<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When Clayton Fisher died in January of 2011, Norman Jack (\u201cDusty\u201d) Kleiss became the last living dive bomber pilot to have participated in the Battle of Midway.\u00a0 As time took more of the participants of the June 4 – 6, 1942 battle, he found he was being sought out by more and more historians seeking information about the events of that engagement.\u00a0 At the age of 95, Kleiss asked himself questions that would ultimately lead to him finally telling his story.\u00a0 Questions like, \u201c<\/span>Why has God seen fit to make me the last one?\u00a0 Why must I be forced to remember Midway for every remaining day of my life?\u201d<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 His best answer to these nagging questions ended up as a collaboration with two people who were seeking information as the 75th Anniversary Commemoration of The Battle of Midway was being planned.\u00a0 His co-authors would be Timothy Orr, an associate professor of military history at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia and Laura Orr, the deputy education director at the Hampton Roads Naval Museum, the U.S. Navy\u2019s official museum in Norfolk.\u00a0 Jack Kleiss determined that he had one final duty to fulfill and with the Orrs on board, together they crafted the book <\/span>Never Call Me a Hero – A legendary American dive-bomber pilot remembers The Battle of Midway<\/span><\/i> (William Morrow – 2017).<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The book was slated for release in time for the 75th Anniversary Commemoration of the Battle of Midway scheduled for June of 2017.\u00a0 Dusty Kleiss would not see the release nor the commemoration as he passed away in 2016 at the age of 100.\u00a0 As the title clearly states, Kleiss never considered himself a hero.\u00a0 In the book\u2019s introduction he says, \u201cDear reader, please be generous to me, but never call me a hero.\u00a0 During the Pacific War, I did my job and that\u2019s it.\u00a0 I know I performed a dangerous task – dropping out of the sky with a bomb – and that I lived in an exceptional time, when the world was torn apart by war.\u00a0 But in the end, I\u2019m just a lucky fool, blessed with a long life and lasting love.\u00a0 Fortune favors me, but I have yet to comprehend why.\u201d\u00a0 Kleiss never called himself a hero, but everyone else certainly should.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Born in Coffeyville, Kansas on March 7, 1916, Norman Jack Kleiss was the youngest of three children.\u00a0 His father John was born in Wisconsin and was a master woodworker for a railroad company until he took up the insurance game.\u00a0 His mother Lulu was an expert typist.\u00a0 The Kleiss family made their home alongside the Verdigris River, a tributary of the Arkansas River.\u00a0 Located but a few miles from the Oklahoma border in southeast Kansas, Coffeyville is probably best known as the end of the road for the fabled Dalton gang.\u00a0 The Daltons decided to hold up the town\u2019s two\u00a0 banks simultaneously on October 5, 1892.\u00a0 The decision proved to be a fatal one as\u00a0 four gang members and four townsfolk died in the ensuing gun battle.\u00a0 As a youngster, Kleiss remembered hearing the tale from a veteran of the gunfight.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Young Norman, always a determined child, decided one day that his name would be \u2018Jack\u2019 and that was that.\u00a0 It was a different time to grow up.\u00a0 Jack recalled building a small boat that he and his friends christened the <\/span>Punkin\u2019 Creek Special<\/span><\/i> after one of the tributaries of the Verdigris River.\u00a0 Oftentimes, his father would drop Kleiss (and another newly created dinghy) off at the Verdigris on his way to work.\u00a0 At mid-afternoon, his father would drive down the road paralleling the river until he found wherever the river had taken Jack during his adventures.\u00a0 For an adventurous child, it was a wonderful place to grow up.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Kleiss first became interested in the Navy when he went to live with his mother\u2019s brother in Lincoln, Illinois for a period of time.\u00a0 Jack\u2019s mother was battling stomach cancer and his father had to farm out the kids so he could continue working during his wife\u2019s illness.\u00a0 Uncle William had been a surgeon in WWI.\u00a0 When his own son, Jack\u2019s cousin Walter, decided to attend the Naval Academy instead of following his father into medicine, Uncle Walter sought to interest Jack in the medical field.