Flyboys

by James Bradley

  “The most dangerous time is when you’re just hanging out, going slow,” said Robert Akerblom. “Once you’re in the dive, you feel the speed and it relieves the tension.”

  “We had to keep circling until the others made their dives,” Leland Holdren said. “As you circle, you fly away from the optimum point from which to make your dive. If you dive relatively straight down over the target, you go in fast. But we were circling wide, and when it came time to make our dives, we dove in a less severe angle and didn’t generate as much speed as the guys before us.”

  Leland began his dive into the flak with Fred Rohlfing and Floyd following behind. “When the antiaircraft fire comes up,” said fighter pilot Alfred Bolduc, “you see little red dots. When they get closer, they’re about the size of a baseball bat diameter. They’re coming at you by the hundreds.”

  Two of those hundreds of red dots found their mark: Both Fred’s and Floyd’s planes were hit. Rohlfing’s Avenger burst into flame and he, radioman Carrol Hall, and gunner Joe Notary never made it out.

  Floyd’s plane did not catch fire, but it was fatally damaged and it was all he could do to make a safe water landing. Leland had flown off at the completion of his run, and since Floyd’s was the last plane, no one saw him or his crew land in the water. Letters from the navy to the parents of the three downed boys would later say that the probability of their having survived the landing “was extremely low.”

  But Floyd, Marve, and Glenn made it out of the plane safely and inflated their Mae Wests. They were wet, cold, and scared, but they were alive. They had landed between Chichi Jima and Ani Jima, a small uninhabited spit of land hardly big enough to have its own name. For some reason, Glenn split off from the other two and made his way to Ani Jima, while Floyd and Marve swam to Chichi Jima.

  Floyd and Marve were now in the same general area that George Bush had found himself in six months earlier, though George had landed a bit farther out. Soldiers standing on the same cliffs where Nobuaki Iwatake had observed George’s rescue now saw Floyd and Marve in the water. Fisherman Maikawa Fukuichiro and Warrant Officer Saburo Soya were told to bring the Americans in. They paddled out about a hundred yards and found Floyd and Marve in the frigid water, “almost half paralyzed and . . . on the point of sinking,” as Fukuichiro later recalled. “Their lips were blue and they looked cold.”

  On the beach, the boys were allowed to warm themselves by a fire. Floyd was dressed in his one-piece flight suit and Marve was down to his white woolen long johns. Warrant Officer Soya told Fukuichiro to phone the headquarters of the 308th Battalion. The officer on the other end of the line ordered the flyers brought to the 308th, which would get credit for their capture.

  At the 308th Battalion headquarters, the soldiers searched the prisoners and relieved Floyd of his pistol and Marve of his survival knife. These trophies were dispatched to Major Matoba.

  But soon everyone on the island had to take cover once again. More waves of Flyboys were approaching. Floyd and Marve were bundled into an air-raid shelter.

  Major Matoba retreated to his cave. As the falling bombs exploded in the sunshine outside, Matoba examined Floyd’s pistol and Marve’s knife. In the blackness, the major ran his hands over the Flyboys’ possessions as he drank and thought.

  The swarms of carrier planes kept the island hopping that day.

  “The February eighteenth raids were the fiercest air raids we experienced,” said antiaircraft gunner Usaki. “During the day about a thousand planes raided the island. As antiaircraft personnel, we were almost always at our battle stations and at night we also had to go to battle stations. We were very tired and every chance we got we slept in the quarters but stayed on the alert.”

  The gunners were tired but dedicated. “We often had to eat our meals at our positions,” said Lieutenant Jitsuro Suyeyoshi. To the Flyboys, it seemed the emperor’s gunners didn’t pause for a bite. “There was so much flak, you could walk on it,” said Robert Akerblom. Ralph Sengewalt added, “It looked like every tree on the island was firing at us.”

  And still the Flyboys came. Pilot Jesse Naul was flying behind Bob Cosbie’s plane, which in turn was to the right of Bob King’s Avenger, with Jimmy Dye and Grady York aboard. Jesse later told me what happened:

  We came in at about nine thousand feet and we were getting ready to go into our dive. I was behind Cosbie’s plane. Suddenly, antiaircraft fire shot Cosbie’s right wing off. His plane went into a clockwise spin, spinning clockwise down toward the right, where his wing had been.

