A Dawn Like Thunder
Page 38
The two carriers were escorted by the new battleship South Dakota, along with six cruisers and fourteen destroyers. From sighting reports, the American commanders knew that Japanese carriers were lurking somewhere to the north. As at Midway, they hoped their search planes would find the Japanese first.
Shortly after dawn, Japanese and American search plane pilots found each other’s fleets at almost exactly the same time, and radioed the sightings. The Americans drew first blood when at 0740, two unescorted Dauntless scout bombers bravely attacked the light carrier Zuiho , making two hits on the flight deck, and preventing it from launching or landing aircraft for the remainder of the battle.
At 0830, the two opposing air armadas passed in full sight of one another, 73 American planes going one way, and 125 Japanese planes going the other.
Shortly after 0900, the planes from the Hornet and Enterprise attacked the principal Japanese carrier force, damaging the big carrier Shokaku with three bomb hits, as well as two of her escort ships.
At the same time, Japanese air formations commenced their attack with a ferocity the Americans had never seen before. In the span of two minutes, three bombs landed on the Hornet, two of them penetrating the flight deck. One Japanese bomber pilot, his plane on fire, deliberately crashed it into the Hornet.
A few minutes later, two Japanese aircraft fired torpedoes into the Hornet’s side, knocking out her engines, and bringing the ship to a dead stop. As she lay still in the water, the pilot of another burning Japanese bomber flew it into the ship, igniting the carrier’s aviation gas tanks.
With the Hornet dead in the water, a flight of Japanese bombers moved on to attack the Enterprise, hitting her with two bombs, one of which exploded through the hangar deck, killing dozens of sailors.
Tuesday, 27 October 1942
Guadalcanal
Torpedo Squadron Eight
The first unverified rumor came from a pilot who had just arrived at Henderson Field. There was no official confirmation, but more details emerged as word spread. It turned out to be true.
The Hornet had gone down.
If Torpedo Eight could have considered a ship its own, it had been the Hornet. On the day the carrier had been commissioned back in Norfolk, the pilots of Torpedo Eight had stood proudly on her flight deck, arrayed in dress whites as she was welcomed into the fleet.
For the men who had been aboard that day, including Swede Larsen, Bert Earnest, Chief J. C. Hammond, Judge Wendt, and Gene Hanson, the memories started with Lieutenant Commander Waldron and the others who had been lost since: Grant Teats, Bill Evans, Ozzie Gaynier, Whitey Moore, Vic Lewis, and so many others. Twenty-two of the original thirty-five pilots were dead, along with thirty crewmen.
Now the Hornet had been sunk with great loss of life in another carrier battle. At one point, Bert Earnest realized that his uniforms and most of his personal gear were still aboard her. They would always be.
With the major Japanese ground offensive beaten back, Swede brought together his four pilots, Earnest, Hanson, Katz, and Mears, to tell them his plans. They were the last of the seventeen squadron pilots who had flown with the Cactus Air Force. Between them, the five pilots had been recommended for seven Navy Crosses for uncommon valor.
Swede told them he was going to stay on the island until he was officially relieved. He thought that Guadalcanal was where they needed to be. He told them he had ordered Pete Peterkin to stay behind along with all of the enlisted men.
Chief Hammond thought he would have a plane ready to go in a week, Swede said. If the Japanese mounted another ground assault, the squadron would go back into its positions on the line until the plane was ready to fly.
He wasn’t ordering them to stay. The ones who wanted to go back to Espiritu Santo were free to do so. The pilots who wanted to remain with him were welcome to stay.
The four of them talked it over. There would be only one plane to fly if Hammond was successful, and Swede would be the one flying it. What was the point? All four left that day aboard a transport plane for Espiritu Santo.
Swede’s Refrain
Tuesday, 3 November 1942
Guadalcanal
Torpedo Squadron Eight
After the Japanese ground offensive was crushed, there was no serious fighting for almost a week. The Japanese stopped sending planes down from Rabaul to attack the airfield. The Tokyo Express no longer came down the Groove every night.
Swede continued to wait for another Frankenstein to fly.
