Air Force Museum
Lt. Phillip Rasmussen
Second Lieutenant Philip Rasmussen was one of the American pilots who reached the air during the attack on Pearl Harbor. When Japanese aircraft struck Oahu, Philip Rasmussen ran to the flight line at Wheeler Field and took off in a P-36 while still wearing pajamas beneath his flight gear. He joined three other pilots and entered a confused fight against a much larger attacking force.
In depth
The story behind the display
His damaged aircraft returned with numerous bullet holes and without functioning brakes or rudder control. The episode became memorable not because it changed the outcome of the attack, but because it captures how quickly individuals had to act amid surprise, damaged communications, and disrupted command.
Details that tell the story
Took off from Wheeler Field during the Pearl Harbor attack · Flew a Curtiss P-36A Hawk · Returned in a heavily damaged aircraft · Received the Silver Star for his actions
Aircraft change the battlefield
In the First World War, aircraft became valuable because they could see beyond the front line. Reconnaissance and artillery observation affected decisions on the ground. Once that information mattered, opposing forces had reason to attack the aircraft gathering it. Fighters, defensive armament, and increasingly specialized missions developed around this contest over observation and freedom of movement.
The aircraft were fragile by later standards, but their crews worked inside a rapidly expanding military system. Training, maintenance, replacement aircraft, photography, communications, and weather reporting supported each sortie. Improvements in engines and armament changed tactics, while the pressures of combat exposed weaknesses that might have taken much longer to discover in peacetime.
Personal stories should be read alongside those systems. A uniform or a named aircraft connects the war to an individual, but the individual depended on many others and operated under constraints that skill could not eliminate. Aircraft from opposing sides show how designers answered similar problems in different ways. The later military collections in Dayton and at Udvar-Hazy reveal what endured: the need to gather information, protect friendly forces, move people and supplies, and coordinate action across distance. The scale changed enormously; the relationship between an aircraft's design and the job it had to perform remained fundamental.