  Cosbie’s plane flipped upside down and went sideways. It slammed into King’s plane. Cosbie’s left wing hit King’s plane between the turret and the vertical stabilizer. At the same time, Cosbie’s propeller hit King’s left wing and chewed off four feet of it.

  King’s plane then went into a spin. King thought they would crash, so he told his crew to bail out. Jimmy and Grady bailed out. My crew yelled, “We see two chutes.”

  King had his seat belt off, fixing to bail out, and to his surprise, he got the plane straight. He “caught it,” meaning he caught the spin and righted the plane. He kept flying.

  As Grady and Jimmy bailed out, Cosbie’s Avenger went into a fatal spin. Cosbie, gunner Lou Gerig, and radioman Gil Reynolds never made it out. Jesse Naul speculated on what their last minutes might have been like:

  Cosbie went into his spin at nine to ten thousand. His plane just spun and spun. Let’s say they were all alive when the plane went into that spin. Even though they were healthy American males, the centrifugal force would have pinned them to the walls and they wouldn’t have been able to get out.

  If they were conscious, they knew what was happening and were fighting to get out. They’d be trying to unhook their seat belts and pop the doors off, but they wouldn’t have been able to get out of their seats.

  When a loaded seventeen-thousand-pound plane is spinning, it creates a lot of force. It’s like a saucer at an amusement park that is spinning and pinning you back. It’s the same thing. The force of the spin would force them to remain in the position they were in when they started going down. Finally, they smacked into the water and that was it.

  Jimmy and Grady floated down in the midst of exploding shells. “Their chutes were surrounded by antiaircraft bursts,” recalled Joe Bonn. “I dismissed them as shot up, dead.” But amazingly, the two crewmen landed safely just off shore.

  “We flew down to drop them a life raft,” Ralph Sengewalt said, “but we didn’t drop it because we could see Jimmy and Grady in knee-deep water, walking toward the shore. We thought they’d be prisoners and they’d be safe—at least that was our hope.”

  Now there were four Flyboys in Japanese hands on Chichi Jima—Floyd Hall, Marve Mershon, Jimmy Dye, and Grady York. Glenn Frazier was huddled in the bushes across the channel on uninhabited Ani Jima.

  Floyd and Marve were held at the 308th Battalion headquarters for the rest of the day and overnight. Jimmy and Grady were captured by the 275th Battalion and taken to General Tachibana’s headquarters.

  Captain Kimitomi Nishiyotsutsuji remembered that General Tachibana encouraged anyone who wanted to beat the two bound nineteen-year-olds to do so. The general further warned that anyone who protected the boys by putting them in an air-raid shelter, or was lenient with them in any way, would face his wrath.

  The next day, Monday, February 19, Jimmy and Grady were taken to Major Yoshitaka Horie’s headquarters. Major Horie could speak some English and he interrogated them. Glenn remained hidden in the bushes on Ani Jima. At night he must have shivered in the winter cold. He had a canteen full of water, no food, and only a little hope.

  Early in the morning of the nineteenth, Floyd and Marve were taken from the 308th Battalion to General Tachibana’s headquarters, with a stop to visit Lieutenant Jitsuro Suyeyoshi’s regiment. Suyeyoshi and the 308th both had a claim on the prisoners and they would later discuss who got to kill which one.

  Floyd and Marve were tied up outside a guardhouse for th
ree and one half hours, from 6:30 A.M. to 10:00 A.M. There, anyone who wanted to absorb some Yamato damashii kicked and slapped the two defenseless boys.

  Lieutenant Suyeyoshi admired the way the two Flyboys stoically endured their punishment. He ordered his men to assemble in front of the prisoners. “I offered them a drink of whiskey from my hip flask and a cigarette,” Suyeyoshi said, “and then I turned around to the enlisted men in the crowd and told them, ‘These two flyers were working for their country and they are brave men, and I expect all of you to take an example from them.’”

  But respect did not mean mercy. American bombs had killed some of Suyeyoshi’s men the day before and he wanted revenge. Later that afternoon, Suyeyoshi spoke to Matoba about the casualties and the major promised retribution. “Lieutenant Suyeyoshi wanted a flyer to execute in order to show his men that they were personally responsible for shooting down a plane or a flyer, and to give them more fighting spirit and to build morale,” Matoba said.

