On June 15, Admiral Mitscher came for a visit after the Hornet arrived back at Pearl Harbor. The admiral asked him to describe everything that had happened on the flight, after which he congratulated Tex on his almost miraculous survival.
A few days later, an officer came to see him from the Navy’s public relations office. He told Tex that a lot of people back home were questioning what the Navy had been doing since December 7. Now the Navy had an answer for them. It was the resounding victory at Midway. The officer asked Tex if he would go back home and let the American people know what the Navy had accomplished.
Tex agreed to go.
He knew his status in the Navy had changed as soon as he boarded the cruise ship Lurline to go back to the States. That first night he was assigned to the captain’s table for all his meals. And as he strolled around the promenade decks, people would point him out to their friends as if he were a movie star. Another group of reporters was waiting for him when he disembarked in San Francisco.
Within a few days, his photograph had appeared in almost every newspaper in the country. One headline read, ensign gay sole survivor of torpedo squadron eight at midway.
In Philadelphia, Grant Teats’s fiancée, Diana, had finished one of her nursing classes when she saw the story and immediately wrote to Grant’s sister Charlotte in Oregon.
The newspapers each day have so much news about the Pacific fleet. The Ensign Gay that was such a hero I thought was a boy in the same squadron as Grant, but when his picture came out in the paper, it didn’t look like the person I knew. A girl from my hospital that dated him said it was, but now I can’t figure it out. So that leaves me in a daze . . .
Soon, Tex was being called upon to make speeches at business conventions, and he was invited to appear on Nelson Eddy’s radio program. A week later, he received a musical tribute from big band orchestra leader Kay Kyser.
In each place Tex visited, they would give him a painted cardboard key to the town or city. Attractive women sometimes gave him the key to their hotel room. It was an amazing experience, hectic, crazy, and fun. He couldn’t help but get caught up in the fanfare.
Pretty soon he was on the invitation lists of celebrities. Inside, he felt like the same down-to-earth guy he had been before it all happened, but now he was meeting movie stars. He began to receive fan mail and even marriage proposals. Twentieth Century Fox wanted to make a movie of his life. He turned them down.
Tex set aside time to visit the widows of the lost pilots in the squadron, including Faye Ellison, Brownie Kenyon, and Rete Gaynier. He did his best to allay their grief, although one of the other widows told him she thought he was getting too much attention.
That was before they put him on the cover of Life magazine, and he really became famous. “The Sole Survivor,” they called him. Tex hadn’t asked for all the public attention, and he knew it hadn’t changed him. He was a little embarrassed about it all the same.
For some reason, the press seemed unaware of the gallant sacrifice of the eighteen men from Torpedo Eight who had made the first unsupported attack on the Japanese fleet from Midway Atoll. In fact, there was no public recognition at all for Langdon Fieberling and the others who had died with him.
It was particularly hard for the families who received a telegram stating that their sons were missing in action. A few attempted to cope with the uncertainty by communicating with each other.
TO THE PARENTS OF
ENSIGN ALBERT EARNEST
Dear Friend:
Our son, Ensign Charles E. Brannon, was reported missing in action in the Midway battle of June 4. We are trying to find out something definite about him from someone who was an eyewitness, and thought perhaps Ensign Earnest could tell us something about it.
Since reading this week’s Life I have no hope for Charles. Before I quite understood what they did I had a tiny bit of hope. But the Japs were taking no prisoners. Charles was 23 earlier this month. Would have been I should say.
We have no hope of ever seeing our son again, but since there is a slight possibility that he might have been taken prisoner, or drifted to some island without communications, we are so anxious to learn the details about this battle, that is the part he took in it.
We certainly hope Ensign Earnest came through OK and will come back to his loved ones after this dreadful war is over.
Very sincerely,
W. T. Brannon
Bert Earnest’s parents had no idea that their son had even been at Midway.
