Editor's note: This is part of a series of interviews with World War II veterans. The articles will continue in each day's edition until May 28, prior to the World War II Memorial Dedication and Recognition Day, May 29.

"Sixty-two years ago, the United States was bombed at Pearl Harbor by the Japanese," said Paul Grossnickle, 79, setting the climate for his eventual service as a World War II fighter pilot for the U.S. Navy. "That's what really started the Second World War in the Pacific. The Japanese didn't realize they had awakened a sleeping giant. In none of the preceding wars were we attacked, so everyone wanted to do their part for the war effort.

"Whoever was able-bodied and of the right age went into the military. Those who didn't, stayed here and did all their work with the war effort.

"The women of that era were marvelous and tremendous in the things they did. They helped in the aircraft industry; they helped in ship building. Women were pilots and flew the planes away from the factories and delivered them to England. During 1943 thorough 1944 and part of '45, the United States aircraft industry manufactured 278,000 airplanes, averaging 190 airplanes per day out of the factories.

"We have not had but one time of such patriotic fervor and the esprit de corps. The only time I've sensed that kind of patriotism since then was 9/11.

"I was very young, barely 17, a high school senior at North Manchester (in 1942). The minute I was 18, I went to Chicago and took three days of testing. They said, 'OK, we'll take you into naval aviation even though you don't have a college degree.' And so they sent a small contingent of us from the Fort Wayne area to Fort Scott, Kan. There we learned to fly little Piper Cubs.

"The second place they sent us was to the University of Iowa and it was all athletics. They tried to beef us up and make us stronger physically, with boxing, hand-to-hand fighting, running an obstacle course. They said, 'Anything goes. Win at any cost.'"

Schooling and training continued as the fledgling pilots trained in Steerman bi-planes in Ottumwa, Iowa. The open cockpit planes taught them they could put a plane anywhere in the sky they wanted.

"We did slow rolls, snap rolls, put the plane into tail spins and bring it out," Grossnickle said of the aerobatics. "It was all maneuvers. It was very important."

In Beeville, Texas, instrument training began. At Corpus Christi, Texas, the group transitioned into the SNJs, the Air Force's AT6 for navigation.

"They took us out over the Gulf (of Mexico) and we had to find our way back. Fighters of today have such sophisticated gear, they can pinpoint where they are with global positioning systems. We flew by dead reckoning."

Once a pilot qualified with his guns on a target sleeve that flew behind another plane, the men were awarded their Navy wings ... and sent to the next base.

In Melbourne, Fla., Grossnickle and was introduced to the powerful little Hellcats, the F6F made by Grumman.

"It was a wonderful plane," he said of the United States' answer to the Japanese Zero.

"After Dec. 7, the U.S. Navy went to Grumman and asked them to make a plane as fast as a Zero and as maneuverable. Well, they couldn't do it because the Japanese Zero was a lightweight plane that only weighed 3-1/2 tons and it had a less horse power than the Hellcat had, only 1,550 hp. The Japanese Zeros controlled the skies.

"At the start of the war in the Pacific, we had the P-40, which was land based, and the F4F - the Wildcat. We couldn't keep up with the Zero, so we lost a lot of pilots. Then they brought up the F6F, the same as the gull-winged Corsair. It would take a lot more punishment. That plane came back shot up pretty well, but it came back."

Equipped with electrically operated flaps and gun charging mechanisms, the Hellcat carried double the ammunition load of the Wildcat. Able to fly at 376 mph, the Hellcat teamed with the equally new Corsair F4U to establish the Navy's superiority in the Pacific.

"It helped turn the tide of the air war in the Pacific along with the Corsair.

"In June of 1943, during the so-called Marianas Island turkey shoot, we destroyed 404 enemy aircraft and sank four of their big carriers. They were in a lot of trouble because they didn't have the carrier strength they'd had."

At the same time, U.S. Marines were taking key islands.

The Hellcat pilots were required to memorize every switch, every connector and every knob in the cockpit. They were tested blindfolded.

"When you knew every aspect ,they'd tell you to go to the end of the taxiway and you'd take off. All the other planes had a seat behind the pilot. In the Hellcat, when you take off, you're it. Don't screw up because there's no one to correct it for you.

"I was just barely 19 years old and here's this plane with all that horsepower. I held the brakes, ran it up full power, released the brakes and it just leaped. The horsepower and the sound of it was just very fulfilling to a 19-year-old."

The pilots initially made carrier landings on the ground. Flying 15 or 20 feet above the palm trees, they came in "between the lines."

At Glenview Air Station on the north side of the Chicago, the Navy fashioned a deck on two steamers and took them out on Lake Michigan.

"At 5,000 feet they looked like postage stamps. We made six carrier landings and qualified as carrier pilots."

Before returning to Melbourne, Grossnickle made a detour to North Manchester, marrying Jane early in 1944. She went with him to Florida and to the West Coast before he shipped out.

