Robert “Andy” Anderson, 89, of Helena Flats shouldn’t have survived World War II after stalling out upside-down while pulling out of a high-speed dive or flying a plane riddled with dozens of bullet holes.

After the war, he could easily have been one of the nine pilots from his Marine squadron called back to serve in Korea, where eight of them died.

“Apparently, the Lord had his hand on me in avoiding that call, just as he had cared for me the prior four years,” Anderson writes in his book “Slow But Deadly — WW II Memoirs of an SBD Dive Bomber Pilot.”

In honor of Veterans Day, he sat down for an interview about those years he captured in fascinating detail and no small amount of humor in his book. His memoirs record the months of preparation, the evolution of aircraft as well as the flavor of daily life of a bomber pilot in the Pacific Theater.

After experiencing warfare from the air as a young unmarried Marine, Anderson retains a unique perspective in spite of close encounters with death.

“It was the most exciting time of my life,” he said. “It was fun.”

He still considers his birth on Nov. 28, 1922, a stroke of luck because he was the perfect age to join the Marine Corps during World War II. On Dec. 8, 1942, Anderson enlisted in the middle of his second year of college.

Although he had his private pilot’s license, Anderson recalled that the recruiter informed him that he had to finish his second year of college if he wanted to fly for the Marine Corps.

“After finishing my second year, I went to preflight school for 90 days,” he recalled. “From there to basic training in flight in Livermore, California, where we flew the N2S.”

Calling the N2S Stearman biplane a fantastic aircraft, Anderson said it kept flying through all the abuse cadets inflicted. He sailed through the qualifications for stages A, B, C and then D, where standard flight looped up and over into acrobatics.

 Because he loved flying and had a natural talent, he said none of it was particularly difficult for him.

“Probably the toughest part was pushing back from the chow table because they fed us very well,” he said with a laugh.  

Anderson said he was fortunate to have the most feared check ride instructor for his daily instruction in stage D, the last barrier to advanced flight training. He aced stage D and a year later, his former instructor save his life by sharing his detailed plan for surviving the nightmare scenario of an engine stalling while inverted and pulling out of a high-speed dive.

“It did work, and to my knowledge, I’m the only dive bomber pilot who has ever recovered from a high-speed stall at pull-out,” Anderson said.

After graduation and receiving his second lieutenant commission, Anderson moved on to post-graduate training that included carrier landings and takeoffs on Lake Michigan in the SB2U. He deemed it not a very good airplane but he managed to take off and land it on the deck as prescribed.

“You either sort of enjoyed landing on a carrier or you didn’t,”  he said. “For me, it was fun. I enjoyed it. You pay attention to the landing officer — he’s standing there with a flag in each hand, and with that, he tells you what to do.”

Finally, his and the other pilots’ hard work was rewarded with the Scout Bomber Douglas or SBD dive bomber. Pilots later adopted Slow But Deadly to explain the acronym.

It reflected the SBD’s performance in battle. In his book, Anderson recalled one that kept flying with 225 bullet holes.

“That’s a great airplane,” Anderson said. “Very slow but very reliable.”

The SBD became his companion for all of his overseas service that began with assignment to a new dive-bomber squadron formed up at El Toro Marine Base. Soon, the squadron took off for Hawaii, a stopping-off point before shipping out to Midway Island.

“Midway was pretty much a training spot by that time,” he said. “It was the submarine base for the U.S. force in World War II.”

Each morning, the pilots took off for a designated spot about 30 miles away where a submarine was scheduled to surface. Pilots would circle because the submarine becomes very vulnerable at that point.

“You would see the nose come up out of the water,” Anderson recalled. “It was very pretty to watch.”

After determining the sub was friendly, the pilot would circle as the submarine was let through a net between Sand and Eastern islands. Anderson said this was to ensure a enemy sub didn’t sneak through beneath the friendly sub.

“Occasionally, one of the guys would come out and tie a broom to the conning tower,” he said. “That meant they had a clean sweep — they got a ship with every torpedo. That was sort of exciting.”

From Midway, the squadron moved to Makin, a previously occupied island strategically located in the middle of four Japanese-held islands: Mille, Wotje, Maloelap and Jaluit. Their assignment was to fly to those islands every day to destroy the airfields, gun emplacements, control centers and ammunition dumps and look for Japanese ships bringing supplies or evacuating troops.

“They had no aircraft at that time so all we had to fight with was ground fire and they had a lot of that,” he said. “So we lost some planes to that and we got hit a lot. I was never shot down but my plane required a lot of patches.”

According to Anderson, the enemy put up a wall of bullets that the dive bomber had to fly through when he pulled up. One enemy gunner got him with a large explosive shell that put a hole as large as his head near the cockpit just behind the gas tank.

His gunner, Pappy, sat directly behind him in the SBD facing the opposite direction.

“My gunner said, ‘Sir, I think we’ve been hit,’” Anderson said with a laugh. “I said, ‘My God but you’re perceptive, Pappy.’ But it was still flying. That was the worst I ever got hit.”

He recalls the adrenaline rush of bombing targets such as a little steam engine and tracks running around one of the islands. Anderson said it really was fun for him.

At 20 and unmarried, he said he was at the perfect point in life to accept the probability of not returning and to live moment to moment.

“I thought to myself, ‘Here the government has provided me with the best equipment that they have, allowing me to fly it and paying me for the privilege,” he said. “I’d have paid to do it.”

Following the war, Anderson returned to college, married Shirley, now his wife of 64 years, and together they raised three children. The two moved to the Flathead Valley in 1990 after eight years in St. Regis.

It was Shirley, a retired teacher, who encouraged Anderson to write and publish his memoirs for the benefit of their children as well as history. She would like to see it included in air and Marine Corps museum collections.

“Whether we get our money back for publishing is not important,” she said. “But I would like to see it read by people who have an interest in the Marines and the air corps at that time.”

People may purchase the book locally at the Bookshelf at 110 Main St. in Kalispell or from Scott Company Publishing.

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.