The Last Fighter Pilot

by Don Brown

  The announcement of the target selection heightened the pilots’ excitement. Though they were still unsure who would fly the mission, each man had to be ready.

  Always be ready. Always do your best. These were the words Jerry already lived by.

  If only he could get selected.

  CHAPTER 12

  The Rain—and News—Breaks

  Seventy-Eighth Fighter Squadron Headquarters Iwo Jima

  April 6, 1945

  “Okay, gentlemen.Gather round.”

  Major Jim Vande Hey, the twenty-nine-year-old commanding officer of the Seventy-Eighth Fighter Squadron, was a man’s man and a pilot’s pilot. The young man bore a special, no-nonsense charisma that commanded respect, and, when he spoke, attention. For Vande Hey, the war against Japan had been personal from its inception. On the morning of December 7, 1941, as a twenty-three-year-old second lieutenant and recent graduate of pilot training, he’d sat on his bunk at Wheeler Army Airfield, the main U.S. Army Air Force fighter base in Hawaii, talking with a buddy before heading to church. As the sound of aircraft began buzzing overhead outside his barracks, Vande Hey and his comrades thought they were U.S. Navy pilots, who frequently flew over the U.S. Army’s aviation barracks on the weekends in a good-natured effort to stoke the intra-service rivalry. The Army guys usually returned the favor, buzzing over the Navy barracks at Ford Field or Kanaoe Naval Air station when it was their turn to fly later in the afternoon.

  This time, however, the sound was quickly accompanied by the shrill, whistling sounds of falling bombs. A second later, thunderous explosions rocked the earth. Vande Hey and his buddies knew then the planes overhead were not piloted by Americans. Wheeler Army Airfield was the first target of Japanese dive bombers on that fateful morning of December 7, 1941. The Japanese struck the airfield before moving on to the Navy ships at Pearl Harbor, hoping to prevent the American warplanes at Wheeler from engaging them. The results of the surprise attack on Wheeler devastated the base’s air capabilities: of 146 operational aircraft on the field before the attack, seventy-six were totally destroyed.

  The Japanese continued to bomb the airfield throughout their assault on Pearl Harbor, making it almost impossible to get aircraft off the ground. And yet, somehow, twelve pilots assigned to the Fifteenth Pursuit Group at Wheeler succeeded in getting their P-36 Hawks and P-40 Warhawks in the air. These pilots engaged the Japanese in furious dogfights and scored some of the first American victories of World War II. But tragedy still marked the day: thirty-three airmen were killed at Wheeler Field, and many others were injured. Vande Hey was fortunate; he survived the Japanese bombs and bullets. But he would not forget impressions of the death, carnage and destruction caused by the enemy.

  Nor would he forget what happened after the Japanese left Wheeler Field and Pearl Harbor a burning heap. Just ten hours later, news arrived that the Japanese had begun their invasion of the Philippines, which made the Japanese aggression even more personal to the young pilot. Vande Hey had spent time attending college there and had numerous friends in the country, many of whom, through no fault of their own, were now subjects of bloodthirsty Japanese thuggery.

  Today, on Iwo Jima, Vande Hey looked his men in the eyes and delivered the news: they would fly to Japan in the morning as scheduled. His audience cheered, and he continued. The Americans would take sixteen planes per squadron as part of the attack force. That meant ninety-eight pilots would sweep north, under strict radio silence, guarding the bombers. Ten more Mustangs would fly in reserve, circling over the ocean just off the coast and ready to go in over Japan if a plane in the main fleet could not complete the task. The commanding officers looked primarily at pilot experience to determine who would fly first. Those selected would need to be ready to depart at seven a.m.

  Vande Hey started to read the names of those men, who, whether they lived or died, were about to become part of history.

  “Tapp.”

  “Roseberry.”

  “Yellin.”

  At the sound of his name, Jerry felt a surge of energy. He was going to war against the heart of Japan.

  He listened carefully to the preflight briefing from the intelligence officer: once reaching the Japanese coastline with the B-29s, the Mustangs would climb to thirty thousand feet. Their job would be to watch the bombers topside. If a Japanese plane tried to climb high and take out one of the B-29s from above, the Japanese pilots would have to deal with the American guard first.

  It would be the mission of a lifetime.