Chief Hammond had put all his men to work on it. Between the new materiel that was now flowing into Henderson Field, and the spare parts he was able to scavenge from the boneyard, he made steady progress. A rebuilt Wright engine was transferred to the plane’s engine root. Both wings were replaced. Slowly, it came together.
On Halloween, Swede took possession of his new creation and rumbled down the runway to see if it would fly. This one was far more unsteady than the previous plane, but Swede got it in the air, circled the field, and brought it back in.
He immediately pronounced the Avenger airworthy and told Peterkin to prepare it for a bombing mission the next morning. He then ordered Hammond to begin putting another plane together as soon as possible.
Returning to their camp, Peterkin discovered that Mahoney’s special weapons company was moving out to a new position. Peterkin looked around for a new place to pitch their tents, and found one about five hundred yards farther along the ridgeline. It was in a thick copse of trees, and well concealed from a possible strafing attack. He also made arrangements for Torpedo Eight to eat at the mess tent of a newly arrived Marine unit. He reckoned they had now eaten with five different units since arriving on the island.
On November 1, Swede made his first attack in Hammond’s new Avenger. It was in support of General Vandegrift’s drive to push the Japanese back from their positions west of the Matanikau, and shove them out of artillery range of the airfield.
Flying alone, Swede looked for Japanese troop concentrations in the jungle below him. He couldn’t see any, and purposely flew lower to draw their fire. The Japanese did not rise to the bait. He finally released a full salvo of twelve bombs over an area he thought looked suspicious. Back on the ground, he told Peterkin and Hammond that the plane was acting balky and to get the kinks out of it.
On November 2, he took off again to support the new Marine push. From the air, the Japanese appeared to have gone underground, and Swede was again unable to find any obvious targets. He went up alone again that same afternoon. Under low clouds, he dropped his twelve bombs in a jungle clearing.
That night, reports came in that a small force of Japanese troops had landed near Koli Point. The next morning, Swede flew low over the area, dropping twelve bombs on what looked like another suspicious site. In the afternoon Swede took off alone again, heading for the same sector he had bombed earlier that day. This time, his tail gunner reported he had seen small-arms fire coming from the jungle floor. Swede reversed course and dropped his twelve bombs where his gunner thought he had seen the muzzle flashes.
Pete Peterkin was having misgivings about the importance of the contribution they were making. He wrote a letter to Bert Earnest at Espiritu Santo, asking how the rest of the squadron was doing, and confiding his concerns about the mental and physical condition of the enlisted men left on Guadalcanal. He concluded the letter by asking Bert’s opinion of why Swede would be keeping twenty men there when they were down to one plane. The letter went out on one of the daily transport planes.
Receiving Peterkin’s letter, Bert Earnest wrote back that the only reason the men were there was because of Swede’s personal ambitions. The letter went up to Guadalcanal on a supply flight. When it arrived, Swede happened to be present for mail call. He decided to open the letter, even though it was addressed to Peterkin. After reading Bert’s comments about him, he passed along the opened letter to Peterkin without a word. Pete wrote to Bert, warning him that Swede had read his private comments.
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bsp; When Swede returned from his third bombing run on November 3, Lieutenant George Flinn, the squadron’s personnel officer, was waiting for him at their new camp. He had just arrived from Espiritu Santo with important news. The squadron was going to be officially relieved by a Marine torpedo squadron that was already in New Caledonia, and would soon be arriving at Guadalcanal.
That evening, an excited Peterkin shared the news with the twenty enlisted men. They were elated. Just a few more days and they would be headed out of Guadalcanal to join the rest of the squadron.
Flinn also told Swede that a new Avenger had just been delivered to Torpedo Eight at Espiritu Santo. It was supposed to go to the Hornet before she was sunk. Swede ordered it flown up immediately. He also told Flinn to radio a request for volunteers to return to Guadalcanal.
Wednesday, 4 November 1942
Espiritu Santo
Torpedo Squadron Eight
For Fred Mears, the days at Espiritu had floated by in a sunny haze. The Navy’s construction teams had made a lot of improvements since his first visit back in August. After clearing the malarial jungle, they had built a complex of frame buildings beneath the tall coconut palms near the airstrip.
