoff and the other pilots in his squadron had been in the thick of the fighting against Japanese forces since American troops had gone ashore on September 15.

On this day, they would stay aloft for several hours patrolling the skies over the U.S. invasion force. Since all Japanese aircraft on the islands had been destroyed before the invasion, the likelihood of getting into a fight was low. But long-range Japanese patrol planes were scouring the seas for the American task force, and so a constant alert had to be maintained.

The Franklin fighters didn't encounter any enemy aircraft that day. Still, something went terribly wrong for Winecoff. He did not return from the patrol. His death was one of those tragic ironies of war that happen simply because a serviceman has to follow orders.

I came across the odd story of Winecoff's death in 1970 when I was visiting Winecoff's nephew, who was living in his grandmother's house near Rockwell, a small town about 45 miles northeast of Charlotte. It was the same house where Winecoff had grown up, and my friend's grandmother was Winecoff's mother. She had moved to Florida, and was allowing her grandson to live in the house while he attended nearby Pfeiffer College.

Winecoff's grief-stricken mother had kept boxes of letters, photos, and other possessions belonging to her son that the Navy had sent to her after his death. My friend said I was welcome to look through them. I took home a couple boxes of the mementos, and spent a few days poring over them. The contents told the story of Harold Winecoff's life.

Harold Winecoff at his home near Rockwell, N.C.
sometime before his death in September 1944.

After graduating from what was then Appalachian State Teachers College in 1937, Winecoff had taught and coached basketball at Waco High School, between Salisbury and Shelby. He enlisted in the Navy in November 1941 and earned his pilot's wings in May 1942.

In mid-September 1942, Winecoff came home for a 15-day leave. Among the friends he saw was Nadine Ellis, a talented musician who taught at Shelby High School. After his visit, Ellis had some time on her hands when her students were excused from classes to pick cotton. She wrote a note to Winecoff encouraging him to visit again before he had to return to duty. "After all when you go back you can never tell when you might get home again--and back to Waco and Shelby," she wrote.

Jack Hoyle, who'd been one of Winecoff's students at Waco, wrote to tell him how much he'd enjoyed seeing him. "I know you look good in your Navy uniform and I sure would like to see you," Hoyle wrote.

Winecoff's experience as a teacher served him well in the Navy. He was a flight instructor at Pensacola Naval Air Station, and the boxes contained letters from friends he'd known in Brewton, Alabama, a small town about 60 miles north of Pensacola. The affable Winecoff had a group of friends in Brewton who nicknamed him "Ace."

He also corresponded with young women in West Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Alabama. All of them longed to see him soon. A few hinted that they'd be amenable to a permanent postwar relationship with him. But he made it clear, in deeds if not words, that he wasn't interested at the moment in long-term plans.

By July 1944, Winecoff had been sent to Pearl Harbor to be assigned to a combat fighter squadron. Around the same time, Bootsie Durant, whom he'd dated when he was in Pensacola, told Winecoff in a letter that things hadn't been the same for her since he'd left town.

"I have had some dates since you have been gone," she said. "Still they don't make me feel happy at all. The boys I've been with are either childish or a bunch of wolves. I guess after you have gone out with a swell person it's hard to get used to someone else."

Winecoff was assigned to Fighter Squadron VF-13 aboard the USS Franklin, designated CV-13 by the Navy. The pilots called themselves the "Black Cats."

The boxes also contained a letter written in 1946 by Hubert Weidman of Los Angeles, one of Winecoff's shipmates, to his sister explaining how her brother had died.

While Winecoff and the other three pilots were on patrol, Weidman wrote, they were ordered to investigate an unidentified aircraft that had appeared on the Franklin's radar. Navy commanders couldn't take the chance that this was an enemy search plane that might discover the American task force. So Winecoff and the three other fighter pilots were ordered to climb and go after this airplane at top speed.

But a towering thundercloud that topped out at about 14,000 feet above the ocean lay between the Navy pilots and the suspicious airplane.

"It was one of those huge white billowy clouds, that usually look so fine, but are really dangerous to get into," Weidman wrote in his letter to Winecoff's sister.

Weidman, the group leader, knew it was dangerous to fly through the thunderhead because such clouds often contain powerful, turbulent wind and hail that could wreck the planes. It would take time to fly around the cloud, however, and the delay would allow the unknown plane to get closer to the American fleet.

So Weidman decided that he had no choice but to take his flight through the top of the thunderhead. The four Hellcats disappeared into the big cloud. But only three emerged. Winecoff's plane was missing. But Weidman couldn't delay the mission to search for Winecoff.

"We were still receiving orders from the base, and the urgency demanded that we continue our search for the bogie," Weidman wrote.

