Old memories

A grandfather's jotted memories --

 

 

 

 (A division is four airplanes divided up into two elements of two airplanes): 

First combat:

"I rev'd my engine up to take-off rpm and manifold pressure, holding my brakes, and when I got the signal from Fly One I released my brakes and started rolling down the flight deck.  It's all as close to me as yesterday, the feel of the air and the sun, and thinking of all that lay ahead.  About two-thirds of the way down the deck, I popped my flaps and we floated into the air.
"I joined up with the rest of my division and we climbed to 25,000 feet.  I could hear over my radio, 'Bombers approaching from 270 degrees, 40 miles...bombers still coming from 270 degrees, 30 miles.'  And then, 'Flight of Zeros coming five minutes behind bombers, course 270 degrees.'
Finally the whole horizon filled with planes.  There were 56 of them, 26 bombers and 30 Zeros.  There were so many, and so near, that I couldn't really believe that they were enemy planes and that I was about to engage in actual combat.
"My division leader led us into a high-side run against the bombers, Type 97 Mitsubishis.  I'd seen the Zeros above and behind the bombers before we began our attack--painted brown with a big red ball on each wing--but I didn't notice them now, I only saw the bombers.  I selected one and opened fire at 450 yards which is a lot too far off.  But as I closed in I saw my tracers going apparently right in front of the wing, which means they were going right into the wing; when they seem to be hitting the wing, they're actually going behind it.
"The left engine began to smoke, not gradually, but with a big black puff.  I fired a long burst and the engine began to flame, then the whole plane was on fire--bing, just like that.  It just fascinated me.  The bomber had looked so big I didn't see how I could do anything to it.
I was watching the Mitsubishi fall when all of a sudden my whole windshield disintegrated right in front of me.  I felt a sharp pain in the right side of my head, and my left foot went kind of numb.  Glass blew all over the cockpit.  Something got in my eye.
"I knew somebody had me right, so I did a half-roll and got out of there, straight down for a couple of miles.  There was nothing behind me when I leveled off and looked things over.  There was glass all around me.  The bulletproof windshield was a mass of cracks.  My left eye was pretty bad and there was a slug of metal sticking into my left shoe.  The prop felt funny, too.  There were three bullet holes in it, I found later.
"I felt woozy but I found the ship and caught the wire and the deck crew helped me out of the cockpit.  In the rear of the plane were a bunch of six-inch holes made by cannon shells.  The radio equipment in the fuselage was all blown to hell.  Evidently a Zero had made a high-side pass on me."

He was patched up in sick bay and back on flight status after a night's rest.  One of the pilots in his division was shot down, bailed out, swam and treaded water for 48 hours before making it to shore on an island, where he was marooned for five days before being spotted by a passing flight of SBDs and picked up by a J2F.

The next day, another combat:

"I can remember every cloud in the sky as we climbed up into it.  We were intercepting two flights of nine bombers with 13 Zeros escorting.  At 27,000 feet we got off to the side of the bombers and began edging above them to make our pass when the Zeros dropped down on us.
I got separated from my division.  I was watching the Zeros coming down and not paying enough attention to where the rest of the boys were going.  I was too inexperienced.  I was too green to remember everything that had been hammered into our heads.
"Pretty soon I found myself scissoring with a Zero.  That is to say, he had the altitude to keep diving at me, and I kept turning into him, trying to stay behind and below.  We scissored five or six times, and every time I made a sharp, steep bank, I lost altitude.  Altitude is what pays off in an air fight, and this looked bad.  He forced me to keep making those quick turns to keep him off my tail, and with each turn my plane shivered and shook and lost altitude.  It was hell.
"He passed above me and did a steep wing-over.  I dived and started to climb.  It wasn't an intelligent thing to do, but I was lucky.  He couldn't quite get his guns on me.  Then he did the damnedest thing you ever saw.  He came down from above and behind, and instead of riding it out on my tail and filling me full of bullets, he let himself go too fast so that he went by me.  He should have dodged off to one side and got out of there, but instead of that the fool rose right up under my nose and did a roll.  What was he trying to do?  Maybe he thought I couldn't hit him if he kept his plane tumbling like that.  As a matter of fact, he was just making himself a bigger target.  I used a three-second burst, and he was dead before I stopped firing.
'"We had scissored all the way down to eight thousand feet--to show you how he had been driving me into the ground--but even eight thousand feet is a long way when you're looking down.  He made a splash no bigger than a porpoise.  Then he was just part of the soup."