Dear Mr. Brannon,
We received last night your letter, and beg to assure you of our heartfelt sympathy in your apparent loss. We are jittery every time the telephone rings for fear it will be a message from the Navy Department in Washington that Bert is missing, but fortunately for us up to this time no such message has been received.
We regret exceedingly that we have no information whatsoever from Bert about his activities in the Pacific. As a matter of fact, he has never even written us that he was in the Midway battle . . . We are not sure, but we are of the opinion that Bert and your son were roommates at the base in Norfolk because Bert frequently spoke of his roommate Charlie. Regretting we can give you no information whatsoever and expressing to you our sincere sympathy, we are,
Very sincerely,
Mr. and Mrs. James Earnest
PEARL HARBOR
COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, PACIFIC FLEET
ADMIRAL CHESTER NIMITZ
EASTERN ISLAND, MIDWAY ATOLL
BERT EARNEST
On June 6, a brief memorial service was held for Jay Manning. Along with the other men who were killed during the Midway battle, his body was reverently ferried out of the lagoon aboard a PT boat and laid to rest at sea.
Orders arrived from Pearl Harbor that Bert Earnest’s Avenger should be shipped back to Hawaii for an inspection by aeronautical engineers who hoped to determine how it had survived so much damage.
The battered plane was carefully hoisted aboard a seaplane tender that was taking Marines back to Hawaii, and it was strapped down to the deck. The first night out from Midway, the temperature in the compartments belowdecks turned brutally hot, and some of the Marines decided to go topside to sleep. As the ship slowly plowed eastward, it ran into a series of rain squalls, and they took shelter under the fuselage of the wrecked aircraft that was fastened to the deck.
They awoke to find their bedrolls soaked with blood. During the stormy night, hard rain had scoured clean the shattered gun turret in the Avenger. Jay Manning’s remains had dripped through the bullet-riddled fuselage onto their bedrolls.
Ordered back to Hawaii on June 9, Bert said good-bye to Harry Ferrier and boarded a Marine R4D transport plane headed for Pearl Harbor. As the aircraft slowly climbed out over the Pacific, it was hard for him to believe that he had been out there for little more than a week and had already been part of one of the biggest naval victories in American history.
He began to think that he might even have earned a week or two of leave in Hawaii, relaxing on Waikiki Beach before he had to report back to duty. After the transport plane was in the air, he discovered that many of the men flying with him were heading stateside to enjoy extended family leaves.
That got him thinking about the same possibility. It was foolish to speculate, but who knew what was going to happen to him when he arrived back at Pearl? Maybe they would say, “Good job, Bert,” and give him a chance to fly home to Richmond where he could spend some time with Jerry Jenkins.
He fell asleep thinking about all the wonderful possibilities.
When the plane finally landed, Swede Larsen was there waiting for him. After being congratulated on his Midway mission, Bert was told that Torpedo Eight was now under Swede’s official command.
“Report to me at Luke Field,” Larsen said. “We have a lot of work to do.”
Sister Sara
FRIDAY, 5 JUNE 1942
LUKE FIELD, FORD ISLAND
PEARL HARBOR
0400
S
miley Morgan sat in the cockpit of his silent Avenger, waiting for word on whether they were taking off at dawn. Swede’s detachment of the squadron’s remaining pilots and planes had been on alert since June 2, just in case the Japanese might still be coming their way.
Each morning, the pilots would be awakened in the darkness of the lanai at the old Bachelor Officers’ Quarters. Still groggy, they pulled on their flight suits and walked over to Luke Field. There, they would warm the plane engines, shut them down, and wait in the gloom of the predawn sky at the edge of the runway.
Shortly after sunrise on the morning of June 5, a ground officer raced around in a jeep to tell them they could stand down again. Climbing out of the cockpit, Smiley walked back to the old BOQ to shave and shower. Then he headed over to the new BOQ to have the breakfast buffet: freshly sliced pineapple, melon, papaya, pancakes, waffles, eggs, ham, and bacon — all at a cost of twenty-five cents.