\u00a0 He did consider it for a while, but it was his introduction to the Naval Academy that would stick with Kleiss when he returned home to bury his mother in February of 1929.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In 1932, the fifteen year old Kleiss enlisted in the Kansas National Guard.\u00a0 He lied about his age to sign up, but nobody seemed that concerned about it.\u00a0 His weekend training involved a variety of tasks but the most memorable was horse riding.\u00a0 Jack claims he has a better memory of the equine soldiers he worked with than the humans in the company.\u00a0 During one of their war game exercises, Kleiss and his horse were \u2018killed\u2019 when he ventured out from the trees to watch an airplane fly by.\u00a0 It was about this time that Jack decided airplanes would be the new calvary and he wanted to become a \u201ccavalryman mounted on wings, a knight of the airborne battlefield.\u201d\u00a0 Kleiss reasoned that the newly emerging field of Naval aviation was his best bet to become a pilot.\u00a0 As his high school graduation neared, he had to turn down a four year scholarship to Kansas State University in order to accept a fourth alternate appointment to the Naval Academy.\u00a0 The alternate appointment left him a gap year to fill between high school and his first year in Annapolis.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0During this pause in his educational plans, Kleiss worked a variety of jobs.\u00a0 Though it involved hardening steel drilling equipment with cyanide, he considered his job at the Oil Country Specialties company his best job.\u00a0 One of the company managers, Roger \u201cRolley\u201d Inman, had formed a flying circus with his two brothers and a two-year-old male lion (yes, a lion).\u00a0 Inman gave Kleiss and his father their first airplane ride.\u00a0 With Jack\u2019s father standing in the enclosed cockpit drinking a cup of coffee between Inman and Jack, Rolley did a full loop.\u00a0 The centrifugal force kept both his father and his coffee on the floor and in the cup, respectively,\u00a0 Upon landing, Jack\u2019s dad thanked Rolley for both flights.\u00a0 \u201cFlights?\u201d\u00a0 Inman laughed.\u00a0 \u201cI gave you only one flight!\u201d\u00a0 Kleiss senior rejoined, \u201cNo, you gave me two flights, the first and the last.\u201d\u00a0 His father may have hated flying, but Jack loved it.\u00a0 Any questions he had about turning down the scholarship to KSU disappeared completely as Rolley took the plane through the loop.\u00a0 A year at Coffeyville Junior College helped Jack buff up his math during the day while he continued at Oil Country Specialists on the afternoon shift, often working until midnight. \u00a0 He also endulged in his hobby of repairing firearms which both added to his savings and his personal gun collection.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In May of 1934, Kleiss reported to Annapolis, Maryland to enter the U.S. Naval Academy.\u00a0 He graduated 245th in a class of 438.\u00a0 Jack still had a two year commitment to serve in the surface Navy before he could apply for aviation training.\u00a0 He was serving aboard the USS <\/span>Vincennes<\/span><\/i> out of Long Beach, California when he met his future wife Eunice.\u00a0 She was a few years older than he and of another faith.\u00a0 Jack says he was foolish and pigheaded enough to let their differences keep him from proposing to her.\u00a0 After a deployment to the Atlantic Task Force and then aerial training in Florida, Kleiss found himself stationed aboard the USS <\/span>Enterprise<\/span><\/i> out of San Diego, CA.\u00a0 He had a grand plan to marry Eunice (who they had mutually decided to call \u2018Jean\u2019, much the same way he had decided to be \u2018Jack\u2019 instead of Norman), but after only two days on the west coast, he had his orders changed.\u00a0 The <\/span>Enterprise<\/span><\/i> was leaving for Hawaii and the commanding officer had Jack transferred into the Scouting Six squadron who would begin intensive training in Pearl Harbor for an undetermined amount of time.\u00a0 Though the wedding would have to wait until after the Battle of Midway, Jean drove to San Diego to pick up the things that Jack would not be able to bring with him when he boarded the <\/span>Enterprise.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/i>Flying a \u201cDauntless\u201d SBD-3 (a \u2018Scout Bomber Douglas – Mark 3\u2019) on a bomb run has a steep learning curve.\u00a0 Kleiss said plunging down a roller coaster was \u201cDullsville\u201d compared to a dive-bombing run.\u00a0 In practice or the real thing, the planes would start at an altitude of four miles.\u00a0 When the wing commander waggled the wings of his aircraft, each plane would peel off one by one in a downward plunge toward their target.