Decorated duck hunter of World War II

Somehow, not one of the 21
officers and crewmen aboard the Japanese Imperial Navy’s Mavis aircraft saw the
U.S. Navy’s B-24 Liberator below.

“There was no reason for them to look,” reflected Allie
Lymenstull, a World War II Navy veteran from Quincy who was aboard the U.S.
Navy bomber. “The Japanese owned that part of the Pacific. They didn’t expect
to see us there.”

The Liberator was cruising northward at 215 miles per hour at
an altitude of 5,000 feet. One of the plane’s crew members spotted the Japanese
plane 3,000 feet overhead and flying south.

Lymenstull, a 21-year-old Quincy High School graduate, was
the nose gunner in the B-24. His place was in the front turret in the
high-winged aircraft, which became the workhorse of the Navy’s long-range reconnaissance
and bombing missions in the South Pacific in World War II. On Aug. 28, 1943,
the plane was on routine patrol over the South Pacific.

After graduating from Quincy High School in 1940, Allie
Lymenstull became an apprentice tool-and-die maker at Gardner-Denver Co. in
Quincy.

“It was an interesting craft,” said Lymenstull, tall, sinewy
and still imposing at 90 years old. “It was what I wanted to get into. My dad
was in World War I, over in France, in supplies. When the war came along he
said if you join the army you’ll have a roof over your head and a couple of
meals a day.”

That’s not what the younger Lymenstull had in mind. He wanted
to fly and joined the Navy instead. His experience earned him a slot at
aviation machinist mate’s school at Navy Pier in Chicago after boot camp. From
there he was ordered to aerial gunnery school in Hollywood, Fla., where his
shooting skill impressed his trainers. A hunting friend chalked up Lymenstull’s
expert marksmanship to his years of duck hunting along the Mississippi.

Lymenstull got his wish to fly. He was assigned to a PBY
(Patrol Bomber with Y designating the manufacturer’s identification number),
squadron of “flying boats” out of Kaneohe Bay on the east side of Hawaii. It
was a patrol and reconnaissance squadron that looked for enemy submarines and
downed pilots around Midway Island. The U.S. Navy in 1942 won a major sea
battle there. Now it was quiet around Midway.

“There was never any action,” said Lymenstull, who admitted
his eyes often grew heavy under the drone of the twin-engined plane. “Easy
duty. Biggest problem was staying awake.”

When the B-24s were delivered, his squadron was split. Half
stayed with the PBYs and the other half was assigned to Liberator crews. The
smallest men usually were assigned to operate the B-24’s bomb turrets, cramped
with two .50 caliber machine guns. At over six feet tall, Lymenstull the
marksman was the exception.

Its crews nicknamed the B-24 the” Flying Boxcar” because of
the appearance its flat sides gave it. More would call it the “Flying Coffin.”
Although it had a longer range and heavier bomb load, it had less armor, making
it more vulnerable. The plane had hair-trigger bomb bay doors that opened if
bombs broke loose but also could open if a man stepped on them
accidentally. Errant bomb or crewman would be dropped to the surface below. And
there was only one exit, located near the tail, which made a flight crew’s
escape from a disabled ship difficult.

With training over, the crew of Lymenstull’s B-24 left for
Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, east of Australia. After a few bombing
raids, the crew settled into patrols over the Pacific. The distance of their
flights initially was short, but fuel tanks added in the two front bomb bays
doubled the Liberator’s range to a thousand miles out and a thousand back.

The pilot was Navy Lt. C.J. Alley of Wisconsin.To avoid
confusion between Lt. Alley’s last name and
Lymenstull’s first, which could lead to disastrous consequences, the men nicknamed
Allie Lymenstull “Lyme.” The patrol on Aug. 28, 1943, began routinely enough.
Shortly after noon one of the crew spotted the four-engined Mavis headed for
Rabaul, the main base of Japanese military and naval activity in the South
Pacific.

In the bow turret where he had the best view of the enemy
plane above, Lyme felt the G-forces push him down on the backless seat as
Lieutenant Alley throttled up the four 1,200-horsepower engines and banked the
lumbering bomber right. Lyme confirmed the silhouette as an enemy Mavis, then
checked the ammunition belts loaded with cigar-sized .50 caliber shells. He
instructed Tillman in the top turret and Lloyd in the waist gun not to fire
unless they saw a hatch open and a gun come out.

As the Liberator climbed closer, Lyme called the range to the
other gunners. There was still no activity from the Japanese plane.

“I’ll take the engines,” Lyme said, the Liberator now so
close to the enemy plane that Lymenstull thought they could be flying in
formation.

“Lyme, don’t you think we are close enough now?” Lieutenant
Alley asked.

“Yes, sir,” Lyme answered, squeezing off what sounded like a
burp of bullets into the rear of the Mavis’ engine 4, setting it on fire.

“I was shooting just behind the main engine where the gas and
oil lines came into it,” Lymenstull said. Another short burst and
engine 3 was on fire. With the starboard engines disabled, the Mavis’ right
wing dipped and Lyme “walked up the wing,” with a brief burst that ripped into
engine 2 and then 1. With all engines on fire, the outboard panel of the right
wing blew off and the Mavis banked sharply into a death spiral.

“That wasn’t luck,” said Lyme, the Mississippi duck hunter.
“I was hittin’ at just the right spot to open the oil tank and gas lines so you
get a fire immediately and burn out the wing.”

Mo Mahaley, the B-24’s ordinance man, took pictures as the
plane went down, one of them at the instant the Mavis hit the water. The
Historical Society has archived a set of the pictures.

When the B-24 returned home, its fuel tanks nearly empty, the
entire squadron turned out to cheer the crew. It was the squadron’s first kill
of an enemy plane.

“We figured that going from Truk (the northern anchorage for the Japanese fleet) to
Rabaul the Mavis had some VIPs on it,” Lymenstull recounted. But 57 years would
pass before the crew would learn how important the Mavis’s passengers were.

Among the 11 officers of the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy
was Major Gen. Yadoru Arisue, third in command of the Eighth Area Army at
Rabaul. All were enroute to plan the repulsion of the expected invasion by Gen.
Douglas McArthur’s forces. Navy Capt. Kyosuke Mizuno had just returned to
active duty after tour in the Imperial Palace. His death was said to have
greatly saddened Prince Takamatunomaya, the younger brother of Emperor
Hirohito.

By that time Lymenstull had retired from Otis Elevator Co. of
Quincy after 38 years. Only Lymenstull and two other crewmen of the B-24 are
left, and they held their last reunion in Portland a while back.

“Hell, I’m 90 years old,” Allie Lymenstull, said. “We’re
running out of people.”

Reg Ankrom is executive director of the Historical
Society. He is a member of several history-related organizations, the author of
a history of Stephen A. Douglas and a frequent speaker on pre-Civil War
history.

Sources

Carey, Alan C. We Flew Alone: United States Navy B-24 Squadrons in the Pacific, February 1943-September 1944. Atglen, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Military History, 2000.

“Federated States of Micronesia.”

Freiburg, John R. Personal interview by Reg Ankrom. March 1, 2012.

“General [Characteristics of the B-24 Liberator].”

“Kawanishi H6K (Mavis) Maritime Reconnaissance Flying Boat.”

Lymenstull, Allie J. “First Tour.” Unpublished manuscript, file, Historical Society of Quincy and Adams County.

Lymenstull, Allie J. Personal interview by Reg Ankrom. February 7, 2012.

Thompson, Henry J. “Letter to Lyme, 9 December 1999.” File, Historical Society of Quincy and Adams County.