Grashio had rekindled two old flames, one of which was his high school sweetheart, a big-eyed blonde named Devonia Carolus. The other was Grashio’s longtime love affair with airplanes, which showed considerably less promise. Nevertheless, much like his father—who in 1902 had traded his likely future as a goatherder in Calabria, Italy, for a ticket on a New York–bound steamer—he took a chance and enrolled in Gonzaga’s federal flight training program in 1938. With hard work, newfound focus, and the practical experience he had gained with the Washington Air National Guard, Grashio earned his pilot’s license in 1940. He navigated the rigorous cadet programs at Randolph and Kelly Fields and was assigned to Ed Dyess’s 21st Pursuit in 1941, a break Grashio would later consider the biggest of his life. “Ed … took me right under his wing. He was only two years older than I—he was twenty-five—but he was like a father to me at first,” said Grashio. “Then, when I became more assured, he was like a pal.” At the time, Grashio could not have known how strong that friendship would become, nor could he have known how much action was in store for him.
Despite the heavy fog of war settling over Luzon, the skies were clear and the air, recalled Grashio, was “as smooth as glass.” The P-40s of C Flight passed over 3,000-foot Mount Arayat until 1220 hours, when Grashio surveyed Clark Field from 10,000 feet. Seeing nothing unusual, he decided to wing westward to join up with a formation of P-40s. Ten fateful minutes later, his radio crackled to life. “All P-40’s return to Clark Field,” shouted the tower operator there, his voice muted by exploding bombs. “Enemy bombers overhead!”
There were fifty-three Japanese navy Type 96 and Type 1—known as “Nell” and “Betty”—twin-engine bombers in two V formations blackening the skies at Clark Field. It was about 1230 when the first wave of Nells, like bursting storm clouds, began to rain destruction from their bomb bays. The shrill whine of an air raid siren sent men pouring from crowded mess halls. They dove into slit trenches and scrambled to their battle stations as bomb concussions rocked the ground beneath them.
The Japanese bombardiers possessed uncanny aim. Direct hits obliterated hangars, barracks, and communications stations and felled radio towers and telephone poles in showers of sparks. Fragmentation bombs ignited ammunition dumps and oil tanks, and fuel trucks exploded in orange fireballs. Shrapnel, giant sheets of aluminum, corrugated iron, and whipping propellers slashed through the air, striking men indiscriminately. Strings of bombs smacked the flight line, blowing apart dozens of new P-40s. The flames hungrily spread to tufts of cogon grass and thickets of dry bamboo. Towering plumes of dark, oily smoke billowed skyward. After the second wave of bombers had passed, dozens of gray Zeros streaked down through the smoke blanket, their blazing guns shredding the silver steel skins of the just refueled B-17s.
Antiaircraft gunners frantically fired their 3-inch guns, but most of the corroded fuses—much of their ammunition was World War I surplus—were duds and those shells that did explode did so in harmless smoke puffs well beneath their targets. Others peppered the sky with fire from old water-cooled Brownings, rifles, and .45s. Though heroic, their efforts were largely in vain; by the time Grashio had boomeranged his P-40 back to Clark, he found a broiling holocaust.
Shaken out of his dreamlike trance, Grashio reflected on “how utterly and abysmally wrong” the officers on the Coolidge had been and prayed for those on the ground. He then spied a handful of Zeros, the blood-red hinomaru, or rising sun emblems, visible on their wings. Drawing a deep breath, he motioned for his wingmen to follow, but McCown and Cole were already engaged. Suddenly, a lone Zero darted out of the swirling smoke below his ship, apparently circling around for another strafing run. His heart pounding, Grashio steadied his P-40 and the plane shuddered as he let fly a barrage of bullets. The Zero slid out of the sky leaking smoke, but Grashio would not have time to celebrate his first victory.
Wingman Williams had spotted nine Zeros preparing to dive, but before they could complete their turn, the two lead planes completed a climbing turn of their own and were now on the tails of the Americans. In seconds, the hunters had become the hunted. Grashio did not know it, but one of the pilots chasing him was Imperial Navy Chief Petty Officer Saburo Sakai. Sakai, the leading Japanese air ace to survive the war, would shoot down more than sixty Allied aircraft before being grounded by wounds and failing eyesight in 1945. After the war, Sakai would become a Buddhist and renounce all violence, but on this day he was eagerly pursuing his first American victories.
