Glen Fleming; phony WWII aircrewman

We got this tip through Mary from renowned author of World War II Naval Aviation books, Barrett Tillman. It’s about Glen Fleming who did an interview with his local journalist, Matt Fritz at the Herald Argus. From a journalist point-of-view, it’s a great story, but from an historian’s point of view, not so much;

A day before the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, the Japanese military put a 40 mm anti-aircraft round through the plane of Navy fighter pilot Glen Fleming.

Flying back from a bombing mission over Tokyo Bay on Aug. 5, 1945, he thought the worst was over. The Japanese air fleet had long since been devastated by the American military, and all Fleming had to worry about were ground forces and the enemy ships gathering around the bay.

Before he left, he dropped bombs from his converted torpedo plane, known as a “rocket bomber,” to cause damage to a cruiser and a destroyer, and he sank at least two submarines using his plane’s rockets.

But through the battle the war veteran hadn’t considered a building he passed uneventfully on his way to the fray. But either the Japanese moved guns into the edifice during the conflict, or else he flew too close upon leaving, because they hit him. And he was done for.

The round blew a hole through the bottom of his plane and took the front portion of his right foot with it. It also filled his leg full of shrapnel. But worse was the damage it did to his right fuel tank. Emergency lights went on and he knew the tank had ruptured. He had only minutes to land.

Beneath him was water.

[…]

Growing up in Valparaiso before the United States entered the fray, he said talk of war was already in the air by 1938 and the Navy had posted signs, backed up by radio and newspaper ads, encouraging young men to join the Combat Air Corps (CAC).

Fleming said the CAC was an accelerated fighter pilot course designed to allow recruits to sidestep the Naval Academy and become pilots to fill a perceived shortage in the military.

The prospect of being a fighter pilot interested him, and his uncle, a World War I veteran, encouraged him.

“He told me there was a war coming up and if I joined now I could pick what I wanted to get into,” Fleming said. “If I got drafted, they would put me wherever they wanted me. If I joined, I would have a decent place to sleep instead of a foxhole somewhere.”

He joined Jan. 1, 1939, at 23 years of age.

After his plane went down on Aug. 5, 1945, he found himself resting on a raft, floating about 30 miles off the coast of Japan. He managed to land the plane without casualty on open water. It was a calm day. He said his turret gunner had put a tourniquet over his leg to stop the bleeding, along with sulfa powder to stop infection and a shot of morphine to decrease the pain.

The turret gunner, along with the tail gunner, had also inflated the raft and pulled Fleming onto it, along with medicine, weapons and fishing equipment, and pushed them off. The plane went under about 12 minutes later.

“I’m glad I had them with me,” Fleming said about his crew, “because I never would have gotten out without them.”

And there they drifted in the ocean. Fleming said they were without any radio, and he couldn’t see any fish in the water to catch. The two fighter planes that accompanied his bomber during battle had long since deserted him to refuel. Fleming and his crew were alone. His plane had vanished and he would never fly one again in war.

The first plane Fleming flew into combat was a Douglas SBD Dauntless Dive Bomber, which he used in the Battle of the Coral Sea in 1942. Onboard the aircraft carrier “Enterprise,” Fleming had been given the choice of flying a dive bomber or a torpedo plane. He knew torpedo planes were particularly dangerous to fly because they had to drop their cargo no more than 300 feet above the water to prevent the torpedo from rupturing, and within 300 yards of the destination ship, so the target couldn’t escape. The planes were often shot down.

His choice was easy.

The dive bomber was equipped with a cowl gun that fired rounds between the arch of the propeller blades. He shot down two enemy planes in the fight.

Fleming then graduated to a Grumman F4F Wildcat and, in June of 1942, was ushered into the Battle of Midway. He said it was a harsh day. Planes filled the sky and he still remembers the sound of bullets hitting his craft. He finished the battle with 28 holes in his plane, and said he was lucky to get out alive. But he was proud of his involvement.

“That was the decisive battle of the war as far as I’m concerned,” he said, pointing out that the Americans had devastated the Japanese carrier fleet by the end of it.

After the Battle of Midway, Fleming got a Grumman F6F Hellcat, which he flew in the Battle of Iwo Jima. He said the plane’s arrival was a particularly memorable one for him because it was flown by an attractive young lady. Her name was Emmabelle. She would later become his wife.

But that would be several years, and many battles, later — battles that allowed him to shoot down a total of seven planes.

“And I know I got nine,” he said, “but I can’t claim the other two because my gun camera malfunctioned. Five of them were Japanese Zero fighters (Mitsubishi A6M Zeros) and two were torpedo planes.”

He pointed out that hits had to be confirmed by camera.

The rocket bomber plane he flew at the end of the war, the one that sank in the Pacific, was equipped with two 500-pound bombs in the torpedo bay, and eight five-inch diameter rockets.

After it went down with the fishes, Fleming and his crew floated for some five and a half hours, wondering what would happen next. Then an American submarine surfaced. They were saved.

Fleming was brought onboard the craft and a corpsman tended to his wounds and gave him more medicine and morphine, later transferring him to an aircraft carrier. Eventually he wound up at the hospital in Pearl Harbor.

The doctor there took 28 pieces of shrapnel out of his right leg and left two behind as souvenirs, telling Fleming they were buried too deep to do him any harm.

But Fleming had other worries.

“(The anti-aircraft gun) took all my toes off, but my little toe,” he said. “The doctors took a piece of my butt and put it in place of my big toe so I had balance.”

He was then transferred to a hospital in California, and then to one in Chicago, where he was eventually discharged. Emmabelle lived just south of Plymouth, so they married and moved to La Porte. She has since passed away. Fleming ran Holderbaum Auto Service for 47 years.