The next day, the Japanese came back again:

"Vee after Vee of bombers came down on us, escorted by dozens of Zeros.  Our squadron CO told us to stay with them and fight, no matter what the odds were, no matter how bad the position might be.  That day we showed him we'd heard what he said.  We went after the bombers but the Zeros were up there watching us the way cats watch mice.  As they closed on us we turned into them head-on and they broke off.  I went after one and got him in my sight and let him have it, knocking a big puff of white smoke out of him. He rolled left onto his back and dove away.
"Then I found myself rising underneath and behind another Zero.  He did a split-S and I lost sight of him.  That is the trouble.  Things change so fast in the sky.  You have your man, you miss him, you lose him--and maybe you've lost the whole world and yourself along with it.  It happens while you're snapping your fingers a couple of times, in just that short a time.

"But I saw my Zero again, pulling up and heading northwest.  I poured wide-open throttle to it and went right after him.  I got above him, closing the gap a little more and a little more.  In the meantime he'd been doing S turns, and I kept sliding over so that he wouldn't see me.  Finally I got up to 20 yards--just like opening a door and walking into a room it was so close.  Then I fired the shortest burst I ever used, not more than 20 shots, but they were all smashing right home into him, and he blew up all over the sky--up there at 12,000 feet--and it was just like putting a stick of dynamite into a room.  I was hoisted up in my seat by the force of the explosion.
"I saw the pilot blown up 30 feet in the air.  The chute he had on didn't open fully and he dropped, the chute flapping above him.  Little pieces of the plane hung like leaves in the air.  I followed him down and watched him hit the water.  The shroud lines of the chute were holding him, and he was lying there as though asleep."

He landed back on his ship, was rearmed and refueled and launched again against another incoming bomber force, a division of four F4Fs against 18 bombers and six Zeros:

"As we climbed to 26,000 feet, far away among the clouds now and then we could see little drifts of planes fighting, like a whirl of leaves.   We attacked the bombers straight in.  I made my pass against mine, went under him, climbed up again, and while I was doing a wing-over I saw 15 more Zeros, a whole cloud of them.  It's hard to straighten out a fight, even when I try to remember every detail.  I recall asking over my radio for  a little help, but everybody was busy.  After that it all came fast, the Zeros were everywhere, taking punches at me.  I punched back, making one smoke and spin and another drop away in a ball of flame, but the rest kept coming at me.
"I dove on another one and was closing the range, ready to fire, when a Zero opened fired on me from behind.    Machine gun bullets and cannon shells shook my plane.  Two 20mm shells smashed into my cockpit, and the shrapnel from the bursting shells hit me in the right side and knocked my leg off the rudder pedal, which caused my plane to roll over on its back and start spinning.
" I pulled out of the spin at about 19,000 feet.  The Zeros hadn't followed me down and I was alone. I realized that I was wounded when I discovered that I couldn't move my right leg back to the rudder pedal.   I looked at it.  Shrapnel had torn up my thigh.  Two pieces had driven down into the muscle, another fragment had open a big gash.  I didn't see much blood then, and my leg was numb, not painful.
"The flying was not so good.  I had to lift my leg with my hand and put it on the rudder pedal.  So I called the ship and said I was coming in for an immediate forced landing.  Pretty soon they called back and told me to wait.  I made a circle of the ship and dropped my wheels and flaps.  Once more they called to  tell me to wait.  They said, 'You can't land.'  I simply said, 'The hell I can't!' And by that time I was on the deck.
"I don't know why they warned me off.  I didn't see any enemy planes around.  It still makes me mad to think of that voice telling me not to land when I was pretty fortunate to be able to get down without crashing.
"My plane was junk.  They stripped off a few parts that they could use, but the rest of it just went over the side."

 His wounds were severe enough that he was evacuated to a shore-based hospital to recuperate.