The U. S. Navy is again fighting for control of Midway. No shots are being fired, but the battle is costing the Navy—and the Air Force—thousands of dollars annually. In the never-ending skirmishes between American military aircraft and the airborne enemy, our aircraft receive serious damage hundreds of times each year—and the next skirmish may wipe out a multi-million-dollar plane and its crew. The air crews, who can’t fight back, say this kind of a situation is strictly for the birds—Gooney birds, that is.
The Gooney birds were based on Midway thousands of years before the Navy arrived. They are graceful in the air, and their clownish antics on the ground amused everyone—until aircraft started operating from Midway. A 12-pound bird smashing through a plane windshield is anything but funny. So now there are two kinds of people where Gooney birds are concerned—those who like them and those who don’t. The Navy doesn’t like Gooney birds.
In fact, one day in 1959 a young American sailor on Midway who didn’t like Gooney birds decapitated one of them. He was tried by summary court martial, sentenced to five days in the brig and fined $30.00. According to law, his punishment fit the crime. Not so, chorused the island residents, who think Gooney birds are “cute,” he got off easy.
During April of that same year, the Gooney birds cost the American taxpayers an estimated $33,000, broke a Navy man’s shoulder, endangered the lives of hundreds of airmen and interrupted the nation’s forwardmost line of defense, the Pacific extension of the Distant Early Warning (DEW) system. When confronted with these facts, the same residents agreed that the Gooney birds were dangerous, but they were still “cute” and retaliation against them was unthinkable.
So the one-sided battle for Midway goes on —every year from the middle of October through July at this vital mile-square bastion of defense in the mid-Pacific. Gooney birds by the thousands flock to Midway to set up housekeeping, and several hundred times during the season one of them manages to collide with an airplane. The result is always the same—one less Gooney bird, and a plane damaged and put out of service. The supply of Gooney birds is limitless—replacements are constantly hatching out alongside the runways—but plane repairs are costly and time- consuming. The Navy urgently needs Midway, but it could get along without all those Gooney birds.
In 1946 Midway atoll was included in a vast Federal wildlife reserve. That was fine; it was the age-old breeding grounds of the Laysan albatross, which is a Gooney bird by its proper name, and the Gooney birds were welcome to Midway.
In 1956 Midway was designated the anchor point for the new Pacific Radar Barrier. Because it was the only site considered geographically and strategically suitable, the Navy rebuilt the island so that the nation’s defense line might be stretched an additional 1,500 miles. This would thwart any “end run” plan around the Aleutian chain by an aggressor bent on attacking the United States. That plan was fine, too, but it overlooked the Gooney birds, who thought they had prior claim to the island by traditional and federal rights.
That was when the U. S. Navy found itself at war with the Gooney birds, who from the beginning seemed to be winning without concerning themselves about retaliation. The Gooney birds, showing no partiality, will fly into any kind of airplane. Black-foot albatrosses, bigger and more hostile than the Gooneys, also get into the act.
Military Air Transport Service aircraft at Midway have recorded about 70 serious collisions, entailing extensive damage and costly repairs in most cases. And there are records of Air Force jet fighters colliding with Gooney birds and sustaining damage that laid the plane up for weeks.
In 1956, after the Air Force asked the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service for help, two biologists went to Midway to blueprint a campaign which would induce the Gooneys to abandon the mile-square island and move to more desirable and unused islands nearby. The plan was simple. The biologists thought if life was made unbearable for the Gooney birds by harassing tactics they would leave in disgust.
To begin, grotesque scarecrows were erected all over the island. It was hoped these monsters would frighten the birds into leaving. Instead, the birds ganged up and pecked the flapping scarecrows to bits. Next, flares, mortar shells, and bazookas were set off or lobbed over the bird’s heads. The explosions didn’t bother the Gooneys; instead, thousands more of them flocked to the island and lined the sand dunes “to watch the show.” In desperation, the biologists enlisted a Navy radio team who set up a generator, amplifying a range of 20 to 20,000 cycles, and aimed a loud speaker at a crowded Gooney encampment. Instead of flying away, the birds merely moved nearer, stretched their necks and screeched defiance at the speaker.
For 19 months every conceivable harassing tactic was tried. Nothing worked. In fact, as if angered by the organized plan to oust them, the Gooneys grew more obstinate. The biologists withdrew. The Gooneys stayed.
