You Are Not Forgotten Page 11

  Ryan would get only a few dozen flight hours in the Corsair—and just two hours of dogfighting practice—before going to war. Many of the other pilots got even less—if any at all.

  They had also missed out on the highly valued counseling provided by the plane’s main test pilot, who didn’t visit Cherry Point until more than a month after they had shipped out. They would have to learn fighter tactics in the war zone.

  It was not until the afternoon of September 1, 1943, the day before they were scheduled to leave Cherry Point for the West Coast, that the squadron finally received its full complement of Corsairs.

  The cross-country journey of VMF-321 began on Thursday, September 2, 1943, from Oak Grove Field in nearby Polkville, North Carolina, one of the outlying airfields. The squadron had received orders to report to Naval Air Station, San Diego, where it would spend a few weeks getting equipped for combat before boarding an aircraft carrier bound for the Pacific. With forty fliers, the squadron had twice as many pilots as Corsairs, so only half of them were needed to fly the newly delivered fighter planes to California for the sea voyage to the combat zone. The others would travel by rail, along with enlisted Marines to serve as mechanics and other ground crew. Meanwhile, four of the pilots were married, and their wives set out for the West Coast in a red Ford convertible so they could see their husbands off to war. Before leaving Cherry Point, the pilots drew playing cards to see who would be lucky enough to fly and who would have to put up with the weeklong train trip. Ryan was among the luckier lot and drew a high card.

  With Ryan serving as navigation officer, the flight echelon set out on a preselected route with stops to rest and refuel. Their first stop was Atlanta—and they barely made it in one piece. Lieutenant Bob Norman—who’s shiny new Ford was carrying his wife and the three others to the West Coast—flipped his plane over trying to land. Luckily, he was skinny enough to crawl out of an opening in the canopy before being burned alive. Still stunned from his near-death experience, he continued the journey as a passenger in a training plane that was assigned to follow the group. From Atlanta they moved on to Shreveport, Louisiana, where they spent the night. The next day, they set out for Denison, Texas, to refuel, before heading on to an Army airfield in Dallas.

  The skies were clear over the Texas prairie the following morning, the third day of the cross-country journey. They planned to stop in Midland, Texas, for lunch before continuing on to Arizona. The Texas sunshine was nearly blinding as they lifted off from Dallas. But about thirty minutes after takeoff, black storm clouds appeared on the horizon. The wind picked up and the Corsairs were knocked violently in the swirling gusts. The pilots tried to get around the storm. Some peeled off to the south, others went north, but soon the thick rain clouds were all around them. The storm severely damaged Lieutenant Bluford P. Mauldin’s plane, and he had to ditch in the prairie. He considered himself lucky to be alive. He actually landed a few miles from where he grew up and hitched home. Lieutenant Eugene “Vic” Smith was tucked closely underneath his flight leader, Captain Ray Lemons, when his fellow pilot flew into a dark thunderhead and disappeared. Suddenly, Smith couldn’t see a thing and quickly lost his bearings. He feared he would crash into Lemons. Then, with only seconds to spare before he spiraled uncontrollably toward the ground, the Ohio farm boy glimpsed an opening in the sky. He was able to use the point of reference to emerge from the storm. But there was no sign of Lemons.

  By the time it was all over, the squadron was spread across West Texas. Most of the pilots rendezvoused at an Army field in Abilene after locating a radio beacon before continuing on as planned. When they arrived that night at Davis-Monthan Air Base in the Arizona desert, their skipper soberly informed them that Lemons was dead. When his Corsair hit the ground it had gouged a hole the size of a basement, Major Knott reported. That brought to four the number of pilots killed since the squadron was born. And they hadn’t even left the States.

  The group finally pulled in to Naval Air Station, San Diego on September 6. It was clear to Ryan and many of the others that most of their pilots needed additional training on how to fly using only their instruments to guide them. In what was still the infancy of aviation, they relied too heavily on visual flying. They needed to be able to confidently “uncage” their instruments and switch on the gyro compass, the artificial horizon, the needle ball, and the airspeed dials and use the information to fly through the kind of weather they had encountered over the Texas prairie. But few of them got the necessary training in the Corsair. Their planes spent nearly all three weeks the squadron was on the West Coast undergoing repairs.