The Hellcats sped on to find the intruder.

The mystery airplane turned out to be an American B-24 bomber. After identifying the plane, Weidman and the two other pilots hastily returned to where Winecoff had disappeared.

Other planes from the Franklin joined the search. But no sign of Harold Winecoff or his plane was found, Weidman wrote.

I put aside the boxes of letters and mementos with the intention of returning them to my friend in Rockwell. Not long after I brought the boxes home, however, his grandmother's house burned down.

I stuffed the boxes into a closet and forgot about them. I came across them years later. By this time my friend had moved away and I'd lost touch with him. I took the stuff with me when my wife and I moved to Florida in late 1991.

Soon after our move, I met Sam Rhodes, who'd served aboard the USS Franklin and later retired in Jensen Beach. With his help, I contacted Ted Engdahl, who'd been a fighter pilot on the Franklin and was one of Harold Winecoff's best friends. Engdahl, a Michigan native and retired school teacher, was living near Winter Haven, Florida.

Engdahl said Harold Winecoff was a quiet man with a dry wit and a "sneaky" sense of humor. "You get little chuckles from it, instead of hilarious laughter," he said.

Winecoff enjoyed smoking good cigars and reading. He was 29 years old in 1944--older than the other pilots in his squadron. So the younger pilots nicknamed him "Pappy."

A few days before Winecoff's fateful flight into eternity, he'd sat on the flight deck of the Franklin with Engdahl and another pilot in his squadron, Ken McQuady. The three young men were best pals and called themselves the "Three Musketeers." They talked about what they hoped to do after the war.

Engdahl played volleyball with Winecoff on the Franklin's hangar deck on the morning of September 27, 1944. Around noon, he'd watched when his friend took off from the Franklin on the patrol. The Franklin's log notes that the three remaining planes of Wiedman's flight returned and landed aboard the carrier at 3:23 p.m.

"Recovered planes of the patrol minus one fighter of the CAP which was last seen in formation as it entered a cloud," the log says. "A search was made and the entire Task Group passed over the area twice. There was no indication at any time on the radar and no trace of any crash observed. The pilot is reported as missing."

The ship's regimental history, Big Ben the Flattop: The Story of the USS Franklin, includes a few paragraphs about Winecoff's disappearance. The patrol flew into a "heavy squall," the history says, and one fighter didn't emerge. "Hopelessly the search planes scoured the area, but no trace of Lt. Wade H. Winecoff, a country boy from North Carolina, was ever found."

Engdahl had had the sad task of packing up Winecoff's belongings and sending them to his family in Rockwell. He was the only one of the "Three Musketeers" to survive the war.

I visited Engdahl several times during the next two years and played some golf with him. I also interviewed him for a story that was published in the Salisbury (N.C.) Post on the 50th anniversary of Winecoff's death on September 27, 1994.

"Maybe we got along pretty well because I like athletics and I kind of worshiped the guy because I became a basketball coach too, and a teacher," Engdahl said. "Maybe he was my idol and I never realized it. He was just a super guy."

With Engdahl's help, I contacted Vernon Osborne of Clarkston, Georgia, who'd been one of the pilots flying with Winecoff the day he disappeared. Osborne remembered flying into that squall. The turbulent winds nearly destroyed all four Hellcats, he said.

"It almost threw all of us into the ocean," Osborne recalled. "You can't fly in those things. You can't see anything in there. It's like flying into a hurricane."

Engdahl thought that the turbulence had thrown Winecoff's plane into a spin. While the Hellcat was one of the best Navy fighter planes of World War II, he recalled that it could be a death trap if it went into a spin. "You get into a spin and you're probably done for," he said. "You're never going to come out of it."

Weidman's 1946 letter supported this theory.

"It was the opinion of most of the boys, that he got slow in the cloud and went into a spin," Weidman wrote. "Because he was in a cloud and had no outside reference point, he could have become excited and gone into a progressive spin."

"I think the explanation lies in the fact that he lost altitude in the cloud and the rough air in the middle gave him a hard time," Weidman continued. "Bad weather and the turbulence in the middle of some cumulonimbus clouds is often too much for the best of pilots."

If Winecoff's plane did go into an uncontrollable spin, Engdahl said, it would have crashed into the ocean and could have been traveling at 500 or 600 mph, killing Winecoff instantly.

The fact that Harold Winecoff died because of an unidentified American B-24 adds a cruel twist of irony to his death. But such events are part of war. There was no way to know if the plane was a friend or an enemy, and it had to be identified, Engdahl said.

In 1994, Harold Winecoff's brother, John, was still living near Rockwell and saw my story in the Salisbury Post. During the Thanksgiving holiday of 1994, I returned Harold Winecoff's possessions to his brother.

