by Robert Gandt
Behind the Tonys came four Zeroes. One made the mistake of overshooting his high-side run on Tail End Charlie Ray James. James took advantage of the mistake, maneuvering behind the Zero’s tail. He stayed there, all six machine guns firing, until the Japanese fighter went into the water.
Up above, the other three Corsair pilots were mixing it up with the remaining Japanese fighters. Bo Farmer was having a field day, splashing three Zeroes and a Tony fighter. Clarke climbed up after an escaping Zero, catching the fighter and blowing it to pieces.
The fight was over as quickly as it had begun. The surviving Japanese fighters scattered like quail. Clarke’s flight was returning to the orbit point when another call for help crackled on the tactical frequency. A destroyer—USS Laffey—was in trouble.
When they arrived over the radar picket ship, they found a swirling tableau of antiaircraft fire, swarming kamikazes, and friendly fighters, including Wildcats and Hellcats from other carriers and a contingent of Marine Corsairs from the Okinawa airfields.
Clarke and his wingman, Ens. Jack Ehrhard, went after a pair of Vals that were positioning for a run on the Laffey. Clarke flamed one, and Ehrhard put enough rounds into the second to send it smoking toward the water.
Minutes later, they spotted a Japanese Betty bomber low on the water, racing at top speed from a pair of pursuing F6F Hellcats. Sportsmanship between fighter pilots, especially those from different carriers, was virtually nonexistent. Clarke and Ehrhard rolled in on the Betty, neatly cutting out the Hellcats.
In his eagerness to nail the Betty, however, Clarke overran the bomber before he could get it in his sights. That left his wingman, Ehrhard, to claim the prize, while the disgruntled Hellcat pilots watched from astern.
But the Betty didn’t crash, even after Ehrhard poured a hail of lead into it. The bomber skipped off the water, pulled up, then splashed down in a semicontrolled ditching. As the Corsair pilots swept overhead, they saw three figures clamber out of the wreck of the bomber. The Japanese crewmen were bobbing like otters in the water, within paddling distance of a nearby enemy-occupied island.
This was not a day—nor an era—for compassion. None of the American pilots had charitable feelings for the enemy who had been killing American sailors all morning. One after the other, .50-calibers firing, they strafed the water around the downed Betty until nothing was left but a dark froth.
Laffey’s gunners were being killed or wounded as fast as they could be replaced. Even though the CAP fighters were engaging the kamikazes, shooting down or chasing away most of them, Laffey was still a target.
A bomb struck her just below the bridge, wiping out the two 20-millimeter mounts and killing both gun crews as well as several already wounded men being treated below in the main-deck-level wardroom being used as a dressing station.
Then came a Judy dive-bomber, hurtling in from the port quarter. Laffey’s gunners blazed away with their remaining 40-millimeter and 20-millimeter guns, but the blunt-nosed shape of the Judy continued to swell in size. At the last moment before impact, a Corsair caught the kamikaze from behind. The Judy crashed into the water close aboard. The blazing hulk skidded into the destroyer’s hull, causing a dent but no serious damage.
For the moment, no more enemy planes seemed to be targeting Laffey. Peering into the sky, Ari Phoutrides had the feeling that it was over. He could see more than a dozen fighters—Corsairs and Hellcats—chasing the few remaining kamikazes.
For the wounded Laffey, it was almost too late. Fires in the aft half of the ship were still burning out of control. The destroyer was slowly flooding. Her shattered fantail was nearly submerged. Though her engines were running, the rudder was still jammed hard to port. Captain Becton was trying every combination of engine thrust to steer the destroyer southward, away from the kamikaze hunting ground. Nothing worked.
The destroyer-minesweeper Macomb steamed up to assist with the frantic damage control efforts and to take the destroyer under tow. With her flooded stern and jammed rudder, Laffey was untowable by a single vessel. In the early afternoon, a pair of fleet tugs arrived. After using pumps to control the flooding, they managed to haul the destroyer back to the Hagushi anchorage at Okinawa.
Laffey wasn’t the only casualty that day on RP1. Both her gunboat escorts had taken heavy damage. LCS-116 was struck topside, suffering seventeen dead and twelve wounded. LCS-51 had a gaping hole in her hull, with three men wounded.
