While traveling in Russia I saw city after city honored as Hero Cities—St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, Minsk, Odessa, and others. I read with heart-breaking awe what that meant—devastation, massacres, casualties, near-starvation rations and day after day terror. With the exception of the U.S. fleet left flaming in the harbor outside Honolulu on December 7, 1941, American soil experienced nothing so horrific as the hero cities of Russia.
While there, a lady asked where I lived. “Palm Springs,” I answered, “in southern California,”
She brightened. “Movie stars!”
I smiled and nodded, but there was so much more I could have told her about Palm Springs.
In 1942, Palm Springs was like no other place on earth. It was all manner of aircraft over head, it was maneuvers in the desert, it was service men clogging Palm Canyon, it was making do with food and gasoline rationing and knowing that life is on hold “for the duration”. It was knowing, too, that life is unpredictable and precious and you must grab every moment of it. And all this was intermingled with the glitz, celebrity, sunshine and star dust that is forever Palm Springs.
One of the most ironic statements on record came from a departing Desert Inn guest the week after Pearl Harbor was attacked. “You are in a good place,” he said “here in this little spot, comfortable and safe, away from the coast and of no military interest to anyone.”
His assessment couldn’t have been more wrong. Very soon after the U. S. declaration of war on Japan and the Axis nations in Europe, Palm Springs and the surrounding desert saw five different military related operations; General Patton’s maneuvers in the desert, Torney military hospital, a medical training corps, a prisoner of war camp for Italian soldiers, and the 21st Ferrying Command.
The men who made up the 21st Ferrying Squadron were a diverse group, crop-dusters, barn-stormers and stunt pilots as well as seasoned military personnel. They were an old west maverick posse consisting of just about anyone who could fly a plane – a military operation unique to Palm Springs.
It was an anxiety-filled time. The threat of a Japanese attack on the west coast was real. Newspapers carried columns about what to do in an air raid or gas attack or what to do with an incendiary bomb. An air raid warden was on duty and a citizens’ Watchman Committee kept round-the-clock shifts. Rumors of a Japanese presence along the west coast kept nerves frayed.
Military air craft were being manufactured at Douglas, North American and Northrop in Long Beach and other locations along the West Coast. Because a concentration of newly manufactured planes was an invitation to disaster, a dispersal and deployment location was needed.
Palm Springs had just begun to build an airport but the runways were still dirt landing strips. The Army Air Corps leased the airport from the city and took over the project, ultimately finishing the building and pouring concrete runways 5,000 feet long, taxi ways and the many round disks surrounding the airport, called Hard Tops. The Hard Tops, more than forty in all, stood above the ground with taxi ways leading up to them. Each Hard Top could hold one large aircraft or two small ones. A tie-down, like a giant staple in the center of the disk, anchored the planes.
At the height of the operation as many as 150 transient planes were ferried from the Los Angeles area to the Palm Springs Base in an afternoon for R.O.N. (remain overnight) on a Hard Top. The planes were then deployed to another location the following day.
Pilots slept in tents. There was no mess hall. They went into town for meals and to Palm Springs High School for showers. In summer, they came in contact with the realities of the desert: blowing sand and baking heat. Water pipes were laid but, as it turned out, too close to the sandy surface and water was too hot to use until night. Lister bags were placed by the tents for drinking water, but blocks of ice had to be brought from Palm Springs to cool the water. Mechanical repairs were halted through mid-day because tools were too hot to handle. Day time sleeping was a problem for guards on night duty. Eventually, barrack buildings were built along the north side of Tahquitz Way and on the south side, a motor pool, mess hall, small hospital, fire station and headquarters were put in. Air conditioning, however, was a thing of the future. The control tower, located where the fountain at the airport is today, was originally a forest rangers’ lookout tower.
In some cases pilots were not familiar with a particular type of aircraft and needed instruction and time in the air to qualify to fly that plane. Palm Springs became one of two Advanced Instrument Flying Schools in the United States. The other was in Homestead, Florida.
The planes were not ready for combat when they came to Palm Springs. They would be flown later to a modification site elsewhere in the United States to be further outfitted for their purpose, such as transport, bomber, fighter or pursuit plane. After the plane was modified, a crew was assembled and sent overseas for combat. Planes that came through the base were P39s, P63s, P51s and also, C57s, C54s, C47s built by Douglas. In addition, there was an assortment of fighters and bombers. Some planes were ferried to Anchorage for use in Russia.
Airplanes sometimes dipped low over Palm Canyon Drive, slow-rolling and stunt-flying above pedestrian’s heads. This irritated merchants and villagers but delighted students who stood awe-struck in the schoolyard as planes clipped the top of trees. Recess was a thrill.
Palm Springs, the grand bejeweled dowager we know and love, was wild young thing with plenty of sparkle in the days when the 21st. Ferrying Squadron came to town. She gave unselfishly to the cause and was patriotic to the core, but never misplaced her social calendar. Desert nights found Palm Canyon filled with service personnel. The City Council, in a truly patriotic and compassionate move, extended the closing time for bars and night clubs from 12 midnight to 2:00 A. M. The Chi Chi Club and the Doll House were favorites, but a serviceman could take a date to Charlie Farrell’s Racquet Club and get a fabulous meal for two for $15.00 and probably see a movie star besides. The Desert Inn boasted an Olympic-size swimming pool which was open to service personnel.
The USO Hospitality Center had a special attraction, an air conditioned Hospitality Room. Besides that a fifth local swimming pool opened there for service men. At the Palm Springs Theater you could see Betty Grable and John Payne in “Springtime in the Rockies” or at the Plaza, Jack Benny and Anne Sheridan in “George Washington Slept Here.” But in Palm Springs you didn’t have to watch the silver screen to see movies stars. On the streets, taking in the evening air you might find Edgar Bergen or Shirley Temple or Ralph Bellamy, Freeman Gosden, Rudy Valle or Hoagy Carmichael. Joe E. Brown adopted the 21st Ferrying Squadron and came often to entertain them. This added to the Pilots’ reputation across the country as the “Hollywood Ferrying Squadron”.
After watching a movie, an instructor at the Instrument School turned to leave when the lights came on and realized Lauren Bacall had been sitting behind him. She smiled. He smiled. She said, “Did you like the film?” He nodded.
The Ferrying pilots themselves were a special breed, more at home in the air than on the ground. Geographic regions and prejudices faded as day by day they ferried planes to Oklahoma, Florida, Quebec, Brazil, Alaska, Australia or wherever flight plans sent them. For all their apparent lightheartedness and adventurous spirit, the Ferrying Pilots knew that they were, in fact, test pilots – the first to fly newly-manufactured planes. They remembered the plane that lost a wing over the Gulf of Alaska and plunged into the icy depths or another that came apart over Louisiana. In the climate of the times, they thought also of sabotage. When the night life ended and they sat quietly under desert stars, they talked their own language, describing the idiosyncrasies of planes they had flown and what the next pilot assigned to that plane should know.
By late 1943, the direction and locale of the war had taken such a turn that the threat which seemed so real at first was gone. The Ferrying Command Base continued as an Instrument School for pilots. Still, the war was not over. Some pilots were assigned into active combat while locally General Patton continued to prepare his troops to meet Rommel in the North African desert. Italian prisoners of war were put to work as cooks in mess halls.
Now only a few remnants remain in this peaceful paradise of that stirring time. Near the Palm Springs Airport in a quiet residential neighborhood there is a large concrete disk – an old Hard Top where newly-built planes were once tied down. Nearby, a marker tells of Palm Springs’s fascinating, patriotic and heroic past, a time when the glamour city rose magnificently to the challenge of wartime.
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