It was another magnificent morning, the only kind they seemed to have in Hawaii. After he moved far enough away from the sepulchral odors still coming from Battleship Row, the syrupy smell of exotic flowers seemed to fill the air.
Hawaii was stunningly beautiful, Smiley thought. Even the walking paths were lined with neatly trimmed hibiscus hedges, flaming red bougainvillea, and other exotic flowers he had never seen on the Gulf Coast of Florida. Along with the profusion of color, there was constant birdsong from the jacaranda and poinciana trees. In some ways, it felt like a vacation. With his friends in Torpedo Eight out fighting the Japanese, he felt guilty about it.
By then, they all knew that something momentous was occurring a thousand miles to the west. Two days earlier, Smiley had run into a PBY pilot who had just returned from Midway. He had told him a big battle was brewing out there in the Central Pacific. The pilot said he had seen Langdon Fieberling’s six Avengers at Midway, and that they were part of the air garrison defending the island.
That night, several more PBYs came in from Midway loaded with wounded Marines and Navy fliers. The pilots began passing the word that a major victory had been won against the Japanese fleet. At the same time, a crazy rumor began to spread that Torpedo Squadron Eight had been wiped out.
On the morning of June 6, Swede received official word through Admiral Noyes’s office that all of Torpedo Eight’s Devastators from the Hornet had been shot down, and that Tex Gay was apparently the only survivor. Tex had been flown back from Midway and was at the base hospital. Swede immediately went over to see him.
He came back with the confirmation that not only was the Skipper dead, but so were all the other pilots and crewmen except Tex. Swede brought the squadron together and told them that Langdon Fieberling was gone, too, as were all the pilots and crewmen in his detachment, except Bert Earnest and Harry Ferrier.
In the hours that followed, the remaining members of Torpedo Eight gathered in the hangar at CASU-5 to talk about what had happened. At first, the reality of it was almost inconceivable. How could forty-five out of forty-eight men from the squadron be killed in one day? It just wasn’t possible. Not the Skipper. He had been larger than life. Not all the others, too, the friends they had trained with through the long winter at Norfolk, the guys they had joined on liberties, and shared so many memories with.
That same evening, Swede came back to say that they had been ordered to join the battle. The carrier Saratoga had just arrived from the West Coast, and was on her way out to intercept the remainder of the Japanese fleet. The squadron would fly their Avengers out to the carrier. “Now, we’ll finally see some action,” Swede assured them. This was their chance to help finish off what remained of the Japanese fleet.
Early the next morning they took off from Luke Field and landed aboard the Saratoga. Smiley was nervous about putting his Avenger down on a flight deck for the first time, but he came in as smooth as silk.
Once they were aboard and on their way, Swede brought the pilots together to give them the latest news. Apparently, the Japanese striking force was gone. They had hightailed it back to Japan. The battle was over. Admiral Spruance and the rest of the victorious task force were heading back to Hawaii.
Swede did not give the squadron time to celebrate. To become officially qualified on the Avengers, each pilot had to make eight carrier takeoffs and landings. Swede got approval from the captain for his pilots to earn their qualifications right away.
Smiley Morgan’s first flight left him less than ecstatic. On a technical level, it went fine, and he made the first carrier landing without mishap. What he hadn’t found enjoyable was the discovery that whoever had flown the plane before him had relieved himself in the pee tube beneath the cockpit seat.
Normally, the tube would have emptied itself during the flight, but there must have been a blockage of some kind, because when Smiley did a slow roll before returning to the carrier, he found himself drenched with the man’s urine. He had to make seven more landings before he was able to head belowdecks to take a shower.
Otherwise, the experience of being at sea aboard a fast carrier was new and exciting. With the exception of one spell of bad weather, Swede kept them flying every day.
On June 11, Swede received orders to fly his ten Avengers from the Saratoga to the Hornet, joining the remaining officers and enlisted men of Waldron’s Torpedo Eight as the ship returned to Pearl Harbor.
