The Twilight Warriors (7 page)

T
hrough the autumn and into the gray winter of 1944, the new Corsair pilots drilled on gunnery, air-to-air tactics, night flying, and dive bombing. And they learned one of the grim statistics of the war: the Navy was losing nearly as many airplanes in accidents as they were in combat.

One day Erickson and a lieutenant named Al Blackman were practicing dive bombing on a target complex in the New Jersey marshes. They were flying a racetrack pattern, diving on the bull’s-eye target on the ground.

Erickson was behind Blackman when he saw something—an object, maybe a piece of the aircraft—come off Blackman’s airplane. The Corsair abruptly went into a flat spin. Erickson saw the canopy open, and he watched the tiny figure of Al Blackman trying to climb out.

He didn’t make it. The Corsair exploded into the ground, sending up a gush of oily black smoke.

Erickson was astonished. Blackman wasn’t a Tail End Charlie like Erickson. He was one of the guys who were supposed to know how to stay alive. Later, they learned what had happened. When Blackman’s Corsair pulled out of its dive, the starboard horizontal stabilizer separated from the tail. No one knew why, whether it was the result of previous damage or a flaw in construction, but Al Blackman had been doomed from the moment he entered the dive.

Erickson thought about it for a while.
If it could happen to him, it could happen to anyone. Even me
. Then he stopped thinking about it. If he let it bother him, he couldn’t do this job.

O
ne final challenge remained: the Big One—carrier qualification. Without the ability to launch and land back aboard a carrier, none of a Navy fighter pilot’s other skills counted. Until now, the Tail End Charlies’ belief in their own invincibility had not been shaken. They were still bulletproof. Landing the Corsair on a carrier was going to be a piece of cake.

Then they saw the carrier.

The USS
Core
was a “Jeep carrier,” an escort carrier converted from a merchant ship hull. Jeep carriers were intended to escort convoys and support amphibious landings. Their designation was CVE, which, according to their sailors, stood for “combustible, vulnerable, and expendable.”

Most of the pilots didn’t mind the day landings. They didn’t even mind the fact that they were out in the tossing Atlantic on a butt-freezing winter day, with a low cloud deck that was spitting rain and sleet. Beneath the clouds the visibility was okay, and in the landing pattern they would try to concentrate on the LSO—the landing signal officer—and ignore the fact that the
Core’s
stern was heaving up and down like a yo-yo in the heavy seas.

From his platform on the aft port deck edge, the LSO coached the pilot with a pair of “paddles”—canvas-covered signal boards—signaling whether the plane was too high or low, fast or slow, angling his outstretched arms one way or another to align the plane with the deck. When the airplane was over the deck edge, the LSO gave the “cut”—a paddle across his throat. The pilot chopped the throttle, and the airplane dropped like a dump truck onto the deck.

Carrier qualification was tough on the airplanes. Several blew their tires after especially hard landings. One of the Tail End Charlies bounced back into the air, coming down nose low and gouging a hunk of wood from the deck with the big three-bladed propeller. With amazing efficiency, the deck crew hauled the wounded birds to the forward deck and soon had most of them flying again.

As soon as a pilot got his three landings, he’d climb out of the seat and another would take his place. When Erickson’s turn came, he strapped into the still-running Corsair, ran through his cockpit checks, then gave the deck officer the signal that he was ready. When the deck officer swung his flag forward, pointing down the deck, Erickson shoved the throttle forward and released the brakes. Hurtling off the bow, Erickson nudged the Corsair’s nose up, and the big fighter lifted into the gray sky.

He turned downwind, passed abeam the carrier, and started his turning approach. He spotted the LSO, who was giving him a “roger”—paddles level, no urgent signals to add power or slow down. Nearing the blunt, unforgiving ramp of the ship, he saw the cut signal and yanked the throttle to idle. The Corsair thudded into the wooden deck, and Erickson felt the hard tug of the shoulder straps as the tailhook snagged a wire. Less than a minute later, he was roaring back into the sky.

Each pilot needed three landings for day qualification, then had to make two at night. After Erickson’s third day landing, he thought it was almost becoming fun.

Then came nightfall, and the fun ended.

I
t looked like the carrier had sailed into an inkwell. The only lights the pilots could see were the line-up lights on the landing deck, which were visible only within a cone of 12 degrees. German submarines were reportedly lurking off the U.S. Atlantic coast, so neither the
Core
nor her escorts were showing any running lights. The destroyers ahead and behind the carrier were each marked with a tiny blue light.

Everyone was having trouble. The LSO was waving off one pilot after another. Some were taking as many as five passes to get their first landing. To the pilots watching from the darkened deck, awaiting their turn, it looked dangerous as hell out there.

It was. While they watched, one of the Corsairs turning into the groove—the short final approach to the deck—abruptly wobbled
its wings. Before the LSO or anyone else could react, the fighter stalled and crashed into the fantail—the stern—of the carrier. There was a shuddering explosion, a brief orange flash, then nothing. The pilot, Lt. (jg) Larry Meade, was killed instantly.

