Rear Admiral Bennett Sher Sparks, United States Coast Guard, Retired, was born in October 1925 in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. His father was drafted into the Army late in the Great War [Annotator's Note: World War 1], and was on his way to fight when the Kaiser [Annotator's Note: Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert; German Emporer and King of Prussia Wilhelm II] surrendered. Prior to the Second World War, he was a salesman for the Lipton Tea Company; however, during the war tea was scarce, and he became a shipbuilder in Erie, Pennsylvania. Sparks had one younger sister, and worked at odd jobs from the time he was 12. When he was 17, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941] and war broke out, and Sparks persuaded his father to sign for him to join the military. He tried to enlist in the Marines, but a 32nd of an inch overbite disqualified him, so he joined the United States Coast Guard. Although he had enough credits to graduate high school before he left for training, he wasn't allowed to commence until he came home on leave and joined the rest of his class from Strong Vincent High School in Erie, Pennsylvania. Sparks went to Manhattan Beach, New York for boot camp, and was assigned to a port security unit in Manhattan, New York, where he checked incoming ships for contraband.

Working 12 hour watches on the piers of New York City, Bennett Sparks did what he called "interesting," but "strenuous" work. He berthed in barracks at a facility in Manhattan, until he married a girl he met in church, and lived with his wife in Long Island, New York. Sparks was sent to radio school in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and described the plush duty he enjoyed during that time. But he was not "thrilled" with radio school, and in early 1943, he left for the Coast Guard Air Station in San Diego, California and Aviation Radio School. He continued through a process of education that included LORAN, or Long Range Aid to Navigation, School, aviation radar school and aerial gunnery school, all of which prepared him for his duty in the Pacific, which was flying patrols against the Japanese in PBMs [Annotator's Note: Martin PBM Mariner flying boat] and large seaplanes. He also had a side job in the pioneer experiments with innovative JATO, jet assisted takeoffs, technology and testing.

Describing his patrol duties in the Pacific, Bennett Sparks spoke of the initial testing of SONAR [Annotator's Note: sound navigation ranging] for navigation during which planes would drop SONAR buoys into areas where they suspected enemy submarine activity. The buoys would transmit back to the aircraft and everyone, Navy and Coast Guard, instructors and crew, learned about the new technology at the same time. In late 1943, Sparks was transferred to Elizabeth City, North Carolina. His wife and infant son joined him, and they moved into a Navy housing project. Cinder block inside and out, with concrete floors, potbelly coal stoves for heat and a wood stove for cooking, and an icebox for refrigeration, his wife found it a disappointment, but the young family was together. Sparks was 19, on a limited income, and he hitchhiked the 20 miles to work. The couple was expecting their second child, but they lived among other couples "in the same boat," and formed new friendships in the small town that was host to the largest Coast Guard Air Station in the United States. The base began sending submarine patrols out into the Atlantic Ocean. Sparks flew in different types of seaplanes named after birds. As a radioman and aerial gunner, which also put him in charge of dropping depth charges, he coded and decoded messages between the aircraft and the base. At that time in the war, the German submarine fleet was very prevalent, sinking American ships every day. Sparks said they dropped a lot of depth charges, but he has no idea if, or how many, subs they sank. In some aircraft, he was alone with a pilot; in others, the crew could number as many as 15 members. Patrols in the larger aircraft could last as long as 18 hours during day and/or night flights that might go as far afield as Greenland and Iceland.

The flights to the far north did not always include a landing, Bennett sparks pointed out; it was sometimes a loop there and back. Landing in Greenland could be treacherous because of icebergs and glacial dynamics. The Coast Guard was part of the Navy at this time; and flights were under the Navy's control. Sparks said they sighted many submarines in that area, and dropped "a lot of depth charges." The planes were also equipped with .50 caliber machine guns, which were only useful on survivors or a surfaced sub. If a sub was detected, the pilot, who was in command, would issue a battle plan. Sparks, in addition to his armament duties, was responsible for communicating their position and battle plans, and was "pretty busy" during an attack. Out of the Axis powers, the Germans controlled the fleet in the Atlantic, and although Sparks knew there were German cargo and battle ships in the area they patrolled, he remembers encountering only one battleship which was later sunk by the British, which was unmistakable because of its enormous size. Sometimes his missions required landing in Liverpool, England for refueling and "everybody was kind." He recalled feeling simply that "our allies were good, our enemies were bad" and he just wanted to do a good job and get back to his family.

