Combat welder? There is a classification in both the United States Army and the US Navy today, but in the South Pacific during World War II, it was just another duty for the guys in the motor pool, ground crews on air bases, or men in the engineering section on a ship.
In the modern Army, you can work as a 91E Allied Trades Specialist or in the Navy as a Damage Controlman. In 1943, Floyd Westlake was simply an American enlisted man who was an artist at welding metal.
Floyd grew up in Eastern Nebraska, near the small town of Murdock, the son and grandson of a family of meat cutters, a trade he would return to after the war.
Floyd’s father, Raymond Westlake, was a bit of a rolling stone, always seeking something better. As a result, Floyd and his brothers, Clinton and Kenneth, and sisters, Thelma, Martha, and Mary, attended a lot of elementary schools as Raymond bounced around Nebraska, Idaho, and Wyoming looking for something that often seemed intangible.
Raymond moved his family from Murdock to Minatare, a town in the Nebraska Panhandle, but things just weren’t right. Raymond suffered from depression.
Raymond started moving his family often, trying to find whatever was missing in his life.
“Dad changed schools six times one year,” his son Bruce Westlake said. “Grandpa was looking for something.”
Raymond moved the family for a short time to Nampa, Idaho, but that didn’t work out, and within a month or two, they were back in Western Nebraska, this time in Scottsbluff.
It was while in Scottsbluff that Floyd learned to weld in Torrington, Wyoming, a short 30-mile run across the border on U.S. Highway 26.
Floyd was a natural, a gifted welder with a keen eye, firm hand, and the touch that good welders develop in determining pace, temperature, and depth in a weld.
When Floyd was 20 years old, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, propelling the United States into World War II. The demand was high for skilled tradesmen in the military, but equally as high for instructors back home to train and prepare these men for combat.
Floyd began teaching welding. He moved to Golden to work for Remington Arms. After a short stint in Colorado, Floyd enlisted in the United States Army. He was assigned to the 13th Army Air Force, a distinguished flying unit that saw extensive action in the South Pacific.
Floyd Westlake enlisted in the Army Air Corps on September 21, 1942. He was working building hangars at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne when he enlisted.
He went through basic training at Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis, Missouri. After basic training, Floyd was assigned to various bases in Texas and then Camp Stoneman in California before being transported to Guadalcanal. He arrived on the island on November 24, 1943. He spent just a day on the infamous battlefield where the United States first fought the Empire of Japan. He was transferred to Munda, a smaller island in the Solomon Islands chain. It was on Munda that Floyd spent most of the war as a ground crewman, specifically a welder for the 13th Army Air Force.
The 13th didn’t get the acclaim the 8th and 9th Air Force received in bombing Germany with B-17s and B-24s, but its job was vital in defeating Japan.
The 13th fought on small islands from Australia to the Philippines as the war progressed. As the Marines and Navy “Island Hopped” across the Pacific toward Japan, so did the 13th Army Air Force.
When the war began, the Japanese seemed invincible.
On February 19, 1942, a force of 188 Japanese Bettys with escorting Zeros bombed Darwin, Australia, killing 235 people, the largest strike made on Australia during the war. The Auzzies weren’t prepared. They began gathering a handful of British Spitfires and American P-40 Warhawks, but most of their aircraft were 1930s-vintage, some of them biplanes, dating back to the World War I era. It was this force that eventually united with the 13th, creating a fighting force that turned the tide of the war against Imperial Japan.
They informally called themselves the “Jungle Air Force”
In the dark days of August 1942, when the United States hung by a thread on Guadalcanal it was a portion of the larger Jungle Air Force, the “Cactus Air Force” comprised of Wildcats, P-40s, B-25s and P-39 Airacobras that held off the Japanese Navy during nightly raids of the Tokyo Express as they traveled down “The Slot” to bombard American soldiers and Marines.
Floyd arrived after the Allies had turned the tide and gained the upper hand in the Solomons, sinking dozens of Japanese transports, tankers, destroyers, and cruisers in the process. The immediate threat at Guadalcanal was over, but the war was still very much in doubt.
American forces captured the vital island of Munda and its pivotal airfield in July and August 1943.
When Floyd stepped off the supply plane three months after the battle ended, Munda was a primitive, snake, hermit crab, and rat-infested hellhole.
Munda was a long way from Pearl Harbor, San Diego, or the Panama Canal; supplies arrived erratically or not at all. Many times, fuel, spare parts, medical supplies, and mail ended at the bottom of the ocean, victim to a Japanese submarine or an air strike.
A man with Floyd Westlake’s welding and fabricating skills was invaluable. There were Marines stationed on Munda. They didn’t have a welder.
“One day, some Marines came looking for a welder for a job they needed done, and Dad went to do the job for them. He evidently impressed him with his work because when he was done the Marine officer told him he would recommend him for promotion,” Bruce said. “The Marine officer told him that he could not get him a high promotion because he was in the Army Air Corps, but that what he could do was get him a promotion to PFC. So, Dad never received the promotion he deserved.”
Munda was an isolated area on New Georgia Island. New Georgia is roughly 53 miles long and 25 miles wide. Munda was an area along the Southwestern coast of the island with about four miles of beachfront. It was a large area.
There was a shortage of vehicles; jeeps, trucks, half-tracks, and bulldozers were hard to find, often destined for active battle areas where the Marines were fighting the Japanese. Floyd either walked or waited hours for a jeep.
