Death and Survival

A flight of six F4F-4s.

I recently  got to take a look at my grandfather's flight log book from when he was a naval aviator during World War II.  I had known something of his life in those days from a memoir he started and made some entries in, but mostly left blank.  I've  quoted from that about his first air combats in 1942.

Deck crew unfolds F4F-4's wings.

But I did not know that later in that same year he was shot down, forced to parachute into the sea and was declared missing in action and his family notified but was rescued more than a month later.

An F4F-4 is waved into position for launch.

I had no idea about any of this and can't recall it ever being mentioned. It was just a part of his life that happened when he was a young man and it was nothing that would come up in conversation.  In any case, he wasn't much of a talker. 
One thing that struck me when I was looking into this episode is how tired he must have been the day he was shot down.  He flew six hours, six combat hours that day, guarding the carriers and transports. Three carrier launches and two carrier recoveries. 

Pilots man your planes!  An F4F-4 being scrambled.

The first launch was at 6 am, a combat patrol over his carrier, just at dawn.  So he had to have been up some considerable time before that, probably since 4 am to allow time enough to get dressed, have breakfast, meet in the ready room and get briefed, then the usual  hurry up and wait.
Then another combat patrol shortly after 10 am over the transport screen.  Some four hours flying just in the morning, with all the tension of watching and waiting for an enemy attack.  He was the flight leader each time, being the senior officer, a  Lt. (jg). 
Then on the final combat patrol, launched shortly after 1pm, leading five others, he encountered 33 enemy aircraft -- 15 bombers escorted by 18 fighters.  Outnumbered five-and-a-half to one, yet there was no choice but to fight.  Three of the fighters attacked the G4M bombers while the remaining three, including my grandfather, went after the escorting Zeros to try to keep them away from the three F4Fs going after the bombers

The life raft compartment behind the F4F-4 cockpit, and the life raft.

The three fighters that attacked the bombers all survived, although one landed badly shot up and another had to make an emergency landing on another carrier.  The third one didn't have any damage at all.
All three of the fighters that engaged the Zeros were shot down and their pilots declared missing and presumed dead.  Two are still missing, their fates unknown. 
The Navy credits my grandfather with shooting down two Zeros before going down

The F4F-4's uninflated life raft and its storage bay.

himself.  Another pilot shot down a Zero as well before he, too, was shot down. 
I had imagined that my grandfather, after being shot down, floated around in his life raft until he was rescued.  But that wasn't what happened.  Twenty-millimeter cannon shells struck the life raft compartment behind the cockpit of his F4F and the life raft was ripped out, inflating as it did so. But it clung flapping in the slipstream to the outside of the airplane, tethered to it by a line such as you can see in the photo above, seriously affecting control of the plane.  Other cannon shells ripped into one of the wing fuel tanks, setting it on fire.

A Zero in the gunsight of an F4F-4.

My grandfather bailed out at 3,000 feet.  He didn't open his parachute until he was very close to the water for fear of being machine-gunned by the many Zeros circling around.  As a result, when he hit the water, he injured his spine. 
To make matters worse, as he was struggling back to the surface and trying to get clear of his parachute shrouds, a Zero crashed into the water almost on top of him. He was knocked underwater by the wave surge of the impact and surfaced into a sea of flaming gasoline.

Pilot's ready room. A little tense.

He wrestled out of his parachute harness and swam away from the wreckage of the Zero, only to have two Zeros strafe him, possibly expending the last of their ammunition as they only made one pass and kept on going.

Mitsubishi G4M  bomber going down.

 And then he was alone.  For days he treaded water in the vast sea.  Immersed in water though he was, he developed a raging thirst. He tried to drink sea water and vomited. He hallucinated.  Bizarre waking dreams that made him unable to distinguish the real from the unreal.  At some point, he washed up on a coral reef off a small island and the surf pounding him onto its sharp projections brought him to his senses.  He waded and swam to the island beach where he slept in the warm sand.  When he awoke, he found lots and lots of coconuts lying around but he couldn't get them open.  He built a fire using a jury-made bow and stick against tinder on a flat piece of wood, then burned the coconuts until the shells became thin enough that he could crack them open and finally slake his thirst and get some food in him.  He lived thereafter on coconuts and coconut crabs.  For the first day or two he only made a small fire and put it out and covered the remains after he had eaten, fearful of Japanese patrols.  But there were no Japanese, nor anyone else on the island.  He made an "SOS" out of driftwood on the beach, kept a smokey signal fire going, ate, slept and stared out to sea and up at the sky.
He was reported missing and his family notified. The dreaded telegram. Missing, presumed dead.  And then, 37 days after he was shot down, he was reported safe.  A passing flight of American bombers spotted his fire and signal and a PBY flew out and picked him up and within minutes he went from chewing on a crab claw to drinking strong Navy coffee and eating Vienna sausages and soda crackers. Three days later he was flown from Tulagi island to Espirito Santos island, a long flight in another PBY, which is noted in his log book.  After 10 days in the hospital there, he was returned to his ship.
In his log book he notes this PBY flight down on the August page.  There is no September page.  The next page is October, when he resumes normal flight activities with his fighter squadron.  So, to be clear, he was shot down on August 7, rescued and reported safe on September 15, as noted in his log book, flown to Espirito Santos on September 18 ('though at first glance it would seem August 18) with flight time noted in his logbook, then returned to his ship on September 28.
 As a summary, on the day my grandfather was shot down, a total of 18 F4F-4s battled attacking Japanese aircraft formations.  Nine were shot down and four pilots killed, two planes made it back to their carrier but were so badly damaged they were pushed over the side, and four others suffered battle damage.

In exchange, four Japanese bombers were shot out of the sky, one crashed on the return flight home and one made it back to base but crashed while trying to land.  Another 19 bombers suffered battle damage.  Three Zeros were shot down, five made forced landings on the way home, one crashing as it attempted to land, one made it home but crashed on landing, and 10 more suffered battle damage.  The Japanese bombers did not score even one hit on our ships.
It seems, in terms of destroyed aircraft, that the two sides came out even that day. But there were dozens and dozens of Japanese fighters and bombers and just 18 young American pilots, never more than six together, who had to drive them away from our ships.  In that they succeeded, despite the high cost to themselves.
And my grandfather survived, so I am here! 
I write that rather flippantly.  But the truth is that it was a near thing for me to come into existence.  Three young men went into combat against many times their number of enemy fighters and two of them were killed.  The one that led to me survived, just barely.  But who would have been born had those other two men lived?  Why were they not born and I was? There's a whole finger-fan of people born because my grandfather lived, and...nothing...because the two men who went into combat with him against the Zero fighters did not.

(Regarding the flight log, the letter "K" in the column, "Character of Flight," stands for "Tactical"; that is, an operational combat flight.  The number written in the "Passengers" column was the radio frequency the flight used. The ARA/ATA radio the F4F was equipped with operated voice communications on 1.5 to 3.0 MHz so "188 channel" would be 1.88 MHz.)