Night operations were suspended—but not for long. Two hours before sunrise it was Erickson’s turn. After a botched first pass, he found his way through the murk and managed to land aboard. Then he repeated the process, completing his two required night landings. Following the director’s signals, he folded the fighter’s wings and taxied to the bow. Despite the freezing temperature, sweat steamed from beneath his helmet. Erickson knew he should have felt jubilant, but he wasn’t. He was just glad to be alive.

The next day the
Tail End Charlies said goodbye and good riddance to the
Core
. They were finished with training. The next time they saw a carrier, it would be the real thing—the USS
Intrepid
in the Pacific.

They were headed for the war. But first a tradition had to be observed.

P
artying was as much a part of squadron life as flying. Still, the historic Atlantic City bash would be discussed in hushed tones at reunions for the next half century. Most of the pilots had only blurred memories of the event, but one thing they agreed on later: it was probably a mistake to have invited everyone—especially the senior officers and their wives.

Of course, they should have known what to expect. The man responsible for planning the party was the squadron executive officer, Lt. Timmy Gile. Gile was an ace from the fighting in the Solomons, a bachelor, and a renowned hell-raiser.

The party started out fairly subdued, with the usual toasts and pronouncements. The officers were in their dress blues, their ladies wearing semiformal dresses. Then it gathered momentum. Gile had booked a sixteen-member female group called the
Philadelphia Debutantes. They were followed by the second act, a voluptuous stripper who went by the name of Toni the Tease.

By eleven o’clock most of the pilots were soused, the senior officers’ wives scandalized, and Timmy Gile’s place in squadron history secured. Not only had he organized the party to end all squadron parties, but he disappeared with Toni the Tease.

3
YOU ARE ALREADY GODS

MABALACAT AIR BASE, PHILIPPINES
OCTOBER 21, 1944

L
t. Yukio Seki took his place in the front rank, a step ahead of the others. Seki wore his flight suit, helmet, and goggles, with a billowing white scarf tied about his neck. Since dawn he and his pilots had been ready for departure.

Seki was exactly the kind of officer Admiral Ohnishi had been looking for to command the first official kamikaze unit. He was a graduate of the Eta Jima naval academy and had already distinguished himself as a gifted naval officer.

Now Seki had under his command twenty-four volunteer pilots, with twenty-six Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighters, given the American code name “Zeke.” The unit was divided into four sections, all with poetic names: Shikishima, a poetic name for Japan; Yamato, the ancient name for Japan; Asahi, the morning sun; Yamazakura, for mountain cherry blossoms.

Tears welled in Admiral Ohnishi’s eyes as he delivered the orders to the volunteers. “
You are already gods without earthly desires,” he said in a quavering voice. “But one thing you want to know is that your crash-dive is not in vain. Regrettably, we will not be able to tell you the results. But I shall watch your efforts to the end and report your deeds to the Throne.” They lined up for a farewell drink from a ceremonial container. Their fellow pilots took up an ancient Japanese warrior’s song:

The mournful notes of the song still hung in the air as the pilots manned their planes. Seki gave his commanding officer a folded paper, which contained strands of his hair. It was a traditional samurai gesture, a farewell gift to his fiancée and his recently widowed mother.

One after the other the Zeroes, each armed with a 250-kg. (551-lb.) bomb, roared down the runway and headed off for their targets.

And then returned.

They had combed the area where the enemy fleet was reported until their fuel was depleted, then returned to Mabalacat. Seki was mortified. With tears in his eyes he apologized for his failure.

The next day Seki sortied again—and once more returned. Four times this happened, day after day, because of the same problem. The weather over the Philippine Sea bedeviled them. With no radar and little reconnaissance support, the Zero pilots had to pick through the towering cumulonimbus clouds that swelled over the ocean. Every gray shadow and shaft of sunlight looked like a target. Each time they returned to Mabalacat in bitter disappointment.

Meanwhile, beyond their view in the Leyte Gulf, the greatest sea battle in history was unfolding.

S
ho-1 had begun. The ambitious Japanese operation—a three-pronged strike of surface ships—was converging on the American amphibious force at Leyte. Two separate Japanese surface forces were coming from the south, while Admiral Takeo Kurita’s northern force, led by the world’s mightiest battleships,
Yamato
and her sister ship
Musashi
, charged into the Sibuyan Sea, headed for the San Bernardino Strait. A fourth force, a decoy fleet of carriers with a smattering of warplanes, was positioned several
hundred miles northeast of the Philippines to draw Adm. William “Bull” Halsey’s carriers away from the fray.

In the early hours of October 25, 1944, the southern striking force, commanded by Admiral Shoji Nishimura, was wiped out in a classic night surface battle in the Surigao Strait before they could reach the critical Leyte landing ships. Kurita’s northern force was hammered in the Sibuyan Sea by U.S. carrier-based warplanes. By the end of the day,
Musashi
and a third of the force had been sunk. The pride of the Imperial Japanese Navy, the mighty
Yamato
, took two bomb hits but managed to control the damage and stay in the battle. Admiral Kurita reversed course, appearing to withdraw to the west from the battle.

Halsey had taken the bait. He sent his fast carriers roaring after the Japanese decoy carrier force, leaving the critical San Bernardino Strait unguarded. That night, Kurita again reversed course and passed through the strait. At dawn the Japanese force was bearing down on the virtually undefended fleet of escort carriers called Taffy Three.