Desperate Battle at Unalga Pass

In the damp, cold wash of dawn on 31 May 1942, Ensign Albert E. Mitchell, USNR, the patrol plane commander, and his crew found themselves in trouble. Not only did they not know where they were, but contaminated gasoline had forced their Consolidated PBY-5A Catalina onto an Aleutian beach. Unable to determine his precise location, Mitchell, who had taken off from Sand Point, Popof Island, the night before, broadcast that 42-P-4 was down in the vicinity of what radio bearings indicated was beer Island.¹

Learning of Mitchell’s plight from Dutch Harbor, the small seaplane tender Gillis (AVD-12) reached Deer Island at 1700 on the 31st. She lowered a boat and sent ashore a salvage party, which brought Mitchell and his crew on board at 1841 and treated them for exposure. Since only bad weather was preventing a takeoff, the tender left her salvage party and sailed for Cold Bay.

The Gillis returned to Deer Island with the PBY’s crew on 1 June. Its fuel strainers cleaned and tanks topped off by the Gillis, 42-P-4 reached Cold Bay soon thereafter. The next day, confronted by the existing primitive maintenance facilities. Lieutenant Commander James S. Russell. VP-42’s skipper, ordered Mitchell to Kodiak to have 42- P-4’s gasoline tanks decontaminated properly.

On June 4—the day the Japanese launched their assault on Midway and the day after they first bombed Alaskan soil—prowling PBYs from Dutch Harbor managed to spot the approaching enemy despite the rain and overcast. At Kodiak, however, operational necessity apparently overrode concern for 42-P-4’s fuel system. His gasoline tanks still in unsatisfactory condition, Mitchell volunteered nonetheless to undertake an urgent mission to Dutch Harbor. Entrusted by Captain Leslie R. Gehres, Commander, Patrol Wing Four, with the delivery of wing operations orders, Mitchell reached Cold Bay at 1400. Two hours  later 42-P-4 took off. With Mitchell flew Ensign Joseph M. Tuttle, USNR (copilot); Wheeler H. Rawls, Aviation Machinist’s Mate Second Class (plane captain); Frank G. Schadl, Aviation Machinist’s Mate Third Class (second mechanic); James D. Pollitt, Seaman Second Class (gunner); and Richard N. Sparks and James B. Strom, Aviation Radioman Third Class.²

At 1735, as ordered, Mitchell radioed ahead, only to be warned to stay clear—the Japanese were expected soon.³ Thus alerted, he perhaps reasoned that since his destination would soon be untenable, one of the many coves in that vicinity could afford him shelter. At that moment, though, the Japanese carrier Ryujo’s planes—nine Nakajima B3N2 Type 97 carrier attack planes (Kate) escorted by six Mitsubishi A6M2 Type 00 carrier fighters (Zero)—rounded Cape Sedanka, boring in toward Beaver Inlet. Before Mitchell could reach safety, the six Zeros set upon his lumbering PBY.⁴

Until overwhelmed in the unequal contest over Unalga Pass, Mitchell and his men fought skillfully and courageously. His gunner even scored hits on the Zero that bore the tail code DI-108. The relentless foe, however, splashed the Catalina into the waters off Unalga Island, only a few minutes after 42-P-4’s last transmission. Army observers at Fisherman’s Point, on Brundage Head, saw a few survivors emerge from the burning PBY but then watched in horror as the Zeros swooped down and machine-gunned those who had escaped the flames and clambered into a rubber boat. There were no survivors.

At 1948, shortly before the last of the Japanese planes from the Ryujo and the Junyo had left the area, the Gillis, which had played a major role in repelling the recent attack, received word that a PBY had been shot down off Beaver Inlet. The ship sped to the scene and, just east of Unalga Island, found a wingtip float attached to about eight feet of wing. A little over an hour later the Gillis’s men recovered Rawls’s body, as well as an unfolded, uninflated life raft perforated by several bullets, a parachute bag, and a mattress. A search of Rawls’s jacket yielded a daily flight inspection form which, ironically, identified the lost PBY as the same one that the Gillis had rescued just a few days before. A subsequent search produced nothing further.

The men of 42-P-4 had, in all probability, enabled the U.S. Navy to soon gain a priceless intelligence asset—a late-model Zero. All available evidence, albeit sparse, points to this conclusion. Commander, VP-41’s report to Chief of Naval Operations, 22 July 1942, on the details of the salvage states that bullets, none larger than .50-caliber, had entered the Zero from both upper and lower sides, circumstantially indicating some aerial combat. Furthermore, a chart in the Operational Archives’ World War H Command File reveals that the Japanese planes shot down Mitchell’s PBY on 4 June on their way to Dutch Harbor, not while retiring.

