The Twilight Warriors (45 page)

W
hile the Grim Reapers of VF-10 were lighting up the sky over the picket ships, their sister squadron, VBF-10, was doing what the air-to-mud fighters had always done—diving through fire and flak to hit targets on the ground.

It was a dirty, dangerous job. As he usually did, air group commander Johnny Hyland had assigned himself to lead the twelve-plane strike on Kokubu, a Japanese airfield on the southern tip of Kyushu. Intelligence reports indicated that Kokubu had become a nest for the kamikazes that were savaging the picket ships.

Six of the fighter-bombers were carrying 500-pound general-purpose bombs, while the others carried clusters of the new 5-inch Holy Moses rockets. As expected, the Japanese put up a curtain of antiaircraft fire. The familiar roiling black puffs were already blossoming around each Corsair as they rolled into their dives. Also as expected, the enemy airplanes were well concealed beneath camouflage or in sheltered revetments.

Not well enough. By the time the Corsairs expended their bombs and rockets, a trio of two-engine Mitsubishi Ki-57 “Topsy” transports had been destroyed, and nine other warplanes, mostly Zeroes, had been transformed into flaming hulks. Ten more single-engine airplanes were damaged enough that they wouldn’t soon be used as kamikazes.

Pulling off the target, Hyland gathered his fighter-bombers for the trip back home. But when he counted planes, he was one short. One of his Tail End Charlies, Ens. Ernest “Red” Bailey, was missing.

No one had seen Bailey go down. No one had heard a distress call. Gazing back in the direction of Kokubu, they could see the columns of black smoke rising from the airfield. One of them, in all likelihood, was coming from the wreckage of Red Bailey’s Corsair.

Hyland turned his flight to the south, leaving Japan behind them. While the Corsairs droned back to the south, a heavy silence settled over the tactical frequency, each pilot alone with his thoughts. It was a somber end to what was otherwise a perfectly
executed strike. Red Bailey was another of the Texas contingent, a newlywed who had gone to Rice University before leaving early to join the Navy. He had become the fifth VBF-10 pilot lost in combat since the squadron arrived off Okinawa.

When they were still five miles east of Kikai, Lt. Paul Cordray’s voice broke the silence. He had spotted two Zeroes dead ahead. Someone else called out eight more, 3,000 feet above them.

The Corsairs still had ammunition left. Splitting his divisions, Hyland led the attack from one side while Cordray took the other. Another fight was on.

P
aul Cordray was already an ace. He was a tall, broad-shouldered Texan, another of the VF-17 veterans of the Solomons campaign who had been drafted by Will Rawie for his new squadron. Cordray was also considered by most of the Tail End Charlies to be the best fighter pilot in the squadron.

Now he proved why. Slashing into one of the Zeroes, Cordray put his first burst into the fuselage and wing roots. It was enough. The Japanese fighter burst into flame and did a wingover straight into the water.

Another division leader, Lt. Ralph “Go” Goetter, was chasing an Oscar fighter through a hard left turn. Firing a long burst well ahead of the Oscar’s nose, he watched his tracers arc back into the Japanese fighter. Seconds later, trailing flame and smoke, the Oscar plunged into the ocean.

It was clear that these Japanese airmen hadn’t been trained as fighter pilots. “They used very little evasive action,” Goetter wrote in his action report, “and didn’t return our fire.”

Eager to add another kill to his own record, Johnny Hyland tailed in behind one of the Zeroes. He fired several bursts directly into the Zero’s tail. To his amazement, the bullets seemed to have no effect. Hyland fired again. Still nothing. It was mystifying. The Japanese fighter kept flying straight ahead as if he were bulletproof.

Abruptly the Zero made a left turn. Hyland’s wingman, Ens.
Eldon Brooks, saw his chance. Like a dog after a rabbit, he cut inside the Zero’s turn, firing one short burst into the Japanese fighter’s fuselage.

The Zero burst into flame.

Watching the Zero go into the ocean, Hyland couldn’t believe it. Not that he begrudged his wingman getting the kill—that’s what air-to-air combat was all about—but why hadn’t the damned Zero gone down when
he
shot it?

He was still in a fit of pique when he wrote his after-action report. “There is in this attack some evidence that this plane, apparently a kamikaze, was especially well armored and protected,” he wrote. “From previous experience, this plane was expected to burn much sooner than it did.”

An especially well-armored Zero?
It didn’t seem likely, but no one in the strike group, least of all a Tail End Charlie like Eldon Brooks, was foolish enough to say so.

Brooks wasn’t the only Tail End Charlie to draw blood. Ensigns Paul Pavlovich and Tom Boucher also seized the moment, picking off a Zero and a Tony from the wave of southbound kamikazes.

With their ammunition spent and the kamikazes scattered, Hyland again turned his group southward. The hour-and-a-half flight back to the
Intrepid
gave everyone time to think. The same silence fell over the eleven remaining Corsairs.

For Hyland, it was a time of mixed emotions. He had a special relationship with his young pilots. Losing a kid like Red Bailey over Kokubu was painful. But he also had reason to feel gratified. He had been one of the early advocates of using the Corsair in the dual roles of fighter and ground attack.

Today’s mission was the ultimate proof that he was right. His strike group had destroyed a dozen enemy airplanes on the ground. Minutes later they’d shot five more out of the air. The age of the fighter-bomber had arrived.

F
or the Tail End Charlies, the morning of April 16 held one more moment of glory. A four-plane flight of the most junior officers in VBF-10—each one an ensign, the lowest officer’s rank in the Navy—had intercepted a wave of kamikazes headed directly for
Intrepid
’s task group.