  So with combat on the horizon, the men of VMF-321 spent their few weeks in San Diego doing what millions of young men do before shipping overseas. They enjoyed the surf, dined out, and took in some of the city’s nightlife. The married men stayed at San Diego’s US Grant Hotel, while some of the others took a quick trip to Tijuana, Mexico, to get tailor-made leather shoulder holsters for their Marine Corps–issued .45 caliber pistols.

  During the day they attended lectures on how to prepare for the months ahead, down to small but enormously useful tips like why they should bring a lot of prophylactics. Not for the girls. There most likely wouldn’t be any of them in the combat zone. But rubbers had proved to be the best way to keep small personal items dry in the tropics. They were also unofficially instructed to bring as much whiskey as they could, to trade with the natives. So they went down to the Officers’ Club to stock up on bottles of Teacher’s Highland Cream scotch whiskey, which they wrapped in towels and stored in their footlockers.

  They were also encouraged to get their affairs in order. On September 17, Ryan filled out paperwork to leave 100 percent of his accrued pay—$351 a month—to Grace should he fail to return from his tour of duty. To support her and Uranie while he was gone—he would no longer be able to send them money himself—he designated that they receive $100 per month, effective immediately, directly from the Marine Corps. He had also recently directed that $37.50 be deducted from his pay each month to buy U.S. Savings Bonds. In the event of his death, that, too, would go to Grace, he instructed.

  Finally, at noon on September 25, 1943, with calm seas and a light wind blowing at eight knots under cloudy skies, the USS Nassau, a newly constructed escort carrier, steamed out of San Diego and set a northwesterly course. Ryan and his fellow pilots were headed to war.

  A few days before Ryan’s squadron was scheduled to ship out, its number-two officer, the profanity-prone Major David Drucker, convened a secret meeting of the men. They took a vote. It was unanimous. They had no confidence in Knott, their commander, and desperately wanted a new leader to take them into combat. But there was little they could do about it.

  The atmosphere those first few days on the Nassau bordered on mutiny. They were only reminded how ill prepared they were as they watched the Nassau’s crew conduct daily drills, including how to defend against a torpedo attack and to abandon ship. What lay ahead was also clear by the complete blackout enforced on the ship for the ten-day journey so as not to attract attention from Japanese vessels.

  About the only thing that kept up their spirits was playing cards by the dim light of the ship’s heads, or bathrooms; in fact, their journey was quickly turning into a marathon gambling session, under the stewardship of the outsized personality of Lieutenant Roger Brindos, who in addition to poker and blackjack was steadily teaching Ryan the finer points of gin rummy, casino, and hearts.

  “I never went for cards before—but now—while I took this up to pass time, I do have a lot of fun from them,” Ryan wrote to Grace. “I haven’t tackled contract bridge yet, but I think with a little more time I will.”

  About halfway through the voyage, on September 29, all the pilots were hastily ordered into the Nassau’s wardroom. Major Knott, looking stunned, told them he had news. He was being transferred. They would be getting a new commanding officer, effective immediately. Before they had a chance to digest the welcome news, they were introd
uced to their new skipper.

  Major Edmund F. Overend, or “End Over End,” as the men soon got to calling him in private, was a tall, muscular officer with a furrowed brow and unmistakable air of command. He was a deeply spiritual man who grew up in Coronado, California, where he was an avid Boy Scout and worked his way through college before earning a commission in the Marine Corps before the war. He was already something of a hero. Earlier in the war Overend had flown in Burma with the Flying Tigers of the American Volunteer Group, fending off Japanese air attacks over China in P-40 Warhawks with shark teeth painted under the nose.

