The Twilight Warriors (33 page)

Authors: Robert Gandt

BOOK: The Twilight Warriors

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I
t was a bitter pill for
Intrepid
’s ambitious air group commander, Johnny Hyland, to miss the historic
Yamato
strike. That morning when the mission was being hurriedly put together, Hyland was already airborne on a fighter sweep over Tokuno, in the north Ryukyus. By default, group command of the
Yamato
attack had fallen to Will Rawie.

But the day wasn’t a complete loss for Hyland. While he was covering the Corsairs strafing the Japanese airfield, he glimpsed the silhouette of a low-flying Val dive-bomber headed south. Pouncing like a hawk, Hyland gunned the Val down with a single burst from his .50-calibers, chalking up his second air-to-air victory of the campaign.

The CAG wasn’t the only one in the group to score. Ens. Raymond “Freddie” Lanthier, while strafing a target at Tokuno, spotted an incoming Nakajima Tojo fighter. The Tojo was a fast mover, nearly as capable at climbing and diving as the Corsair. Attacking from below, Lanthier put enough rounds into the Tojo’s engine to send the fighter flaming into the sea.

Another senior officer who missed the
Yamato
battle was Lt. Cmdr. Wally Clarke, skipper of the VF-10 Grim Reapers. Clarke
had led another twelve-plane strike on the airfields in the northern Ryukyus. Despite heavy antiaircraft fire, Clarke’s fighters strafed the field, destroyed eight parked airplanes, and withdrew to the south without losing an airplane—until they were en route home.

Clarke’s wingman was one of the Tail End Charlies, a short, youngish-looking ensign named Don Croy, whom the squadron nicknamed “Mighty Mouse.” A few days earlier, Mighty Mouse had had a close call. On a strike over Minami, he’d taken a hit and ditched his Corsair dangerously close to the enemy island. After several hours in his raft, he had been rescued by a daring OS2U floatplane pilot.

Now Croy was flying close formation on Clarke’s wing while the skipper weaved through the towering cumulus that obscured most of the East China Sea. In a moment of inattention, Croy didn’t see Clarke’s Corsair banking into him.

What happened next was never clear. Clarke’s propeller chewed into Croy’s wing. An instant later Mighty Mouse was spinning uncontrollably toward the sea. Clarke’s broken propeller was shaking his airplane so violently he had to shut the engine down. He glided to a water landing 4,000 yards behind a destroyer. Minutes later, the tin can crew was hauling him aboard.

But not his wingman. The destroyer sailors told Clarke they had witnessed the whole thing—the collision, the Corsairs dropping to the ocean—but no one saw a parachute. Mighty Mouse had disappeared without a trace.

S
till slumped in his padded chair in
Bunker Hill
’s flag plot, Mitscher received the reports from the strike groups. When the strike was finished and the last warplanes had landed safely aboard their carriers, the Bald Eagle scribbled a message of congratulations to all the air groups. They had achieved a glorious victory, he wrote. He was proud of them.

Each strike group had brought back rolls of film documenting the attack. As quickly as the film could be processed, prints were being rushed to the flag bridge on
Bunker Hill
. With his ever-present cigarette dangling from his mouth, the admiral peered at the still-wet black-and-white images.

It was all there in the photos. Mitscher’s gamble had paid off. The grainy images provided the ultimate proof of the airplane’s dominance not only of the sky but of the sea. The age of the battleship was over. Mitscher should have been reveling in his moment of triumph.

But he wasn’t. The Bald Eagle was not his old self. His face was more haggard than ever, his eyes red-rimmed from the undiagnosed medical event of the night before. Mitscher took one more look at the photos, then rose from his chair. Without comment, he returned to his cabin and went back to bed.

A
board
New Mexico
, Adm. Raymond Spruance was also digesting the reports. Although he’d gotten over the disappointment at missing out on a last great sea battle, he wasn’t ready to recall Deyo’s surface force, which was still steaming northward to engage the enemy. Four destroyers from the Japanese task force were still afloat, leaving the remote possibility that there might still be a surface action.

Rear Adm. Mort Deyo, on his flagship
Tennessee
, was accepting the fact that the damned airedales had again stolen the glory. That night, when the recall order finally came from Spruance, he sent off a jovial note to Mitscher. It was too bad, he wrote, that the surface sailors wouldn’t have “Japanese scrambled eggs for breakfast.”

A battle with the
Yamato
task force would have been a glorious last hurrah for Deyo and his beloved battlewagons. The next day they would go back to their shore bombardment duties off Okinawa.

For Mitscher’s airedales, the destruction of the
Yamato
and five of her screening ships had not come without a price. Ten warplanes—four Helldivers, three Avengers, and three Hellcats—had been lost. Four pilots and eight aircrewmen were missing and
presumed dead. Several, including eyewitness Bill Delaney, had been snatched from the enemy’s midst by daring Dumbo crews. Still, the losses were minuscule when measured against those of the previous great air-sea battles. Mitscher’s airmen had won a spectacular victory.

Now Spruance could return his attention to the bigger picture. The
Yamato
encounter was dramatic, satisfying, perhaps even historically significant. But the pragmatic admiral knew the truth: it was a side show. The real battle for Okinawa was just beginning.

A
board
Eldorado
, Kelly Turner was in an ebullient mood. A week had passed since the landings on Okinawa, and as far as the Alligator was concerned, things were going exceedingly well. The
Yamato
and five of her entourage lay at the bottom of the East China Sea. The greatest wave of kamikazes ever seen had been gunned down like coveys of quail. Buckner’s Tenth Army was meeting only sporadic resistance in its march across Okinawa.

Turner couldn’t resist sending a jocular message to his boss, the Pacific Fleet commander in chief. “I may be crazy,” he signaled Nimitz, “but it looks like the Japanese have quit the war, at least in this sector.”

Nimitz wasn’t buying it. From his Guam headquarters, he signaled back, “
Delete all after ‘crazy.’ ”

As it turned out, Nimitz’s instincts were correct.