The pilots were living at the edge of the bay in small wooden cottages that were clean and cool, with screened porches that faced out on the water. At night, it was quiet, with only the background noise of takeoffs and landings at the airstrip that were part of every pi-lot’s life.
With the exception of a desirable woman, the place had most of the things a man could appreciate as he regained health and strength. The food was good, and thanks to the Navy’s eradication efforts, there were fewer flying insects to swat away while they ate it. Whiskey and beer could be easily acquired.
The pilots and crews relaxed in different ways. Some headed over to the big naval base across the island to try to pick up nurses. Others played poker or Chinese checkers or cribbage, or just sat in their cottages near the bay with a paperback novel.
Guadalcanal had aged the pilots of Torpedo Eight. After the intensity of what they had gone through, their eyes and mouths were etched with furrows, and they had the sallow complexions of men who had been ill with dysentery and malaria. Fred Mears’s hair was falling out. His reflexes had gotten slower.
Only one incident threatened to disrupt Fred’s first week of relaxation. Lieutenant Benny Grosscup, the squadron’s gossip-fed intelligence officer, informed the pilots that a carrier had just arrived at the big naval base and was supposedly short of torpedo pilots. He claimed to have it on good authority that they would all become part of the carrier’s new torpedo squadron. It was a false rumor.
George Flinn radioed them from Guadalcanal that Swede wanted a crew to fly the new Avenger up there right away. Swede was also looking for volunteers to pilot the next Frankenstein plane Chief Hammond was building for him from the boneyard. Strong feelings were expressed about the idiocy of their commanding officer, particularly since the Marine torpedo squadron that was relieving them would be arriving in a day or two.
Bruce Harwood, who was required to remain with the squadron in Espiritu Santo, finally convinced several of the pilots who had been among the first evacuated from Guadalcanal to go back up.
Friday, 6 November 1942
Truk Atoll
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto
In the wake of his dramatic victory over the American carrier forces off Santa Cruz, Admiral Yamamoto had begun preparing his next offensive to retake the airfield at Guadalcanal.
The stakes were inestimably high. As one of his confidential staff documents put it: “It must be said that the success or failure in recapturing Guadalcanal Island, and the vital naval battle related to it, is the fork in the road which leads to victory for them or us.”
After the successive defeats of Ichiki’s detachment in August, Kawaguchi’s force in September, and then the Sendai Division in October, the Imperial Army had concluded that only one path led to assured success. For the next stage of the campaign, they pledged to commit thirty thousand additional troops and three hundred field guns to batter the Americans into final submission.
As always, the key to getting the troops there lay in controlling the air and sea-lanes around Guadalcanal. Admiral Yamamoto was now hard-pressed to guarantee that he had enough available naval forces to do it, even though he believed the remaining U.S. carriers had been destroyed at Santa Cruz.
Although the Japanese had won a clear victory when they sank the Hornet and badly damaged the Enterprise, the cost of the victory had been steep. Two of his carriers had been forced to return to Japan for repairs. Yamamoto had also sent the undamaged carrier Zuikaku home to regroup after it lost many of its experienced air crews.
In the Battle of Santa Cruz, one hundred fifty Japanese pilots and crewmen had been killed, including five squadron commanders from the torpedo and bombing squadrons, and eighteen section and flight leaders. The losses represented 49 percent of the torpedo bomber crews, 40 percent of the dive-bomber crews, and 20 percent of the fighter pilots.
Yamamoto’s remaining carriers were operating with severely depleted air groups. In order to assure the safe delivery of the army’s thirty thousand new troops, he would need to use more land-based aircraft from Rabaul. The first contingent of Japanese troops would be delivered by the Tokyo Express on November 7.
Saturday, 7 November 1942
Guadalcanal
Torpedo Squadron Eight
In the afternoon, American search planes spotted eleven enemy warships coming down the Groove north of Florida Island. The Cactus air staff was confident they were carrying Japanese troop reinforcements, and readied an immediate counterstrike.