As Grashio veered left, Sakai fired a ribbon of explosive shells from his 20 millimeter nose cannon and ripped a gaping hole into the left wing of Grashio’s plane. Grashio’s sweaty hands white-knuckled the stick. Instinctively, he turned to his faith. As his lips trembled in fervent prayer, the three planes sliced through the sky, molten lead pouring from the Zeros’ guns. “I was sure I was going to die on the first day of the war,” said Grashio. Suddenly, his prayers were answered. Grashio remembered Dyess’s lectures: “Never try to outmaneuver a Zero; go into a steep dive and try to outrace it.” Indeed, the P-40 was much heavier—one pilot had called the armor-plated plane “a streamlined safe”—so he pointed its nose to the ground and pushed the throttle wide open. The needle in his altimeter spun wildly as the earth flashed upward at breakneck speed. Attempting such a maneuver in a new plane was “courting suicide,” said Grashio, “but with two Zeros on your tail, the admonitions in technical manuals are not the first things you think about.”
Grashio’s luck, as well as the plane’s virgin engine, held. He pulled up, skimming the treetops as the Japanese pursuers receded into the distance. When Grashio touched down at Nichols at 0130, Dyess greeted him—he had led the other flights on an uneventful patrol over Cavite—and together they inspected the damaged plane. Grashio shook his head, remarking excitedly between breaths, “By God, they ain’t shootin’ spitballs, are they?”
A few hours later, after the order came in to abandon Nichols Field, Dyess, Grashio, and the rest of the 21st Pursuit Squadron landed at cratered Clark Field amid clouds of pumice and dust. Guided by the “eerie glow cast by the smoldering hangars,” they weaved around fire-gutted wrecks and opened their cockpits to a stinging stench of cordite, burnt flesh, and gasoline fumes. Lt. Joe Moore, whose 20th Pursuit had been decimated, summed up the damage tally in one terse sentence: “We
got kicked in the teeth.” Despite sufficient advance warning—nearly
ten hours had elapsed between the attacks on Pearl Harbor and the
Philippines—MacArthur’s air force had suffered a death blow. Twelve of the nineteen B-17s at Clark Field were now charred wreckage and thirty-four of the 5th Interceptor Command’s ninety-one P-40s—two entire squadrons—were destroyed. The lone radar station at Iba Field was damaged beyond repair and the one-sided onslaught (Japanese losses totaled seven planes) had also destroyed precious stocks of fuel and parts.
Two days later, with Japanese planes streaking over Manila and the port area unopposed, MacArthur and Adm. Thomas Hart would be overheard discussing the disastrous calamity that had been delivered upon USAFFE, as well as all American forces in the Pacific.
“Oh, God help us,” one of them had reportedly exclaimed, “if Clark Field can’t now.”
CHAPTER 2
A Long War
No time to falter or catch a breath
For thought of future, for fear of death …
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 25, 1941
Cavite Navy Yard, Luzon, Philippine Islands
It was one of those rare instances in the life of Lt. Cmdr. Melvyn McCoy when the correct solution was not immediately visible. As the Japanese surged toward Manila, McCoy stalked about his quarters in Cañacao, near the three silver towers of the Cavite radio station, methodically packing his seabag with the essentials he would take to the fortress island of Corregidor. Two items remained: a portrait photograph of his wife, Betty Anne, and a set of used golf clubs that he had purchased in a Manila pawn shop. He could not take both.
