War Stories II: Heroism in the Pacific

by Oliver North

  I got my first kill on 16 September. It was my first escort mission to Bougainville. The Zeros were probably about 10,000 or 12,000 feet, and I’d come down from maybe twenty and gotten in behind them, trying to remain in their blind spot. I got two on that flight.

  I got back at the base at Turtle Bay and went to the scrap heap for some parts of wrecked planes, and got a .50-caliber machine gun and shot different rounds into this debris. The common belting for our machine guns was one armor-piercing shell, one incendiary, and a tracer.

  The armor-piercing shell was something you didn’t need on the Zero. The Zero didn’t have armor. And you just need tracers initially to see where your guns are hitting. The thing that would torch off the Zero was the incendiary. It would scatter phosphorous around the small area [inside the cockpit] so that it was almost solid phosphorous for maybe a foot in diameter where the incendiary went off.

  So, I got Boyington out to the scrap heap and showed him what the rounds were capable of. After that we immediately went to a belting of a much larger number of incendiaries. And we got real good results from it, too. The Zeros were blowing up noticeably faster.

  MARINE FIGHTER SQUADRON VMF-214 READY TENT

  MUNDA POINT, NEW GEORGIA

  17 OCTOBER 1943

  0400 HOURS LOCAL

  Like the rest of the Allied air bases springing up on the Solomon Island chain and the others to the northwest, Munda Point, on the island of New Georgia, was a terrible place with a reputation as a “malarial hell-hole.”

  Each night the Black Sheep Squadron had visitors who made life miserable for them. Their first night at Munda, the Japanese welcomed them with a bombing raid at one o’clock in the morning. They kept up that routine, visiting the base up to three times a night, making it impossible for the pilots to get a full night’s sleep.

  When the air raid alarm went off, the men found cover, waited for the Japanese bombers to leave, then went back to bed, only to be awakened a few hours later with the same routine. By 0400 the pilots were roused again—but on 17 October 1943 the last call wasn’t the air raid alarm. It was the duty officer getting them to the flight line for another day’s mission. This day, the Black Sheep Squadron was on another bombing run against the Japanese air base at Kahili.

  Spurred on by his sense of competition, Major Boyington tried a new tactic with his pilots. Now, instead of waiting for Japanese aircraft to attack, he began flying over their bases and taunting them to respond. He even used his radio to let them know he was coming and told them that he was the guy who shot down all their planes. The tactic worked—the enemy picked up the gauntlet and fought back with a vengeance. And as the Black Sheep moved ever closer to the Japanese stronghold of Rabaul, those fights over enemy airspace got increasingly hotter.

  It’s always riskier getting into a dogfight over an enemy’s airspace. If your plane got hit and you had to bail out, there was a good chance you would survive if you were in your own airspace. But over enemy territory, the odds were in favor of your dying there. If you bailed, there was every chance that a Zero pilot would try to gun you down in your parachute. If you were lucky enough to survive the parachute drop, chances were that enemy soldiers on the ground would kill you when you landed.

  Boyington had first challenged the Japanese to aerial battles when they were dogfighting over Bougainville. With its strong Japanese presence, sweeps over Bougainville were always high-risk.

  Boyington continued to goad the enemy until he received a cable from Admiral Halsey. It read: YOUR STEEPLECHASE IS OVER. YOU ARE RETIRED TO STUD.

  Actually, Halsey was saying that their first tour of air combat duty was over and he was granting the squadron some well-deserved R & R in Australia.

  Two other members of the Black Sheep Squadron who went with Boyington to Australia were just twenty-two when they landed in the South Pacific.

  LIEUTENANT ED HARPER, USMC

  Vella Lavella Island

  29 October 1943

  1100 Hours Local

  The first time I saw an F4U Corsair was on an air station before I went overseas, before I got to the South Pacific. Espiritu Santo is the first time I saw one up close. At Espiritu Santo we got assigned to 214 as part of the replacement pool.

  I wasn’t even aware who Boyington was for the first few days. We only knew he’d been in the Flying Tigers when we started training as a squadron.