Led by Ens. Freddie Lanthier, the Corsairs pounced on the low-flying kamikazes. Lanthier brought down the first one, a bomb-carrying Zero, with a short burst. Less than a minute later, he repeated the feat, shooting down a second with another quick burst.

His fellow Tail End Charlies were doing just as well. Loren McDonald caught a Zero at 5,000 feet and put a single long burst into him from behind. As the Zero went into a shallow glide, McDonald eased alongside. He could see the dead pilot lying against the instrument panel. McDonald escorted the Zero until it smacked into the ocean.

Ens. Robert “Pappy” Sweet pulled behind a bogey that was clearly not a kamikaze. It was a snooper—a Nakajima C6N1 “Myrt” reconnaissance plane—and it was there to provide guidance for the incoming kamikazes.

And then Sweet discovered something else different about the Myrt: it carried a tail gunner. For several seconds Sweet and the gunner exchanged fire, both missing, until Sweet pulled up and to the side, out of the gunner’s range. Then he swept back down in a pursuit curve, making himself a hard target while he blasted the snooper out of the sky.

With fuel and ammunition nearly expended, the exhilarated fighter pilots landed back aboard
Intrepid
. Safely back in their low-ceilinged, smoky ready rooms, they relived the life-and-death moments of combat, doing their usual nonstop gesturing and jabbering. It had been a history-making day—and it was only half over. The two Corsair squadrons had gunned down forty-two Japanese airplanes, with one more probable.

The list of aces—pilots with five or more kills—was growing.
And they weren’t just the veterans like Kirkwood and Cordray and Clarke. Several of the Tail End Charlies—guys including Lerch, Quiel, and Heath—had become aces, some, including Lerch, achieving fame in one spectacular mission.

But not all aces were equal, at least in the opinion of some. A few pilots groused that it was one thing to slide in behind a flock of slow-moving Nates or Vals and blast them out of the sky. It was quite another matter to go head-to-head with the escorting Zeke and George fighters, which were often flown by combat-hardened Japanese fighter pilots. Winning a one-on-one dogfight was in a different class from exterminating a clueless suicider.

Most had the sense to keep their mouths shut, at least in the ready room. By now they all knew the hard truth: aerial combat was a fickle business. The type of enemy airplane that happened to fill your gunsight was the luck of the draw. When the war was over and the roster of aces was published, no one would care what kind of airplanes you’d shot down. Only the numbers counted.

At 1327, the chatter in the ready rooms abruptly ceased. The klaxon was sounding. Over the bullhorn came the order for
Intrepid
’s crew to man their battle stations.

Kamikazes were inbound. Five had already slipped through the CAP and antiaircraft screens.

31
TARGET
INTREPID

TASK FORCE 58
125 MILES NORTHWEST OF OKINAWA
APRIL 16, 1945

I
ntrepid’s
guns were firing. By now, everyone knew the sequence. When you heard the rumbling blast of the 5-inchers, it meant that the kamikaze was still at long range. He hadn’t yet zeroed in on a target, and every ship in the task group was tracking him. Then came the stuttering
pom-pom-pom
of the shorter-range 40-millimeter Bofors guns. That was worrisome. The kamikaze was coming closer. He was headed for
Intrepid
.

When you heard the staccato rattle of the 20-millimeters, you stopped in your tracks and stared up at the gray steel overhead. The kamikaze was
very
close. “Close enough to hit with a beer can,” observed radarman Ray Stone, whose battle station was in the ship’s combat information center.

Stone was 19, a high school graduate who had gone directly from Navy boot camp to Fleet Radar School at Virginia Beach, Virginia. He had been aboard
Intrepid
since her commissioning in August 1943. Forever embedded in Stone’s memory was what had happened off the Philippines the previous November. Two kamikazes, six minutes apart, had crashed through the flight deck and exploded on the hangar deck below. Thirty-two men, mostly radarmen on standby duty, were killed instantly in Ready Room 4 on the gallery deck.

Stone was worried about a repeat performance. His duty station in CIC was on that same gallery deck. “If the flight deck had a target painted on it,” he recalled, “the meatball in the center would be right over CIC. The wooden flight deck and thin steel
ceiling above us wouldn’t stop much.
One day, I thought, one of these bastards is going to hit the bull’s eye and that will be it.”

On the flight deck, plane captain Felix Novelli was having the same morbid thoughts. He’d been aboard
Intrepid
since the carrier left Alameda in February. This morning Novelli had watched his assigned Corsair lumber off the deck on another mission. Now, as he always did, he was waiting for it to return.

Like everyone above deck, Novelli was wearing his steel gray battle helmet. The steady din of the antiaircraft guns was beating against his eardrums. Out there over the water, surrounded by the black antiaircraft bursts, he could see the ominous specks.
Kamikazes
. While Novelli watched, the specks came closer. They were threading their way through the web of gunfire.

The first was a pointy-nosed Ki-61 Tony fighter. The Tony was in a 20-degree glide directly toward
Intrepid
’s bow. The carrier’s forward 5-inch batteries were firing, having no apparent effect. At 3,000 yards range, the 40-millimeters opened up. Still nothing. Just in time, the 20-millimeters rattled, tracers closing around the kamikaze, splashing it close off
Intrepid
’s starboard bow.

Then came the second. This one was a round-nosed Zero fighter, also zooming in from dead ahead. The combined fire of all the ships in
Intrepid
’s task group took him apart, cartwheeling him into the sea off the carrier’s port quarter.