&
nbsp; The thirty-four-year-old radio matériel officer for the 16th Naval District, McCoy had graduated from Annapolis with one of the highest averages in mathematics ever attained by a midshipman. He lived to discover solutions to problems, usually much more complex ones than this. Others, after all, had recently proved less vexing. Through orders and scuttlebutt, McCoy had deduced that MacArthur, awakening to the reality of the tenuous tactical situation, would order War Plan Orange into effect on the evening of Dec. 23. With no air force, no navy and no prospect of Allied assistance, MacArthur had no other recourse. Japanese warplanes had destroyed Cavite Navy Yard on December 10, forcing the bulk of the Asiatic Fleet to pull up anchor for the Netherlands East Indies, while the simultaneous sinkings of the capital ships Repulse and Prince of Wales near Malaya on December 10 had essentially eliminated Britain’s strategic military presence in the Far East. The landing of General Masaharu Homma’s 14th Army, 43,000 troops, plus artillery and tanks, at Lingayen Gulf in northern Luzon on December 22 had effectively sealed the decision. These units, acting in concert with landing forces advancing from Lamon Bay in southern Luzon, were racing toward Manila in a pincer movement. Just barely ahead of them were MacArthur’s forces, stampeding back in a frantic double retrograde because most of the green, untrained Filipinos had thrown away their rifles upon encountering Homma’s armor and airpower, commencing the rout.
McCoy also figured that as the ranking communications officer in the Philippines he would be staying behind with the small Navy contingent of ships and personnel. All around him, the demolition of equipment and stores continued in earnest. Warehouses were opened to mobs and Clark, Nichols, and other airfields were stripped, fired, and abandoned, as were Forts Stotsenburg and McKinley. Tankers, ammunition magazines, and shore installations at Cavite and Sangley Point just south of Manila, were scuttled in brilliant, rocking blasts. Fired tanks containing millions of gallons of fuel—the Asiatic Fleet had left behind a two-year supply and the reserves of Caltex, Shell, Standard Oil, and others in Pandacan were
extensive—would send orange flames and a furling pall of smoke skyward for days.
A rising tide of terror, fueled by the rumors of the proximity and reputation of the Japanese army, was sweeping panicked civilians out of Manila. Save for drunken looters, it seemed as though everyone was in flight. Everyone but McCoy. Despite the sounds of war filling his ears, the lanky naval officer with coal black hair stood resolutely, his mechanical mind clicking and turning, stroking his Errol Flynn mustache.
McCoy had spent most of his life ahead of the pack. Born January 1, 1907, a gifted prodigy, McCoy was graduated from Arsenal Technical High School in Indianapolis in 1922 at the age of fifteen and secured an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy from Indiana’s 7th Congressional District the following year. He left with a commission and a burgeoning reputation in 1927. “It was as the Czar of Math that he shone,” certified the Lucky Bag, the Annapolis annual.
McCoy’s personality did not add up. Though he could be coldly
cerebral—a disciple of the sanctity of logic and efficiency, he did not suffer fools and had little patience for incompetence—he also had a warm, vibrant verve about him. People gravitated to him, trusted him. That’s because with the exception of chess and cards (he was virtually unbeatable at poker and bridge), he rarely flaunted his intelligence, choosing instead to radiate a subtle, yet mesmerizing sense of self-assurance—the hallmark of a true officer, gentleman, and genius.
After assignments in Nicaragua and aboard the battleship West Virginia and two destroyers, McCoy earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of California–Berkeley before his transfer to the Philippines in 1940. His last peacetime mission, undertaken upon the evacuation of his family with the other dependents in early 1941, was to install battery-powered radios in lighthouses, on hilltops, and at other vantage points throughout the islands. These lonely forays to Luzon, Palawan, Leyte, and Jolo provided him with plenty of material for his travelogues, but the work was largely devoid of problems to solve—McCoy’s true raison d’être. The war, however, was already changing that. And the new problems would prove an unusual and difficult calculus, even for a man of McCoy’s talents.
Flame-lit Cavite shuddered with clattering explosions. McCoy, his mind now racing at flank speed, looked at his wife’s picture. “It doesn’t do her much justice,” he thought. And Corregidor did have, in the midst of all those guns and tunnels, a nine-hole golf course. The calculating pragmatist slung the clubs over his shoulder and headed for Corregidor. It was the logical decision. McCoy, like everyone else, expected his navy to smash through the Pacific to rescue the Philippines. Until then, he might as well work on his swing.
MONDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1941
Corregidor, Manila Bay, Philippine Islands
The hands of 1st Lt. Austin Shofner’s wristwatch, like anything else moving in the malevolent midday heat, ticked lazily toward noon. Shofner, sitting in an office on the third floor of Middleside Barracks, shook a smoke from a pack of cigarettes. Ordinarily, the Marine did not smoke. These, however, were not ordinary times. An oak of a man standing more than six feet tall and accustomed to carrying 200 pounds, Shofner was miserably hungry. With each pull he subdued his rioting hunger pangs. But that other feeling, the queasy sensation in his empty gut telling him that his days as a combatant were numbered, would not go away.
It was unfamiliar territory for Shofner. In his twenty-five years, the gung ho Marine had yet to drink from a half-empty glass. He had brought that infectious optimism with him to Corregidor’s North Dock less than thirty-six hours earlier when the 4th Marine Regiment had arrived to assume beach defense duties. It was not long after that he discovered the famed fortress island was not all it had been built up to be—both literally and figuratively.
Located at the maw of Manila Bay, the tadpole-shaped island—though officially designated Fort Mills and known the world over as the “Gibraltar of the East”—was affectionately called “the Rock” by American troops. Hundreds of mines sat in the water, just off a perimeter of rocky beaches, vertical limestone cliffs, and the jaws of deep ravines. Craggy hills swathed in high talahib grass were stratified into three terraces of elevation: Topside, Middleside, and Bottomside. With its own airstrip, Kindley Field, and power plant, the Rock was practically self-sustaining. The island bristled with dens of artillery, mortars, and fixed seacoast guns—the largest of which were the 12-inch cannons of batteries Smith and Hearn, which could hurl a 1,000-pound armor-piercing shell seventeen miles. Its most notable feature, however, was the bombproof Malinta Tunnel and its honeycombed maze of reinforced concrete laterals, cavernous 400-foot ventilated shafts used for hospital wards, offices, and storage. “Corregidor was indeed a mighty fortress,” decided Associated Press correspondent Clark Lee. “Doubtless it would have been impregnable—if the airplane had never been invented.”
A jarring duet of sirens and clanging brass shell casings sounded across the hills at 1140. Most of the Marines who had been unloading supplies and digging positions casually looked skyward—the Japanese, their Army comrades had told them, didn’t dare challenge Corregidor’s defenses. Lieutenant Shofner jumped to his feet. After talking a colonel into the barracks basement, Shofner also headed for the exit. Though admittedly discouraged after having seen Corregidor’s “antiquity” up close, he had no intentions of waiting out the raid. The soles of his spit-shined cordovan shoes clacked down the stairs. He pulled his helmet over his closely cropped chestnut hair, ripped a final drag from his cigarette, and flicked the butt, contemptuously, to the ground. “I wanted to go out and see these planes get knocked down,” he said.
Eighteen bombers, flying in a V formation at 15,000 feet, arrived to a raucous reception of hundreds of smoke puffs bursting upon the pale blue sky. Hunched behind sandbags, men and machine guns chattered away in separate, frantic staccatos. The twinkling of the metal bombs in the sunlight jolted Shofner to his senses. “I couldn’t tell wha
t their targets were,” he said, “but I hoped it wasn’t me.” He did not wait to find out.
Just as the first bombs slammed into the Rock, Shofner dove into the barracks, buffeted by blast concussions. It was a close call, the first of many face-to-face encounters with the specter of death in this war, but luck had been on his side. His father had always told him, if you can’t be smart, be lucky.
During his formative years in Shelbyville, Tennessee, a bucolic town about fifty miles southeast of Nashville, Shofner learned the values of a strong work ethic and self-sufficiency from his father, a schoolteacher and part-time farmer. When his schoolwork and chores were completed—he drove cattle and hauled buckets of spring water on a 200-acre ancestral farmstead—Shofner could be found hunting squirrels and rabbits amid the tulip poplars and hickories in the hollows along the Duck River, or else on a baseball diamond or football field demonstrating the talents that would earn him a reputation as one of the best athletes in Bedford County history.
His gridiron prowess merited a partial football scholarship to the University of Tennessee, where he met the second greatest influence on his life, Coach Robert Neyland, West Point graduate and onetime aide to then-Commandant Douglas MacArthur. Shofner saw a recipe for success, not just in football, but for life, encoded in Neyland’s famous “Football Maxims.” “There aren’t many like Neyland in this world. He was a winner,” he explained, “and he taught me mind over matter.”
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