"On Christmas Day, I said good-bye, put her on a train east and I went west."

During a week's stay at Pearl Harbor, the men were instructed to practice trap and skeet shooting at a small bore range.

"Here's this handsome officer in khaki shorts, a lieutenant, teaching trap and skeet shooting in Honolulu. It was Robert Stack, the movie actor, and he taught us.

"Another movie actor we saw a little closer than that was in Beeville, Texas. Tyrone Power was a Marine lieutenant taking training there. Every Friday, all the rest of us would stand out on the porch of the barracks and watch, with our tongues hanging out. Here came this blue convertible. Behind the wheel was Annabella, the French actress, a big blonde, who became or was Power's first wife."

Grossnickle was stationed on Saipan and serving as air support to five different carriers the last nine months of the war. Ships would dock at Guam for aircraft and ship repair. He and other pilots would fly in from Saipan, land aboard and be with that particular ship for about two months, returning with another carrier.

"Five times we went on those trips. On one of them, we ran through a typhoon."

Fleet Adm. William Frederick Halsey Jr. came by his nickname, Bull, honestly. He was stubborn. That attitude was evident in the face of a storm.

"On one trip out, Halsey's Third Fleet was prepared to make a strike so he said, 'We can get through that typhoon.'

"Well he was wrong and the meteorologists were right. We went into it at night and stayed in it. A carrier that size could roll 30 degrees. If you went as far as 33 degrees, it was top heavy enough to have rolled over into the water.

"We rolled 30 degrees many times and in the middle of this you couldn't sleep. I told 'em no one got sick in that violent storm because they were scared sickless.

"One time I went up to the combat information center just below the flight deck. The flight deck is 55 feet above the water. Some of the waves were 20 to 30 feet above the flight deck. Monstrous waves hit and the whole carrier shook like a cork. Part of the flight deck came down so we had to go back in to Guam for repairs.

"We had other situations. A carrier was going to take a bunch of dud airplanes back in. They couldn't be repaired in the fleet and had to go back to Guam."

"There was a string of 28 of us. I was the 27th in line, with a Hellcat behind me and a Corsair ahead of me. Before you landed, you jettisoned the aviation tanks rather than have that fuel aboard. Well, this Corsair ahead of me had two 100-gallon tanks. One dropped. The other hung on and he shook that plane to death. It wouldn't fall off.

"But they took him aboard and that 100 gallon tank went through the prop. The whole forward part of the flight deck was ablaze. I was next to come aboard. I went around starboard along with the fellow behind me."

The two pilots decided against making an ocean landing. Their planes were "duds" because they had no radio. Using a series of hand signals, they went up to altitude and looked for a solid place to land in miles of ocean.

"The fleet is spread out over miles and miles, it's maybe 15 miles wide. You want it to be wide. If you're congregated real close, you can be picked off by submarines.

"We saw a carrier and it was starting to get dark. We flew along the starboard side of the carrier and waggled our wings indicating we wanted to land."

The ship turned out of the fleet and into the wind, allowing the pilots to come aboard.

"I taxied up real close and the fellow behind me landed. As soon as I shut the plane off, the chief came out of the bridge. And he said, 'The skipper wants to know what the emergency is. Turn your switch back on, I want to see your tank.' I had enough gas to make one more pass. Then I would have had to land in the water. There's no lighting aboard ship and no lighting on your plane. When you land in the dark, you have to have your eyes wide open."

During the last six weeks of the war, Grossnickle was on the USS Randolph, an Essex-class carrier, the largest made at that time. He made reconnaissance flights over Kobe, Osaki and Nagoya, Japan.

"A couple of days later, we woke up with the ship heading east, southeast, toward Pearl Harbor. We knew the war was over.

During the next month the pilots disarmed planes, removing the five-inch guns. Then Grossnickle was released from active duty.

"I made 51 carrier landings, 13 catapult shots and one night landing I wasn't qualified for."

Grossnickle went on to college and secured his optometry degree. During the month he graduated, his best friend, a Marine Corsair pilot, was recalled to active duty. With his oldest son just born, he resigned his pilot's commission and took a new one as an optometrist. He spent six more years in the Navy, from 1950 to 1957, serving on the West Coast.

"Full lieutenant pay was poor, not near what you'd get as a civilian. Everyone wanted out, all the dentists and the medical doctors were leaving." It took a year for his resignation papers to be approved.

He began his practice with one technician in the corner of the current Hall and Marose Insurance building in Warsaw. Today, the practice is near the Kosciusko Community Hospital with a branch in Mishawaka. He and his sons employ 92 people.

Grossnickle works three days a week.

"I told bookkeeping, 'Ok next month I'm going to be 80 years old and I'm only working two days a week.' When does it end? You can't just quit." [[In-content Ad]]