Once They Were Eagles (2 page)

Born of the sun they travelled a short while toward the sun

And left the vivid air signed with their honor.

Stephen Spender, “I Think Continually of Those”

ONCE
THEY
WERE
EAGLES

 

It is five minutes of five on a black tropical morning. The darkness is relieved at infrequent intervals by brief flashes of lightning, which momentarily bathe our air-field in blue-white light. Even at this hour the air is warm, moist. A smell of decaying vegetation drifts out of the thick jungle that presses in against the airstrip. All around me are deep shadows of the high dirt revetments along the taxiways lined by tall coconut palms. I can hear the cough and rumble of the engines on our fighting planes; I can see the spitting blue flames of their exhausts.

Last night at ten o'clock I had briefed the whole flight. The target is Rabaul—last Japanese South Pacific stronghold.

Breakfast was at 0415: hamburger, onions, fruit juice, toast, coffee. At 0430 we were in the trucks and on our way down to the strip, the beam from our headlights getting scant welcome from the jungle hovering over the winding road. Down a steep hill, a turn to the left, and we were rolling along the coral taxiway.

Already the mechanics had some of the planes idling over in the revetments, waiting for the Black Sheep pilots to bring them to life as the blazing “whistling death” of the skies. One by one we dropped off each pilot at the plane assigned him: Pappy, Blot, Oli, Mat, Quill, Rope, Notebook, Long Tom …

Conversation was sparse; just a quiet “good luck.”

With their helmets, goggles, throat microphones, yellow Mae West life jackets, jungle survival backpacks, parachutes, and rubber boat packs, they resembled strange monsters as they waddled to their planes, scrambled up on the wings, and were helped into the cockpits.

Now I sit, with Flight Surgeon Jim Reames, high on the bank beside the tent that serves as office and ready room.

It is five minutes of five, and our slumbering moths have come to life. They hesitate as though testing their wings and then roll haltingly out of their cocoonlike stalls and onto the taxiway. They fall into a long, wavering, awkward line and lumber out onto the strip. Only their small red and green wingtip lights, their taillights, and their exhaust flames are visible as they reach the end of the runway and prepare to take off.

With his brakes set, Pappy revs up his engine in a rising crescendo for a final check and then lets it return to idling speed. Swinging the tail around to square with the runway, he waits for the “go” signal from the control tower. Down the strip, in front of him, the small yellow lights
that outline its edges converge in the distance. Beyond that—nothing. Everything else is black in this darkest hour before dawn.

So each pilot sits, alone with his thoughts in the sultry tropical morning on the lonely South Pacific island of Vella Lavella, waiting for the signal that will send him spinning down the runway on his 15,000-pound blue steed.

Then it comes—just a flick of a switch, and a green light stares at him saying, in its impersonal way: “You're next.” The engine takes a deeper tone; the plane moves down the runway faster and faster and then hurtles along, barely skimming the hard-packed coral. The streamlined, gull-winged craft lifts free and gives a final
blaaat
as it climbs away, only the blinking lights and exhaust flames marking its path.

One after the other, Pappy's Black Sheep roar past us, and I mentally tick them off. They flash by, climb, and circle away in the darkness. The last one is gone and the roar fades to a drone, then to a hum. Then the morning is still. Doc and I sit quietly, wondering how many of these kids are going to come back. Last night they were happy; joking. This morning they were tense, grouchy, like football players before the big game.

But this is a deadly game.

And I wonder what motivated them, volunteers all, to come out to this remote part of the world and put their lives on the line. We realize that it is right to fight and even to die 10,000 miles from home in order to protect our homes and our families. Nevertheless, I sit saddened, knowing that not all of our eagles will always make it back to the nest.

This is the loneliest time of the day for Doc and me. We sit quietly in the dark. Doc has looked over each pilot to make sure he is fit to fly. I've briefed them as completely as possible. Now each is strapped in the cockpit of his seven-ton plane, surrounded by instruments, dials, switches, maps, notes—and the darkness. Below him are the lukewarm waters of the Solomon Sea. Ahead, enemy fighters are waiting to challenge him in deadly duel for the airspace.

Each pilot must rely on his own skill and initiative to handle this complex array of problems. He must draw from somewhere out of his background—his education, training, experience, and briefing—the right flash of thought to meet each situation instantly as it presents itself. Even so, instead of winging back and bouncing once more on our runway, his plane might join others that have spun down and crashed in the water or the tangled jungles.

“Well, I've got to get to these reports,” I mumble, and Doc and I get
up and walk into our tent. I light the gasoline lantern and we sit down at the rough table. The hiss of the lantern and the scratch of my pen are the only sounds as I busy myself with the paperwork. Though often condemned, it is really the bottom line of our activity. From such reports, information is gleaned that leads to changes in tactics, ordnance, training, equipment, conditioning, organization. Here are facts on the actual combat performance of aircraft and the men who fly them. Range, speed, fuel consumption, power settings, ammunition effectiveness, performance characteristics, physiological effects of flying are all shown here—and these, added to similar reports from other squadrons, present a picture to the men who build our planes and equipment, train our pilots, and run our war.

Those who study our reports find them impersonal; they're looking for facts. But to Doc and me, sitting in the dim little tent, they are part of our hearts as we write how Alex got his or how Junior bailed out or how Harpo almost spun in when he had an attack of vertigo or how Don just never came back.

As the time draws near for our Black Sheep to return, Doc and I listen for the sound of engines. After many false alarms we're finally sure, and we go back to our perch to watch the planes come in. It is daylight now, and I check them off as they break up their formations and swing into the traffic circle. We can always tell whether they've been in action. If not, they maintain their tight formation, break up smoothly, and land with precision. But when they straggle in and bounce their landings, then we know they've been into some shooting.