His oil scavenger line severed by a bullet from one of the PBY’s guns, DI-108’s pilot, Petty Officer Tadayoshi Koga, headed for Akutan Island. Unbeknownst to Koga. however, who routinely lowered his flaps and landing gear, the terrain that lay beneath him as his A6M2 descended was not hard but marshy. The Zero skidded, shed its landing gear and belly tank, damaged the flaps, and flipped over, sliding along on its back, damaging the wing tips, vertical stabilizer, and the trailing edge of the rudder. It ended up with fuselage and engine half-buried in mud and water. Koga suffered a hard blow to the head.

The plane lay undiscovered until 10 July 1942, when a crewman on board a VP-41 PBY flown by Lieutenant William N. Thies, USNR, sighted it while returning to Dutch Harbor from a routine patrol. Thies, who told of the discovery upon his return, was placed in command of a salvage party. Taken to Akutan in the district patrol vessel YP-151, he and his men managed to locate the plane in a high valley, a mile and a half from the beach. They found the pilot still inside, dead, his head and shoulders submerged in water.

Removing Koga’s deteriorated corpse—held firmly in place by two safety belts and rudder stirrups—proved the first distasteful task to confront the salvagers. Fifteen men could barely lift the A6M2’s tail, compelling the salvage party to cut through the fuselage to release the straps. Ultimately, though, they succeeded in extracting Koga’s body, which they buried “with simple military honors and Christian ceremony” nearby. The Americans mistakenly concluded that the yellow band around the after fuselage denoted a section leader’s markings; in fact, it only identified the plane’s assignment to the carrier Ryujo.

The initial salvage party removed the Zero’s 20-mm. guns, optical reflector sight (which, they discovered, had been repaired recently with friction tape), and other small items. At that point, the Americans realized that the condition of the plane suggested it could be reconditioned and flight tested. They also found that the wings were integral with the fuselage, complicating the salvage.

The press of other operations prevented completion of the work on the crashed Zero immediately, but work resumed on 12 July under Lieutenant Robert C. Kirmse, USNR. Assisted by Mr. Jerry Lund, an experienced rigger from the Siems-Drake Construction Company, a second salvage party set out for the beach in a seaplane wrecking derrick (YSD), bringing heavy equipment and a tractor. Unfortunately, the YSD dragged two anchors; bad weather compelled her to return to Dutch Harbor with the tractor still on board.

Undaunted, the Americans labored in knee-deep mud for two days, working on plywood islands. A suitably Placed high lift helped them remove the engine, but the lack of a winch prevented loading the heavy airplane on the prefabricated skid constructed on the spot with six- inch by six-inch timber. Those difficulties forced the salvagers to return to Dutch Harbor for yet more suitable equipment.

On 15 July, with Lund in charge, the district patrol vessel YP-72 sailed from Dutch Harbor with a barge, a medium-size winch-equipped bulldozer, and a heavier Prefabricated sled with considerable gear and lumber. Work proceeded in earnest; after the bulldozer was offloaded through the surf, a road was immediately plowed up a small river bed to where the plane lay. Every structure necessary to support the work had to be dragged up to the spot and assembled there.

The men lifted the engine from the plane onto a sled; the Zero was likewise hoisted, still upside down, onto a sled. The two skids, each one fording two, three-foot streams en route to the beach, were then dragged through the surf to the barge. Success having crowned their efforts at last, the salvagers returned triumphantly to Dutch Harbor with their prize. They arrived on 18 July and righted and carefully guarded the plane while it was cleaned. Lieutenant Commander Paul Foley, VP-41’s skipper, concluded that the Zero could be rebuilt and flight tested.

Foley and the others who saw this particular Zero were right. The A6M2, repaired, was flown again, enabling the U.S. Navy to gather invaluable intelligence on the construction, equipment, and performance of the fabled enemy fighter. The difficulties in extracting the plane from the marsh had not proved insurmountable, a tribute to the skill and persistence of the salvagers. But it must not be forgotten that the “exceptional bravery and unswerving devotion to duty in the face of grave peril” shown by Mitchell and his gallant crew had played a key role in the story.⁵ Sadly, they did not live to receive the credit they deserved.