Rico says some people need to be remembered.
This story was first published in the Charlotte Sun newspaper, Port Charlotte, Florida on 8 January 2006 and is republished from War Tales with permission.
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Sunday morning, 7 December 1941, Private Stan Sherfick of Punta Gorda, Florida was playing catch with a buddy at Haleiwa Field on the north side of Oahu, where the 47th Pursuit Squadron was based.
“All of a sudden, while we were throwing the ball, the sky was full of airplanes. There were more airplanes flying over than I had ever seen in my life,” the 84-year-old said. “They were flying south toward Pearl Harbor. They were flying high enough that you couldn’t see the rising sun insignias on their wings. At the time we commented: ‘I wonder what the Navy’s doing up there?’ About an hour later we found out.”
All hell broke lose. There was a lot of confusion, according to Sherfick. Pilots from his P-40 Tomahawk squadron began arriving back at the base about a half-hour after the enemy planes flew over the steel-matted runway at Haleiwa.
He read from handwritten notes prepared by First Sergeant Jerry Winters: “‘Lieutenant Walsh got in the air and shot down four enemy planes, Lieutenant Taylor shot down two and Lieutenant Brown got one. So our squadron downed a total of seven planes that first day."
“I was helping a guy named Smith arm a P-40 on the end of the runway. I was carrying ammunition to him when a Japanese dive bomber strafed the field and shot up the P-40,” Sherfick recalls. “I ran over to the edge of the woods out of the way. I got my 1903 Springfield rifle and shot at the attacking plane.
“I think the pilot had his canopy open. I could see him sitting there when I shot. His bomb rack was empty. He was obviously flying back from bombing Pearl Harbor. It was the only Japanese plane that strafed the field.”
The rumors were flying after the attack on Pearl. The soldiers of the 47th Pursuit Squadron dug foxholes and prepared for an invasion of Oahu, the main Hawai'ian Island, by an enemy that never arrived.
Sherfick eventually became a sergeant and an armorer. His job was to make sure the .50-caliber machine guns on the fighter planes in the 47th were operating properly and had plenty of ammunition.
During the war the squadron’s primary mission was to train new pilots. They helped make them more proficient aviators before they went to the front as replacement pilots. Sherfick spent most of the war in the Hawai'ian Islands.
“It was interesting to see how these young twenty-year-old pilots would develop. They’d come in as greenhorns, and when a flight of them returned to base they would buzz the field,” he said. “The better they got at flying, the more aggressive they got at buzzing the field. It didn’t take ‘em very long.”
By 1942, the squadron’s outdated P-40 Tomahawks were replaced with the superior P-47 Thunderbolts. A couple of years later, the 47th Pursuit Squadron was flying P-51 Mustangs (photo, top)— the Cadillacs of the air in World War Two.
Different fighter planes didn’t change Sherfick’s job much. They all had .50-caliber machine guns that had to be maintained and rearmed. That was his job.
Finally, just before the attack on Iwo Jima in mid-February 1945, the 47th Squadron got new orders. It was to play a major role in the attack on Japan. It was to fly into the tiny speck of a volcanic island as soon as the Marines took one of the two airfields on the island. From there the squadron would fly cover for B-29 bombers that were pounding the Japanese home islands on a daily basis.
Sherfick and seventy members of the squadron’s ground crew were aboard a ship just off the beach at Iwo Jima when the first wave of Marines hit the beach on 19 February 1945. A few days later the ground crew went ashore and set up shop at one of the runways built by the Japanese after the Seabees repaired the field.
“The first night on Iwo Jima I was digging a foxhole and I dug up a big piece of human flesh. I’ll never forget that,” he said. “We dug in right next to a battery of 105 howitzers. The next morning we were covered with volcanic dust. Our carbines were also covered with dust. Good thing we didn’t have to use ‘em.
“A couple of days later our fighters started landing at the field while the fighting was still going on. By then our pilots were old pros; they had a lot of flying time,” he said. “The first night after the planes arrived I was sergeant of the guard. The Japanese started lobbing mortars at us. Lucky for us the mortars were duds and didn’t explode. It was still nerve-racking.”
Despite the incredible slaughter on both sides during the 36-day battle for the eight-square-mile island, Sherfick said he never saw a live Japanese soldier. He credits the Marine Corps for that. “The airfield was surrounded by the Marines. I have all the respect in the world for the Marines,” he said.
Ten days after going ashore on Iwo Jima, he got the word he had been waiting for.
“I was taking a gun sight off a P-51 that had run off the runway and damaged its landing gear after returning from a mission to Japan. The first sergeant came up to the plane where I was working and said, ‘Stan, you’re going home.’ The orders sending me home said by ‘First Available Transportation.’”
Because he joined the Army in September of 1940, he had more than the 85 points needed to return stateside. “I was very happy about going home. I went to Saipan and caught a PBY flying boat to Christmas Island, and from there to Honolulu. In Hawai'i, I boarded a Liberty ship, and five or six days later we docked in San Francisco. It was shortly before V-E Day (Victory in Europe) and three months before V-J Day (Victory in Japan).
“After a thirty-day leave, I returned to March Field, California, and began training to be a B-29 armorer,” Sherfick said. “No one had too much enthusiasm for it, but we went to school anyway. Before we finished they dropped the big bomb. I was discharged from the Air Force in September of 1945, went home to Indianapolis, Indiana, and continued on with my life.”
Stan Sherfick of Deep Creek (at left in photo, above) was in the Air Force a week shy of five years during World War Two. His commendations for battles and campaigns include: Central Pacific, Western Pacific, Iwo Jima, Asiatic-Pacific Theater of Operations, three Bronze Stars, American Defense Service Medal, and a letter of commendation for being in the Pearl Harbor attack, signed by Brigadier General H. C. Davidson, Air Corps Commander.
Stanley Lee Sherfick, of Punta Gorda, Florida, passed away on Tuesday, 15 July 2008, at the age of 88. Born on 10 September 1919, he was the son of Everett and Anna B. Sherfick both deceased, in Shoals, Indiana. He was the husband of Patricia Sherfick of Punta Gorda, Florida, and father to a daughter, Geneane Lee Donald Kinnett, of Fairland, Indiana and to a son, George R. Emalie Sherfick of Terre Haute, Indiana.
He is survived by three brothers: Howard Blume Sherfick of Shoals, Indiana; Gene Eldean Sherfick of Shoals, Indiana; and George S. Jewel Sherfick of Terre Haute, Indiana. Other family members include six grandchildren, thirteen great-grandchildren, and four great-great grandchildren.
Sherfick was a long time resident of Indianapolis, Indiana before retiring to Heritage Lake, Indiana, and subsequently moving to Punta Gorda, Florida, where he lived for the last fourteen years.
He was employed for many years at the Chrysler Corporation in Indianapolis, working at both Chrysler’s Shadeland Avenue Plant and the Chrysler Foundry in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Sherfick was a member of the Murat Shriners of Indianapolis, Indiana, the Southport Masonic Lodge 270, and he attended New Day Christian Church in Port Charlotte, Florida.
Always an avid golfer, good guy, and a great dad, he will be missed.
Funeral services were held 21 July 2008 at the Kays-Ponger Funeral Home, Port Charlotte, Florida.
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