In the fading light at the anchorage that evening, sailors from other ships gawked at the mangled USS Laffey. It was hard to believe any ship could take that much punishment and keep fighting. Several ships of Laffey’s size had been sunk from a single kamikaze.
No other vessel in the war would take as many kamikaze hits and remain afloat. In twenty-two separate attacks Laffey endured six kamikaze crashes and two bomb strikes. Thirty-two of her crew were dead, and seventy-one were wounded. In exchange, her gunners took down nine kamikazes. In seventy-nine minutes of hellish combat, USS Laffey had earned herself a niche in naval history.
30 GLORY DAY
NORTHERN RYUKYU ISLANDS
APRIL 16, 1945
Lt. George “Bee” Weems gazed into the morning sky, trying to spot the dark specks coming from the north. The bogeys were reported flying at low altitude, not in their usual loose formation but singly, strung out in a line. Weems guessed that they were coming from an island in the northern Ryukyus.
Like many fighter pilots, Bee Weems had a quirk. His was the pair of binoculars he carried in the cockpit, earning him the moniker “Eyes of the Fleet,” though no one had actually seen him use the glasses in flight. The binoculars were a carryover from his days as a destroyer man. Weems was a Naval Academy grad and the son of a naval officer, Capt. Philip Weems, who was a renowned pioneer of sea and air navigation.
Weems’s wingman, Ens. Charlie Schlag, nicknamed “Curly,” was a balding young man from West Virginia who had trained in dive-bombers before being switched to fighters. Schlag had his own quirk. He carried two canteens in his emergency equipment. One was aluminum, for water. The other was plastic, and it contained whisky. Schlag had heard somewhere that whisky had enough nutritional value to keep you alive for a week in your life raft. He had no idea whether it was true or not, but what the hell—he was willing to give it a try.
They spotted the first bogey a few minutes before 0900. It was a Zero at low altitude and climbing, confirming Weems’s suspicion that the kamikazes had begun staging from one of the nearby islands, probably Kikai. Weems and Schlag rolled in on the Zero, coordinating their firing passes, each getting solid hits, sending the Zero down in flames. It was a coldly efficient team attack, for which the pilots would share the credit.
Seconds later, they spotted another Zero, also low and climbing. This one Weems promptly shot down. Then a third showed up, and Schlag took his turn. He was still putting bullets into the Zero, making it smoke, when the Japanese fighter abruptly rolled inverted and dove for the ocean. Weems was there, guns firing, and the Zero joined its two predecessors in the ocean. Another shared kill.
The action wasn’t over. Five minutes later, yet another solo Zero showed up. Like the others, it was in a climb, and Weems wasted no time blasting it out of the sky.
The sky was cleared of enemy planes, at least for the moment. The Zeroes had all carried external bombs, which meant to Weems that they were kamikazes and not fighters. He requested permission to reconnoiter the enemy island of Kikai, only 10 miles away.
Minutes later, permission received, Weems and Schlag, now joined by their second two-plane section, were sweeping over the Japanese airfield. They caught one Betty bomber out in the open, which they exploded with their guns. They found a Zero in a revetment and set it afire.
And that was it. If there were more kamikazes based on Kikai, they were well concealed. Or, as Bee Weems suspected, they were already airborne and attacking American ships.
Weems was right. On the northern picket stations, the kamikazes were again p
ouncing on the tin cans. The destroyer Bryant, which had been steaming to Laffey’s assistance from nearby RP2, came under attack by six kamikazes. One crashed into the base of her bridge, wiping out the CIC compartment and the plotting rooms, killing thirty-four sailors.
At the same time on RP14, three more picket ships, the destroyer Pringle, the destroyer/minesweeper Hobson, and their escorting gunboat, LCS-191, were all slugging it out with kamikazes. Pringle’s gunners had already splashed one attacking Zero and were now fighting off three Vals.
Pringle’s skipper, Lt. Cmdr. John Kelley, was following the “keep moving, keep shooting” doctrine, turning hard in each direction to give his main batteries a full field of fire. It wasn’t enough. A Val wove its way through the smoke and flak, smashing into Pringle just behind her forward stack. Pringle didn’t have Laffey’s toughness—or her luck. The impact of the kamikaze buckled the destroyer’s keel. Pringle broke in half, and in less than five minutes she went to the bottom, taking sixty-two men with her.
