How would today’s generation define the concept of duty to a higher cause? The story of one Pensacolian’s patriotic duty began with the fall of the Philippines that brought so many to the brink of disaster following the devastating Japanese attack. Back home, Ms. Carolyn Howard wrote the following for the Pensacola News Journal in an article dated April 26, 1942…..“A few months ago, the word ‘Bataan’ meant nothing to the average American person. For years hence, Bataan will be listed with Thermopylae, the Alamo, Valley Forge and Verdun where heroism against hopeless odds, selfless sacrifices and a devotion so great that death was cheated of those who died. It was the Bataan incident that men glimpsed the spirit that sent their forefathers into the wilderness. Here men saw humanity challenging the grim fatality of the ordinary world and here they saw the best in men defying the worst. For these reasons, among many others, the stories of Bataan shall never be written off the pages of American or world history.”
There was one heroic story of how an American airman, stationed in Australia tried single-handed to get food to the hungry Americans on the Bataan peninsula before that valiant stronghold fell into the hands of the enemy. Even though he failed in his courageous attempt, his almost superhuman efforts deserve a chapter in the annals of the American air force. The flier is Captain Paul I. Gunn, a native of Arkansas, who received his flight training here at the Pensacola Naval Air Station.” Gunn and his family had lived in the Philippines three years before the war began. Retired from the Navy he took a job with the Philippine Airline Company as an operations manager and pilot. But with the destruction of the American air force on December 8th he and his company’s planes were immediately commandeered by the military with Gunn given the rank of Captain in the US Army Air Corps.
For the next several weeks he flew reconnaissance missions out of Manila while his wife Clara Louise Crosby Gunn made the best of it for her and their children as food and supplies began to dwindle. But the outcome was never in doubt and General Douglas McArthur declared Manila an open city on Christmas Day 1941. Knowing that Manila was to be abandoned Gunn was ordered to fly Manuel Quezon, the President of the Philippines, to safety on the island of Mindanao. Immediately upon his return he was told to ferry a plane full of VIP’s to Australia, which left no room for Clara and his four children to escape. Forced to abandon his family he drew out all his military pay and borrowed what he could to leave with Clara before he left. Knowing she would be imprisoned he told her to tell her Japanese captors that her husband had been killed a few weeks earlier. He then took off with a heavy heart and a crowded plane and turned toward Brisbane, Australia.
Shortly thereafter, his family was captured and placed in the Santo Tomas POW camp where many of the civilians and women and children were being held. It would be four long years before they would be reunited again as a family. While Clara and the children were being starved by their captors Gunn turned his attention to winning the war single handed and his exploits became legendary. This legend had its quaint beginning in Quitman, Arkansas upon Paul’s birth in 1899. As a young boy he saw his first aeroplane at a flying exhibition in a nearby farmer’s field and decided then and there to become a pilot. Upon the outbreak of World War, I in 1917 Gunn enlisted in the US Navy but having only a 6th grade education he was denied entry into his cherished flight program so was forced instead to become an aviation machinist mate. This led him to the Pensacola Naval Air Station where he met his beloved Clara, affectionately known to him as “Polly.” She was the daughter of Augustine E. and Erme C. Crosby, a carpenter at Ft. Barrancas with a small house in Warrington. But being denied entry into the flight school did not deter Paul’s obsession to fly. He saved up his military pay and bought a surplus seaplane and began to teach himself to fly.
By the time he and Polly were married in 1923 he was able to fly her to their honeymoon in Biloxi, Mississippi by taking off from Bayou Texar at Bayview Park. After his enlistment was up in 1923 he heard of a new Navy program that was allowing enlisted men to become pilots (They were known as “Silver Eagles). This was what Paul had been waiting for all his life. He immediately reenlisted and went on to earn his wings in the spring of 1925 at N.A.S. For the next twelve years he remained in Pensacola as one of their top-flight instructors, with many of his students becoming Navy legends themselves. He retired from the Navy in 1937 after twenty years and went to work for Robert “Bob” H. Tyce, a pilot and businessman in Hawaii. Tyce would become renowned as the first American killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Two years later Paul and his family moved to the Philippines to help set up the Philippine Air Line Company using a twin-engine Beechcraft. This was the same aircraft that was commandeered into service by the Army following the Japanese attack. When asked to list Gunn’s contributions to the war one would have to think long and hard to remember them all. One would be the placement of six .50 caliber machine guns in the nose of American B-25 bombers turning them into an awesome weapon of destruction. But the list could easily go on and on to include the rescue of a multitude of young pilots and mechanics, flying them out of the jungles and back to Australia where their valuable service was put to good use in the war effort. Shot down several times he would survive in the jungles by dodging enemy patrols and walking back to friendly villages and his ultimate rescue.
On one such trip the physical hardship caused his hair to turn pure white thus earning him the nickname of “Pappy Gunn,” even though eventually it returned to its normal color. He also flew numerous missions trying to get food and supplies to the troops on Bataan before their ultimate surrender. Unfortunately, his war efforts came to a sudden end when he was severely wounded by bomb fragments during an enemy attack on the Leyte airfield at Tacloban. The wound left his arm useless requiring his hospitalization until the end of the war. After the war he and Clara returned to the Philippines to continue his work with his airlines. Sadly, he was killed on October 11, 1957 while trying to fly his plane around a thunderstorm. His body was recovered and returned to Pensacola for burial in Barrancas Cemetery to await his second reuniting with his beloved Polly in 1997.
Paul I. Gunn "Pappy Gunn," US Navy
and US Army Air Corps
Clara Louise Crosby Gunn
WWII Paul "Pappy" Gunn, 2nd from right
Pensacola News Journal Article 10-27-1957