  Initially I was very aggressive, and had no fear at all, until suddenly I was on the receiving end instead of the delivering end. And that’s very sobering. It never got easier, when you were on the receiving end. Zeros were hard to shoot down. I fired a whole load of ammunition into one, almost point-blank, as he dove away. And he barely burned. But he obviously was done for. He was no longer fighting and was crashing into the sea. But he didn’t blow up for me. In fact, he didn’t burn easily at all.

  Zeros were flown by very skilled pilots and were hard to shoot down. Most Zeros that were shot down were targeted by pilots that didn’t let the Zeros see them coming.

  I got hit a couple of times with Zeros that I never saw, too. And that was pretty typical. I was just a kid trying to do some good. I only got one confirmed, and a couple of probables, and a few more I just shot up.

  The intelligence officer took your word for it. If I’d have been inclined to exaggerate, I could’ve been an ace. I really shot that guy down that went in the ocean and I shot up a couple more until they were riddled with holes, but I didn’t see them burn or crash. So you didn’t count them.

  Boyington gave me the nickname “the sleeve” after I got shot up the first time. A “sleeve” is the target sleeve that’s towed behind another plane to offer fighters gunnery practice.

  It was my first tour and I hadn’t shot down anything. Other guys were having a little luck. But I was trailing and I was getting anxious.

  I got off by myself and found a Zero down below me. I started making runs on him. That’s when I discovered how maneuverable they were. Every time I got close to him, he’d do a split S underneath me. I’d do a wing over, and come back. And he’d do another split S. We were working ourselves down over the harbor, right off the end of their runway. And my thought was, that little bugger can’t split S forever. He’ll do a split S into the ocean. But what I didn’t realize, all the way down, he must have been hollering for help on his radio.

  Suddenly I had a lot of extra company. And instead of being on the offense, I suddenly was on the defense, trying to stay alive. There was a small cumulus cloud, a mile or so away. I jinked left and right, and up and down, and I finally made it into the clouds. And of course you felt like you were playing tag. I popped in and out, ended up getting some pretty good shots at several Zeros.

  After playing that game for a while, I dove out the bottom of the cloud and headed home. Nothing fatal was hit—the engine wasn’t hit. I wasn’t hit. The landing gear wouldn’t come down so I had to make a belly landing. But, otherwise it was a non-event.

  It didn’t seem to be a big deal, except I had over a hundred holes in my airplane when I got back. Boyington took a look at the airplane and said, “You were a target sleeve today.”

  We had no idea we were setting records. And we were having reasonable success. But we didn’t expect the attention that we received along the way. You didn’t want to think about it.

  3 January 1944, Boyington was shot down. We were coming out of Bougainville, and when he didn’t come home, we asked to go on a search party. And they wouldn’t let us. The following morning, they let four of us take off and go look for him, providing we got back in time for our regular mission. If the Japanese sub hadn’t come along and picked him up early that morning, we would’ve found him.

  I said then, and I still say sixty years later, Pappy made me feel secure. He made me feel aggressive. He gave me confidence. He was a leader. Sure, he got in trouble on the ground from time to time, and liked to drink and fight. But he was terrific in the air. And he made us young fighter pilots brave.
And that’s leadership.

  LIEUTENANT W. THOMAS EMRICH, USMC

  Vella Lavella Island

  29 October 1943

  1315 Hours Local

  I remember vividly that first time. We didn’t see any enemy airplanes at first, on my first mission. And suddenly about sixty Zeros appear. There’s probably thirty or so of us from various squadrons. So airplanes are all around. You look off to the left, there’s airplanes going down in flames. There are airplanes crossing twenty feet in front of you. And I think, what am I doing here? I’m scared to death. My mouth was so dry, if you’d have called me on the radio, I couldn’t have answered you. That’s how scared I was.

  On October 17 I shot down two Zeros—two on the same day. You have to remember that the Zero had no armor plate and no self-sealing fuel tanks. Their fuel tank was behind the cockpit. And both the airplanes I shot down, I came in from behind. They never saw me. And when I fired, the Zero just exploded because my bullets were incendiary and the gas tank behind the pilot blew up. You never saw them again. It’s obvious when they’re on fire that they’re finished.