The Golden Anniversary of Maris's Remarkable Season is Being Forgotten

No one seems to be noticing that 50 years ago this month, Roger Maris was closing in on one of Major League Baseball's most revered records.

By September 12, 1961, Maris had hit 56 home runs and was within sight of the legendary Babe Ruth's single-season record of 60, which Ruth set in 1927.

But Maris's phenomenal home run production had suddenly tailed off as the 1961 season was drawing to a close. On September 12, he went homer-less against the Chicago White Sox and was in the middle of a seven-game dry spell. He wouldn't hit home run number 57 until September 16 against the Detroit Tigers.

Maris was feeling the pressure of his run on Ruth's record. Teammate Mickey Mantle also was in the chase for the record with 53 home runs, and he'd become the sentimental favorite among fans and sportswriters to break the record. But an injury would shorten Mantle's season, and he'd finish with 54 home runs.

Maris, 26 at the time, was a quiet, no-nonsense man who'd grown up in Fargo, North Dakota. (Click here to see an essay about a family connection to Maris.) He was unaccustomed to the intense public scrutiny that came with playing baseball in New York City and was annoyed by the constant presence of reporters. He'd been labeled by reporters as surly and uncooperative during post-game interviews. He was losing sleep, and was in such a state of anxiety that his hair was falling out.

And although there were still 16 games remaining on the Yankees' 1961 schedule after the game of September 12, Major League Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick announced that same day that unless Maris or Mantle hit 61 home runs by the 154th game of the season, it would not count as a new single-season record.

The reason for Frick's ruling was because in 1961, the American League had added two new teams and extended its season to 162 games. So Mantle and Maris would play eight more games that season than Ruth's Yankees had played in 1927.

What Frick did not announce with his ruling was that he'd been a good friend of Ruth's and did not want to see the Babe's record eclipsed.

Maris had raised his home run total to 58 when the Yankees took the field in Baltimore September 19 for a double-header against the Orioles that would be games 153 and 154. He went hitless in the first game and managed only a single in the second game. So in the eyes of Ford Frick, Ruth's single-season record was still intact.

Maris hit homer number 59 the following day against Baltimore, and he hit number 60 when the Orioles came to Yankee Stadium on September 26.

Maris's final home run of the 1961 season came on October 1 against pitcher Tracy Stallard of the Boston Red Sox. In the fourth inning, Maris took two pitches outside the strike zone. But he connected on Stallard's third pitch, a knee-high fastball on the outside corner.

"There it is," announcer Red Barber said the moment the ball left Maris's bat and sailed into the right-field stands. "Sixty-one."

Maris rounded the bases with his head down and went straight to the Yankees' dugout after touching home plate. He seemed surprised at the lengthy ovation from about 23,000 fans who attended the game, and, with a big smile on his face, stepped out of the dugout twice to acknowledge the cheers.

No one would approach Maris's accomplishment until the steroid-riddled seasons of the late 1990s. (Click here for a Drye Goods essay about that.) Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds all shattered Maris's single-season record, but all of them later were linked to using performance-enhancing steroids when they were piling up their astronomical home run totals.

In my mind, that makes Maris's feat all the more remarkable. Even though he had eight more games than Ruth, he did it without cheating. I've watched a lot of baseball games this season, and I don't recall hearing any mention of the golden anniversary of this achievement. And that seems wrong. Why isn't Major League Baseball officially observing this milestone? Could it be that they don't want anything that might remind fans of the absurd number of home runs hit during the steroid era?

Active 2011 Atlantic hurricane season predicted by CSU forecasters

Forecasters at Colorado State University are predicting that the summer of 2011 will bring another active hurricane season to the Atlantic Basin.

Meteorologists Phil Klotzbach and William Gray think 16 named tropical storms will form between June 1 and November 30. Of those storms, nine will develop into hurricanes with winds of at least 74 mph, and five of those will intensify into major hurricanes with winds exceeding 110 mph.

Klotzbach and Gray think the active season will be fueled by very warm waters in the Atlantic Basin, which includes the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. The CSU forecasters also think that a weather phenomenon known as La Nina also will enhance storm formation in the Atlantic.

A La Nina event occurs when waters in the equatorial region of the Pacific Ocean are cooler than usual. The cooler waters often cause atmospheric conditions over the Atlantic Basin that allow tropical storms to develop. These favorable conditions can include diminished wind-shear. When wind-shear is high over the Atlantic, tropical storms have trouble forming and strengthening because the wind-shear disrupts their development.

