During a World War II strike on targets near Kure, Japan, an F6F Hellcat pilot watches as his skipper goes down.
Several ominous puffs of dark debris had appeared around the tail section of the skipper's plane. I glanced away for an instant and then back to him. A stupefying scene unfolded.
The skipper's canopy opened and he stood up; his parachute streamed out and jerked him clear of the plane. The Hellcat hit the water and the skipper hit a few feet to the right of it. His parachute didn't blossom to check his fall; he plunged feet first and disappeared into the murky, shallow water. The canopy of his parachute floated on the surface; its lines extended downward, fading from sight into his dark, watery grave next to the partly submerged, drowning Hellcat.
The previous evening the chatter in our squadron ready room on the aircraft carrier abated abruptly when the skipper stood to begin briefing the next day's strikes against Japan. His aloof bearing told me—a junior officer—Keep your distance; I'm in charge here. I did not know him on a personal level, but I respected him as a talented man and officer. It was late July 1945.
We knew we would strike targets in the Kure area of the Inland Sea. Tension nagged at me, and from their banter and smoking, I sensed a high anxiety level among the other pilots as well. The skipper reported the tactical situation, but before turning the briefing over to our air intelligence officer, he ended his little speech with, "We will sweep the airfields in the Kure area, shoot any aircraft out of the sky, and hunt and kill the bastards on the ground"—a little bravado he tossed in to tweak our fighting spirits, but it seemed out of character for him and unsuitable, I thought. No pep talk like that would stir us to long-odds heroic deeds. We knew what sweeps like that meant and it depressed me. Just more wild, blind strafing of airfields hoping to hit hidden kamikaze aircraft. Such flights just gave the Japanese antiaircraft gunners more practice.
My buddy, John, whispered to me, "Back in the shooting gallery as one of the ducks."
There must be a better way, I thought.
The air intelligence officer charged my brain to well over capacity with photo intelligence reports, antiaircraft gun positions, radio communications frequencies, possible hiding places for aircraft, bail-out and ditching instructions, probable weather conditions, and diagrams of airfields. Then it was off to bed to prepare for reveille before 0300.
The first strike was 16 planes, four four-plane divisions, with the skipper leading. With the final briefing completed we waited impatiently for the order to man our planes. When I finally trudged from the ready room and climbed to the flight deck I was burdened with an anti-blackout flight suit, helmet with goggles and earphones, parachute harness, inflatable life vest, .38-caliber pistol in a shoulder holster, ammunition belt, oxygen mask, backpack with survival gear, canteen of water, holstered knife, navigational plotting board, and gloves. Others also carried a rabbit's foot.
It was dark on the flight deck, with a brisk wind on our beam. The ship rolled slowly in the swells as I threaded my way among the closely parked aircraft, their wings folded. I found my plane, and its maintenance captain, standing on the wing, helped me settle in the cockpit.
"The plane is in good shape; good luck," he said, and he gave me a pat on the shoulder and disappeared. I felt pangs of loneliness, and wondered if that would that be my last human contact. I checked and rechecked flight details and waited for the signal to start engines.
Planes were launched in the approximate order they would fly in the formation. That is, the skipper went first, then his wingman, etc. I was "tail-end Charlie" in the second division, led by Bill Miller, so I was the eighth plane to go. At launch time it was still dark but the new day's fingers were groping for the horizon. As the ship turned to port into the wind, the first planes were fired off the catapults. When headed into the wind the ship righted herself and the rest of the flight made deck runs. I could see them as shadows dart up the deck, their engine exhausts aflame. When my turn came, men with lighted wands signaled me to taxi clear of the other aircraft, where men spread and locked my wings. The deck officer gave me the rev-up signal. I checked the magnetos at full power, nodded -to- him, and he signaled me to take off.
The plane lurched forward when I released the brakes, and I kept it on course with the rudder pedals. I couldn't see ahead until the tail came up and the bow rushed toward me. Easing back on the stick, I felt the plane lighten and leave the deck. I pulled in the wheels and flaps.
The Hellcat ahead of me disappeared into the predawn gloom, so I made for the rendezvous point and climbed to the correct altitude. I could see only one plane circling what I believed to be our rendezvous point—and this bird not only was lonesome, he was irked. It was the skipper. His angular head jerked from side to side, looking for the other planes, and he flew in tight circles that I imagined corresponded to the twists in his gut. Where were the other six planes that took off ahead of me?
After what seemed an eternity, actually only 10 minutes or so, six planes found us. We still were short eight planes. The skipper broke radio silence, contacted the rest of the flight and ordered them to rendezvous at Point Ash, a code name for the nearest point of land. He signaled that we remain in our present flying positions rather than try to unscramble the formation. That meant I would fly on his wing, an honor I would have been pleased to yield to anyone. This fouled rendezvous and the extra fuel it consumed were a bad start on our maximum-range flight.
Within an hour we sighted land through breaks in the clouds and our missing eight planes joined up. We flew up Bungo Suido, an entrance to the Inland Sea, with the west coast of Shikoku in sight on our right. The skipper led us below a lowering ceiling to maintain visual contact with the ground. We followed the coast northeast toward our first target, Matsuyama West Airfield, near the shore.