  In such fights, you’re not only flying the airplane, you’re shooting six guns. It isn’t just flying skill that counts. It was also marksmanship.

  The next tour after that, we were flying along in an overcast of 800 feet after we’d come back from an aborted mission. We were flying at about 500 feet and you can imagine what these Japanese thought, with eight Corsairs, passing 300 to 400 feet over them.

  About a minute or two later, my engine quit. I tried to turn on the other fuel pump and check the tanks. Before that time, I’d always thought, If something happens, do I want to make a water landing or bail out? Well, at 500 feet I didn’t have any choice about bailing out. So it was going to be a water landing. But the engine quit and the airplane slowed down, and when I hit the ocean, water gets right up to my windshield. Naturally I try to get out. I climb onto the wing, jump off into the water, and the airplane disappears. That’s how fast it was.

  And my friend Ed Harper starts circling to see that his buddy was okay, and calls for some assistance. In about an hour a boat came out, picked me up, and took me to shore. There was an auxiliary field there, and another Army plane came and flew me back to base.

  MARINE FIGHTER SQUADRON VMF-214

  CAPE TOROKINA BEACHHEAD

  EMPRESS AUGUSTA BAY, BOUGAINVILLE

  27 DECEMBER 1943

  0940 HOURS LOCAL

  In mid-November, U.S. Marine Raiders from the 3rd Infantry Division finally landed at Bougainville, where the Japanese least expected. They were followed by 34,000 Marines and Army troops, who, having bypassed the enemy garrisons on the south coast, sailed halfway up the western side of the island before going ashore just north of Empress Augusta Bay at Cape Torokina.

  The bulk of the Japanese forces in Rabaul, far to the south, needed time to move troops and equipment across the island to hold back the Americans. By that time, the Seabees—with the help of an engineer brigade from New Zealand—had finished two airstrips while the infantry established a secure beachhead. The Allies were actually making some headway when the Japanese finally came up from the south.

  The Black Sheep Squadron in front of a Corsair on Vella Lavella.

  Combat on Bougainville was terrible, with the jungle and terrain even worse and more unforgiving than those on Guadalcanal.

  By the time Bougainville was partially secured, Major Boyington and the squadron had returned from R & R to the forward base at Vella Lavella. There, Boyington learned that he had nineteen new men to train. But Pappy wanted a more challenging target than Bougainville and suggested the fortified Japanese base at Rabaul. His old friend General “Nuts” Moore gave him the go-ahead.

  On 17 December 1943, Boyington led the first single-engine fighter sweep across Rabaul. The Japanese forces at Rabaul had been steadily worn down by Allied bombing and strafing attacks, by both MacArthur’s air force and the Black Sheep Squadron. This day Pappy Boyington’s pilots would be up against more than two hundred Zeros and their pilots, who knew how to fight the Marine Corsairs.

  The Japanese shot down six Black Sheep pilots on their first two runs on Rabaul. But at the end of the day Boyington alone had a total of twenty kills to his credit—just six fewer than the American record held by Joe Foss and Eddie Rickenbacker. On 23 December he knocked down four more, closing the gap even more.

  A press corps interviewer asked Pappy if any Japanese planes showed up to attack the Black Sheep Squadron. He replied, “Yes, there were a number of Japanese planes that came up over there . . . and we got all we could in dogfights. And I saw eight other planes destroyed besides the four I destroyed myself.”

  The next night, at a base Christmas party, he boasted, “They can’t kill me. If you ever see me with thirty Zeros on my tail, don’t worry. I’ll be all right. I’ll meet you six months after the war in a bar in San Diego and we’ll all have a drink for old time’s sake.”

  Ten days later, Major Gregory “Pappy” Boyington was shot down in a running gun battle in the skies just off the coast of Rabaul. But he didn’t go quietly. Before his plane disappeared into the sea, he was seen burning another enemy Zero—his twenty-fifth—one short of the all-time record.

  Boyington’s disappearance created a press and public relations frenzy. Rumors were rampant. The New York Times reported that Major Boyington was alive on an island, hidden by natives and waiting to rejoin the squadron. There were other guesses as to what happened. None of the stories about his disappearance were true.

