Col Dean S. Hartley, Jr. Military Service

Pictures in boxes show planes flown. Combat shown with red caption. Large pictures show Hartley as pilot.

Hartley graduated from Wofford College in 1941. He had completed the ROTC program earlier in the year, but as he was not yet 21, he could not be commissioned in the Army. However, the Navy allowed him to volunteer for its Aviation Cadet program, and that summer, he was commissioned at a lieutenant/pilot in the Marine Corps. [Doyle Boggs, Wofford College website]

Rich Kuykendall reports that his brother M/Sgt John H. Clackum, Navigator was at NAS Jacksonville, with Hartley.

1942 - Guadalcanal: Combat, 2/Lt; VMF-223, VMF-224, with 1^st Division (8/30/1942 - 10/16/1942)

VMF-224, late September 1942
L-R standing: Hollowell, Brooks, Musselman, Johnson, Kennedy, Kunz, Hartley, Fuller.
L-R Kneeling: D'Arcy, Nicolay, Dobbin, Galer, Armistead, Irwin, Walter, Treptow.
(Source: The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign by John Lundstrom)

THE OLD GOLD AND BLACK, Wofford College, December 5, 1942

HARTLEY BAGS TWO ZEROS AND TWO BOMBERS, GUADALCANAL

A guy who saw action in the air above Guadalcanal, was bombed, shot at by Jap Zeroes, who shot down two Zeroes himself and was in on the kill of two bombers, is getting married this afternoon in Spartanburg - and we don't know which thought scares him more.

That's Dean Hartley, 1941 Wofford Graduate, all wrapped up for you in one sentence.

We interviewed Dean in a room in Carlisle Hall, where, sprawled in a straight-backed chair, he told us something of his activities since leaving this campus. David "Goof" Prince, as occupant of the room, was kibitzer and supplied some of the questions.

When Dean graduated from here he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Army Infantry. Soon afterwards he was transferred to the Naval Air Corps, taking his first training at the Miami Naval Reserve Air Base. He moved to Jacksonville for several months of training, then back to Miami for his final instructions. After being commissioned there, he was transferred to the Marine Flying Corps. He has been in that branch ever since.

Hartley flew as wingman to the Major, in this outfit. Flyers work in pairs for sky fighting, two of them attacking simultaneously.

His first score in the air was a bomber, which he shared with the Major. The action occurred the second time he was in the air at Guadalcanal. A formation of bombers were reported by observation posts, and when Hartley and his group arrived, they found the bombers supported by a formation of Zeroes behind them and above.

"The Major and I made an overhead run (swooping down from above) on the left hand bomber, firing as we went by. Reports from observation posts showed that he didn't get home and our planes behind us said he was smoking after we went by, so we figure we got him."

As to nervousness, Dean said he didn't have time for that. "The first time I was up I was nervous. The second time things happened so fast I didn't have time to be nervous."

"As a matter of fact," he broke into his story, "the most fun didn't come when I shot down a Jap but when I nearly got shot. One time the Skipper and a few others and I were flying around, when three of us got separated from the others because of the clouds. All at once we saw eight Zeroes. Two of us turned for home, but the other guy decided he wanted to get him a Zero, so he went after him. When I looked back, there he was with a Zero on his tail. I turned around and scared the Zero off him, but when it was over I had bullet holes in the wings of my plane where the Jap had come close to me."

Dogfights, the favorite of the past World War where planes milled around in a large circle as they fought, are a thing of the past, Hartley declared. Now you just zoom down from above and hit 'em and keep going. If you miss with your first burst, you don't go back for more.

Dean shot down his first Jap plane less than three months ago, on September 13. "The Major and I and a couple more were coming down after some Zeroes a few miles away. We were flying about 1,000 feet up when I saw a Jap on the tail of my buddy who was flying my plane that day. I turned down on him, got behind him and fired three short bursts (from six guns) at him. He was right in my sights. I couldn't miss. As I went by I saw flames in his cockpit. At 5,000 feet I looked back and saw him spin down in flames."

The food at Guadalcanal, Dean says, is sufficient. "For awhile there I ate Jap rice, Jap spaghetti, and Jap hardtack fro captured stores."

"I got my second Zero when I was up with the Skipper and four others. There were heavy cloud layers that day and as we came through one layer we looked up and saw twelve Zeroes above us. Two of our boys went home, but before we got through the clouds we were among the Zeroes.

"Well, we milled around and the Skipper got one. After that I didn't wait to see any more. I turned over and went straight down - burned out an engine doing it. I landed with smoke in my cockpit while an air raid was going on. I hopped out and ran like hell for a fox hole, where I stayed until the raid was over."

Hartley said that he had seen one instance in which a Jap fighter attempted to machine-gun a flyer as he parachuted to earth. The Jap missed and was shot down by the Colonel of the outfit, an old head at fighting "who had just gotten four Zeroes that morning."

Goof Prince chimed in with a don't-the-dead-ones-haunt-you question. "The dead ones don't, but the live ones do. They come over at night and drop shells and blow up my tent and my uniform and try to blow up me. One time I lost $400 worth of uniforms."

"I remember one night," Dean said, "I was in my tent when I heard something go wheeeeeee. I said, it's time for me to get in my little hole, so I crawled in. It was about ten yards from my tent and reinforced with sandbags - but more for morale than anything else. Bombs fell for three hours while I was lying flat on my stomach with my mouth full of dirt. About four o'clock in the morning they stopped. I stepped out of my little hole and fell into a big one. One 500-pounder had landed squarely on my tent."

Hartley stated that his squadron had taken some Jap prisoners, but that he knew little about them. "Some of them look intelligent, some don't. I just looked at them while they were walking around in the bullpen."