Fleming said he has developed pains in his leg recently due to the shrapnel pieces moving against the bone. So every couple months doctors move them back with a magnet.

But despite his years, and his injuries, Fleming still flies. Sort of. Due to some connections he has with the Navy, he’s participated in flights onboard an F-14 Tomcat from the Grissom Air Reserve Base in Indiana to an aircraft carrier off the coast of California. He said the pilot sometimes lets him take over the controls during the flight.

“The plane is a lot faster than my old plane was,” he said. “It can break the sound barrier.”

So the dude has ass-toes, huh? I’m sure the ladies like that.

I don’t usually C&P an entire article, but when Mr Fritz ever gets around to reading the email that Mr. Tillman sent him, the article might go down the black hole of journalistic fail. Here’s Mr. Tillman’s email, because he has a better grasp of the subject than me;

Dear Mr. Fritz,

You–and your readers–have been had. Nearly all of the claims in your article can be [disproved] if anyone takes a few minutes to check. It’s called The Information Age for a reason.

I’m a professional author with 600+ articles and c. 35 nonfiction books published, most dealing with naval and aviation subjects. I’ve received half a dozen awards for history and literature–you can check my website for my credentials.

Fleming has been telling his fairy tales for several years so, if it matters, you’re not the first naive victim.

Fleming’s major bogus claims (there are others) in approximate order:

There is/was no such thing as the Combat Air Corps. What an absurd statement, unless Fleming got his medals from the whimsical Renegade Navy web site.

His photo with the I-Love-Me box shows combat aircrew wings above the Purple Heart. Aircrewmen were gunners and radiomen in multi-seat naval aircraft. BTW, the box also contains Naval Flight Officer wings (non-pilot officers), a rating established c. 1966–roughly 20 years after Fleming says he left the navy. The box also contains two Marine Corps marksmanship badges. (Incidentally, most of the gongs and awards he shows can be purchased at surplus stores. The medal with the red-white-blue ribbon looks suspiciously like one I earned as a Boy Scout.)

His claim of reporting aboard a carrier and being asked what plane he wanted to fly is ridiculous. Pilots first went through operational training in a particular aircraft, then went to the fleet to fly THAT airplane. They didn’t get to pick and choose once aboard ship!

Fleming claims he was aboard USS Enterprise at the Coral Sea battle. Batguano. Enterprise was nowhere near Coral Sea in May 1942. I know because (1) it’s my job to know and (2) my most recent book was the definitive history of The Big E.

Fleming claims he went from SBDs at Coral Sea to F4Fs at Midway a month later. More BS. There was no time to transition, and every USN fighter pilot in combat in 1942 is known. None were named Fleming.

The lapse between Midway and Iwo Jima was over 2 1/2 years. What was our hero doing in that time?

Fleming claims he shot down seven (or nine, or whatever) japanese airplanes. Even more BS. I’m former secretary of the American Fighter Aces Assn, and there are about 112 living US aces. None are named Glen Fleming. Moreover, nobody of that name was credited with even one aerial victory in WW II, in the navy, marines, or army air forces. I have alerted AFAA about your publishing Fleming’s fraudulent claim.

You do not tell us which carrier Fleming allegedly flew from when his Avenger allegedly was shot down. But I have a full list of TBF-TBM losses (I wrote a book about Avengers), and there was one such loss on 5 August 45. The pilot’s name is not given but I know the squadron and carrier. Ask Fleming to provide details.

Finally, here’s the biggest howler: Fleming claims that he used to ride US Navy F-14s from an Air Force base in Indiana to the Pacific Coast to land aboard carriers. That in itself is absurd–it’s astonishing that anybody believes him. But he gilds the lily by saying he was “allowed to take the controls.” Well, sir, here’s a flash: THERE WERE NO BACK SEAT CONTROLS IN A TOMCAT. (Maybe he saw that episode in the JAG TV series!) Furthermore, USN F-14s were retired in 2006, and I’m vastly skeptical that he has that kind of influence in Iran.

Some questions for your consideration, and your editors:

What is Fleming’s naval aviator number and what’s the date?
Did he show you his pilot logbook?
Did he show you citations for his alleged medals?
Did he identify the squadrons in which he allegedly served?
Did he show you alleged photos of himself allegedly in WW II?
Did he show you his DD-214 or Bureau of Naval Personnel honorable discharge form?

In short, it’s conceivable that Fleming flew (or flew in) Avengers in 1945. It is not remotely possible that his other claims are true. You definitely owe your readers a retraction and correction, and you probably owe an apology to every man who wore wings of gold in the Second World War.

For what it’s worth, I have a journalism degree, and I don’t go looking for phony heroes to expose (there are web sites devoted to that purpose). But when self-aggrandizing fakes like Fleming cross my bow, I expose them. In recent years I’ve informed two newspapers of such problems. One editor verified my information and printed a full retraction. The other refused, preferring to remain a cheerleader rather than a journalist.

Which kind of newspaper is the Herald-Argus?

To top it all off, we have Fleming’s FOIA which says that he joined the Navy in 1943 and was discharged in 1945. I’m thinking 1943 is after 1939 when he says he joined. I might be mistaken, but his assignments are all on land, until he was on the USS Kula Gulf which wasn’t commissioned until May 1945 and didn’t depart San Diego until August 5th, the same day Fleming says he was shot down after a bombing run over Japan.
The USS Kula Gulf shuttled planes around the islands from September to November until it brought home some veterans of the fighting in December when Fleming was also discharged.

But the fact remains that he wasn’t a pilot, he wasn’t an officer, and it doesn’t look like he saw any Japanese until after the war. And, I’m guessing that he doesn’t really have ass-toes.

You can contact Mr. Fritz at mfritz[at]heraldargus[dot]com and urge him to retract his story.

Category: Phony soldiers