Vertical air photos of Matsuyama showed many aircraft in revetments. The field was where it was supposed to be, but from our low-angle approach, it looked nothing like the air photos. We made a low-level strafing attack during which I could not pick out a meaningful target. In the few seconds between peeling out of formation and getting within firing range, I could not see a revetment much less an airplane in it. It was maddening to be exposed to ground fire with so little chance of inflicting significant damage.
We gained altitude and joined up over water, where we saw two oil tankers steaming north in the Inland Sea. The skipper signaled us to attack the nearest tanker. I moved to a position a hundred feet abeam and starboard of the skipper and began our attack, firing all six .50-caliber machine guns in bursts to suppress any defensive fire the ship might offer. I was astonished when the skipper fired a pair of rockets. They arced gracefully through the air and hit the water hundreds of yards short of the target. With that faulty shot in mind, I pushed my attack with machine guns to point-blank range before I fired a pair of rockets. It was almost an unintentional kamikaze attack. I still can call up the image of the ship's mast in my windshield, accompanied by the explosions of my rockets and objects spraying up from the ship.
That part of the strike was an unqualified success. The rockets had the impact of 5-inch shells and the planes that followed also inflicted enormous damage. The tankers were left burning and sinking. I visualized the chaos on the ships—dead and wounded men, others struggling out of flooding engine rooms only to face a wall of burning oil. But those thoughts were pushed aside by the need to fly the airplane and join up on the skipper.
We made a feint toward Iwakuni Air Base while our photo plane took pictures. Then the skipper, without good reason, led us within the air defense zone of the Kure naval base. Black puffs of flak appeared menacingly close. Some of us zigzagged out of the area but he held a steady course.
We headed for our next target, Niihama Airfield, on the north shore of Shikoku. En route, someone spotted two four-engine flying boats anchored in a cove. The skipper, after some hesitation, directed the second two divisions to attack them while we flew cover. Both flying boats were left sinking in shallow water.
The overcast was low at Niihama, making us start our strafing run at 3,000 feet, in a sweeping left turn. I thought, here we go again, ducks in a shooting gallery. I was on the skipper's right. The other two planes in the division moved to our right on the outside of the turn. We straightened our course seaward and began firing at anything in our sight, which was not much. In a few seconds we skimmed the water at high speed. Then he crashed.
Momentarily my training and instincts flew the airplane, as my mind replayed that stunning scene. I banked to the left and with two others circled the wreck. It took several minutes for the finality of his death to sink in and to remember that the Japanese still were shooting at us from the airfield. When it did we responded to Bill Miller's insistent call, "Join up! Join up! Join up!"
I saw the rest of the flight a mile to the west and headed there to begin the long, sad flight to our home carrier. It struck and comforted me that although a key person died another quickly took over and the organization continued. We would carry on as we had in the past, when Dick and Lariun and Art and Joe and Okie and others had fallen. I was dazed and unbelieving during the return flight. The skipper always appeared to me an aloof, invincible leader who would be the last to fall. His crash still is a vivid image that returns to me often.
We retreated through Bungo Suido to the "safety" of the open sea. Picket destroyers 50 miles offshore gave us an updated steer to the task force, yet another 100 miles away. We flew through light rain below a somber low overcast that matched my spirits. I saw other planes in loose formation skimming the water like weary migrating ducks.
The greatest hazard now was running out of gas. It was going to be close for me, despite starving the engine throughout the flight. Others reported their fuel perilously low; one ditched near a destroyer and a second landed on another carrier. I felt as drained as my reserve fuel tank, whose gauge now indicated "empty" but quivered a little, indicating some gasoline remained. Bill found the task force and our carrier. With great effort I blocked from my mind the dead skipper and the near-empty fuel tank and focused my attention on flying. I landed safely, more than five hours after takeoff.
As the only pilot who saw the skipper hit the water I had to repeat my story often, beginning with the debriefing air intelligence officer, and ultimately, to the air group commander who had to report to the skipper's wife the circumstances of his death. He asked several penetrating questions, to determine beyond any doubt that the skipper had died in the crash and was not just missing in action—a distinction of great importance to his family. There was no doubt in my mind or in the minds of the other two pilots who had circled the wreck. He was dead.
The widow already would have been informed of the death through official channels by telegram, with no specifics. The air group commander's letter would be a second shock to the wife and family and a delayed sorrow to the skipper's newborn son. I envisioned photographs of the skipper hung in some honored niche in their shattered household, images of a deep, talented, and brave man.
I also thought of the quirk of fate that kept the bullets that downed him from hitting me, flying only a few tens of feet from him. Such are the haphazard results when men attempt to resolve differences by war that becomes impersonal; faceless men shooting at faceless men.
Those were the official debriefs of that strike. The unofficial comments among the pilots had a different tone. I wondered why the skipper had fired his rockets at such long range that they hit far off the target. Several could not understand why he led us at low altitude needlessly through a known heavy concentration of antiaircraft batteries in the Kure area and why he took no evasive actions when the flak was thick among us. Why did he deviate from the strike plan? He led us far from the planned route, making it doubtful that we would have enough fuel to return to the carrier. Why was he so slow in responding to the sighting of the two sea planes? Why didn't he take evasive action after he stopped strafing and started over the water at Niihama? There may be reasonable answers to those questions, but they died with him. And who would have asked them had he lived? Not I.
The strike schedule for that afternoon and the following morning listed my name.
Commander Vernon flew Hellcats with VBF-87 from the Ticonderoga (CVA-14) off the coast of Japan.