Depth charges were generally under the wings of the aircraft, according to Bennett Sparks. The pilot, given location information, would drop altitude and use his controls to release the depth charges, and in those days it was not a highly technical skill. If a strafing operation was called for, it was done at a lower than flight altitude as well. Machine guns were at several locations on the planes, and the tail gunner had the last opportunity at a target. Sparks recalled an incident late in the war when his aircraft was in a joint operation, about a hundred miles off North Carolina, with a Coast Guard cutter, a Navy destroyer or two, and a PBY [Annotator's Note: Consolidated PBY Catalina flying boat] that attacked a German submarine. Sparks' crew was directed to pick up survivors and bring them back to Norfolk, Virginia for interrogation by Naval intelligence. They made a perilous open-sea landing and trained their machine guns on about a half dozen Germans who, rather than putting up any resistance, were thrilled to be picked up alive. Sparks said they turned the prisoners, stilled dressed in their submarine overalls, over to the Navy and had no idea what happened to them afterward.

Bennett Sparks remembered that early in the war, before he was flying, one of his jobs in New York Harbor involved guarding German and Italian POWs [Annotator's Note: prisoners of war] coming back from Europe. He would escort them off the ships and take them by Army bus to a train station in Hoboken, New Jersey. He had to make sure they had no weapons or contraband, take away their uniforms and concessions, except for toiletries, and send them off to camps in the western United States. Sparks noted that they were all men, all "mild and mellow," and not hostile. He once got into trouble for taking a German hat, holster and printed materials as souvenirs from one of the ships. The next morning, Coast Guard Intelligence was at his bunk side, making inquiries about the paraphernalia. He learned the rule was "no souvenirs." Another time, when he was stationed away from his family, he would hitchhike, a prevalent mode of transportation for military people, home when he was off duty. On one of his trips, two German POWs driving a laundry truck picked him up; Sparks found it ironic that he was in the back with the dirty linen and the prisoners were riding in the cab. During his hitch at the Marine Air Base in Cherry Point, North Carolina, he flew a mission to rescue a Marine pilot that had ditched his small aircraft in the Atlantic. He gave the exhausted man his dry flight suit, and when they landed at the Naval Air Station in Brunswick, Georgia, the medics grabbed Sparks, who was in his shorts, and put him in an ambulance. When he protested that they had the wrong man, the medics thought he was delirious.

After the war, Bennett Sparks was transferred to duty with Department of Commerce's Coast and Geodetic Survey, using powerful cameras to take aerial photographs of the Alaska territory before it was a state. Sparks found flying in a modified PB-1G [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17-G Flying Fortress heavy bomber] four-engine bomber over uncharted territory, with bad weather a constant obstruction, quite interesting. Eventually he was using the photographic technology he helped to develop in other places around the world. He spent almost 12 years in that job, once flying with a crew that did an article for "National Geographic." Later, he was flying out of Alexandria, Virginia in the crew of the Secretary of the Treasury's aircraft, which was a modern civilian-type plane. Sparks went to flight school on the G.I. Bill as a civilian and became a pilot.

Bennett Sparks noted that he did a temporary stint very late in the war at the Marine Air Base in Cherry Point, North Carolina, which involved picking up Marine pilots that had crashed at sea, and he was no longer hunting Germans as a primary duty. It was a training base, and "lost a lot of aircraft." The distance they had to fly out to sea and the type of rescue determined the type of aircraft they used. Sparks said he remembered one crash in a marshy area that required a parachute landing, which he was elected to do, and it "scared the hell out of him" to jump into the alligator and snake infested swamp. When he got to the pilot, he was already dead. But Sparks said not too many of the operations were "recovery" rather than "rescue." He also recalled having to pick up a crew that included one member suffering from highly contagious spinal meningitis; they took along a flight surgeon and got the man back to the hospital.

After the war, Bennett Sparks continued to serve in the Coast Guard, and moved with his wife and six children to California. He went through all the enlisted ranks and was eventually commissioned as an ensign. He then went through all the officer ranks up to Admiral. He was commanding officer of several Port Security units in Southern California, and was sent to Antwerp, Netherlands [Annotator's Note: Antwerp, Belgium] as part of NATO [Annotator's Note: North Atlantic Treaty Organization]. Later, he was sent to Guam in the Marianas, and to many different countries in Europe. He got involved in the CIOR, or Confederation of Inter-Allied Officers organization, and became the chief CIOR delegate to NATO for the United States. Through that work he learned much about America's allies, and former enemies, and it was an enlightening and interesting experience. He also became involved in the Reserve Officers Association of the United States, which provides the delegates from the United States to the CIOR, and worked his way up to the position of president of the organization. Sparks commented that he feels the world is ever changing, and, hopefully, is evolving into something where our enemies can become our friends.