  Floyd and Marve were loaded back into a truck and taken to Tachibana’s headquarters so the general could get a few licks in. But before he had a chance, an air-raid siren sounded and Tachibana turned to scurry to his protective cave. One soldier moved toward Floyd and Marve to untie them and bring them into a shelter. General Tachibana noticed and barked, “Why are you fooling around there? We do not care if they die or not.”

  Later that day, Floyd and Marve were moved to Major Horie’s headquarters for interrogation, where they joined Jimmy and Grady. Floyd and Marve had flown off the USS Randolph, Jimmy and Grady belonged to the USS Bennington. Here they would meet for the first time, tied up and watched by guards. They were four kichiku in Japanese hands—four Flyboys in big trouble.

  After Jimmy and Grady had bailed out of their plane, pilot Bob King had flown back to the carrier at an altitude of one thousand feet accompanied by other squadron planes. All who saw the plane airborne with most of its left wing missing were amazed. And there was more. The back of the plane was bent where Cosbie’s nose had struck. “Like a playing card bent in half,” Jesse Naul said later. “It was bent in the middle and drooped.”

  “We told him his landing gear wouldn’t work, that he shouldn’t even try,” Jesse said. “We told him he’d have to make a water landing.” King smacked his plane down on the ocean, bending it with the impact.

  “I tossed King a life raft,” said Robert Akerblom. “I opened the door, holding it. ‘Now,’ my pilot yelled.”

  King had taken a bad jolt when he hit the water and spent the night in sick bay, but he was alive—more than alive: He returned to flying the next day. But the young pilot was a changed man.

  “King was the most heartbroken man I ever saw in my life,” Ralph Sengewalt told me. “He lost two men and lived. He didn’t say much. I think he never really recovered from that flight, he was so moved. We knew what he went through; no one blamed him. What he did was almost miraculous.”

  “All he’d say was, ‘I had my seat belt off,’” Jesse Naul remembered. “Everybody would have done the same thing. King gave Jimmy and Grady an opportunity to get out. He was looking out for his guys like he was supposed to. He was ready to bail when the plane righted. He was surprised when it did. He had his seat belt off, ready to jump.”

  Back on the USS Randolph, the surviving Flyboys mourned the loss of their three buddies.

  “When someone was gone,” said Bill Hazlehurst, “they were just gone. There were no questions, no discussion, and no speculation. It was really bad for me when Floyd didn’t return. Really bad.”

  “The planes and the people just disappeared,” flight commander Tex Ellison told me years later. “There was no ceremony; there isn’t much you can do. When there are no remains, all you can do is bundle up their personal effects and send them on.”

  Enlisted friends of Glenn and Marve boxed and labeled their belongings. Bill Hazlehurst and Joe White, who had spent so many “hellacious weekends” with Floyd, were assigned to pack his things.

  “We spent a morning going through Floyd’s stuff in a meticulous fashion,” Bill told me. “We folded everything neatly. We tossed some pictures of him in nightclubs with girls that we didn’t think appropriate to send on.”

  Floyd’s parents would later receive his belongings in the mail with a memo dated March 7, 1945, that inventoried their son’s last possessions. They were “cuff links, Kodak camera, eversharp pencil, Naval Aviator certificate, Kodak pictures, sewing kit, fishing gear, leather wallet, shoe shine kit, razor, shaving brush, and leather slippers.”

  I asked Bill Hazlehurst if he and Joe White commented on Floyd’s premonition that he would not come back from battle in the Pacific. Floyd had told them of his belief back in California, when he stopped going out with his buddies and decided to live with one woman.

  “Later we talked about it a lot,” Bill said, “but not that day. That day we just consoled each other over our lost buddy and said, ‘What a goddamn shame that a nice guy like Floyd had to bite the dust.’”

  Flyboys also felt loss over on the USS Bennington.

  “It was at the debriefing that it all came together,” said Ken Meredith. “We went back to the ready room. The guys who aren’t there, the empty chairs—those are the guys who didn’t come back. I made a statement about what I saw to the air combat intelligence officer. As the debriefing went on, a total picture was developed. Then we realized Grady and Jimmy were gone.”

  “The planes didn’t come back,” said radioman Bob Martin. “There was nothing you could do. That’s the way it was; it could happen to anyone. We just all figured our time would come.”

  Ken Meredith was chosen to sort Grady York’s things. “I didn’t have to throw anything of Grady’s away,” said his buddy. The boy whose worst epithet was “skillyboo” had nothing that his mother couldn’t see.

