Freeland Endicott

“Jigger” Endicott, as he’s known, was an instructor of fighter pilots all throughout WWII, Korea and Vietnam.  Right after WWII, his mission was helping to create a Japanese air force and among the men he had to train to fly jets were a former WWII Japanese fighter ace and an erstwhile kamikaze pilot.  Jigger was a career Air Force officer and retired as a Lt. Colonel in 1969.

 

          His parents were Benjamin Franklin Endicott (his grandfather had the same exact name) and Sarah Anita Campbell.  Benjamin’s branch of the family came from Kentucky, but Benjamin himself grew up in Boaz, Wisconsin.  

 

          They moved to Redmond, in Deschutes County, Oregon in 1927 and Jigger grew up there.  He acquired the nickname Jigger at age 18 through odd circumstances: “ I was working in a hardware store and the owner told me he just always wanted someone to call Jigger, and it was going to be me!”

 

          In high school, Jigger was a pretty good basketball player, being the only Junior to get his varsity letter and thus the only Senior the next year coming in with a letter on the team.  His education stopped after high school. 

In July, 1941, he obtained a pilot’s license through the Government’s  Civilian Pilot Training program (CPT).   Many people signed up for it and the Government would pay everything only for the top 3 graduates.  Jigger was number 17 and they told him he could continue but only if he paid $65, which he was happy do to do – “$65 was cheap for a pilot’s license,” as he put it. 

 

          On November 21, 1941, he enlisted in the Army, in Portland, Oregon. His service number as an enlisted man was 19004812 but it changed later when he became an officer to AO-686835.   His enlistment record says he was a financial institution clerk and that his height was 69 inches and weight 160 pounds. 

 

          Jigger wanted to go into the Army Air Corps (Until 1947, the Air Force was part of the US Army) but since he had not gone to college, he was not allowed to enter the normal flying program.  So instead he applied for the Flying Sergeant Program and got into that.  But it was changed to the Aviation Cadet Program.   First, he had Aviation Ground School in San Antonio, Texas, for about 2 months and then Primary, Basic, and Advanced School, getting through it all in July, 1943.  

 

          After that, he had a choice of which type of aircraft to fly and he chose fighters, flying the P-40 Warhawk and later, in 1944, the P-51 Mustang (which was his favorite aircraft – “it was the fastest fighter and could do long range -- everything”).  Although he wanted to be a fighter pilot, he did so well in the schools, they ordered him to stay as an instructor.

 

          He instructed combat pilots at Pinellas Army Field (now the St. Petersburg – Clearwater International Airport), in St. Petersburg Florida.  How did he teach pilots advanced combat techniques if he himself had never been in combat?  “Most of the instructors had been in combat,” he explained, and he learned the combat maneuvers from them. 

 

          After a while, Pinellas opened up a gunnery school and Jigger was kept there as an instructor, too.  What did he know about gunnery?  “Aerial gunnery only took a 15% hit rate to qualify as expert and when I fired for record, I got 54%.”  In other words, once again, he had done too well to be sent to his first choice, overseas combat, and had to remain in the States as an instructor again. 

 

          Combat pilots would fly their own P-47 Thunderbolts, and P-38 Lightnings from around the country to take a one-month course with Jigger and his colleagues:  “They’d be ordered to fly out to our place to see why we were shooting so much better than they were.”  Mostly, Jigger explained, it was because they were firing from too far away and at the wrong angle of attack. 

 

          Finally, when Jigger had been at Pinellas longer than any pilot on the base, he asked to go overseas.  But instead, they sent him to Santa Maria, California in July, 1945 to train on a jet, the P-80, Shooting Star, the first operational U.S. jet.  “But then they stopped the program because Major Bong was killed in one.”  Congressional Medal of Honor winner, Richard Bong, was the United States' highest-scoring air ace, having shot down at least 40 Japanese aircraft during the war.  His death as a test pilot of P-80s was front-page news across the country, sharing space with the first news of the bombing of Hiroshima. 

 

          After the war was over, Jigger was discharged in November,1945, although he remained in the Reserves.  A man named Cal Butler hired him as a pilot and sent him to manage the Madras airport in Madras, Oregon, which he did from 1946-1948.  But much of his job consisted of crop dusting and by 1948, Jigger got tired of that, quit and then ran 2 Shell gas stations until 1953.  

 

          At that point, during the Korean War, the Air Force asked him to come back to active service, which he did.  He was sent to Aviation Cadet School, in San Antonio, Texas where he instructed in the T-33, a two-seater version of the Shooting Star. 

 

          After a year there, he was asked to volunteer for “Operation Tori” in Japan, but since no one would explain to him what it was, he declined.  No one else volunteered, either, so Jigger was assigned to it anyway and sent to Japan in 1954. 

 

          Operation Tori consisted of creating a Japanese air force as part of the Japanese Defense Force at Tsuiki, Kyushu, Japan’s third largest island.  “Each of us had 4 students,” Jigger said.  One of mine, named Ibusuki, had 30 allied planes to his credit in World War II.  He became the first Japanese to solo in jets.” 

 

                    Training the Japanese was different.  U.S. kids were a lot                               different than Japanese.  The U.S. kids were not afraid to admit                           what they didn’t know, but the Japanese would not do that                        and that can be pretty dangerous when you’re flying jets.  Also,                       this was right after the war and it was a little strange.  After all,                        I had an uncle who was shot down by the Japanese at the battle                           of Midway.  He was part of Torpedo Squadron 8.

Jigger had another interesting Japanese student, too, one who had been a kamikaze pilot during the war – “ He had already seen his own funeral!” as Jigger put it.

 

          He taught the Japanese for a little over a year before being assigned to the Far East Checkout Program, a program to check out U.S. pilots flying T-33s, which he did for a year and half.  

 

          Jigger then asked for an assignment back in the States on the West Coast.  But he was sent instead to Dover, Delaware to ferry jets around and did that until 1957, when they ended the program.  After that he was stationed in Chicopee, Massachusetts, as the maintenance officer For B-52 bombers and he was promoted to Major.  He did that for 6 and a half years.  

 

          In 1963, they grounded Jigger because of a heart problem.  But he was allowed to stay in the Air Force  anyway and in 1965 went to Burma.  He spent two years there as the maintenance officer of the Burmese Air Force. 

 

          This was considered a hardship assignment and after one of those, you got to choose where you wanted to go next. Jigger requested Travis Air Force base in Fairfield, California and was sent there as Control Officer for a year. 

 

          In September 1968, he was sent to Vietnam where he was maintenance control officer for a reconnaissance wing that flew RF4C Phantoms and RF 101 Voodoos.  He came back to the States in July 1969, retired as a Lt. Colonel, and did some work helping to run a farm.

 

          Jigger’s wife’s name is Betty and they had three children, Carol, Ben Talbert, who was killed in an industrial accident (just as Jigger’s father had been), and George, who is currently the mayor of Redmond, Oregon, a city of 25,000 people.  Both Ben Talbert and George served in the Army in Vietnam.