\u00a0 The pilot would need to arm the bombs, adjust their instruments, and set the perforated flaps at the back of the wings called dive brakes.\u00a0 Kleiss said that at the start of a dive, the target looked no larger than a ladybug sitting on top of your shoe.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Jack describes a typical bomb run:\u00a0 \u201cAt full dive speed, an SBD dropped at 240 knots, or 275 miles per hour.\u00a0 Even a typical, \u2018perfect\u2019 dive was hard to endure.\u00a0 Air resistance buffeted the plane and deafened our hearing.\u00a0 We had to keep our cockpits open during a dive, so the noise of the wind drowned out nearly all other sound.\u00a0 With one eye on the bomb scope, we adjusted the dive so our target was centered and had no tendency to drift up and down, or left or right. \u00a0 Our other eye glanced at airspeed and other instruments, assuring us that our dive brakes were working.\u00a0 Mainly we watched the altimeter, which spun like a top but was inaccurate by 1,000 feet.\u00a0 If it spun past 5,000 feet we knew it just passed 4,000.\u00a0 We required 1,500 feet for normal pullout and another 1,000 feet to stay above bomb fragments.\u00a0 A quick pull on the manual release handle gave each pilot a jolt as the undercarriage bomb – either a 500-pounder or a 1,000 pounder – pivoted \u2018downward\u2019 (really behind the plane) to clear the propeller.\u00a0 To pull out, we pulled smoothly on the stick, which resulted in 6 to 8 g\u2019s worth of pressure.\u00a0 (At 6 g, this means that if a pilot, his parachute, and his flight gear met the design weight of 200 pounds, then he pushed down on the seat with a force of 1,200 poundds.)\u00a0 Once we had pulled out into a level flight, we closed our dive brakes, swing those big perforated flaps flush with the trailing edge of the wing, accelerated to full throttle, went high RPM (rotations per minute) on the engine, and headed for home.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The carrier <\/span>Enterprise<\/span><\/i> was heading back to Pearl Harbor after delivering men and cargo to an island Marine base when the Japanese sneak attack occurred on December 7.\u00a0 Had they not been delayed by weather, they would have been in port that fateful morning.\u00a0 Kleiss\u2019s squadron lost planes when they encountered the Japanese planes bound for Hawaii.\u00a0 He himself flew a later scout loop but saw no action.\u00a0 Initially, the chaotic radio chatter was hard to decipher, but when the fleet raised their battle flags, everyone knew they were now at war.\u00a0 In the early months of 1942, Kleiss was involved with Task Force strikes at the Marshall Islands, at the island atolls of Wake and Marcus.\u00a0 Kleiss wondered then if the loss of pilots, gunners, and planes was worth the minimal damage they did on these raids, but the brass assured them the message they sent by striking sites within 1,000 miles of Tokyo was just as important.\u00a0 The engagement that would shake the Japanese fleet to its very core was closer than Jack thought.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Jack Kleiss\u2019s Scouting Squadron Six began a bomb\u00a0 \u00a0 run on the Japanese aircraft carrier <\/span>Kaga.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>The three bombs Kleiss released all struck the <\/span>Kaga<\/span><\/i> which erupted into an inferno.\u00a0 The <\/span>Kaga<\/span><\/i> was considered one of the Japanese Navy\u2019s most important ships, and it would not survive the attack by Jack\u2019s squadron.\u00a0 The same afternoon, Jack and the Task Force airgroup fatally struck another enemy ship, the carrier <\/span>Hiryu.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>Two days later, Kleiss became the only pilot from either side to make direct hits on three enemy ships when the cruiser <\/span>Mikuma<\/span><\/i> was sent to the bottom.\u00a0 The Battle of Midway crippled the vaunted Japanese fleet, setting the stage for their final defeat in the Pacific Theater.\u00a0 The cost to the <\/span>Enterprise<\/span><\/i> airgroup was forty-four airmen while the two Task Forces lost 277 sailors and airmen.\u00a0 The war in the Pacific would rage for another three years, but Kleiss would make his contributions elsewhere.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0After the Battle of Midway, Jack was back at Pearl Harbor on June 13.\u00a0 Admiral Nimitz ordered all the senior pilots back to the states on June 21.\u00a0 A month after the Battle of Midway, Jack and Jean were married.\u00a0 They raised five children as he continued his Navy career.