Once They Were Eagles (22 page)

Fred Losch

Miller's record bears out that philosophy: he flew nearly twice as many missions and hours as any other pilot.

“One of the mistakes I think was made by Marine leaders in aviation at that time was that there was very little general instruction given to pilots about getting into a fight and slugging it out, dominating the enemy by your own aggressiveness. The attitude was more or less to do your own thing. Boyington's characteristic was the desire and willingness to get right in there, ride as close as he could, do a lot of shooting without regard for himself. Other people were more conservative. I guess I was probably the more conservative kind, thinking how graceful it was to be flying around in a beautiful plane and not concentrating to the extent he was on really doing what we were there to do.”

“As operations officer on our second tour, you kept an outstanding set of books,” I commented.

“I kept my own books on every day's flights. Who was on duty and what took place; every name, every plane's bureau, registration number, every takeoff time, landing, solo time, and so forth—it was a kind of index. The first part was each daily effort by the squadron with all the details. Then I had a section for each pilot by name as to which days he flew and what he did. I had a summary of each division's activity.”

Speaking about the use of fighters for more than shooting down planes, he said: “What you're talking about is that different people contribute different things to a team; the real offensive work is the bombing, and fighters are needed to see that the bombers get to their targets. There's the role of close air support or interdicting ground movements.

“My worst experience? On Bougainville, I had the green light and was making a normal three-point landing when I suddenly felt a jar, saw something go over me. It was a damaged B-24 coming in from the opposite direction with only one main landing gear. When the pilot saw me, he used what air speed he had to pull up and over and land behind me. The strut was down and hit the nose of my plane, knocking the strut off, and he made a wheels-up landing. My plane was so badly jarred, it was junked.”

Miller was later sent to Cherry Point as commander of the first Marine Corps day fighter squadron to be equipped with twin-engine planes. After the war he returned to his law practice but remained
active in the Reserve Program; he was called up and served a year in the Korean War. Thereafter, he resigned his commission to concentrate on his law practice in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, specializing in estate planning and real estate.

Henry was born and raised in Jenkintown; his roots are there. He jogs a mile each morning on his own property, spends a dozen hours a week working in his yard. He is busy in church work, too: chairman of the stewardship committee, the hunger and refugee programs; and he recently became active in prison visitation and a program for the mentally retarded, as well, and he is a driver for Meals on Wheels.

Since 1960, he has spent considerable time in legal services for the poor, and is chairman of the Hearing Board in his township.

I interviewed Fred “Rope Trick” Losch in his plush home in Altadena, California, not far from plant headquarters of the building materials firm he built from scratch into a $40,000,000-a-year business. We sat at the bar in the huge Spanish-style house.

Fred has put on several pounds since the days when he weighed about 120 in his stocking feet but has kept his friendly, outgoing disposition, his love of life with a heart as big as all of California.

“When December 7th came along, I was out bow-and-arrow hunting on my folks' farm in Pennsylvania. My brother said: ‘You'd better put that bow and arrow away and get yourself a gun—the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor.'

“We went up to Pittsburgh Monday. Everybody was planning to join the Army Air Corps, but the line was halfway around the Federal Building. A buddy said, This is for the birds. Why don't we try the Navy Air Corps?'

“I'd never been in an airplane and didn't know the Navy had an air corps, but in a couple of hours we were signed up. We were trained on
the Corsairs, but when I joined the Black Sheep for their second tour, I looked at guys like Magee and Matheson, Bolt, Heier, and Olander—‘God, those guys are professionals! A bunch of God-damned killers.' And Boyington, he was Jesus Christ himself. I was the same age as several others, but they were six weeks ahead of me. We looked at them as if they were ten years older.”

I said, “They'd aged ten years in those six weeks of combat. Were you scared on your first mission?”

