67 years ago, on another sleepy Sunday morning, two brave young men, still wearing the tuxedo attire — and, likely, the hangovers — from a party the night before. Hopped in a Buick and raced toward an airfield as Japanese warplanes attacked all around them.
They raced to the Haleiwa Auxiliary air field, getting strafed along the way. There, two P-40s were being prepped for their arrival.
No, not Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett, but George Welch and Kenneth Taylor. Actual heroes.
So remember, if you ever have the misfortune of seeing Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor again, two unnamed men actually took off in the middle of the attack and shot down Japanese planes until their ammo ran dry. Then they landed, rearmed and did it again.
Both men continued to fly fighters in the war in the Pacific and both survived the war.
After the war, Welch became a test pilot and was likely the first person to have broken the sound barrier. (He flew the Bell X-1 two weeks before Yeager and might have broken the sound barrier in a steep dive after launch — in any case, he is the second, after Yeager, to officially break the sound barrier.)
Welch died testing the F-100 Super Sabre in 1954.
Taylor remained in the military after the war, retiring in 1967. Unlike Welch, he lived to see Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor.
He also thought it sucked.