laststandonzombieisland

On my recent trip through the Atlanta Airport to visit Glock and canoodle with the new Gen6s, I spied a display of hand-carved wooden scale models, all of WWII-era aircraft.

One caught my eye, that of a Grumman J2F-4 Duck amphibian in bright pre-war livery, complete with “meatball” roundels.

Yup, it was I-J-7, the famous “Candy Clipper,” complete with candy cane markings on its cowlings.

The Clipper was part of Navy LT Jack Clayton Renard’s Utility Squadron of PATWING10, a group of 10 light single-engine seaplanes operating out of the area around Manila: four J2F-2/4 Ducks, five early OS2U-2 Kingfishers, and one SOC-1 Seagull.

The “Candy Clipper” moniker came from its Navy pilot’s side-quest of carrying candy to nurses on Corregidor to brighten the Christmas of 1941, along with shuttling medical supplies and food to the bunker.

By late January 1942, all of Renard’s light amphibians had been lost to the fighting or were otherwise written off, and the Navy personnel diverted to ground defense as the war for Manila was lost.

A USAAF 1st Lieutenant, Roland J. Barnick (O-2820), was tapped to take the battered old Clipper, which had its shot-through engine recently replaced with one from a sunken J2F, on the last flight out of Bataan before the Japanese surrender on 9 April 1942.

Built for a crew of two (three in a pinch), the Clipper was crammed with Barnick and five high-value passengers, including Army Major (later general and UN President) Carlos P. Romulo, who went on to write about the flight in his best-selling book, I Saw the Fall of the Philippines.

The abused Clipper, overloaded and running on a waterlogged salvaged engine, somehow made it from its hiding place at Cabcaben airfield to friendly lines in Mindanao, where it would remain as its passengers managed their way by assorted means to Java and Australia.

Barnick, a bomber man, would end the war leading B-29 Superforts over the Japanese Home Islands.

He earned a Silver Star for the Clipper flight and would later retire as a brigadier general in the USAF, with over 5,000 hours logged —including a few in a field-rebuilt Duck.

Passing in 1996 at age 79, BG Barnick’s ashes are interred at Arlington, Column: 3, Court: 4, Section: M, Niche: 4.

Break a candy cane in his honor this month.