Dean's last plane was shot down on his last hop before returning to the United States when he went up with his squadron after "about twelve bombers." The Major got one and he got one.

After this encounter he returned to the States, reaching San Diego, California, on November 18.

In about two more weeks Dean's leave will be up and he will return to active duty - but he doesn't know where.

Japanese "Red Ball" Memorial Flag - "Gift for Iwasaki Yoshio"
Captured on Guadalcanal in 1942

WWII Personal Battle Flag

Japanese "Tiger" Headband

4 Aug 1944 - Espiritu Santos, Marianas, Guam: Combat, Capt; VMF-225, arrived 4 Aug 1944 [external link]

1946?-1948 - Honolulu, HI: Asst. G-1 Air Fleet Marine Forces Pacific (AirFMFPac), Major, reverted to permanent rank of Capt, re-promoted to Major

1953-1954 - Korea (family in Spartanburg, SC): Combat, LtCol; Commanding Officer MAMS-33 Marine Air Maintenance Squadron, located at K-3 airbase, near Pohang, Korea.

See Hartley flying F9F in short (25 second) movie

. If that works on your computer, you may want to watch an extended version

(9 minutes) with music.

1954-1955 - Quantico, VA (lived in Alexandria, VA): Student, 1st MAIS, research paper, "What Degree of Pilot Proficiency is Required for the Marine Aviator Assigned to Billets Outside the Marine Aircraft Group or Squadron?" [external link].

1955-1957 - Niagara Falls, NY: LtCol; Commanding Officer, Marine Air Reserve Training Detachment (MARTD)

1961-1963 - El Toro, CA: Col; Commanding Officer, VMGR-352 Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron Commanding Officer-352 (VMGR-352)

1963-1964 - Iwakuni & Vietnam (family in Orange, CA): Combat; Asst. C/S Wing Comptroller

1964-1969 - Newport, RI: Col, Deputy Head and Head of School of Naval Warfare, Naval War College

1969-1971 - Quantico, VA: Col, Director, Marine Corps Extension School, retired Jan 31, 1971

1971-2010 - Monroe, LA: Retired from Marines, Founder of NLU Aviation Department, retired from that

Resurrection of a Fossil

By
Jimmy Fordham and Dean Hartley

A "fossil" is defined by Webster as "antiquated; dead to change or progress." Unfortunately that description may, too often, be applied to teachers and professors, Marines who fought in World War II, public personages who have been too long at the seat of power, or even chronologically young people who have ceased to learn or to recognize the joys of new experiences. Here we have, in Colonel Hartley, one who might fit into several of those categories - a World War II Marine pilot, a professor of Aviation at NLU, and to some extent a bureaucrat of thirty-five years' experience. But this is not a serious philosophical story with deep overtones of grave import. Instead, let's call it a "Rescue Mission."

Simply stated, Dean Hartley was for thirty years a Marine Pilot, and flew most of the planes from fabric biplanes of the 1930's to swept wing jets and KC-130 Hercules aerial refueler/cargo planes. Somehow, though, in his last six or seven years in the Marine Corps he did very little actual flying - and on coming to NLU to head the Aviation program he decided that the little Cessna 150 type of plane presented no apparent challenge, so there wasn't a great deal of flying there either. After all, there was all that (bureaucratic) paper work to attend to.

But then Bob Speed showed up with a bright yellow SNJ-6 (AT-6 to you Air force types), a plane Dean had first flown thirty-four years before, and last flown twenty-two years before. Then there was Jimmy Fordham, a graduate of the NLU Aviation program in August of 1975, and now a corporate pilot with Ford, Bacon, and Davis. Jimmy was also "the other" pilot besides Bob Speed (a corporate pilot with Olinkraft) whowas checked out in the SNJ. So when Dean saw the SNJ, there wsa a re-kindling of an old love - and Jimmy was elected to instruct his old instructor. In 1.6 hours, Dean was sent off to solo (again). Then Jimmy and Dean went out and did some real flying - a few loops here, a slow-roll there, a chandelle over younder, an Immelman up above, and finally a hammer-head or two.

And the net result is that the incipient fossil (see definition at the beginning of this story) Dean is once again a genuine, flying pilot. He flies for the pleasure and joy of it, he takes his students and friends for rides - he even got his wife up with him in a plane for the first time in thirty-two years - and is now working on renewing his instrument rating by taking the FAA Instrument Course. It would be safe to say that the serendipitous concatenation of events - the bright yellow SNJ, the Jimmy Fordham student turned teacher, and Dean Hartley the teacher turned student, resulted in the re-birth (rescue) of a (potential) fossil. It would also follow that everyone should benefit, and particularly Dean's students who might be induced to listen a little more attentively to his words of advice. After all, they know now he really is a pilot who just might be up there in the air at the same time they are - after thirty-five years, at that.

If you should look for a message or moral, perhaps you could use the old saying: "You're only as old as you feel." Or perhaps you could suggest that if you think you're "over the hill," then you certainly are. You could also say, though, that one of the real joys of living is to keep on learning, or re-learning - keep on looking for the other side of the hill, the back of the next cloud, the thrill of doing something well. Fine! That's one way to keep the dreadful gray of senility and oblivion away - and to maintain the frame of mind which makes true accomplishment a joy, day to day. For all children, of all ages.

Late flash! Jimmy and Dean have just bought the original Midget Mustang (Long LA-1, side number N6V), a very small, very sleek, very agile single seater. Vive la children. See page 21.

From Louisiana Flight Patterns, Vol. 6 No. 1, Spring 1978.