March Anson and Scoot Bailey of the U.S. Navy

by Marshall McClintock

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  SCOOT MEETS TWO ZEROS

  Scoot Bailey lounged in the ready room of the aircraft carrier _BunkerHill_ as the big ship plunged through heavy seas at top speed. They hadbeen at sea for some weeks now, in company with a cruiser and threedestroyers, heading southwest from Pearl Harbor for scenes of battle.For the last two days the five ships had put on full steam, andeveryone aboard knew that something was up.

  “Something’s cooking up ahead,” Scoot said to Turk Bottomley, who satnext to him, legs stretched out on a straightback in front of him.

  “Obviously, my friend,” Turk said. “Something’s been cooking in thispart of the world almost all the time lately.”

  “I thought we’d be heading for the Marshalls and the Carolines,” Scootsaid, “to get in on the fighting there. But I guess they’ve got thingswell in hand in those parts. We’re well past them now, and to thesouth.”

  “No flying for two days now,” Turk said. “That’s what’s been botheringme. Before we got off once in a while for a look around, anyway. I wantto fly, that’s all. I won’t worry about where. Let the Admirals send mewhere they want me, but let me fly and fight when I get there—and, ifpossible, on the way, too.”

  “Gee, I thought I loved flying,” Scoot said, with a laugh, “but I neverheld a candle to you.”

  “Yeah, I even resent walkin’,” Turk said. “Seems like I should’ve hadwings instead of legs—just for gettin’ around short distances. I’dstill want that Grumman Hellcat for longer jumps.”

  “They’re sweet ships, all right,” Scoot said. “I used to dream offlying a Wildcat—thought there just couldn’t be anything better thanthat. And I still thought so when I finally flew one off the trainingcarrier. She was an old one, but still a Wildcat. Then when I get hereon the _Bunker Hill_, I find the brand new F6F’s—and Hellcat is theright name. They’re what a Wildcat pilot dreams up as impossiblyperfect when he thinks about what kind of plane he’ll have in Heaven.”

  “Poetic, now, aren’t you, Scoot?” Turk said. “I can’t put wordstogether that way, but it sounds nice when you talk about planes.Sometimes, when you get real excited, you almost talk the way I feel.”

  Suddenly they sat up, as did the four or five others in the large room.Other pilots began to pile into the room followed by most of thebig-shot officers on the ship.

  “Oh-oh—here it comes!” Scoot said. “Now we’ll find out. It looks like abriefing.”

  There were fighter pilots, the pilots, gunners and observers of torpedoand scout dive bombers, and the squadron leaders of each group,accompanied by the particular vice-admiral in command of the force nowracing across the Pacific. This rugged, beetle-browed gentleman lostlittle time in getting down to business. Addressing the flying officersbefore him while other officers hung a huge map on the wall behind, hequickly gave them the information they wanted.

  “You’ve all known we’ve been heading for something as fast as we couldget there,” he said, in clipped tones. “Now I can tell you, becausewe’ve made speed and are not far away. Within a few hours we shouldcontact other carriers and ships going to the same objective. Thatobjective is the Jap Naval base at Truk.”

  There was a gasp of surprise throughout the room as the Admiral pausedfor a second.

  “There’s a mighty fine batch of ships in Truk Harbor,” he said, “and,we have reason to believe, not too much protection. Carriers—andthere’ll be six of them—will go in close enough to launch all planes.Battleships, cruisers, and destroyers will go in closer.”

  Turk Bottomley was sitting on the edge of his chair, as if he wouldbound from the room and race to his plane in a second, but the Admiralcontinued.

  “The time is now about 1600. We shall rendezvous with the others of thetask force at about 2030. You will take off on a schedule your squadroncommanders will give you beginning at 0430, arriving over Truk aboutdawn—the first wave, that is. All scout and torpedo planes will go toTruk, one-half the fighters will remain as protection with or near thecarrier. Your squadron commanders will go over all necessary detailswith you now. That is all.”

  The Admiral stalked from the room, and the commanders prepared to goover all details. They launched at once into detailed descriptions ofthe objective, the schedule of flights.

  “If we’ve figured right,” one of them said, “we’ll stick around twodays, throwing in wave after wave. We must meet our schedule because itties in precisely with the schedules of the other carriers in thegroup. We’ll not give them a minute to catch their breath. There’ll beplanes coming at them continuously.”

  For two hours the briefing session continued. Photographs and maps wereshown, man after man asked questions. Finally every flier felt that heknew Truk and its environs as he knew his own home town. Then came theannouncement of the fliers who would remain with the carrier instead ofgoing to the attack on Truk and there were groans about the room as menheard their names called.

