Once They Were Eagles (8 page)

The two of us undressed, and shielding our flashlights so that only a tiny streak showed between our fingers, we picked our way back across the clearing.

We had the showers all to ourselves and were covered with soap when the searchlights came on and immediately picked out a bomber only 15,000 feet up and coming directly over us. We looked around frantically for a moment. We had no place to go—there were no foxholes by the showers and no time to get back to our tent. There was nothing we could do, so we took our razors and began to shave as the AA shells burst around the Nip plane.

It was like having a front seat at a mammoth Fourth of July celebration. The searchlights played brilliantly across the sky; the batteries flashed around us; their shells exploded brightly high above us. Then the enemy plane unloaded its bombs. We could hear them whistling down, then detonating over toward the strip. Bailey and I finished shaving, showered again, and dried off. The all-clear sounded as we fumbled for our field shoes.

Life on those islands was feelingly expressed by a young Marine who scribbled off this poem one night:

The constant roar of planes taking off and landing made sleeping difficult; the fine coral dust blew over everything, interfering with our work, our card games. Some of the boys went souvenir hunting and found Japanese flags, guns, aircraft instruments. The Seabees who were working on the strip could make anything: beautiful brass ashtrays out of artillery shells, necklaces from a kind of seashell called “cat's eyes.” The prize souvenir salesman, however, was the Army corporal who tried to sell us a U.S. .45 pistol he'd swiped as it hung in our parachute tent!

We had some laughs. The story got around that one of the Japanese bomber pilots called our control tower on our frequency and said in good English: “Here's a present from Tojo.”

The tower operator said, “To hell with Tojo.”

The pilot dropped his bombs and, after the explosion asked: “What do you think of Tojo now?”

“Tojo is a son of a bitch,” said the tower Marine.

The Japanese pilot sputtered for a moment, thinking of the foulest thing he could say, and then blurted out:

“Babe Ruth is a son of a bitch.”

Another story involved an officer looking for transportation to the forward area from Espiritu Santo who managed to arrange passage in a torpedo bomber. He stowed his footlocker, seabag, and bedroll in the bomb bay of the aircraft in the afternoon, figuring on leaving early the next morning. However, one of the pilots took the plane up for a practice flight that same day and made a mock attack on an abandoned hulk out in the ocean.

He scored a direct hit with the major's footlocker, and near misses with the seabag and bedroll.

Between their strikes and patrols, the Black Sheep ranged over enemy territory, strafing barges, troop concentrations, antiaircraft and coastal gun positions, and transport vessels. No place was safe from their whistling Corsairs and hails of 50-caliber machine gun slugs.

On 21 September, four of them headed by Boyington caught a Japanese steam launch in the channel off southern Bougainville and blew it up.

Another day, they asked permission to make a strafing run over Kahili Airdrome itself, home of hundreds of Japanese aircraft. Dr. Boo Bourgeois took his division off for this dangerous mission at 3:30
P.M.
Junior Heier, Sandy Sims, and Don Moore were with him. The four circled to the northwest and roared across the south end of the heavily defended airfield at 300 miles an hour only 50 feet off the ground. Holding their triggers down, the Marines in echelon formation burned a deadly swath across this vital area. In the face of late, scattered AA fire, they strafed a bivouac area near the strip, burned up eight Zeros parked along the runway, battered an AA position just west of the strip, and sieved some boats and troops at the mouth of the river immediately west of the AA position.

Heier was the farthest inland of the four-plane division. On the swing, he was outside and having trouble catching up. At this point, a ground explosion threw debris in front of his plane, and he swung to get out of the way, plowing through a palm tree as he did so. The sturdy Corsair staggered out into the clear with the prop vibrating badly.

Heier nursed the plane along, losing oil all the way, and just as he rounded the corner of Vella Lavella, the oil pressure gauge went right to the top, indicating that the engine was about to seize up. He kicked the plane over onto its back and fell out head down. When the parachute opened, he told me, his head and feet traded positions as though he were on the end of a bullwhip.

He hit the water so weighted down with his survival gear that he just dropped toward the bottom of Kula Gulf like a bomb. At a depth of about 25 feet, he popped his life jacket CO
₂
cartridge and shot back to the surface, inflated his rubber boat, and paddled to shore, having lost one of his beautiful Australian flying boots—highly prized by the pilots—in the process.

Then he saw a Japanese scow coming after him.

“I got out my .45 and said to myself, I'm going to get as many of them as I can.' I had no intention of being captured—I'd been reading all those atrocity stories—so I figured I'd shoot as many of them as I could and then shoot myself.”

Emotionally drained by the strain of nursing his crippled plane 100 miles over unfriendly territory, shaken by the parachute drop, wet and cold, he was a forlorn figure as he resolutely stood his ground, his .45 in his hand, as the craft moved along the shoreline.

“Then I heard one of them say, ‘The son of a bitch is around here somewhere; there's his parachute,' and it was our Seabees! They were using the Japanese scow as a garbage boat.

“I hollered, ‘Over here, fellas'. As they came toward me, I saw I only had the one flying boot. Realizing one boot was worthless, I threw it out into the water and walked along the beach to be picked up.”

As he waded out to board the boat, he saw his other boot in the shallow water. But he couldn't find the one he'd flung away.

 

“I got that old feelin',” Quill Skull Groover told me on the morning of 23 September, as we were discussing the day's scheduled strike on southern Bougainville.

Groover's “old feelin'” was as sure a forecaster as your grandpa's rheumatism. This Georgia boy's “feelin'” forecast aerial combat action, and we had already come to respect it.