Once aboard the Hornet, Smiley quickly discovered that the atmosphere was dramatically different than on the Saratoga. Many of the pilots seemed subdued and even downcast. Smiley presumed it had to do with all the losses they had suffered.
When Swede brought his pilots together in Ready Room Four, everything was just as it had been left when Waldron had led the squadron out on their first and last combat mission. At Swede’s request, Fred Mears and the other two replacement pilots who hadn’t flown in the battle told them what they knew.
While they talked, Smiley couldn’t help but notice the reminders of the doomed squadron’s last hours aboard ship. A few of Waldron’s instructions were still chalked on the blackboard. Some of the personal gear of the lost fliers was found in the compartments under their leather seats.
With the death of Waldron and all the senior pilots, the highest-ranking Torpedo Eight officer left aboard the Hornet was Lieutenant George H. Flinn Jr., the squadron’s personnel officer. His job kept him deskbound, maintaining the records of every man serving in the unit.
A graduate of Yale, class of twenty-six, Flinn was the son of a construction magnate from Pennsylvania whose company had built the Holland Tunnel in New York City. Flinn didn’t look much like a naval officer, with his rumpled uniform and his cap always askew, but he was proud to be part of a combat unit, and he had enjoyed being in temporary command of the squadron.
He had particularly liked taking care of the pilots, almost as if he were the housemaster of an unruly fraternity. After the squadron had taken off on June 4, Flinn went down to the galley and ordered the cooks to prepare roast chicken dinners for all fifteen of his pilots.
He had the chicken dinners delivered on trays to the ready room in anticipation of their return, and he had refused to allow the mess boys to take the trays away until long after it was obvious the guys were never coming back.
Flinn considered it his job to fill Waldron’s shoes until officially relieved.
On June 12, Swede ordered the remaining officers and enlisted men in the squadron to assemble on the hangar deck. After the flight crews and support personnel had lined up in ranks, Flinn and Larsen walked to the head of the formation.
The physical contrast between the two men was startling. Flinn seemed almost clownish-looking with his cockeyed hat and baggy khakis. Standing beside him, Swede looked like a recruiting poster.
Flinn spoke first.
He told them that it was a privilege to be their commanding officer, and that he was proud to be leading a combat unit of American fighting men. His words struck some of the pilots as a bit odd. No deskbound officer could command an air squadron. When
he was finished, Swede stepped forward. In his parade ground voice, he said, “You were the commander, George. I’m the commander now.”
Smiley Morgan was reminded of what Langdon Fieberling had once said to him about Swede when they were about to fly their Avengers across the United States. Fieberling had referred to him as “the lion.” That’s what Swede reminded him of now, the king of the jungle marking his turf.
“You’re no longer in charge of anything, George,” Swede proclaimed, “unless I say so.”
Smiley found himself feeling sorry for Flinn.
“Torpedo Eight still exists,” Swede said next, “and the way I feel it exists is to get vengeance. That’s how I see our job now, revenge.
“We’re going to hit the Japs wherever we can,” Swede went on. “We’re going to blow into the heads of those Japs who pulled the trigger on us at Midway that their country would have been better off if they hadn’t been born. . . . I want vengeance, and I think you want it, too. We’ve got a score to settle and a chance to settle it. Who can ask for more?”
No one cheered when he was finished. A lot of them were still in shock over what had occurred a week earlier. Bill Tunstall, the machinist’s mate who had been Abbie Abercrombie’s plane captain, was still regretting not having accepted Bernie Phelps’s wallet so the money could be sent on to his family.
Back in his stateroom, Fred Mears expressed his own feelings on the subject of vengeance in his personal journal. He hadn’t flown with the other pilots on June 4, but he had gotten to know them in the last days and hours of their lives. He had read their final letters and gone through their personal effects. He had listed the items belonging to each man, and had packed them in boxes to be returned to their families. Fred had a different take than Swede on what was important when they went into battle again.
A Dawn Like Thunder Page 19