  “One minute,” the fighter squadron commander called. “I think the OldMan gave a wrong impression. The names I’m calling won’t stay with thecarrier both days. They’ll stay behind the first day but go on to theattack the second day, while the first group remains with the carrier.”

  Groans turned to laughter, but Turk Bottomley was furious. He was goingout the first day, but he wanted to go out the second day, too. He madehis feelings known in no uncertain terms.

  “Never mind, Turk,” the commander laughed. “You can go up and flyaround and around the _Bunker Hill_ all day!”

  So it was that Turk flew off in the dark morning hours, while ScootBailey stayed behind envying those lucky men whose names had beenopposite the odd numbers on the list instead of the even. As planeafter plane rolled across the heaving deck of the flat-top and roaredoff into the overcast sky, Scoot muttered under his breath, wishingthat each one might have been his.

  Dawn came and there was no word. Scoot went up with half a dozen otherfighters to keep eyes on the sea, to attack any Japanese craft thatcame through to get them. But for hours there was no sign of aplane—either of the enemy or of their own.

  Then Scoot, just after he had landed again, heard them far away—theroar of many powerful engines. And in a moment he saw the tiny specksthat raced so fast they soon became planes circling in mighty sweepsaround the carrier. The first one came in as the signalman waved hispaddles for a landing. Deck men and the fighter pilots who were not upin the air lined the edge of the deck, and officers crowded the bridge.As the first pilot scrambled from his plane, the deck crew grabbed it,folded its wings, and raced it back to the elevator so the next planecould land.

  In a moment the pilot was talking—and in a few minutes he was joined byanother, then another and another.

  “We caught ’em with their pants down!” the first yelled. “Flatfooted.We caught ’em right on the airfields! They couldn’t get off.”

  “And when the bombers came in,” cried the next, “they had a clearfield. How those boys dove! Oil tanks blew up! Ships strewn all overthe place, clogging up the harbor!”

  One after another the pilots told their stories while mechanics checkedtheir engines, filled the tanks with gas, the guns with ammunition.They all told of how the Japs had been taken by surprise, how planeafter plane had been wrecked on the field, how torpedo planes andscout-dive bombers came in with little more than scattered antiaircraftfire to get in their way.

  “We’ve hardly lost a plane so far!” one said. “And have we got planesaround there! I haven’t seen so many planes since I was at CorpusChristi—but these are not trainers. Fighters, torpedo planes,bombers—coming in like flocks of wild geese. Why, I was just as worriedtrying not to bump into some of our own craft as by any opposition theJaps put up. The Old Man must be mighty happy. Has he got full reports?”

  “He’s gettin’ ’em first-hand right this minute!” the executive officerof the carrier replied. “He’s up there himself in a scout, looking overthe
whole business. And you can bet your bottom dollar he’s thehappiest man on earth!”

  “What was prettiest,” another joined in, “was seeing the planes fromthe other carriers coming in. From every direction! We were in thefirst wave, and just as we pulled up and away, there they came—wavenumber two from the northeast, and a little farther away wave numberthree from the southeast. You had to hurry and do your job so you couldget out of the way of the next batch coming along.”

  “Where’s Turk Bottomley?” Scoot asked. “Did any of you see him?”

  “I saw him circling around for another go at one of the airfields,” atorpedo-plane pilot said. “At least I think it was Turk’s Hellcat Isaw. He was joining up with the second wave and going in again.”

  “He ought to be back by now,” someone said. “All the other fighters arein—except Tommy Mixler. I saw him go down in the harbor. Ack-ack.”

  There was a moment’s silence at this unwanted mention of a casualty, ofa friend they’d see no more, and then—as if they were forcibly clearingtheir minds of any such thoughts—the pilots went on chattering again.Their planes were almost ready for them to take off again when they allsaw a lone fighter circling the ship. Zooming his engine and doing abeautiful wing-over turn, the pilot brought his plane around into thewind for a landing on the heaving deck of the carrier.

  “That’s Turk, all right,” Scoot said. “Home from the wars.”

  And it was Turk, almost out of gas and completely out of ammunition. Hehad stayed around as long as he could, and now he wanted to be offagain within five minutes. As soon as his plane was shoved out of theway where it could be checked and get its new supplies of gas andammunition, the fighters who had come in earlier began to take offagain. They were off on schedule, going in for their second attack onJapan’s Pearl Harbor of the Pacific!

  All day long it went on, with Scoot and the others staying aloft, onthe alert for the Jap planes that would surely come through to attackthem. No matter how great the surprise, some planes would get off theairfields at Truk and others would race in from other Jap strongholds.They would go for the carriers first, of course, for the flat-tops werethe big prizes. With the base ship gone, the planes would be lostwithout a “home” to return to.

