3/18/2011:
In aerial combat, an ace is a pilot who shoots down five enemy aircraft. One of North Dakota’s ten aces came from Minot. His name was Harvey Picken.
Born in 1916, Picken graduated from Minot State Teachers College in May of 1940 and worked for the Great Northern Railway as a fireman, shoveling coal into locomotives. In December of 1940, Mr. Picken enlisted in the U.S. Navy to become a pilot.
By the time the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Harvey Picken had already earned his combat wings and was a Navy flight instructor in Florida. Wishing to transfer to combat status, Picken was instead assigned to aerial photography school in Hawaii.
As an aerial photographer onboard the aircraft carrier Intrepid in the South Pacific, Picken flew a Hellcat fighter plane. Being a photographer might sound like a safe job, but Picken was assigned to photograph enemy positions, and the Navy did not provide fighter escorts for photo reconnaissance. That meant Picken had to protect himself. And what a good job he did. On September 13, 1944, Picken shot down his first Japanese plane. About a week later he became an ace in one day when he shot down five Japanese aircraft near Formosa.
Lieutenant Picken, in his Hellcat fighter, became an ace twice over, with a total of eleven enemy planes downed, thanks in part to his Hellcat, which was faster and better-armored than the renowned Japanese Zero.
Picken flew photo and combat missions through the remainder of World War II in the Pacific, and he narrowly missed being killed by a kamikaze plane at Okinawa in 1945. The kamikaze made a direct hit on the Intrepid, hitting the pilot’s “ready room” just after Picken had left. It was his closest brush with death during the war.
When the war ended, Harvey Picken, promoted to lieutenant commander, returned home to Minot where he went back to work with the Great Northern Railway. He later owned two Minot restaurants, and, in 1971, went to Alaska to work on the oil pipeline.
Harvey Picken and his wife, Mary, retired in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, where he died on this date in 1997, at the age of 80.
Interestingly, the aircraft carrier Intrepid, on which Harvey Picken served, is now a floating museum and National Historic Landmark in New York City. On this day, Datebook remembers the legacy of ace pilot Harvey Picken of Minot, who was one of the nation’s “Greatest Generation” – those who served their country so nobly and so well during World War II.
Todays’ Dakota Datebook is written by Dr. Steve Hoffbeck, history department, MSU Moorhead.
Sources: “Harvey Picken,” obituary, Spokesman Review, Spokane, Washington, March 19, 1997, p. B2.
“Minot Ace Is Credited With 10 Japanese Planes,” Minot Daily News, November 7, 1944, p. 1.
“Flying Ace From Minot Served On The Carrier Intrepid,” Minot Daily News, May 25, 1997, p. E3.
“Minot’s Fighter Ace,” Minot Model Messenger, vol. XII, no. 2, September, 1997, p. 1.
“U.S. Navy and Marine Corps Aces,” Naval Historical Center, www.history.navy.mil/branches/aces/html, accessed on March 1, 2011.
Barrett Tillman, Hellcat Aces of World War 2 (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 1996), p. 48.
“Navy Puts Hellcat First as Fighter Plane, Citing Record in Combat With Japanese,” New York Times, October 26, 1943, p. 7.
“Navy Hellcat a Fighter’s Plane, Built to Pilots’ Specifications,” New York Times, September 10, 1943, p. 11.
“A War Hero, Intrepid, Joins City Museums,” New York Times, August 2, 1982, p. A1.