Turner went to his desk and opened a sealed manila envelope that he and all Pan Am Captains had been carrying among their papers for some months because of the worsening situation in the Pacific. In it were instructions for getting the passengers to safety and camouflaging the Clipper for a return to some safe harbor. Hilo, the big island with its protected harbor, was about two hours south, and that's where Turner headed.

After setting course, the Captain went below to tell the passengers what had happened, leaving his crew to dodge the big, shiny, highly visible airplane among the clouds for cover.

When they arrived, Hilo appeared tranquil, its green forests and white beaches apparently innocent of the turmoil at Pearl. Just the same, Turner dragged the water once for obstructions and then, "We landed cautiously, I might say, because the word of the attack had gotten out there and there had never been one of our aircraft or any flying boat in that harbor to my knowledge." He said he was concerned about gunfire from two sources: from the Japanes and from Hilo's residents who might take potshots at any and all unfamiliar flying machines.

"Anyway, we eased onto the water and pulled up and tied to a buoy available there. A launch came over tieh military, FBI and several other agencies aboard who might be interested in a strange airplane." The launch took Turner and all his passengers ashore.

He went to a hotel, looking for a telephone. Miraculously, Turner managed to get a call through to Pan American's operations at Pearl Harbor. He knew that Pan Am's local manager would be at the base to supervise the Clipper's arrival. "I was talking to him and he was describing to me the blowup of some of our naval vessels just as if I were looking right at it. That was cut off, however, when they either recognized that information was going out or that the line was needed."

Turner returned to his airplane to get it ready for the run to safety. It would take awhile to refuel it, and in the meantime, it had to be disguised. "We pushed it up into the bushes along the shoreline. In the old days of barnstorming, we used to mix buttermilk and lampblack together. With that concoction, you could paint a sign on your airplane so you could fly advertising messages. When you got through with it, you just washed it off." Turner and his crewmen got five gallons of buttermilk and the necesssary lampblack and "attempted to camouflage this big old tub. Whether it was necessary or not, we don't know. But we assumed that it may have helped in case there was a strike." He recalled that aircraft were heard above a low overcast during the night, but the military said there were no American planes in the air. Two or three shells were lobbed toward the Hilo seawall, but there was no damage.

The next morning, the Anzac Clipper was along. None of the passengers elected to return to the American mainland. Turner reflected that it wasn't surprising that U Saw continued toward Burma since he had been accused to collaborating with the Japanese.

After refueling and then stowing three spare barrels of gasoline on the Clipper to keep it out of Japanese hands, Turner took off to retrace the more than 2,400 miles to San Francisco. Flying in radio silence, keeping the blackened plane in or near the clouds, Turner said they were able to monitor radio conversations about Japanese submarines reported near the California coast. They looked for them, but couldn't confirm the reports.

Once back at Treasure Island, military authorities "required some three to four hours more of my services" to bring them up to date on details he could furnish as the first civilian to return from the Pearl Harbor region.

"In a matter of two or three days, we were taken into active duty as a transport squadron. I had the honor of being Admiral Nimitz' pilot when he went over to relieve Admiral Kimmel as Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet." Nimitz arrived in Hawaii on Christmas day. From that point on, Captain H. Lanier Turner spent most of his time shuttling the Admiral and his staff around the Pacific to reconnoiter beach-heads and meet with officers on the firing line. The autographs below were left in Turner's log book by men who would become great and historic figures of the Twentieth Century. I had the honor of photographing them in the early 1970s, when this interview was conducted:

Captain Turner finished 35 years with Pan Am in 1966, retiring out of 707s. Commenting on his "40 minute episode," he said, "It's one of those things that one looks back upon many times, realizing each time that there's no co-pilot like God."

Thank you, Sir.

This is the first in a series of my favorite stories that will appear here as time goes by. If you quote them, please remember where you found them and think kindly of the scribbler who put them here.

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