The Pacific

by Hugh Ambrose

  The captain's spot, Joe replied, was "eight feet further toward the bow than you were," whereupon Lieutenant Hank Warren faced Jocko Clark. "Captain, I promise never to come up there and try to run that bridge if you'll leave me alone and let me spot the flight deck."26 After a tense moment, the captain's thick, wide lips broke into a smile. "I promise." The story of Hank getting Jocko to back down was just the kind of juicy story that made it all the way around the ship, even to Mike, who hadn't flown for a few days and wouldn't step into the cockpit for a few more.

  Flight operations began in earnest after the ship entered the Gulf of Paria, a large body of water between the island of Trinidad and the coast of Venezuela. The two entrances to the gulf had been blocked with submarine nets, allowing U.S. carriers--and Yorktown was one of several new Essex-class carriers preparing for its first combat tour--to focus on testing all of their systems and personnel to the utmost. Mike's flight on May 28, his first in three weeks, was supposed to mark the start of his squadron's final preparation for a combat tour. Instead, it was the beginning of the end of Bombing Six.

  The SB2Cs, in Mike's words, "turned out to be a bust. We couldn't get them off the deck. We'd get up into the launch position, the wings would go down, but they wouldn't lock. So we'd have to taxi the plane off . . . to the side of the ship." The next one up might be able to lock its wings, but the plane after that and the one after that couldn't, so the whole launch sequence disintegrated into a mess, as the plane pushers and elevators worked to get the busted ones out of the way. "Most of them never got their wings locked." The ability to fold its wings had been one of the Helldiver's advantages over the Dauntless because it allowed for a tighter deck spot. The sight of four or five men climbing on each wing to weigh it down enough for it to lock, however, failed to inspire confidence.27

  After a few days of fighting the technology, Captain Clark ordered the Helldivers off his ship. Ray Davis gave Mike the job of going ashore with the faulty planes and seeing what could be done. At an airstrip on Trinidad, Mike and his team spent a week tinkering with the wing-locking mechanism until it worked smoothly. One of the tests they devised involved parking three planes near the SB2Cs and using the propellers to simulate a strong wind. It worked. Even as they were buffeted, the wings snapped down. So they flew back out to the ship, churning through the gulf. The "first time we get in launch position, the wings won't lock down."

  Mike was angry at the SB2Cs. He had come to believe the acronym SB2C stood for the plane's rank: Son of Bitch Second Class. He said nothing as the captain chewed him out, unhappily noting that Clark assumed he had spent the week at a bar instead of working. Clark could not focus on Lieutenant Micheel for long, however. The Helldivers of the bombing and the scouting squadrons revealed other significant flaws. On June 12, a number of them pulled their tail hooks out when they caught the arresting wire upon landing, sending them crashing into the wire barrier--a barrier of last resort that damaged planes and threatened personnel. Two others developed mechanical trouble and crashed near the ship. Captain Clark expressed his anger in his characteristically blunt style, concluding with, "Kick those things off the ship. I don't want to see any of them on my ship again!" On June 12 he summarily canceled flight operations. His carrier steamed for Trinidad. That night all of the offending SB2Cs were deposited by crane at the airfields. Yorktown took off at high speed for Norfolk.

  TWO WEEKS AFTER RECEIVING THE MEDAL, ON JUNE 12, MANILA FORCED HIMSELF to write his parents. He described his location as "somewhere where I can enjoy life" so that they would not worry. "I am in the best of health and very happy--for the other day I received the Congressional Medal of Honor. Tell Pop his son is still tough. Tell Don thanks for the prayer they say in school for us."28 He asked for news about the family and signed off. In the envelope he included a photograph of the medal ceremony. The photo John chose to send showed him wearing his medal and standing next to Billie Joe Crumpton, wearing his Navy Cross.29

  He received a reply from his parents in late June. They told him that since the news of his medal had broken on June 24, they had been besieged by friends, well-wishers, and reporters and cameramen.30 Manila's parents, Sal and Dora, included lots of letters. So many of the letters had requested photos of him that Dora had arranged to have a postcard made of him.31 A lot of the letters came from women whose sons had served on Guadalcanal; they hoped he might have some information about their marines. Sal and Dora sent him copies of the Raritan Valley News, which mentioned that Manila John's hometown planned to throw him a big homecoming celebration and also award him a $5,000 bond because, as one headline had it, he had "Held Off Entire Jap Regiment for 3 Days."32 A huge poster-sized picture of Sergeant John Basilone had been hung on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Tony Field, an editor with Sensation magazine, had spoken to them about purchasing the life rights to the story of Manila John, to make a movie, pending the approval of John and the USMC.33