  No one but the Japanese knew that Pappy Boyington had been shot down and picked up in the water by a Japanese sub. He was taken to Japan and only resurfaced at the war’s end, when his name showed up on a list of American POWs.

  The Marine Black Sheep Squadron fell apart after its leader had been missing in action for several months. VMF-214 was officially disbanded in March 1944. The men of the formerly tight-knit squadron went their separate ways. Some returned home to the U.S. for duty while others were reassigned to other units in the Pacific.

  MacArthur and Halsey—with the help of the Black Sheep—had effectively isolated the Japanese on Rabaul. Cut off from supplies or evacuation and virtually abandoned by their leaders, Rabaul’s garrison of more than 100,000 Imperial troops were allowed—in the words of Admiral Halsey—to “wither on the vine.” From early 1944 to the end of the war in August 1945 the garrison received no food, supplies, or reinforcements.

  When Japanese commanders surrendered Rabaul after the war, among the 101,000 troops still on the island fortress were five divisions commanded by nineteen army generals and eleven admirals of the Imperial Navy contingent.

  CHAPTER 11

  BLOODY TARAWA

  (NOVEMBER 1943)

  USS MARYLAND, FLAGSHIP, U.S. 5TH AMPHIBIOUS FORCE

  TARAWA, BETIO ISLAND

  20 NOVEMBER 1943

  0800 HOURS LOCAL

  As Rear Admiral Harry Hill watched from the bridge of his flagship, the largest amphibious assault yet tried in the Pacific was finally under way. Called Operation Galvanic, it aimed to capture the Gilbert Islands in the first phase of a new central Pacific offensive—a strategy long advocated by Admiral Chester Nimitz and bitterly opposed by General Douglas MacArthur.

  The long struggle to isolate and neutralize Rabaul had built support in Washington for Nimitz’s plan. And though MacArthur believed that the road to Tokyo had to go through the Philippines, everyone else was looking for a way to avoid more of the long, bloody battles like those fought in the steaming, mountainous jungles of New Guinea and Guadalcanal.

  Operation Cartwheel, the two-pronged Allied approach toward Rabaul launched in the aftermath of Yamamoto’s demise, had been a difficult but resounding success. By the end of October 1943, troops from MacArthur’s southwest Pacific command had moved well up the northeast coast of New Guinea and were preparing to land at Cape Gloucester on New Britain. Halsey’s South Pacific forces had made para
llel progress up through the Russell Islands, Munda, Vella Lavella and Choiseul. On 1 November, the 3rd Marine Division and the Army’s 37th Division landed on Bougainville.

  These engagements were fought as conventional land battles, supported by Navy cruiser/destroyer surface action groups and land-based Army, Navy, and Marine aircraft. While Halsey was slugging his way to the northwest, his lack of carriers forced him to seize and build little island airstrips. General George Kenney, commanding MacArthur’s 5th Air Force, was building a virtual air armada of first-rate, land-based Army Air Force fighters and bombers supported by hundreds of transport aircraft. By the fall of 1943, Kenney’s airmen were ranging hundreds of miles from Australia and Papua, attacking Japanese ships, bases, troop concentrations, and supply depots at will. On 2 November, Kenney sent seventy-five B-25 Mitchell bombers and eighty P-38 Lightnings to raid Rabaul itself, sinking more than a dozen Japanese ships, damaging twenty others, and destroying ninety-four of the emperor’s planes in the air. On the ground, American losses totaled eight B-25s and nine P-38s.

  Admiral Harry Hill

  That same night, in the Battle of Empress Augusta Bay, U.S. cruisers commanded by Admiral Stanton Merrill and a destroyer division led by Captain Arleigh Burke turned away a Japanese counter-invasion force of cruisers, destroyers, and transports attempting to interdict General Vandegrift’s amphibious landing on Bougainville. The following day, Admiral Halsey sent carrier aircraft from Saratoga and the light carrier USS Princeton to bomb the Japanese fleet anchored at Rabaul. On 11 November, he did it again—adding the carriers Essex, Independence, and Bunker Hill—a five-carrier raid that lasted for hours, wrecking the Japanese base.