April 16 was turning into one of the deadliest days ever for kamikaze attacks. In kikusui No. 3 the Japanese had sent fewer airplanes than in the two previous massed attacks—only 165 airplanes instead of the initial wave of 355—but the tactics had become more deadly. The kamikazes had learned to coordinate their attacks and hit from opposite sides, relentlessly stalking ships that were already wounded and smoking.
But a question still puzzled American commanders: why were the kamikazes throwing themselves at the picket destroyers instead of at the higher-value warships farther south? One explanation was that the Japanese considered the radar picket ships to be vital targets. Another was that the picket ships were birds in hand—the first targets the anxious kamikaze pilots spotted on the route to Okinawa.
And then there was an even simpler possibility: the kamikaze pilots didn’t know the difference between warships. Several had been heard excitedly transmitting that they were “diving on a battleship” when their target was a destroyer.
But on the afternoon of April 16, the tokko pilots stalking the ships of Task Force 58 northeast of Okinawa knew exactly what class of warship they were hunting. Their targets were big, fast, and unmistakable. One of them was the aircraft carrier Intrepid.
While the Grim Reapers of VF-10 were lighting up the sky over the picket ships, their sister squadron, VBF-10, was doing what the air-to-mud fighters had always done—diving through fire and flak to hit targets on the ground.
It was a dirty, dangerous job. As he usually did, air group commander Johnny Hyland had assigned himself to lead the twelve-plane strike on Kokubu, a Japanese airfield on the southern tip of Kyushu. Intelligence reports indicated that Kokubu had become a nest for the kamikazes that were savaging the picket ships.
Six of the fighter-bombers were carrying 500-pound general-purpose bombs, while the others carried clusters of the new 5-inch Holy Moses rockets. As expected, the Japanese put up a curtain of antiaircraft fire. The familiar roiling black puffs were already blossoming around each Corsair as they rolled into their dives. Also as expected, the enemy airplanes were well concealed beneath camouflage or in sheltered revetments.
Not well enough. By the time the Corsairs expended their bombs and rockets, a trio of two-engine Mitsubishi Ki-57 “Topsy” transports had been destroyed, and nine other warplanes, mostly Zeroes, had been transformed into flaming hulks. Ten more single-engine airplanes were damaged enough that they wouldn’t soon be used as kamikazes.
Pulling off the target, Hyland gathered his fighter-bombers for the trip back home. But when he counted planes, he was one short. One of his Tail End Charlies, Ens. Ernest “Red” Bailey, was missing.
No one had seen Bailey go down. No one had heard a distress call. Gazing back in the direction of Kokubu, they could see the columns of black smoke rising from the airfield. One of them, in all likelihood, was coming from the wreckage of Red Bailey’s Corsair.
Hyland turned his flight to the south, leaving Japan behind them. While the Corsairs droned back to the south, a heavy silence settled over the tactical frequency, each pilot alone with his thoughts. It was a somber end to what was otherwise a perfectly executed strike. Red Bailey was another of the Texas contingent, a newlywed who had gone to Rice University before leaving early to join the Navy. He had become the fifth VBF-10 pilot lost in combat since the squadron arrived off Okinawa.
When they were still five miles east of Kikai, Lt. Paul Cordray’s voice broke the silence. He had spotted two Zeroes dead ahead. Someone else called out eight more, 3,000 feet above them.
The Corsairs still had ammunition left. Splitting his divisions, Hyland led the attack from one side while Cordray took the other. Another fight was on.
Paul Cordray was already an ace. He was a tall, broad-shouldered Texan, another of the VF-17 veterans of the Solomons campaign who had been drafted by Will Rawie for his new squadron. Cordray was also considered by most of the Tail End Charlies to be the best fighter pilot in the squadron.
Now he proved why. Slashing into one of the Zeroes, Cordray put his first burst into the fuselage and wing roots. It was enough. The Japanese fighter burst into flame and did a wingover straight into the water.
Another division leader, Lt. Ralph “Go” Goetter, was chasing an Oscar fighter through a hard left turn. Firing a long burst well ahead of the Oscar’s nose, he watched his tracers arc back into the Japanese fighter. Seconds later, trailing flame and smoke, the Oscar plunged into the ocean.