  The news of what was going on back home made him unhappy, even as he and his friend Richard Greer spent the July Fourth holiday with two female friends playing in the snow at a resort called the Australian Alps.34 When he returned, he wrote his parents again. To all the requests that had been enclosed in the mail to him, he could only apologize with a white lie and say that he had been "kept very busy" since receiving the medal. As for an explanation of why he had been awarded it, he wrote, "I did what any other Marine would have done in my position."35 He continued. "I sure would love to come home, but there is still a big job to do over here . . . I'm sending my medal home, so take good care of it." He concluded, " Tell Pop to save some wine for my return." Manila John did not, however, tell his parents the whole truth. Only a few days earlier, he had been found qualified for promotion to gunnery sergeant.36 With his friend Sergeant Mitch Paige having made the leap to officer, Sergeant Basilone must have felt sure enough of his chances to become very excited. A promotion to the exalted position of "gunny" represented a level of success beyond what he had ever dared to hope. Already, though, another force was at work. His desire to send his new medal home to his parents went unrealized.

  WHEN YORKTOWN RETURNED TO NORFOLK, BOMBING SIX TRADED IN THEIR SB2Cs for the trusty Dauntless. Other big changes for the carrier's squadrons came from the navy itself. The navy had decided to increase the number of fighters aboard a carrier. America could not continue to lose as many carriers as it had in 1942; more fighters meant more protection from enemy planes. To make room for more Hellcats on Yorktown, the scouting squadron was eliminated. The reorganization also recognized that the distinction between bombing and scouting squadrons had existed only in theory, not in practice. While Yorktown's new bombing squadron would be larger than it had been before, it would not be double the size. Some pilots would have to be transferred to other squadrons before the new carrier embarked for the Pacific.

  Lieutenant Commander Ray Davis, who had seniority over the officer in command of the scouting squadron, could have chosen to stay with the new Bombing Six. He elected to go ashore and form a new squadron. Mike also went ashore, although in his case the other squadron's flight officer outranked him and elected to stay aboard. Bill Pittman and a few of the other old veterans of Bombing Six opted to go with Ray. They figured their skipper would get them into his new squadron. Once ashore in Norfolk, though, Ray found himself assigned to a desk. Ray and Mike and Bill shared a good laugh about the unexpected turn. Bombing Six had been "tossed to the winds." Mike found himself headed to Bombing Squadron Fourteen, stationed at NAS Wildwood.

  In late June 1943, Lieutenant Micheel took a train up the coast a few hundred miles to the village of Rio Grande, not far from the slightly larger town of Wildwood, on the southern tip of New Jersey. He caught a bus past a smelly fish- rendering plant to the base. Located on a long marshy isthmus lined by beaches, NAS Wildwood looked the part of a naval base. Off the runways ran the taxi strips that led to rows of planes parked along the flight line. The giant hangar with its rounded roof had little offices running
down either side. In a routine now familiar, he dropped his bags at the BOQ and headed over to report to his squadron commander, Lieutenant Commander Grafton Campbell.

  Bombing Fourteen had just begun to exist in fact as well as on paper. Commander Campbell had arrived a few weeks earlier. Pilots had shown up sporadically since then. Mike noticed that his skipper had not yet served in combat. The navy had, however, provided the new squadron with one other seasoned veteran, Lieutenant Harold Buell. Mike knew "Hal" Buell. Hal had been a class or two behind him during pilot training. They had flown together on the second day of the invasion of Guadalcanal, when Mike had gone with Hal's scouting squadron.37 Hal had spent a few weeks as a member of the Cactus Air Force. Having departed Enterprise just as she was struck by bombs on August 24, Buell's group had been forced to land on Guadalcanal. After the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, the group never flew back aboard the carrier. Fighting the Tokyo Express during those crucial days at the end of August and into September, Buell had shipped out before Mike arrived on Cactus in October.