  Now, if only he could manage a good night’s sleep.

  CHAPTER 13

  On to Japan

  Saturday, April 7, 1945

  When the crest of the orange sun broke over the Pacific at 5:22 a.m. on April 7, Jerry was up, wired, and ready to get into the air. In a war zone, the dawn always brought a measure of uncertainty. There could be bigger days to follow, or this could be his last day on earth. Even at twenty-one, Jerry had learned that no man could totally control his destiny. A million things could go wrong today: mechanical failure, bad weather, antiaircraft fire, a sudden influx of enemy forces with no escape route for the Dorrie R and her companions. Jerry had already seen more than enough death to know that not a single day should be taken for granted.

  But this knowledge didn’t make him afraid to live, or to do what he came to do.

  The three hundred B-29 bombers that Jerry and his fighter group were going to protect today were already in the air, having taken off in the dark hours of the morning from Saipan. Jerry headed over to the Quonset hut for the final briefing: while the main force of B-29s would bomb the aircraft factories, another handful of B-29s and P-61s would fly alongside the P-51s to Japan, solely for the purpose of providing navigation for the P-51s (both the P-61s and the B-29s had radar/tracking systems). That smaller group of B-29s would not fly over Japan; rather, they would remain offshore while the invasion force carried out its strikes, then help navigate the fighters back to Iwo Jima once the bombing mission was complete. Also, in addition to the backup Mustangs, eight more P-51s would provide “top cover” for the rescue U.S. submarine below, as well as the B-29 navigators at the rally point just off Japan. The backup planes not called on for the attack over Japan would then turn back to Iwo Jima, accompanied by the P-61s.

  Before long, Jerry was strapped into the cockpit of the Dorrie R as it sat on the airfield. He glanced out at the other Mustangs, all awaiting the go signal. The B-29s were approaching, the pilots knew, somewhere in the southern skies. And soon they appeared, an incredible sight of over a hundred single-engine fighter planes, painted in their aviation battle gray.

  Jerry looked down at his grounds crewmen. Thumbs up were exchanged, and then at seven a.m. precisely came the signal for the planes to start their engines. Jerry fired up the Dorrie R, and the hum of her seventeen-hundred-horsepower engine joined the roaring chorus filling the air. The sound grew into a thunder so great that it shook the ground. The ground controllers began to motion the pilots into a takeoff position. One by one, the P-51s began rushing down the runway and lifting into the morning sky.

  Picking up more speed and slicing through a slight layer of ground fog, the wheels of the Dorrie R broke contact with the earth. The end of Airfield No. 1 disappeared under her wings, and the Mustang nosed upward. A moment later, Jerry pulled her out of the takeoff line and over the ocean, the distinctive granite features of Mount Suribachi now down to his right. He swung the Dorrie R around and lined up in the “four finger” formation, assuming the “wingman” position with the Yellow Flight. The first leg of the flight plan called for a rendezvous with the B-29s over Kita Iwo Jima, or “North Sulfur Island”—the small, jagged area of about two square miles located approximately fifty miles north of Iwo Jima. Once this had been accomplished, the fleet turned toward Tokyo.

  Because of the long range of the mission, the Mustangs were carrying two supplemental 110-gallon fuel tanks, one under each wing, enough fuel for the initial flight to Japan. As the Ja
panese coastline came into sight, each P-51 hit a switch that dropped the spent fuel tanks into the bay. The tanks had served their purpose; now, the planes needed to lighten their load for the upcoming dogfight with enemy aircraft.

  The planes began crossing Suruga Bay, one of the two great inland bays in the Americans’ flight path. To the west of the bay was the Japanese mainland. Off to the north, Jerry witnessed, for the first time, a landmark he’d seen so often in pictures: the great, snow-capped peak of Mount Fuji, looming twelve thousand feet into the sky. He remembered the intelligence officer’s briefing from the previous morning: “When you fly across Suruga Bay, focus your gun cameras on the tip of Mount Fuji. In that way, we will be able to evaluate your film when you fire your guns at the enemy.”