If the 2011 hurricane season is active, it will continue a trend of busy seasons that began in 1995. Gray, a pioneer in the science of long-range hurricane forecasting, thinks this cycle of active seasons is caused by changes in salt content of the Atlantic waters. Salt level fluctuates because of ocean currents. An increase in the salt content makes ocean waters warmer, and hurricanes draw their enormous energy from warm water.

The cycle of active hurricane seasons can last 20 years or longer.

Last summer's hurricane season was the third-most active on record, but the activity went virtually unnoticed because no storm made landfall in the U.S. Meteorologists including Gray and Klotzbach don't think this kind of luck can continue.

Alabama Family Will Donate Historic House for Renovation as African-American History Museum

(NOTE: This is a news release I've sent out about the effort to renovate one of Plymouth's oldest and most historic structures.)

An Alabama family with North Carolina roots will donate an early 19th-century house dating back to the earliest days of Plymouth's history for renovation and use as a museum depicting African-American history and culture.

The house, listed in the National Register of Historic Places as the Picot-Armistead-Pettiford House, will be donated by the family of Velma and James Braye of Tuskegee Institute, Alabama to a non-profit organization to be designated in Plymouth. The donation was arranged by the Plymouth Small Town Main Street Committee, with assistance from senior historian Carl Westmoreland of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati.

The Brayes, their daughter Linda Bulls, son-in-law George Bulls, and granddaughter Salena Bulls decided to donate the house after a private meeting in Plymouth April 1 that included family friend Peter McNair, Westmoreland and his wife Carol, and representatives of the Plymouth Small Town Main Street Committee.

Earlier that day, nine-year-old Salena Bulls said she thought it would be "great" if the house was used as a museum. "Like Salena, I think it's a wonderful thing that the house will be utilized as an African-American history museum," said Velma Braye, who grew up in the house. "It's something I've been wanting since 2000.

Braye's mother, Gladys Whitley, who died in 2000, was the house's last occupant.

Westmoreland said the house is a "capsule of history" whose historic stature is enhanced by its unusual succession of owners.

"Each owner made a significant contribution to Plymouth and to the whole notion of American striving and attainment," Westmoreland said.

The two-story wood-frame house overlooking the Roanoke River was built in 1814 by physician Julian Picot, a Frenchman who is thought to have come to the settlement that is now Plymouth in the 1780s after being shipwrecked on Ocracoke Island. Picot arrived in Plymouth at about the same time the town was established in 1787. Plymouth was incorporated in 1807, only seven years before Picot bought a lot at the corner of West Main and Monroe streets where he built the house.

Plymouth, located about six miles upstream from where the Roanoke River empties into the Albemarle Sound, became one of North Carolina's busiest ports after the nearby Dismal Swamp Canal opened in 1805. Ships loaded at Plymouth traveled down the Roanoke, across the Albemarle Sound, and through the canal to the deepwater port about 100 miles away at Norfolk, Virginia.

In 1844 the title to the house and lot was transferred to Robert Armistead, a Plymouth merchant. Robert Armistead died in 1857, but his brother Thomas lived in the house until after the Civil War. Plymouth saw heavy fighting during the war, and Thomas Armistead's house was one of only a handful of buildings that weren't heavily damaged or destroyed before the war ended in 1865.

Local oral history has long linked the house to the Underground Railroad that helped escaped slaves in the Antebellum South find their way to freedom. But some historians challenge that theory because the 1850 Census indicates that both Armistead brothers owned slaves.

Thomas Armistead's house was sold at a public auction in 1886 to William H. Hampton. The house stayed in the Hampton family until 1913, when it was bought by Jane Brinkley. The following year, Brinkley sold the house to Reuben Pettiford, an African-American brick mason.

Westmoreland, the historian, noted that this transaction in which a white owner sold a house to a black buyer was very unusual in 1914.

Reuben Pettiford died in 1916, but his descendants still own the house. The fact that the house has stayed in the hands of an African-American family for nearly a century and was used as a boarding house and hotel for blacks during the so-called "Jim Crow" era of segregation also is historically significant, Westmoreland said.

"We are delighted that the Braye family has decided to make this huge contribution to our effort to improve downtown Plymouth," said Willie Drye, chairman of Plymouth's Small Town Main Street Committee. "The Picot-Armistead-Pettiford House is one of North Carolina's most historic buildings, and the restoration of this great old house as a museum of African-American history and culture will be a milestone for our downtown commercial district. This will be a wonderful addition to our collection of museums focusing on Plymouth's rich maritime, Civil War and natural histories."

The Small Town Main Street Committee will immediately launch a fund-raising effort to put a new roof on the house and stabilize the historic structure, Drye said. Advisors from the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources will help plan the roof, he said.