Floyd was being stretched thin. As a talented welder, he was in demand all along the Munda coast and sometimes inland. He needed a vehicle.
It’s said that necessity is the mother of invention. Invention for a creative man like Floyd wasn’t a problem.
Floyd and two friends, a soldier named Slate who built hot rods in civilian life, and a mechanic named Charles Orskog, took the matter into their own hands. They found a scrapped jeep and pulled the engine. Taking wheels from a bomb cart and metal from damaged aircraft, they began to fabricate a vehicle.
Floyd welded the frame, while Slate and Orskog worked on the engine and drive train. They built a direct drive jeep using just scraps from the Air Base dump, the “boneyard.” They named their little beauty the “Munda Maid.”
Slate used his hot rod skills and the light aluminum frame to create a fast, agile vehicle. The three soldiers were the envy of the base as they almost flew down the sand from one job to another.
They always gave rides to a couple of friends, Susie and Wrinkles, a pair of stray dogs the men befriended.
When the war ended, they sold the Munda Maid to another soldier for $25. They found good homes for Susie and Wrinkles before they left as well.
This was the largest fabrication Floyd and friends constructed on the island. Floyd quietly built many smaller items in his spare time.
Bruce related a story Floyd told him of a day when they had a little free time.
“One day when work was slow, Dad and some other soldiers decided to borrow a native canoe and go exploring upriver to a burial ground they had heard about. They stopped at a place to eat lunch. After eating, they left a case of pop there and continued up the river. When they found the burial place and landed to look for souvenirs, one of the men reached down to pick up something and was bitten by a coral snake. It stuck its head out of an eye socket in a skull lying there. Dad decided they would return to the canoe and leave the others there without him. When they returned down the river to stop and pick up their case of pop, it was gone. They never knew what happened to it, maybe a thirsty crocodile or a Japanese soldier still on the island. A mystery.”
There were still Japanese soldiers on the island. Wandering off alone into the jungle could be deadly; a few of the more dedicated ones roamed the hills near the airfield and were able to shoot down a few American aircraft.
One Japanese machine gun was set on a small island on an approach to the airfield. The crew downed a few planes. The Japanese had electronics that allowed them to track incoming aircraft, pull the machine gun out of hiding, and open up.
“The Army brought in engineers and had Dad build a piece of equipment that shielded the radar on one of our planes,” Bruce said. “They then sent the plane out to the island to strafe the gunners.”
It was a successful mission. They caught the Japanese in the open and destroyed the threat.
Most of Floyd’s days fell into a familiar routine. He worked with his ground crew repairing planes, vehicles, and equipment. He spent his active duty in the war years mostly shielded by a welding hood as he brought B-25s, P-38s, P-40s, B-17s, B-24s, and eventually the most lethal night fighter of the war, the P-61 Black Widow, back to life with the flame of his torch and with beads from his arc welder.
In his spare time, Floyd’s artistic side came out.
He began creating works of art from spent shells, both American and Japanese, broken glass from aircraft, and pounding brass and copper shells into flat pieces of metal.
Bruce described some of the items his dad created and that he keeps at their home near Kinnear.
“Most of the items he made from Japanese ammunition: The jewelry box is lined with parachute silk and has Mom’s initials on the top. The desk sets have small dishes. The silverware has been made from Japanese aircraft aluminum. The handles are made of plexiglass from airplanes. The large knife handle is made of plexiglass that he pumped ink into. The large blade is made from a propeller. The small knife was made from the same metal as the blade, with what was made from a Japanese bayonet.”
Most of his work was purchased by other servicemen to send home as souvenirs. Floyd made a lot of money selling these unique creations. He sent most of it home.
“He sent so much money home, Mom thought he was working the Black Market,” Bruce joked.
The most dangerous thing in the military is often a second lieutenant. They have the rank but no experience, and many of them aren’t blessed with a lot of common sense.
“Dad was in the shop welding one day when an officer came in and asked him to cut a belly tank in half so it could be made into a canoe. Dad refused, but the officer insisted. So, Dad told him to go out and throw a match into it, and if he was still alive, Dad would cut it for him. Like a dummy, the officer did just that. The belly tank took off down the runway, flew around the shop, came back, and landed, fortunately doing no damage,” Bruce said. “The next day, the officer was reduced to the rank of private. The drop tank was made of aluminum, and aluminum is not flammable. Dad was given a promotion the next day.”
When new aircraft arrived, the ground crew flew with the crew to test it.
General MacArthur visited Munda one day, but Floyd was out with his crew testing a new aircraft and missed a chance to see the general.
As the American military drove the Japanese back toward the home islands, the 13th Air Force followed.
Floyd spent the final months of the war in the Philippines. It was from there that he took a troop ship back home.
Floyd was planning on following construction jobs, and there were many of them in the post-war years, but life sometimes changes things.
“They brought in a ripper off a cat,” Bruce said. “They set it on four 55-gallon drums. Dad was welding under the ripper when it crushed the barrels. It broke his back.”
Floyd then returned to his roots and went into business with his father, Raymond.
In 1947, Bruce invested the 5,000 dollars he’d earned selling his works of art in the Pacific into constructing a new processing plant on the west end of Kinnear.
Farmer’s Packing was born and officially opened its new plant in 1954. Floyd worked there with his family until he passed on April 17, 1997.