  Jerry trained his .50-caliber guns on the mountain, and felt a sense of excitement, knowing that the city of Tokyo awaited just seventy miles beyond. On a clear day, they said, that great snow-capped mountain could easily be seen from the Japanese capital city. The Americans’ flight path would take them near some of Japan’s most populated areas: the neck of the Izu Peninsula (between Suruga Bay and Sagami Bay), past the Yokosuka peninsula (between Sagami Bay and Tokyo Bay), and then, once they crossed the Tokyo Bay, the land surrounding Tokyo, and the city itself. The projected time over the target, if all went well, was estimated to be about fifteen minutes. However, no one expected the Japanese to wait until the planes were over their target before striking.

  By design, the Seventy-Eighth Fighter Squadron flew in the right front quarter of the Americans’ formation as they soared closer to Tokyo. The prime position was largely due to Vande Hey’s and Jim Tapp’s reputations as pilots; General Moore knew that they would make a formidable “one-two” punch, and based on military intelligence, the general believed that the Japanese had no pilots who could match them. The spot in the formation meant the Seventy-Eighth would be the first to fly over Japan; it also meant they might catch the first waves of Japanese Zeros awaiting the American aircraft. The American command, frankly, hoped that the Japanese planes would come out and fight. An experienced Mustang pilot would trump an experienced Zero pilot. Nearly four years after Pearl Harbor, the Americans had the superior fighter planes. Nothing in the world could trump the P-51 Mustang. If the Zeroes came out en masse, perhaps the P-51s could inflict significant damage to the Japanese air defenses in one mission.

  At 10:20 a.m., as the Americans flew over the waters of Suruga Bay, the first enemy fighter appeared. The Ki-44 Shōki, referred to as a “Tojo” Fighter, approached quickly from the west, flying in on a hostile vector from the Japanese mainland. Its target was the American B-29s. The heavily armed Tojo carried four 12.7-millimeter machine guns (some Tojos also had two twenty-millimeter cannons). If it got a clear shot at a B-29, its guns were lethal. In addition, plane’s agility made it a dangerous threat to American bombers.

  The question mark when facing these war machines, however, was the competency of the Japanese pilots. Since 1942, the Japanese airmen had taken a pounding when going up against the air defense of the U.S. Marines and the pilots of the U.S. Navy. Beginning with the battle of Midway, when the outnumbered U.S. Navy struck a severe blow against the Japanese by sinking all four aircraft carriers in the Japanese task force, Japan suffered a loss from which she would never recover. U.S. military intelligence believed that many of Japan’s better and more experienced pilots had been killed earlier in the war and that the P-51s today would be facing less experienced pilots compared, for example, to those who had attacked Pearl Harbor.

  Suruga Bay and the Sagami Gulf are two great inland bays near the landmark Mount Fuji.

  Now the Blue Flight of the Forty-Sixth Fighter Squadron broke off and gave chase to the Tojo, becoming the first American squadron to open fire on the Japanese over Japan. The American quartet scored multiple hits against the outnumbered enemy aircraft, and watched as the Japanese fighter veered away.

  Within minutes, however, a Japanese Ki-45 Toryu “Dragon Slayer” managed to penetrate too close into the Americans’ air space. The tip of the American air armada had flown within five minutes of Tokyo when something told Major John Piper, the commanding officer of the Forty-Seventh squadron, to look overhead. Piper spotted the Dragon Slayer about a thousand feet above the American planes, ready to strike. The aircraft—a twin-engine, heavily armed, long-range fighter—was one of Japan’s best weapons against the B-29.

  The Americans had to get the Dragon Slayer out of there.

  Piper pulled up on his stick, and the other three planes in his Red Flight broke into a pursuit maneuver. The Dragon Slayer, outnumbered four to one, would have nothing of it. As soon as the Mustangs locked in, the Dragon Slayer initiated a steep dive, rushing toward the waters of the bay. Piper and his men had to make a quick decision: either they chase the Ki-45 all the way down to the water, and probably catch and destroy him, or they remain on post at eighteen thousand feet to continue protecting the B-29s. With the Dragon Slayer now out of play, Piper’s squadron chose to resume their defensive position guarding the B-29s. As much as Piper wanted to give chase, he had to keep his eye on the ball. He and his men were there, first and foremost, to protect bombers.

  The pattern repeated as the Americans crossed Suruga Bay: more interceptors appeared, only to be taken down by the P-51s.