The time drags slowly between the landing of the first plane and the arrival of the truck at our ready tent with the first load of pilots. The boys are noisy, full of horseplay. They're talking excitedly, waving their arms as they hang up their chutes and backpacks.

They crowd around my desk to give me the word on the mission. The field telephone begins to ring; Operations wants to know what's happened on the flight: how many planes? any losses? important observations? sightings?

Doc Reames, a broad grin on his face, is passing out small shots of brandy to calm down some of the most excited.

Gradually, I get my story straight, gather all the facts and data for my reports.

Then a truck hauls the Black Sheep away for showers, lunch, and rest.

One more mission completed.

 

The Black Sheep Squadron sprang into being almost overnight, like Minerva from the skull of Jupiter. Almost overnight, too, they became a legend in the annals of Marine Corps history: youth-suddenly-become-men who blazed a brilliant arc across the skies of the South Pacific.

“There is a tide in the affairs of men,” said Shakespeare, “which taken at the flood leads on to fortune.” The military situation, the development of a combat plane capable of meeting the Japanese Zero on equal or better terms, the fortuitous availability of a mix of combat-experienced and fresh new pilots, and the presence of a leader who could mold them into the toughest combat squadron in existence at the exact time that it was needed all combined to form just such a tide.

The Japanese campaign had devastated everything before it across China, Hong Kong, Malaya, Indochina, Thailand, Burma, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, the Marianas, the Carolines, and the Solomons. The Japanese had seized some three million square miles of Oceania in six months and had only been stopped by the Marines in bloody fighting on Guadalcanal.

Admiral William Halsey, in his characteristic manner, termed the Guadalcanal landing “Operation Shoestring”: shortly after the initial assault, Japanese bombers drove the supply ships from the beachhead before they could fully unload, leaving the Marines stranded for days. Half-starved, disease-ridden, fighting a fanatic foe, these few sweating men advanced slowly toward the airstrip. Securing the airfield, they knew, would bring other Marines who, at their rear bases, were sweating out each painful inch of the way with them.

That the operation was a frayed shoestring may be seen from this excerpt from the January 1943 official logbook of the Marine Aviation Unit that moved into Guadalcanal's Henderson Field right behind the Marine ground troops: “Heavy bombers all gone, medium bombers all busted, dive bombers got no props, fighters got no tanks, torpedo bombers bogged down, airstrip out of commission, pilots all sick, am sending dispatch requesting instructions.”

Cost to our Navy was high, too: two aircraft carriers, ten cruisers, and ten destroyers. But things got better after Operation Shoestring.
By August 1943, Guadalcanal had become a rear area, subjected only to nightly bombing raids. Marines had landed on the Russell Islands, Rendova, and Munda and were eyeing Bougainville, 300 miles north of Guadalcanal. From Bougainville our fighters could reach the Japanese stronghold at Rabaul.

Marine aviators had kept pace with their brothers on the ground, covering their landings, blasting ground installations, and knocking enemy fighters out of the sky. But these airmen, carrying too heavy a load on their shoulders, were beginning to show signs of strain. They flew daily from before daylight till after dark with only brief halts for refueling and rearming. During their catch-as-catch-can rest periods on the ground, they were subjected to nightly air raids. All through the night, Japanese bombers throbbed across the sky and sowed their deadly explosives. Their unsynchronized engines gave them an easily identifiable sound; the Marines called them “Washing Machine Charlies.”

The route from Guadalcanal to Tokyo was blocked by many obstacles; major ones were Bougainville and Rabaul. Rather than carry on a costly, time-consuming island-by-island campaign, the Joint Chiefs of Staff settled on a plan to capture some of the islands and neutralize and bypass others.

It was in this climate that Admiral Halsey decided to press forward up the Solomon Islands slot toward Tokyo. He was poised for an assault on Bougainville which would give him an air base from which he could reach the Japanese-held Rabaul, at the northern end of the Solomon Islands—the Japanese Pearl Harbor. At that time (mid-1943), Rabaul's four airfields contained 400 aircraft; 100,000 Japanese troops were massed on the island of New Britain, where Rabaul is located. The Japanese considered the base impregnable. They did not intend to give up Rabaul.

While the U.S. had no plans to seize it, Rabaul had to be neutralized if the drive toward Tokyo was to move forward. But Bougainville came first. Bougainville was protected not only by thousands of Japanese troops but also by five airfields, the most important of which was Kahili, on its southern tip. Off that tip was the island of Ballale, an airdrome surrounded by bristling antiaircraft guns. Obviously, air power was needed: bombers to demolish ground installations, fighters to protect the bombers while they did their job, fighters to take on the Japanese Zeros head to head.

Halsey reviewed his requirements. One was a fighter plane that could hold its own against the Japanese Zero. He had it in the gull-winged
F-4-U Corsairs recently developed by the Chance-Vought Aircraft Corporation. They had started arriving in the Solomons in February 1943. By August, enough had been delivered to the combat theater to equip the Marine squadrons. Ironically, they were available to the Marines only because the Navy had turned them down as unsuitable for carrier operations.

The Corsair was a clean, sleek aircraft with a 2,000-horsepower engine. Its rated speed of 415 miles per hour at sea level made it the fastest aircraft in the theater at that time. The Corsair carried six 50-caliber machine guns, three in each wing.

Halsey had his fighter planes. Next, he needed pilots to fly them and a commander to lead.

 

Normally, a Marine fighter squadron was formed in the States, given organizational and operational training as a unit, and then shipped overseas intact with its administrative staff and maintenance sections as well as its aircraft, flight echelon, and equipment.