  The Fighting Tigers were legendary. In the spring of 1941, before the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt approved loans to the Chinese to finance the purchase of warplanes to beat back the Japanese onslaught in the Pacific. The deal also permitted the Chinese to recruit American pilots as long as they resigned their commissions in the U.S. military. The volunteers were effectively well-paid mercenaries, but in the view of most Americans the good kind.

  Overend was already a highly decorated ace, the pilots aboard the Nassau learned, with Japanese planes to his credit. On Christmas Day two years earlier, he had been reported missing in the skies over Burma after being shot down in a dogfight with a Japanese fighter. To the surprise of his fellow Fighting Tigers, however, “Eddie” showed up back at their base the next day. Overend’s arrival to take the helm of the new squadron lifted morale immeasurably.

  On the night of Friday, October 1, as the Nassau steamed west, he regaled the pilots of VMF-321 with tales of the fearless men he served with in Burma. Men like Gregory “Pappy” Boyington, who was perhaps the most famous Marine Corps fighter ace, for his proficiency in the air and his whiskey drinking on the ground—both of which had been exhaustively covered by the papers back home. Boyington, who had two dozen Japanese planes to his credit, and his Black Sheep Squadron of Corsairs were now on their third combat tour in the South Pacific.

  Overend was eager to impart all his knowledge to his new squadron about how the air war against Japan was being fought. If they believed in each other, he told them, and in what they were doing, they could surmount virtually any obstacle.

  “I took a green, eager Marine fighter squadron into the South Pacific,” he recounted soon after the war. “I strove to teach it all I knew about the Japs and aerial tactics—also all that I had learned about human relationships.”

  A U.S. intelligence assessment at the time described in no uncertain terms what they could expect to face in the coming months: “The first-line Jap pilot is well trained and resourceful, and he handles his plane in a skillful manner; he will initiate attack, is aggressive in combat, and is a fighting airman not to be underestimated.… They will change their methods with alacrity whenever they find their aerial operations successfully countered.… They are alert and quick to take advantage of any evident weakness.”

  Japanese pilots, the men of VMF-321 were also briefed, were known to concentrate their fire on stragglers or a disabled plane. They could be ruthless in their determination: several cases had been reported by late 1943 of American pilots being machine-gunned as they parachuted to earth. Japanese Navy pilots, meanwhile, were especially feared.

  The Corsair’s main competition would be the Mitsubishi A6M Zero, also known in American lexicon as the Zeke. It had a less powerful engine than the Corsair but was lighter and therefore more maneuverable, especially at higher altitudes. Japan’s confidence at Pearl Harbor was in no small measure due to its faith that the Zero would rule the skies against any other fighter. The Japanese had also recently introduced a souped-up version of the Zero known as the Tojo, which was faster and had a greater rate of climb. Yet the planes’ relatively scant armor protection made them vulnerable to American firepower; the Corsair’s weapons load alone was equal to the total weight of a Zero.

  Ryan and his fellow pilots were enraptured as Overend spoke of the excitement mixed with fear that came with looking out from the cockpit for the first time to see the dreaded “meatball”—the big red dot painted on the side of Japanese fighters. He also impressed upon them the importance of constantly harassing the Japanese with strafing runs on their ground positions and bases whenever possible.

  That night on the Nassau, as they steamed toward the rising sun, the squadron also finally got a name. Its members settled on the moniker of one of the three squadrons in the famed Fighting Tigers: Hell’s Angels. They also chose an emblem to paint on the sides of their planes, one befitting their boyish zeal: a scantily clad woman with wings and a halo set against a blood-red background.

  Ryan descended the gangplank and drew fresh sea air into his lungs. As he stepped onto the pier, the warm equatorial breeze, moist from the frequent tropical rains, licked at his cheeks, and the faint smell of freshly caught tuna wafted over the waterfront. It was the afternoon of Wednesday, October 6, 1943, and the USS Nassau had tied up earlier in the day in the narrow harbor at Pago Pago on Tutuila, the largest of the three islands known as American Samoa.

