Question from Milton Bush: I have some recipies from a PT Boat 108 cook who was at Green in 1944: Spam made 10 ways; hot dogs with a red sauce; corned beef, etc. On long PBY missions, did food get cooked on board, or was it mainly cold sandwiches and jars of soup? 

Fred Henning: We did not do gourmet cooking on PBY flights. We always had coffee on the stove. That was the first thing we did when we reached cruising altitude. Most of the time we had sandwiches and such although the crew cooked a few times. A few times we had K Rations -- that was the worst. Sometimes we had cartons of C-Rations especially for extended missions, more than one day. When we went to Japan, we had C-Rations. We existed on those for several days at Atsugi Air Base where we were socked in by weather. There was no other food there except abandoned stores of tea and rice. The C's were safer. 

Milton Bush: I think the dock was known as The Officers Dock. I am trying to collect the PBY plane nicknames for the several squadrons. The PT guys just used the nicknames on the radio during missions. I just got a journal from a Ron 23 skipper. Goes from March 14 to Nov. 4, 1944. Theirs was the last to leave, early Dec. One crash boat remained, Little Joe. Do you recall your plane's nickname and some of the others in the unit? 

Fred Henning: We did not use any nicknames for radio call signs in VPB 53. In each operational area we flew, the squadron had a code name to which was attached a number for the particular mission. I don't remember our code name/word for Green Island. When operating out of Samar our code name was Milkshake. Then our assigned call sign for a particular mission might be Milkshake 23, for example. We never used the squadron ID, VPB 53, in radio communications, nor pilot real names. Sometimes after making contact with another '53 plane we used first names or familiar nicknames in further communications. But planes, or pilots, did not have assigned nicknames as they do today. 

Fred Henning: If I remember correctly the field ovens were fueled by gasoline that was held in tanks at the bottom of the stove. The stove was sort of rectangular shape from top to bottom. We could put griddles on top of it - the oven could be used for baking, etc. It was sort of like a large camp stove with burners on top. Any refrigerators were run by generators. I don't remember diesel fuel being used - smelled too much and smoked too much. I think at base 17, in the Philippines we had an oven sitting on top of bricks with a space underneath for a burner or wood. The baking would start about one to three am, according to what was being baked. On the boats I drew bread from the base galley to use on the boat. It was kind of dicey on Green and Treasury as to cooking. you had to start early and most of the time there was only you and maybe another to start and there were Japanese around sneaking into the camp.  

I think, on Treasury the boats were idled into the bushes and it was cut away around the boat and that was its berth ashore.  We had curfew at 7 pm and no one from base was allowed to go down to the boats after that time - and vice versa. On the boat we had a sort of converted field stove with oven below the burners. Take care, Earl