This morning, he must have had the feelin' pretty strong. Only two and a half hours later, with a broken right arm and leg, he fought his bullet-riddled Corsair 150 miles back to our base and landed it raggedly on the coral strip. He was helped out of his bloody cockpit, stained from the flow of a dozen wounds along his right side.

Groover was one of nine Black Sheep flying high cover on a joint Army, Navy, Marine, and New Zealand strike that day. The Black Sheep attacked 40 Zeros that were snapping at the heels of Army Liberators returning from the strike.

As the fight began, Big Bob Alexander, who was on Stan Bailey's wing, reported his engine was missing. Bailey directed him to return to base, but just at this point, three Zeros attacked Bailey.

Instead of returning to base, Alex guided his limping plane about the sky to protect his division leader. He soon had the three Zeros on his own tail and enemy tracers whistling past his ears. He went into
a dive, and his engine quit. The Zeros, fortunately, turned away.

Bob managed to get his engine going spasmodically and headed for home, losing altitude all the way. He radioed in to the uncompleted Vella Lavella strip, instructing them to prepare for an emergency landing. As he came over the ridge north of the field, clearing the trees by only five feet, he saw the runway covered by trucks and bulldozers and men working. He had no choice now, so he put his plane down to one side of the strip, kicking right and left rudder, dodging trucks and bulldozers as he rolled along at nearly 100 miles an hour.

His plane hit a huge ditch, bounced, struck something solid, and turned over on its back, crushing his Plexiglass canopy.

Alex was lifted out, unhurt, by a naval officer, who looked at his face and said, “Jeez, aren't you from Davenport, Iowa?”

He was a Seebee ensign and a hometown friend.

Bailey, in the meantime, was playing sieve again: the three Zeros got in several hits before he could shake them. He tried to join up with other Corsairs, but kept running into Zeros, which made passes at him from all angles.

He finally headed back and climbed over the tail end of the returning bombers. Two-thirds of the way home Bailey saw six Zeros strafing a parachute in the water. He pushed his bullet-damaged plane over and attacked, driving them away from the helpless pilot.

He brought his Corsair safely into Munda with four 20-millimeter shell holes and 30 machine gun holes in it.

Black Sheep John Bolt, separated from his division in a cloud, came out in the clear and climbed into the sun to 20,000 feet. He attacked the last of a flight of six Zeros, opening fire at 200 yards. The enemy plane flamed and spun down.

Another Zero cut across in front of him, evidently attempting to join the remaining five. Bolt circled in behind him in a diving turn, bore-sighted him, and flamed him with a short burst.

Quill Skull Groover was on Moon Mullen's wing when the action began. They opened fire from 300 yards on a Zero to the right of them and then noticed a flight of Zeros waiting for them to lose altitude.

Moon and Groover pulled up in a climbing turn, looking for friendly planes to join, but none were in sight, only the 10 to 20 enemy planes.

As the two Black Sheep attacked, Groover saw one Zero pull in a tight loop and swing in toward Mullen's tail. He turned in to it as Mullen straightened out.

Three more Zeros came in on Groover's tail.

Mullen saw tracers eating into Groover's plane and then saw the Georgia boy's wing catch fire. Mullen circled and fought off the swarm attempting to finish Groover.

As he battled them, one of the Zeros made an overhead pass on him, hailing him with machine gun bullets. One shattered as it entered the Plexiglass canopy and wounded Mullen in the left shoulder.

Mullen turned toward the Zero and it dived out. Another came in from the left; Mullen swung on him, raking him from stem to stern. The Zero flamed and went down burning.

Mullen pushed over and dived after Groover.

Groover was badly hit. A 20-mm shell had exploded in his wing, setting it on fire; at the same time, another shell had entered the right side of his cockpit, breaking his right arm and ankle, wounding him all along the right side, and setting fire to the cockpit. Quill pushed over in a dive and beat out the cockpit fire with his hands; during the dive, the fire in his wing went out.

Shaking off the attacking Zeros, Groover leveled at 10,000 feet, put his nose down, and headed for home. On course, he began to take stock of his damage. Half his instruments and his radio were shot out; his right aileron was gone; he had two huge holes in his left wing. His right arm was useless, his right leg numb, and blood had soaked through his clothing from wounds in his arm, side, and leg.

As he got out his first aid kit to treat himself, the engine quit! Dropping the kit, he worked over the remaining controls till he got the engine running, holding the stick with his knee as he did so.

We saw Groover as he brought his plane onto our field. From a long way out we could see the huge hole in his wing. We kept our fingers crossed as he limped cautiously in, and with one aileron control and one elevator not functioning, put his Corsair safely down on the strip.

Quill was through for this tour; Doc bandaged him up and loaded him on a plane for Guadalcanal and the naval hospital there.

Mullen's wounds were slight; after being patched up, he insisted on flying another mission that day.

Our box score for the day was four Zeros destroyed and two probably destroyed, while all our pilots got back to base. The squadron totals were now 18 and 12.

And we had gained even more respect for Groover's “old feelin'.”

 

On Sunday, 26 September, we sent 11 Black Sheep to Bougainville as high cover for a Marine torpedo bomber strike on the Japanese antiaircraft positions near Kahili Airdrome. The Marine bombers thoroughly plastered the target, then joined up and headed for home. As they did so, the fight began. Seven Black Sheep attacked and scattered a dozen Zeros that were harassing the bombers, sending one down smoking.

The other four Black Sheep, with Moon Mullen leading, ran into real trouble—some 20 Zeros. Rollie Rinabarger, in Mullen's second section, found his engine heating up and could not stay in position.