\u00a0 The anecdotes he shared about his remaining service time are too numerous to repeat here, but one stood out.\u00a0 Serving as a flight instructor, he was surprised when one of his pilots returned from a training flight without his radioman – gunner.\u00a0 Eventually, a farmer called and informed the base that the missing flier had landed in one of his fields.\u00a0 Upon further investigation, the gunner told Kleiss, \u201cThe pilot told me to jump.\u201d\u00a0 Kleiss asked him to confirm this statement:\u00a0 \u201cWait, your pilot told you to bail out?\u201d\u00a0 \u201cYes, sir.\u00a0 He practically shouted it into the interphone.\u00a0 He shouted \u2018Bail!\u2019 sir.\u201d\u00a0 Kleiss blinked in disbelief:\u00a0 \u201cIsn\u2019t that your name, \u2018Bale?\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Never Call Me A Hero<\/span><\/i> is a testament to all of the Navy pilots who came before and after Jack Kleiss.\u00a0 As the title suggests, he took a very humble approach in telling his story.\u00a0 He was certainly an able pilot, gunner, and wingman.\u00a0 He pulls no punches when explaining both the successes, foibles, and just plain luck that allowed for him to survive the war.\u00a0 As for how he gained his nickname, \u201cDusty\u201d, it came from one of his foibles.\u00a0 Kleiss and his gunner had been selected to tow a long white fabric sleeve behind their plane to serve as a target for the other aircraft.\u00a0 At the conclusion of their practice session, the tow plane would land on the nearest airstrip, stow the target and then return to their own base or ship.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0After one such training session, Kleiss and his backseat gunner turned and leveled off a little above tree height to land at Ewa Field.\u00a0 When the control tower did not respond to his hail, he noticed the green landing light was illuminated so he began his final approach.\u00a0 Already on approach, he noticed a squadron of Marine aircraft approaching the same airstrip, and realized that the green light to land was not for him.\u00a0 Jack made a quick decision.\u00a0 Knowing the Marine planes usually needed the entire landing strip, he planned to land his plane and pull off the airstrip as soon as possible to let the planes behind him land.\u00a0 What he hadn\u2019t counted on was the six inches of red clay dust covering the field adjacent to the paved landing strip.\u00a0 The billowing dust cloud he created prevented the Marine planes from landing and the radio chatter from both the control tower and Marine pilots told Jack and his gunner that nobody was happy with them.\u00a0 Quickly stashing the target, Kleiss felt his way back through the dust cloud that still covered\u00a0 the runway and took off before the tower could ID the plane\u2019s numbers.\u00a0 Of course, one of Jack\u2019s training squadron planes had watched all of this unfold from on high and the story spread like wildfire back at Pearl as soon as they had their wheels down.\u00a0 \u201cDusty\u201d Kleiss now had his own colorful nickname.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0These same Marine fliers landed on <\/span>USS Enterprise<\/span><\/i> in November of 1941, part of a contingent that were being transported to the Marine base on Wake Island.\u00a0 The Marine pilots searched the ship high and low for \u2018the dust cloud guy\u2019 but nobody said a word about \u2018Dusty\u2019 Kleiss being on board.\u00a0 When asked directly about it by the Marines, Jack simply played dumb:\u00a0 \u201cWhat is \u2018dust cloud\u2019?\u201d \u201cDusty\u201d Kleiss was certainly a hero, but he wasn\u2019t dumb enough to tell a bunch of Marine flyers how he earned his nickname.\u00a0 With his \u201cDusty\u201d moniker retired at the end of his Navy Career i<\/span>n April of 1962, Jack was employed in the private sector until 1976.\u00a0 Before he retired for good, he spent ten years teaching math and science.\u00a0 One of his favorite activities was taking his students on field trips.\u00a0 For an old field trip lover like myself, this statement elevated Jack Kleiss\u2019s \u2018hero stock\u2019 a couple of more notches.<\/span><\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 Can’t resist Edwin Starr anytime the subject is WAR – hey, it is a great song and sentiment!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When Clayton Fisher died in January of 2011, Norman Jack (\u201cDusty\u201d) Kleiss became the last living dive bomber pilot to have participated in the Battle of Midway.\u00a0 As time took more of the participants of the June 4 – 6, 1942 battle, he found he was being sought out by more and more historians 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