BY GARY WAYNE COX
Aircraft: Big Sandy Unicom…Centurion…3…7…3…November…6 miles to the northwest…inbound for landing…is the cafe’ open…
Unicom: Winds calm…no other traffic…and yes, the Cloud 9 is open…
I make my living selling aviation fuel and hangar space. A busy day for me usually means a good day for my business. I enjoy having those good fuel sale days. It makes up for those bad weather days when I do no business at all. I have some really good days with no fuel sales too. Sometimes I define a good day by the interesting people I get the opportunity to meet. Meeting my friend Benny Mallory’s Uncle Charlie was one of those days.
Benny Mallory is a flying legend in his own right in West Virginia. If you are a pilot and are from West Virginia, you have heard of Benny. He owns his own airport (Mallory Field) just south of Charleston’s municipal airport (CRW). Benny has taught many people how to fly in West Virginia, probably more than any other instructor in the state. He was also a designated flight examinator, meaning when other flight instructors trained their students, they would bring them to Benny before they could get their pilot’s license. That’s just like you do when you pass your driver’s test with the state police examiner. Benny would bring some of his students to Big Sandy because they could train and then have lunch at Cloud 9. I got to know him pretty well and always enjoyed talking airplanes with him.
One day Benny introduced me to his Uncle Charlie — Charles M. Mallory, a WWII Double Ace from Charleston. Charles Mallory had served on the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid during WWII in the Pacific. Benny, knowing how I liked reading about WWII, brought Charles to the Cloud 9 Cafe’ for lunch and gave me the opportunity to meet him.
We sat in the gazebo by my office and talked for about an hour before we walked over to eat. I shamelessly invited myself to eat with them. I just couldn’t get enough of hearing him talk about his life.
Charles was a member of the Fighting 18s photo reconnaissance specialists. His job, besides “dogfighting” with the Japanese, was taking aerial photographs of future battle sites. He became an “Ace” in one day (five enemy kills) during one of these missions. Charles had been told by his CO not to engage the enemy unless fired upon. His mission was extremely important for the planning of the invasion of the Philippines at Luzon. He was told his orders came from Admiral William “Bull” Halsey himself.
During the mission, Charles and two other reconnaissance fighters were trying to sneak to the target undetected in a cloud layer about 1,000 feet above the ocean. The clouds were intermittent, and the three planes were flying wing tip to wing tip so as to stay hidden and not hit each other. When they started passing through partial clearing skies, he noticed only 200-300 feet directly below them, six Japanese “Betty” Bombers flying in loose formation.
“They were ‘sitting ducks,’ but I had orders not to engage the enemy unless I was fired upon,” Charles said. “I also knew that if we broke out of the clouds and they spotted us, I would be their ‘sitting duck.’ I also didn’t know if there were more than six because we didn’t know what was behind them or what was in front of them. As the clouds started providing less and less cover, I knew I had to do something, so I hand signaled the other guys that I was going down to see what we had.