  The entire island of Iwo Jima is only five miles long. At its southern tip is Mount Suribachi, a dormant volcano approximately 555 feet high—almost exactly as tall as the Washington Monument. It is a “mount” rather than a mountain.

  Standing atop Mount Suribachi, gazing at the invasion beach below, one is struck by how intimate the killing here was back in 1945. When American boys landed on that beach, the Japanese holed up in Mount Suribachi could not only see them, but were close enough to make out the insignia patches on their arms. The Marines were ducks in a shooting gallery, walking into preregistered firing patterns that had been rehearsed for months.

  Easy Company, my father’s unit, landed on the sands of Iwo Jima just five to six hundred yards from Mount Suribachi. My navy corpsman dad was teamed with the finest amphibious assault warriors of WWII. Yet it took four days of hellish fighting for these tough and motivated Marines to crawl just a few hundred yards. The rocky terrain from the beach to the mountain was slathered with American blood.

  The reason Iwo Jima was worth such horrific sacrifice involved the Flyboys.

  The Pacific war was fought over the largest theater in the history of warfare. Islands—sometimes spits of sand or hard, unforgiving rocks like Iwo Jima—determined America’s strategy. The Marianas—Guam, Tinian, and Saipan—provided the long airfields needed for the B-29s to bring the war to the island of Japan.

  The B-29s were the long-haul truckers of America’s air fleet. They were ninety-nine feet long and fit ten men comfortably. The biggest obstacle a B-29 pilot faced on his bombing run from the Marianas to Japan was presented by Iwo Jima. Lying in the direct path to Japan, the island was almost exactly halfway between the Marianas and Japan and boasted two airstrips and a radar station. As the B-29 Superfortresses approached Iwo, that radar station gave mainland defenders a two-hour early warning. There were additional risks. Although American pilots had established overall superiority in the Pacific, the gigantic B-29s lumbering north to attack the empire made easy targets for Japan’s remaining small, quick Iwo-based fighter planes. Then, after enduring antiaircraft fire and dogfights over Japan, the B-29s, often damaged, would again
be forced to face the Iwo-based fighters on their return trip. Too many pilots and crew were being lost to watery graves. General Curtis LeMay, commander of the Twentieth Air Force, warned that his pilots could not sustain these losses much longer. Iwo Jima would have to be eliminated as a threat for the Flyboys to effect the downfall of Japan.

  The Joint Chiefs gave the job of conquering the island to America’s oldest fighting force, the United States Marines. There were plenty of army soldiers in the theater, but only Marines could take a citadel like Iwo. As noted historian Stephen Ambrose wrote, “The Marines were the best fighting men of World War II.” Approximately 70,000 leathernecks trained for the invasion of Iwo Jima for almost a year. (My dad’s company practiced the invasion on Iwo-like volcanic terrain on the “Big Island” of Hawaii. They even found a Mount Suribachi “look-alike” there and scaled its rocky sides.)

  Flyboys bombed Iwo Jima for seventy-two straight days before the February 19 invasion. After the war, navy analysts declared the tiny island the single most intensely bombed spot of the Pacific war. Two thousand seven hundred sorties dropped 5,800 tons (11,400,000 pounds) of bombs. In one square mile of Iwo Jima, U.S. aerial photographs revealed 5,000 bomb craters. Admiral Nimitz thought American forces were dropping bombs “sufficient to pulverize everything on the island.” Meanwhile, a vast American armada of 880 ships forming a line seventy miles long sailed in. Those ships, carrying a total of 110,000 men, eventually surrounded Iwo Jima.

  The vast wealth and power of the United States were obvious from the fact that 1,322 pounds of supplies backed up each of the 70,000 assault troop Marines at Iwo. The armada hauled enough food to keep the city of Atlanta going for a month. They were Marines, so they packed a hundred million cigarettes.

  All this for a tiny speck of cooled lava in the middle of the vast Pacific. Driving your car on the highway, it takes just five minutes to go five miles. It took the slogging, dying Marines thirty-six days to conquer the same distance. The beaches of Normandy were safe enough to have a tea party there less than twenty-four hours into the battle. Yet on Iwo Jima, with a landing beach only two miles long, an area of battle much more compact than that of Normandy, American boys died on the beach for weeks.