  _Some Fighters Stayed With the Carrier_]

  But Scoot searched in vain through the skies as the afternoon turned toevening. The _Bunker Hill’s_ own planes came back for the last time butstill no Japs appeared. Scoot was raging—all day long without a crackat a Jap! And they were right in the heart of what the Nips consideredtheir private ocean!

  “Is there anything left of Truk for us to get?” he asked that night.“Didn’t everything get blasted off the map?”

  “There’ll be plenty left for everybody,” the squadron commanderreplied. “We’ve got half the ships in the harbor and we’ll get most ofthe rest tomorrow. Some of them scattered and ran but the boys from thecarriers to the north are catching them. There are emergency airfieldsaround that will be in use tomorrow, and you can be sure that there’llbe planes from other Jap garrisons in this area. You boys will have afight on your hands tomorrow all right.”

  “We’d better have!” Scoot exclaimed. “Imagine! Not a lousy Jap showedup today!”

  It was with grim anger that Scoot took off the next morning, revelingin the almost unlimited power of his Hellcat as it roared up into theblue skies and circled, heading for Truk. Scoot was in the squadronleader’s group, and their objective was the big airfield south of thecity. The Japs would have been working on it all night, despiteconstant attacks by the bombers, and they’d have at least one landingstrip in shape for their planes to get off. The fighters were to strafethe field, then go up as protective cover for the dive bombers. Thesewould be coming into the harbor right after them, to get the rest ofthe ships that still lay there.

  Roaring low over the choppy waters of the Pacific, the speedy planesraced toward the tiny group of islands that the Japs had made into agreat naval fortress, a fortress that was being knocked to pieces byAmerican planes.

  As they approached the island, Scoot saw ahead several Americanships—two cruisers and half a dozen destroyers.

  “They’re doing it, boys,” his squadron leader’s voice came over theradio. “The surface ships are moving in close to shell the island!”

  Scoot almost laughed in happiness. It was daring enough for Americancarriers to penetrate supposedly Japanese waters and give a pasting totheir impregnable fort. Carriers could stay a couple of hundred milesout while their planes flew in to the attack. And they were fast shipswhich could get away in a hurry if they needed to. But here were thebig-gun ships moving to within fifteen or twenty miles to shell theisland. And the Jap Navy was either hiding or running away—in its ownback yard!

  The fighter planes gunned their engines in greeting as they passed theAmerican ships, and Scoot could see the crews waving and laughinghappily on the decks of the ships.

  “They’ll start their shelling just about the time the dive bombersfinish the first part of their job,” Scoot guessed. “And when they’vepounded away a couple of hours the bombers will come back in again foranother attack.”

  Up ahead lay the island. At better than three hundred miles an hour thehuge flight of fighters went over the shore, heading straight for theairfield. They paid no attention to the twenty or thirty Jap fightershigh above them, did not even notice the bursts, of ack-ack shells thatpuffed around and ahead of them. They were too low and traveling toofast for ack-ack to be very effective or accurate—and as for thoseZeros, the American planes would take care of them in just a fewminutes.

  Scoot saw the airfield up ahead, saw Jap planes on the runways ready totake off. And the next minute he was roaring over the field, not thirtyfeet above the runway, watching the Jap ground crews running for cover,seeing a few firing rifles futilely into the air at the speedingplanes. He pressed the machine-gun button and felt the slight backwardpush to the plane as the battery of fifty caliber machine guns pouredout its converging fire of destruction. Jap after Jap, fleeing towardthe hangars, was cut down in his tracks. Scoot concentrated a terrificburst of fire on the plane directly ahead of him, saw a flash as itcaught fire, then pulled up and away with a shout that could have beenheard half a mile away had not the air been filled with the roar ofpowerful engines.

  He circled and came back over the field the other way, this timedipping to pour a hail of lead into the open doors of a hangar.

  “How did the other boys happen to leave that one standing?” Scootwondered. “The others are all down in ruins.” It was not easy todemolish a big hangar with a fighting plane, so Scoot left that for thebombers, knowing that he had taken care of a few Japs huddling insidethe building and had put forty or fifty holes in the plane standingnear the front.

  After one more sweep over the field, he pointed his Hellcat’s nose atthe sun and climbed. But there was something up there on the sun, hethought, looking intently. Sunspots? What a funny thing to think of ata moment like this. He’d hardly be noticing sunspots—but he _would_almost instinctively notice Jap Zeros when they were diving at him outof the sun.