Such stubbornness is good for chuckles in some quarters. But the Pacific Barrier Commander, Rear Admiral Grover B. H. Hall, and his staff, are not laughing. To them and the 2,500 Navy airmen flying the radar Super Constellations out of Midway around-the- clock, these 12-pound birds pose a serious and a possibly deadly hazard. This, plus the fact that their damage to the limited number of aircraft assigned to the mission is causing an almost impossible workload on an equally limited number of maintenance personnel. From a military commander’s point of view it is an intolerable situation. And although the Barrier Commander would be the first to agree that the Gooney birds are amusing creatures and easy to like, his being charged with the responsibility of operating an effective military deterrent against possible nuclear attack on the United States, the military viewpoint is the only one allowed him.
To appreciate this line of thinking one has to cast aside emotions and assess the facts. With Russian planes plying the polar skies, the threat to North America is glaringly real. They could be over Seattle before anyone knew they were coming. This, plus the fact that nature has provided a ready-made “Avenue to the Americas” in the west-to-east jet stream across the North Pacific, keeps defense planners awake nights. Flying in the jet stream, Russia’s 600-mile-an-hour jets could “end run” our land-based warning in Alaska and make the flight from Kamchatka on the Siberian peninsula to Seattle in less than four hours. Something had to be done to close the 1,500-mile wide door across the north Pacific.
The Navy took the giant step in December, 1956, with a plan for extending the Distant Early Warning system to a point that would disqualify any “end run” strategy. This would necessitate linking the ground-controlled radar stations stretching across the top of the world with an air and seaborne radar network and anchoring it 1,500 nautical miles out in the Pacific.
Work progressed rapidly, and on 1 July 1958 (after a capital investment of $350,000,000 for ships, aircraft and facilities) plus a $40,000,000 rebuilding of Midway’s Sand Island, the Pacific Barrier went on a full wartime operational status. To keep the radar equipment out on the Barrier, the Navy requires 18 converted destroyer escorts and a three-squadroned Airborne Early Warning Wing and employs some 5,000 officers and men 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
In this continuous radar network, aircraft and ships merely serve as platforms.
The ships and aircraft are always positioned so their radar beams overlap with the final link joining the land stations in the Aleutian chain.
The fog-shrouded north Pacific is notorious for brewing the world’s worst weather. No one is more aware of this than the Barrier flight crews; they have become reconciled to its dangers as they know one cannot fight the elements. This, they learn to live with.
The beautiful Laysan albatross is one of the world’s best flyers, but his uninhibited clowning has earned him the nickname of Gooney. People living on Midway enjoy his antics, but the Navy considers him an unacceptable hazard to vital air operations from Sand Island.
Such reconciliation cannot be accorded to their other major enemy, the Gooney birds. Every year at Midway the Gooney routine is the same. In October the Gooneys begin returning from the far reaches of the sea. By late November the population reaches an estimated 130,000. By December they have declared all- out war on the Barrier operations, and in a suicidal bid for air space against the radar planes, have exacted an appalling toll of wreck and damage. By Christmas Day, airmen’s outcries reach crescendo proportions. Justifiably so, for the Gooneys are knocking basketball-sized holes in their planes. And the men are completely without means to protect themselves.
In 1959, the Barrier commander decided enough was enough and warned Washington: “Bird strikes by Laysan albatrosses at Midway causing unacceptable flight hazards and loss of Barrier integrity. Immediate action required.”
Exceedingly few words, but with exceptional implications.
First, a hole in a radar plane means a “hole” in the Pacific Barrier. That means America is temporarily blind in the Pacific. Second, if a Gooney crashes into the pilot’s windshield during the critical moments of take-off, it would most probably cost the lives of 23 Americans, for it would kill or seriously wound the pilot and the plane would crash. The crews, knowing this, feel it is just a matter of time until the inevitable happens, for they reason their luck will not hold forever. Third, having to repair the damage caused by the Gooneys, plus their normal heavy workload necessary on this type of aircraft and operation, is imposing an almost impossible workload on maintenance crews. Many have worked 70-hour weeks. Fourth, these birds put a big bite on the American taxpayers. One dead Gooney bird can cost a lot of time and money.
