The WWII Adventures Of A Seaplane Machine Gunner Chasing U-Boats

Matthew Yacovino was born in August 1924 and grew up in Port Reading, New Jersey, in an Italian immigrant family (the family name was not originally Yacovino, but was created upon immigration). His father came to America when he was 18 and attended night school to learn English. Having married Matthew’s mother when she was 17, he worked as a brakeman on the railroads. The family grew to four boys and two girls, often not having much to eat. As a boy, Matthew enjoyed playing trumpet in the band and loved building model airplanes. He enjoyed high school and wanted to attend Annapolis to become a Navy pilot. He remembers the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, recalling it was “an awful time in the house,” and that his parents were very upset. In 1942, he left high school to join the Navy. After basic training in Newport, Rhode Island, he completed training in Jacksonville and Hollywood in Florida and at Norfolk, Virginia. He enjoyed meeting people from all over the country and learning teamwork, but did not like getting up early or having people give him orders. After a series of tests, he was assigned as a gunner on a flying boat (PBY Catalina). The PBY was a seaplane patrol bomber with a crew of 10, a range of 2,500 miles, and a payload of 4,000 lbs. of bombs, torpedoes, or depth charges. It was used in an anti-submarine role in the Atlantic, protecting Allied shipping and hunting Nazi subs. Matthew remembers the great view from his waist gunner position, where he operated a .50 caliber machine gun, but regrets that he had no sunglasses to protect him from the glare off the water. He was stationed in Morrocco and flew missions over the Atlantic and Mediterranean, with occasional missions out of England flying over the North Sea. Once in England, he met up with his brother Phil, who was recovering from wounds he received serving in the Army in France. When they encountered German fighter bombers, their best tactic was to fly into a cloud to try to avoid combat with the more maneuverable enemy. During the war he took R&R on a French Foreign Legion base. On May 12, 1945, his PBY took the surrender of German sub U-541, with the plane circling the sub until a British Navy ship arrived on the scene. When the war in Europe ended, his crew flew their PBY home by way of South America and Cuba, and Matthew was supposed to begin dive bomber training when the war in the Pacific ended, curtailing his reassignment. He remembers a carnival when he returned home from the European theater. After the war, he used the GI Bill to get a Mechanical Engineering degree from Rutgers and began his career as an engineer. In this interview, Matthew Yacovino describes his life in an Italian-American family in New Jersey during the Depression. He reflects on his wartime service in the Navy, highlighting experiences in Morrocco and England flying against Nazi subs. He describes being a crewman aboard a seaplane and the monotony and excitement of flying during WWII. He recalls some funny experiences, including accidentally shooting the tail of his plane while test firing his .50 cal machine gun. Finally, he reflects on his service, stating, “I met the best guys in the world, but they’re all gone.”