  Meanwhile, the men of the Seventy-Eighth, despite their prominent position, had yet to be challenged by the Japanese. By 10:30 a.m., they had crossed over from Suruga Bay to Sagami Bay. As the planes made landfall for the final phase before the attack, Japanese antiaircraft fire picked up considerably. Down below and out front, the sky began to fill with waves of black streaks and smoke rising from the ground.

  Over in Yellow Flight, Jerry kept his hands on his yoke and eyes peeled on the horizon for incoming enemy craft.

  Below, the industrial area of the Nakajima Aircraft Engine Factory came into view. The sight from the late morning sky resembled the photographs the pilots had studied in their intelligence briefings. From the air, the buildings of Japan spread over several acres, a labyrinth of squares and rectangles rising from the ground. Within minutes, the men of the Seventy-Eighth had led the bombers over their targets, and now, from their position high above, they held the best vantage point in the world for watching the bombers do their work.

  “I saw little dots of light spring from the ground as the bombs exploded,” Jerry wrote later.1 “Wave after wave of bombers dropped their cargo inside the squares of fire on the ground. We fighter pilots were in a constant state of alert; Japanese fighters were all over the sky and the aerial battles between us were fierce. We had to protect our ‘Big Brothers’—the B-29s as they droned on and on over the target. When I had a chance to look down, I could see fires raging. All of the city, it seemed, was on fire.”

  Just as the B-29s opened fire, Tapp spotted yet another Dragon Slayer nearby, vectoring into attack mode—the Seventy-Eighth’s first opportunity for engagement. Tapp broke off in pursuit. Maneuvering his Mustang into close range, Tapp opened fire, his bullets ripping into the enemy aircraft’s engine. Tapp’s wingman, Lieutenant Maher, also opened fire, but it wasn’t clear if he scored a hit. Tapp, meanwhile, knew his fire had struck the plane, but didn’t know if he’d destroyed it. Having chased the Dragon Slayer out of the way, he and Maher pulled back up to twenty thousand feet to resume their protective position of the bombers.

  A second threat swooped in, however, this time a Kawasaki single-engine Ki-61 Hein, identified by the U.S. Air Force as a “Tony.” Externally, the Tony presented a long, sleek-looking design, with the cockpit set well behind the engine in the center-forward position. Faster and more maneuverable than the twin-engine Dragon Slayer, the Tony—which looked almost like the P-51s—could strike with quick and lethal effectiveness. Tapp had to take it out or risk losing a slew of bombers.

  The pilot pushed down on his plane’s throttle to close the gap between the two aircraft, then pulled back to avoid overflying the targe
t. After closing within a thousand feet of the Tony, Tapp opened fire. The enemy craft burst into flames, and Tapp pulled away. It was his first sure shoot-down—known as a “kill” in military aviation—of the day. The pilot turned around a second later and saw the Japanese pilot bail out, his parachute deploying and his body dangling down below.

  There was no rest, however, for the American pilot. Tapp noticed a B-29 under fire by an unidentified enemy fighter attacking the bomber from the rear. He tightened his circle, and getting an angle on the Japanese fighter, opened fire. The enemy aircraft burst into flames, began spinning out of control, and fell to earth.

  Kill number two.

  The Japanese planes were everywhere, it seemed. Six more (this time, single-engine fighters) approached. Tapp bore down on one of them and opened fire again. A second later, the Japanese plane broke up, its wing splintering off, both the plane and wing soon crashing below. It marked the third plane Tapp had downed within minutes. He also actually fired at a fourth plane and struck it but hadn’t realized it had been shot down. He was later given credit for the kill after other pilots reported it. Overall, his heroism that day would go down as one of the greatest feats in the history of the Air Force.

  The B-29s lingered for a total of forty-five minutes over Tokyo, unloading their fire on the Nakajima Aircraft Engine Factory and other targets and reducing them to seas of burning rubble. As always, however, there was a cost: “The fighting and the flak was intense,” Jerry described later.2 “At one point I saw one of our B-29s get hit, and the right wing fell off. The plane burst into flames, and then, as if it was all being photographed in slow motion, one parachute came out, then a second, and a third; then the huge, lumbering plane just keeled over like a ship in the water, went into a spin, and fell from the sky. Of the twelve crew members on board, only three had bailed out.”