A flight crew turns out at 3 a.m. to preflight their plane, in preparation for a 15-hour nonstop patrol. Hours later they taxi out for takeoff, past hundreds of honking and sleeping Gooneys; the air is filled with hundreds more. Forty minutes after take-off, the plane comes back; the right wing de-icer boot has a hole in it the size of a pumpkin. Another Gooney bird has committed suicide and before the crew can ground check and get another radar plane into the air, there is a hole in the Pacific Barrier 300 miles long. The damaged plane still has to be repaired.
Here are a few more Gooney bird statistics for fiscal 1959: by the middle of June and the departure of the last Gooney from Midway, the Barrier’s early warning aircraft had sustained the unbelievable total of 538 known collisions with these living, 12-pound missiles. Of these, 227 caused serious damage. To replace and repair the damage, material cost alone came to $80,312.60.
Because of such damage, aircraft were unable to fly for a period of 1,813.7 hours, or 75 ½ days. The normal depreciation of a grounded radar Super Constellation is estimated at $700 a day. The total price paid for grounded aircraft came to $52,850.
Bird strike damage for this period created an added workload on already over-worked mechanics of 2,520 man-hours. The average enlisted aircraft worker’s salary and allowances is about two dollars an hour. Another $5,040 bill charged to the Gooney birds.
Collisions between Gooney birds and radar aircraft necessitated aborting 33 patrols. When a flight is aborted on take-off, the pilot has to jettison a minimum of 3,000 gallons of gasoline ($540 worth) to bring his 140,000 pound craft down to the maximum safe landing weight. These 33 Gooney birds cost 99,000 gallons of gasoline dumped into the ocean, or 817,800.
Totaling these figures, we find that 227 Gooney birds cost the American people 8156,002.60 during fiscal year 1959. If such intangibles as increased logistic support requirements—getting spare parts and gasoline to Midway—were added, the cost would have been fantastic.
This is a costly matter, but does not mean so much to the plane crews as the fact that their lives are in danger.
Although the Gooney birds have been a major problem for years and have been the cause for expensive scientific study, the Navy continues to advocate any alternative to elimination. Last year the Navy tried relocation, with a $110,000 “enticement-discouragement” program.
This program called for making Green Island, only 50 miles distant, as attractive to the Gooneys as possible, while tearing down their favorite playgrounds on Sand Island. Green Island has a dense covering of 6-foot high shrubs called napaka which prevents the Gooneys from nesting on the ground, hence they wouldn’t live there.
The Seabees moved in and bulldozed 50 foot wide swaths from the beaches to the island’s interior. These were to serve as nesting areas and runways which the Gooneys demand when considering a prospective homestead. On Sand Island all dunes and high areas adjacent to aircraft runways were leveled and hardened, thus eliminating air-currents on which Gooneys love to soar. The Gooney experts believed that surfacing the leveled areas would discourage nesting.
Results from this $110,000 expenditure? The Sand Island Gooneys moved their nests over a few feet and set up housekeeping again. Reason? Gooneys instinctively return to nest within a few feet of the spot where they were hatched. If they didn’t come from Green Island, they weren’t going to go to Green Island. So the tailor-made runways there remain empty. And the Gooney birds continue to war on Midway.
The person who comes up with a successful plan to oust the Gooney birds from Midway will get a “Well done!” from the Navy. For certain, something else will have to be tried, although the Gooney birds are backed by strong pressure groups in the United States which will go to great lengths to block any drastic action. For example, on 20 October 1959, the Audubon Society and other conservationist groups staged a protest meeting in New York City, decrying the Navy’s alleged intentions of “eliminating” the Gooneys.
Such an attitude is inconceivable to Navy airmen, who don’t want to be eliminated either. They can’t believe their safety—and our protecting barrier patrols—could come second to a few thousand birds in the middle of the Pacific. It is their conclusion that Midway isn’t big enough for the Pacific Barrier planes and the Gooney birds. Someone will have to go—and the Navy doesn’t plan to give up Midway again.
Chief journalist Mauldin was an aerial gunner in carrier-based torpedo bombers from December 1941 through September 1944. For the last 15 years he has performed various Navy public information duties. A prolific free lance writer, Mauldin has produced syndicated articles for many newspapers as well as radio, TV, and motion picture scripts. He is presently attached to the Staff, Commander Fleet Air Alameda