  Hardly a day had passed before the navy's new organization caught up with Bombing Fourteen. It merged with Bombing Fifteen to make Bombing Squadron Two. Since neither squadron had had time to develop an identity, the reorganization went smoothly. Campbell promoted his ops officer to executive officer, gave the ops job to Hal Buell, and made Mike his engineering officer. Mike had requested the job because he had already been ops officer and wanted the experience as an engineering officer. His experience wrestling with the SB2C certainly helped. Both Mike and Hal Buell were given a division to lead and the latest version of the Dauntless to fly.

  Gregarious and ambitious, Hal Buell began picking the members of his division carefully.38 He chose those who met his standards for ability and aggressiveness. Although he had bombed the Tokyo Express, Hal badly wanted to sink a flattop and earn the Navy Cross that came with it. He also considered the selection of his wingmen as a matter of survival. Mike noticed that Hal's division became something of a clique unto themselves. When new pilots transferred in, Hal would not take them. He taught his pilots that good dive- bombers didn't drop bombs. Good dive-bombers took their bombs all the way down to fifteen hundred feet and "fired" their bombs into the imperial ships.39 Commander Campbell, nicknamed "Soupy," liked what he saw of Hal Buell. Buell, however, disliked serving under a skipper who had only just completed flight training and had not been in combat.40

  Having earned the Navy Cross at Midway, Mike certainly had the admiration of the ensigns in his squadron. The squadron commander, who had Mike's file, would have seen Ray Davis's recommendation that Mike be given command of his own squadron. Had Lieutenant Micheel pulled some rank, few would have looked askance at it. Mike admired Hal's dedication to the mission and the esprit de corps he instilled, but that was not his way. Mike worked with whoever was assigned to him.

  All the men in Micheel's division had just come from flight school. The ensigns were as full of themselves as any young group of naval aviators could be expected to be. They wanted to live life to the fullest, whether in the air or in the arms of the young ladies of Wildwood, New Jersey.41 The pilots attended ground school. The ensigns accepted the necessity of polishing their communication procedures, enjoyed the physical training "to keep us in shape for our nocturnal recreation," but bitched heartily about the boring training films on such riveting topics as "IBP in the OS2U," and "Recognition."

  Their division leader decided that his philosophy of training was "you start at the bottom and work up." When the training program began in earnest on June 30, the green pilots found themselves practicing their formation flying before moving on to wingovers, stalls, and other maneuvers that demonstrated a pilot's ability to control his aircraft. They soaked it all up because they loved to fly. His students wanted to get past subjects like navigation to practice tactical maneuvers like dive- bombing, gunnery, and carrier landings.

  The ensigns of Bombing Two took every opportunity to zoom over the white sandy beaches bordering Wildwood. It made the women on the beach nervous. As one pilot put it, " There's nothing like scattering half-nude pulchritude." The young pilots took a perverse pride in frequently generating angry phone calls from the town's mayor to Skipper Campbell. If they had one concern, the ensigns feared the war would end before they entered the fray.

  When it came to talk of combat, Mike emphasized two skills above all others. He taught them how to conserve gas in a variety of ways--by leaning out the fuel mixture of the engine, by regulating their speed, and so forth. Husbanding their fuel was not something one did in difficult situations. According to Lieutenant Micheel, it was a way of life. During their training flights out over the Atlantic, he also pushed them to read the waves on the water. A good pilot could look at the waves on the water and understand the strength and direction of the prevailing wind. Properly estimating the effect of the wind on his flight path made it possible for a pilot to find his way back to the carrier's deck. Imbuing the young aviators with the bitter lessons of experience was exactly what the navy expected Lieutenant Micheel and Buell to do. While Buell might speak freely of his experiences in combat, Mike wanted his students to concentrate on wave reading and fuel conservation.