At 1600, Swede briefed the newly arrived Bob Evarts and Andy Divine on the mission. Chief Hammond had completed reconstruction of a third Avenger that he hoped was ready for combat. Swede would fly the new replacement plane, Evarts and Divine the patchwork Avengers.
They would be part of an air group consisting of three Avengers, seven Dauntlesses, and thirty Wildcats. It would be a coordinated attack, with the fighters going in first to strafe the antiaircraft bat-teries, followed by the dive-bombers from up high and the torpedo planes down low.
Under scattered cloud cover, the group took off at 1630 and headed north to intercept the Japanese task force. Packed aboard the eleven destroyers were troops, artillery pieces, food, and ammunition.
The attack went exactly as planned. Although all three Avengers were hit by antiaircraft fire, Swede and Bob Evarts were able to launch their torpedoes from less than eight hundred yards away. They each claimed a hit, although Andy Divine, flying the newest patchwork plane, was unable to release his torpedo. After repeated attempts, he finally gave up. Pursued by Japanese fighters, one of his gunners was hit four times and critically wounded, but all three planes made it back safely.
For leading the attack, Admiral William Halsey awarded Swede the Distinguished Flying Cross. It was the second DFC Swede had received since taking command of Torpedo Eight. He had also been recommended for a Navy Cross for leading the mission against the Japanese cruisers on August 24, the day the squadron had helped sink the Ryujo.
Wednesday, 11 November 1942
Guadalcanal
Torpedo Squadron Eight
For four days, heavy storms and howling winds pummeled the Solomon Islands, preventing Japanese air attacks from reaching Guadalcanal, and giving the pilots of the Cactus Air Force a chance to regroup. Most of them welcomed the opportunity to relax in their tents out of the gusting wind and rain.
Not Swede. Pete Peterkin was worried that his commanding officer was finally getting ready to blow. He thought a number of the squadron’s enlisted men were ready to blow too, but for the opposite reason. They were desperate to leave. Swede wanted to stay and fight.
Like Earnest, Hanson, and most of the other pilots, Peterkin wondered why it was necessary to expose the crews to any more risk now that they had only three planes, two of them virtual c
ripples, and relief was imminent. Personally, he thought they had already pushed their luck too far.
On November 8, VS-71, the last one of the Navy’s Dauntless squadrons in the Cactus Air Force, was evacuated. Torpedo Eight, with its two officers and twenty-one enlisted men, was the only naval air squadron left.
Even the award of the DFC did not seem to improve Swede’s disposition. In spite of the bad weather, the Tokyo Express had continued to deliver troops and supplies every night. On November 10, Swede had tried to lead his three Avengers up the Groove to attack them. A violent storm had forced him to turn back.
His temper wasn’t helped by the radio message from Benny Grosscup that the eighteen Avengers of Marine Torpedo Bomber Squadron 131 had just arrived at Espiritu Santo. The first element of six planes would be flying up to Guadalcanal the next day to relieve him.
In two raids on the eleventh, seventy-seven Japanese planes attacked Henderson Field. In the aerial melees above Sealark Channel, nine Wildcats were shot down while destroying eleven of the attackers.
Swede knew that the next Japanese air and ground offensive was imminent. The word was that it would be the biggest one of the whole campaign, and he wasn’t about to miss it.
Thursday, 12 November 1942
Guadalcanal
Torpedo Squadron Eight
The first Avengers from the Marine air squadron nearly didn’t make it to Guadalcanal. They arrived at the same time that a convoy of American transports was disembarking men and materiel to reinforce Vandegrift’s depleted garrison.
The transports were escorted by five cruisers and eight destroyers. Fearing a Japanese air attack from Rabaul at any moment, their antiaircraft gun crews were being particularly vigilant.
At 1000, the six Avengers of the Marine squadron approached the southeastern coast of Guadalcanal. They were flying at low altitude, and the gun crews aboard the American warships decided to take no chances. They opened up on the unidentified intruders, raking the Avengers with machine gun fire as the Marine pilots kept trying to radio Henderson Field that they were friendly. Before the firing stopped, one Avenger had been damaged badly enough to be exiled to the boneyard as soon as it landed.