Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor latest updates :- PEARL HARBOR, —A noise awoke George Steckbeck on the morning of Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, but he wasn’t sure what it was.

A private in the Army Air Corps, Steckbeck lay in his bunk at Hickam Field, which is adjacent to Pearl Harbor, on the Hawaiian Island of Oahu for a few moments.

He then noticed several guys looking out a window and smoke billowing in the background, so he got up to see what was going on. As he looked out the second-floor window that overlooked Pearl Harbor, he saw an oil tank burning, and then a battleship that was moored in the harbor blew up.

“I was just trying to figure out what was going on when this battleship blew up, and here comes a torpedo plane right in front of me,” said Steckbeck, a 1939 graduate of Lebanon High School. “In fact, the guy looked over and I don’t know what it was, but he either saluted or waved to me. I looked and, holy crimes, it had the rising sun on it, and when I saw that, I knew right away what it was.”

Realizing they were under attack, Steckbeck and his fellow airmen ran out of the barracks but were met with Japanese planes strafing them with machine-gun fire. He made his way to a hangar, where he tried to get machine guns from the armament shop to fire at the attacking Japanese planes.

He was able to get a pair of .45-caliber pistols and some bullets but no machine guns because they were locked up. While he was in the armament shop, a bomb hit nearby and knocked him into a wall, causing his nose to start bleeding.

Soon, the first wave of attacks was over, and after driving another soldier to the hospital, Steckbeck was standing around with some other soldiers when the second wave arrived. Steckbeck and the other soldiers jumped in a drainage ditch as the Japanese planes continued their attack on Pearl Harbor and Hickam.

“The whole gang of us ran out and jumped in this ditch, and that’s when they hit the barracks and the guardhouse,” he said. “We had no kind of shelter there at all.

“It didn’t last long,” he continued. “They were everywhere, coming from all directions. I was there shooting at them with a .45 pistol. Of course I didn’t hit anything, but at least I felt better shooting at them than just standing there watching.”

In all, six military sites on Oahu were attacked that day, and 2,390 Americans were killed. More than 320 aircraft were destroyed or damaged, and 21 vessels were sunk or damaged. On Hickam, 189 people were killed and 303 wounded.

It was feared that a Japanese ground invasion would follow, so that night Steckbeck was assigned to a .50 cal. machine gun along the base’s perimeter.

“That night, it got cold, and it was raining like a bugger,” he said. “I was half froze till they relieved me.”

The next day, he flew an air mission to bomb a Japanese submarine that had been spotted just off the east side of the island.

“We dropped two, and then we circled and we dropped two more,” he said. “We saw an oil slick, and then a Navy plane dropped some, and they must of hit it too, because then debris started to come up. It was officially listed as destroyed.”

Later in the war, Steckbeck participated in the Battle of Midway and the Guadalcanal Campaign. In all, he flew in 57 combat missions during the war.

Steckbeck was discharged from the Army in May 1945, but re-enlisted about a year later. In all, he served 12 years and was discharged with the rank of tech sergeant, after the Air Corps had become the Air Force.

After his military service, he worked as a printer for 23 years at Sowers Printing at 10th and Scull streets in Lebanon before retiring.

Steckbeck married his wife, Gloria, who was his next-door neighbor when he was a kid, in January 1944. She died in 2002. They had a daughter, who died in 2004, and four grandchildren.

Steckbeck, now 87, lives in an apartment at Bethel Point at Hill Farm Estate, a retirement community in North Annville Township.

Even today, 68 years later, he said he can remember the attack on Pearl Harbor like happened yesterday.

“I remember the attack real good,” he said. “It doesn’t seem like it was long ago at all.”  Courtesy  www.ldnews.com

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Pearl Harbor was first posted on December 7, 2009 at 11:14 am.