  At first glance, Ryan’s first overseas post, code-named Strawstack, looked like anything but a war zone. As the sliver of land came into view in the predawn darkness, the men aboard the Nassau were surprised to see the lights of the harbor in the distance. No precautionary blackout here. Now Ryan could see tall palm trees swaying in the breeze as aquamarine waters splashed white across the coral reefs. The vegetation radiated brilliant greens in a majestic landscape all framed by the Rainmaker, the volcano that stood sentry over the harbor and was so named because it seemed to catch the passing rain clouds. Most striking of all were the young, barefoot Samoan girls, wearing only short grass skirts called lavalavas with flowers in their long black hair. Their bare, sun-kissed breasts beckoned the men ashore.

  As Ryan and his fellow pilots waited for their seabags to be dropped from cargo nets onto the dock, their reverie was broken by the drone of Navy Dauntless dive-bombers being catapulted off the deck of the Nassau and landing on the coral airstrip at nearby Tafuna Airdrome that jutted into the blue waters of the Pacific about four miles south of the harbor.

  Here, on the thickly forested mass of volcanic rock that had inspired Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Ryan and the rest of the squadron would spend the next five weeks preparing for combat. The port, which was pronounced in the Samoan tongue as “Pango Pango,” had been the site of a small American naval base since 1900, when a U.S. warship first anchored in the harbor. The natives, for the most part, were still living in their simplicity, gathering coconuts and fishing from their canoes, or pow-pows, beneath the cliffs in the islands’ small bays. They lived peacefully in thatched sugarcane huts, known as fales, with deep oval roofs and coconut leaves tied under the eaves to shut out the elements. The natives themselves were festooned with garlands of ferns, tropical flowers, and brightly colored tortoise shells. They loved to sing, especially, in their broken English, “You Are My Sunshine.” Christianity was imported by missionaries beginning in the nineteenth century, so on Sundays nearly everyone went to church, the women in white dresses and parasols, the men in planter hats, white suits, and white shirts.

  The harbor, largely hidden by the surrounding mountains, had been shelled once by a Japanese submarine early in the war, causing minimal damage to the naval quarters on Centipede Row and a stone wall outside the customhouse. Otherwise, the most pressing threat to the American military came from mosquitoes, which carried a number of tropical diseases and the dreaded elephantiasis, which later in the war would require the withdrawal of most Marines from American Samoa.

  The chain of islands now offered considerable elbow room for training, and situated along the main trade route between the United States and Australia, Tutuila had become a major staging area for Marines fighting across the Pacific.

  Ryan and the other pilots climbed into waiting trucks. The vehicles snaked down the narrow sand-covered streets of the town, brushing the thick bushes on both sides of the road. The new arrivals could
quickly see the island was a small armed camp. Schools had been commandeered into machine shops. Concrete pillboxes were erected on every beach that might be vulnerable to an amphibious landing and manned around the clock with the help of a native guard known as the Fiti Fiti, the well-built Samoan men who towered over many of the Americans.

  To help ward off possible air attacks, large anti-aircraft guns were nestled on Blunts and Breakers Points in the hills around Pago Pago, and a communications and radar station had been erected high up in the island’s central mountain spine. Naval Construction Battalions, the legendary Seabees, had turned the single-lane track connecting the island’s main villages into a two-lane road surfaced with coral rock, where a constant stream of military vehicles kicked up clouds of choking dust. Marines now outnumbered the islands’ ten thousand Polynesian inhabitants, who referred to their guests as malini.

  By nightfall, Ryan had settled into one of the fales—four men assigned to each—at the squadron’s new beachfront camp out near the airfield, where some of the exotic tropical plants gave off a fluorescent glow at night that helped lead the way to the bathroom.

  The next morning, after breakfast, Ryan and the others were trucked back to the harbor to begin unloading their Corsairs and the rest of the gear from the Nassau. Rather than drag the planes through the town, a drawn-out process that could delay the ship’s departure and make it more vulnerable to Japanese submarines, Major Overend decided to catapult them off the deck like the Dauntless bombers a day earlier, even though none of the pilots had ever done a carrier takeoff.