  Having two such experienced airmen in his squadron could make it difficult for the commander of Bombing Two. As Campbell prepared to take the entire squadron up and practice operating as a unit, he instructed his division leaders that the squadron would fly in a stepped- up formation. This meant that every plane behind Campbell's plane would fly a few feet above and to one side. The normally quiet Lieutenant Micheel voiced concern over the order. His question would have surprised the skipper, since he had recently been trained to fly in a stepped up formation. Mike said, "Well, I just came from the fleet, and we flew step down. They don't fly stepped up anymore . . . they fly step down." Scouting Six had flown stepped down in the Battle of Midway.42

  Flying stepped up or stepped down had to do with how the squadron protected itself from attacks by Zeros. Squadrons flew inaVof Vs in order that the guns of all the airplanes were in the best position from which to defend the other aircraft. The relative positions of the planes also had everything to do with how they maintained their tight formation. Since the start of the war, combat pilots had learned that if they flew stepped up, their leaders were below them. When things got tricky, Mike explained, "you never knew where you were when you were over the top of the guy." If you flew below the plane in front of you, however, "you always had him in sight. So that was the way we went."

  Mike failed to anticipate that his comments called into question his skipper's ability. Campbell's temper flared. He had graduated from Annapolis. The blood in his veins ran Navy Blue. Micheel was a Johnny-come-lately, a ninety-day wonder. Campbell pulled an instruction manual off his shelf and proffered it. "Show me where you're flying step down," Mike sputtered, knowing without looking what the book said. "Well, they never change those [books] during the war; there wasn't anybody to work on them. There wasn't any grand place where you sent in tactics" to be adopted officially; "they just evolved and if they worked you picked them up. But there wasn't anybody reprinting the tactic books." The disparaging remarks about tactic books might have reminded Campbell of the nickname pilots like Mike had for graduates of Annapolis: "trade school boys." Lieutenant Micheel concluded with a restatement of his experience. Campbell was adamant. Bombing Two flew stepped up.

  ON JULY 1, PRIVATE FIRST CLASS EUGENE SLEDGE LEFT MOBILE ON A TRAIN TO Atlanta, Georgia, and reported to the commanding officer, Marine Detachment, Navy Training Unit, at the Georgia School of Technology.43 Eugene's long wait had at last ended and his enthusiasm knew no bounds. The graceful arches of the brick and stone buildings on the campus of Georgia Tech made an impression. Students filled the walks and hallways even in high summer, as Tech had adopted a three-semester schedule to speed students through their courses and thus ease the nation's manpower shortage.44

  Lieutenant Holmes, the commanding
officer of the marine detachment, informed Sledge that he was a private, not a private first class, and assigned him to Harrison Dorm. A modern brick building on the southeastern edge of campus and near the Navy Armory, Harrison appealed to him because it housed only marines.45 Eugene liked being issued "navy bedding," with which to make up his bunk, and being measured for his uniform. The first rumors he heard about his course work, however, made him wonder if he would have to ask his father to call his friend at the Marine Corps and "cuss him out." Eugene had not come to Tech to study engineering.

  The next day, Eugene came close to being kicked out of the V-12 program. The doctor examining him determined that he was underweight. Private Sledge insisted he had just been ill and he would soon regain the weight. The doc passed him. Pleased with his adroit handling of the problem, Eugene began eating more. He wanted to measure up. "Don't let anyone tell you that the Marine Corps has lowered its requirements," he wrote his mother. "If you look at the doc like you aren't feeling well, out you go." The prospect of putting on the uniform of "the best outfit in the world" inspired him to have stationery printed with a Marine Corps logo above his name and to write his friend Sid Phillips.

  The demands of service, however, lagged somewhat. The officers in charge of the Navy ROTC Armory plainly had their hands full with Sledge's class, the first class of students for the V-12 program. They had to order the lives of almost a thousand students from the navy, as well as about three hundred marines, and fit them in with the traditional ROTC, or Reserve Officers Training Program. Putting all of these together in the midst of a crowded campus took time.

  After a week, the semester began. Reveille awakened the students at 0545. They fell out for calisthenics, led by a navy chief petty officer; then their routine became like that of college students attending Georgia Tech. The steam whistle signaled the class periods every hour from seven fifty- five a.m. to four fifty- five p.m. The V-12 program assigned its students courses in physics and other sciences. Sledge complained about having to take physics and biology, though he liked the economics class on his schedule. After class, they held drill on their parade ground, Rose Bowl Field, on the opposite corner of campus from his dorm. Curfew on military time began at 1930 during the week and the lights went out in Harrison Dorm at 2330.