It was clear that these Japanese airmen hadn’t been trained as fighter pilots. “They used very little evasive action,” Goetter wrote in his action report, “and didn’t return our fire.”
Eager to add another kill to his own record, Johnny Hyland tailed in behind one of the Zeroes. He fired several bursts directly into the Zero’s tail. To his amazement, the bullets seemed to have no effect. Hyland fired again. Still nothing. It was mystifying. The Japanese fighter kept flying straight ahead as if he were bulletproof.
Abruptly the Zero made a left turn. Hyland’s wingman, Ens. Eldon Brooks, saw his chance. Like a dog after a rabbit, he cut inside the Zero’s turn, firing one short burst into the Japanese fighter’s fuselage.
The Zero burst into flame.
Watching the Zero go into the ocean, Hyland couldn’t believe it. Not that he begrudged his wingman getting the kill—that’s what air-to-air combat was all about—but why hadn’t the damned Zero gone down when he shot it?
He was still in a fit of pique when he wrote his after-action report. “There is in this attack some evidence that this plane, apparently a kamikaze, was especially well armored and protected,” he wrote. “From previous experience, this plane was expected to burn much sooner than it did.”
An especially well-armored Zero? It didn’t seem likely, but no one in the strike group, least of all a Tail End Charlie like Eldon Brooks, was foolish enough to say so.
Brooks wasn’t the only Tail End Charlie to draw blood. Ensigns Paul Pavlovich and Tom Boucher also seized the moment, picking off a Zero and a Tony from the wave of southbound kamikazes.
With their ammunition spent and the kamikazes scattered, Hyland again turned his group southward. The hour-and-a-half flight back to the Intrepid gave everyone time to think. The same silence fell over the eleven remaining Corsairs.
For Hyland, it was a time of mixed emotions. He had a special relationship with his young pilots. Losing a kid like Red Bailey over Kokubu was painful. But he also had reason to feel gratified. He had been one of the early advocates of using the Corsair in the dual roles of fighter and ground attack.
Today’s mission was the ultimate proof that he was right. His strike group had destroyed a dozen enemy airplanes on the ground. Minutes later they’d shot five more out of the air. The age of the fighter-bomber had arrived.
For the Tail End Charlies, the morning of April 16 held one more moment of glory. A four-plane flight of the most junior officers in VBF-10—each one an ensign, the lowest officer’s rank in t
he Navy—had intercepted a wave of kamikazes headed directly for Intrepid’s task group.
Led by Ens. Freddie Lanthier, the Corsairs pounced on the low-flying kamikazes. Lanthier brought down the first one, a bomb-carrying Zero, with a short burst. Less than a minute later, he repeated the feat, shooting down a second with another quick burst.
His fellow Tail End Charlies were doing just as well. Loren McDonald caught a Zero at 5,000 feet and put a single long burst into him from behind. As the Zero went into a shallow glide, McDonald eased alongside. He could see the dead pilot lying against the instrument panel. McDonald escorted the Zero until it smacked into the ocean.
Ens. Robert “Pappy” Sweet pulled behind a bogey that was clearly not a kamikaze. It was a snooper—a Nakajima C6N1 “Myrt” reconnaissance plane—and it was there to provide guidance for the incoming kamikazes.
And then Sweet discovered something else different about the Myrt: it carried a tail gunner. For several seconds Sweet and the gunner exchanged fire, both missing, until Sweet pulled up and to the side, out of the gunner’s range. Then he swept back down in a pursuit curve, making himself a hard target while he blasted the snooper out of the sky.
With fuel and ammunition nearly expended, the exhilarated fighter pilots landed back aboard Intrepid. Safely back in their low-ceilinged, smoky ready rooms, they relived the life-and-death moments of combat, doing their usual nonstop gesturing and jabbering. It had been a history-making day—and it was only half over. The two Corsair squadrons had gunned down forty-two Japanese airplanes, with one more probable.
The list of aces—pilots with five or more kills—was growing. And they weren’t just the veterans like Kirkwood and Cordray and Clarke. Several of the Tail End Charlies—guys including Lerch, Quiel, and Heath—had become aces, some, including Lerch, achieving fame in one spectacular mission.