“I didn't know enough to be scared. I was with Bragdon over Buka Airdrome when an AA shell burst off my wing. I asked what it was, didn't realize they were shooting at me. But I was absolutely petrified one time. I had been towing a sleeve to give some new guys altitude gunnery training. I was at 22,000, and they were at 25,000, when the weather closed under us. We started home, but I must have passed over an area with strong mineral deposits, because my compass began to spin around. I had overcast above and undercast below, and no idea where I was. Was I ever scared? I finally let down through the clouds, but it was raining right down to the deck. I started making big circles. I was almost out of gas when I spotted Espiritu Santo, 100 miles from where I was supposed to be. If someone else had been with me, both of us in the same boat, it wouldn't have been so bad.

“You know, you go through the whole thing, and all of a sudden realize you have only three weeks left on your overseas tour. You say to yourself: ‘Maybe I'm going to make it home!' Up to that point, you'd put it in the back of your mind, but from then on you aren't worth a damn.

“Like after the Japanese no longer had any air operation and we flew to hunt their trucks. One day, the trucks were bait, and 20-mm guns opened up on us. I went in on the gun emplacement and came back up thinking, ‘Boy, we're lucky to get out of that.' Then one of the new pilots came back for another pass, and I cut him off. I said to myself: ‘My plane and I are worth $50,000 each; the beat up trucks, nothing.' When you start rationalizing this sort of stuff, you're not a good pilot anymore.

“It's the same in business. You look at a company, especially a big national company: when it was young, it was agressive—young guys running it, dynamic and going to make their mark. But when a guy is nearing retirement age, he doesn't want to rock the boat. You say, ‘But look what this can do for your company.' He's not interested. I relate these two things closely.

“I'm a good example. After the war, I went to UCLA to finish up my degree, and got a job with Armstrong Cork Company.

Black Sheep Squadron members with the Corsair added to the National Air and Space Museum, 1980.
Kneeling, left to right,
Fred Losch, Harry Johnson, John Begert, Robert McClurg, Greg Boyington, Henry Bourgeois.
Standing,
Burney Tucker, Gelon Doswell, James Reames, Frank Walton, Denmark Groover, James Hill, Don Fisher, Thomas Emrich, Perry Lane, Ed Harper, Bruce Matheson, Fred Avey.

“Then I went to work in Los Angeles for an old hardwood wholesale firm that had been started in 1884. I set up a specialty division there, and in 1961 I made arrangements to split that division off and form my own company. I was young and aggressive, and developed an innovative approach to marketing, ending up with one of the ten finest building materials companies in the United States. In another ten years, it could have been a $150,000,000 company, but by then I didn't want to work that hard.

“When you've got a going concern like that, you have three options: liquidate, go public, or sell out. I'd been giving my top managers stock shares, so I sold out to them. They're all younger, and were officers in the company.

“I had a very successful business. If I were 40 years old, I could build it to $500,000,000, but I didn't have either the years left or the incentive. Now I'm enjoying life. I travel, fish, meet with my old Black Sheep buddies.”

He glanced over at the wall back of the bar, decorated with Black Sheep memorabilia: squadron photos, our emblem.

“Looking back, I consider that tour one of the highlights of my life. It was a time of extreme stress and action compressed into a brief period, but in just those couple of months, I became closer to that group than anyone except perhaps my brother.

“Why was it? It was a happy combination: the stress; the dynamic leadership of Boyington; the press coverage that you were responsible for. We had a team, and we all tried to live up to it. We were the
Black Sheep
Squadron. Other squadrons were individuals—we were a
team.

“Of course, your mind tends to block out the bad things that happened, but I'll always treasure those few weeks with the Black Sheep.”

Fred Avey drove out to meet me at my hotel at Detroit's Metropolitan Airport. “Lighthorse” Fred would have to be termed “Heavyhorse” Fred now. Although he appeared hale and hearty, he was no longer the slender, dapper lad; his 20-inch waist had perhaps doubled. He had been both the oldest and the smallest of the Black Sheep pilots: six weeks older than Boyington, and 10 pounds lighter than the next smallest.