  “That’s what they are!” Scoot exclaimed. “But they made one bigmistake. They thought we were going to strafe the field a couple moretimes and they’d come down on us out of the sun while we were busydoing it. I’ll bet they’re confused now, seeing us coming right up atthem head-on.”

  The first groups of the fighter squadrons were all aiming for theclouds after their attack on the field, while the next groups werecarrying on the strafing job. And Scoot knew, too, that two groups werehigh in the air, serving as cover for just such a Jap attack.

  “Those Nips may not know it,” he muttered to himself, “but I’ll betthere’s a flock of Hellcats coming out of the sun right behind ’em.”

  The Zeros were larger now, growing larger every minute as they diveddown at the formations of American planes trying to climb away from thefield. It looked as if all the planes were determined
to crash head-oninto each other at the greatest possible speed.

  Scoot heard a short command come over the radio from his squadronleader. He grinned.

  “Just what I thought he’d do,” he told himself, and then shoved thestick hard to the right, as he pulled back on the throttle. TheAmerican group split, half going to the right, half to the left, in amaneuver so sudden and sharp that the Japs in their Zeros could hardlybelieve their eyes at seeing planes which had been almost in theirgunsights disappear so quickly. They still thought that their lightlyarmored Zeros were the most highly maneuverable planes in the world.They’d not had much experience yet with the new Hellcats.

  Scoot’s wing tipped sharply, and the craft seemed to stall. Then,giving her the gun again, he flipped completely over. He knew that theJaps, in that part of a second, would have roared past the spot he hadjust been in and now the American planes could chase _them_ on downtoward the field, coming in from the side and rear.

  “There they are!” Scoot cried. “Just about set up in position!”

  The first Jap planes were pulling up desperately from their dive,attempting to get back in position to meet the attack of the Americans.Scoot picked the leading Jap plane, got it in his sights and roared upon it from a little below. He held his fire, held it a fraction of asecond longer, then pushed the fire-control button with a vicious jabthat almost drove it out of its socket.

  Black smoke crept back from the Zero, then flame which fast grew into ahuge sheet of fire enveloping the entire craft. It slowed, seemed tostagger a moment in the air. Losing power at once because of itsclimbing position, it twisted and turned.

  As Scoot pulled up and away, he kept his eye on the blazing Zero as itfell—at first lazily, then faster and faster—toward the ground.

  “Is it going to—Yes, by golly!” Scoot cried as the flaming planecrashed into the huge hangar still standing at the edge of the Japfield below. There was a roar of fire, a great cloud of black smoke andScoot threw back his head and laughed loud and long.

  “Who said a fighter couldn’t take care of a hangar?” he demanded. “Whydid I think I had to leave it for the bombers? Boy, oh boy, is thatgood?”

  “That’s puttin’ ’em in the right pocket, Scoot!” It was the voice ofhis squadron leader over the radio. “But watch out behind you! A littlesneak attack coming!”

  Yes, there were two Japs coming in on him. Now where did they comefrom, Scoot wondered. But he didn’t spend much time on that questionfor he had other things to do. If these Japs weren’t familiar enoughwith what the new Hellcats could do he’d show ’em. So, instead ofdiving to get away, as he knew they expected, he put his fighter into asteep climb that pulled him up toward the clouds as if a giant hand hadreached down and grabbed him.

  That took the first Jap by surprise, as Scoot hoped, but the second hadjust enough time to meet the maneuver. As Scoot closed in on the first,he knew that the second was coming in behind him. He concentrated onone thing at a time. Maybe, he thought, he could take care of the firstone fast and get away quickly enough. With a roar of speed, he broughtthe first Jap into range, opened fire, saw smoke, and waited no longer.He plunged into a diving turn, looked back over his shoulder and sawthe second Jap ship already plunging earthward in a cloud of smoke.

  “Who did that?” Scoot demanded, almost to himself.

  “I did, my friend!” It was Turk Bottomley’s voice.

  “What are you doing here?” Scoot demanded.

  “No Jap planes showed up at the carrier,” Scoot said, “so the Old Manlet a few of us come over to have some fun. I just got here.”

  “And just in time, lad,” Scoot said. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Turk laughed. “The pleasure was all mine.”

  So that is how Scoot managed to paint two little Jap flags on the sideof his plane the next day, as the _Bunker Hill_ steamed westward, awayfrom a smoking and flaming Truk.

  “That’s something like it!” Scoot exclaimed to himself. “I’ll bet poorold March isn’t having any fun like this, cooped up in that stuffysubmarine.”

  It was at that moment that March was listening with pleasure to theexplosion of the _Kamongo’s_ torpedoes against the sides of a Japtanker at Wake Island.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------