The First Hellcat Ace

About this time, the Essex lost a torpedo bomber and its crew to sheer foolhardiness. And in the process, the Essex was placed in serious jeopardy. In VT-9 there was a frustrated, would-be fighter pilot known as Red. As with many of the bomber pilots, he would rather have been flying fighters, but the needs of the Navy dictated that he do otherwise. Still, he liked to show off as much as the performance limitations of the heavy TBF torpedo bomber allowed.

One of his favorite tricks was to pull up sharply after takeoff and make a quick cut to the left, just as we did in the Hellcat. But the TBF wasn’t built for that type of maneuvering, and he was called on the carpet for endangering his airplane, his crew of two, and himself. That didn’t stop Red. Soon after, loaded down with depth charges for an antisubmarine patrol, he tried the same trick.

This time he wasn’t able to pull it off. He pulled up a little too sharply, and the heavy airplane stalled and smashed into the water before he could regain control. He and his crew went down with the airplane, which began sinking almost immediately. There followed several anxious moments when the ship overran the sinking airplane. When the depth charges reached their preset depth, they exploded with a ferocity that severely rattled the ship and sent the engineering crews deep down toward the keel to check on the extent of the damage. Other than some minor leaks and popped rivets, the Essex was fine. But it was a stupid, tragic incident that should never have occurred.

After the strike against Rabaul the task group returned to Espiritu Santo, refueled, and set out again. This time we headed for the Gilbert Islands. We were to support Marines landing at Betio Island in Tarawa Atoll. It wasn’t long before we came within range and operations commenced on November 18, 1943. Our objective—in advance of the Marine assault landing on November 20—was to eliminate enemy aerial opposition, and to destroy as many as possible of the Japanese troops who were dug in on the island.

On November 18, I was part of a strike returning from Betio. It had been a fairly uneventful mission with only moderate antiaircraft fire and no enemy aircraft. I was back toward the rear of the formation, which was flying at only about two or three thousand feet, when I looked across the bombers to my left and saw a float biplane at about five thousand feet, flying on an opposite course parallel to the bombers.

This was where all that time spent in aircraft recognition classes paid off. I instantly recognized it as a Mitsubishi F1M2, codenamed “Pete” by the Allies. It was designed for reconnaissance and observation. The Japanese pilot had stumbled unluckily onto more stuff to observe and reconnoiter than he could handle.

For whatever reason—perhaps because they thought it was a friendly aircraft—no one in the front of our formation had gone after it. I immediately went to full power and pulled toward the enemy floatplane. By any analysis the coming encounter was going to be a duck shoot. My F6F outclassed the enemy biplane in every respect. Spotting me, the Pete’s pilot started about a 45-degree dive. By now there were four or five other Hellcats behind me, hoping to beat me to the shot.

At Tarawa, McWhorter bagged an odd duck, when he shot down a Mitsubishi F1M2 floatplane, codenamed “Pete,” in thick clouds on November 18, 1943.

As I approached firing range, I was set up for a shot into his left rear from above. Before I could get there, though, he rolled over into a hard right-hand turn and increased the angle of his dive, heading for a large cloud. I rolled right, keeping him in my gunsight, and dove to follow him.

As I pulled within range again, I was set up for a perfect overhead shot—right into the top of his plane—when he disappeared into the large cumulus cloud. I thought, Hell, I’ve lost him, but I continued on the flight path I had set up prior to losing him and followed him into the cloud.

I was just about to abort the run when the cloud thinned just enough for me to see—only for an instant—the dark blur of the floatplane right in my gunsight. It disappeared just as quickly. Without hesitating I squeezed the trigger. The .50 caliber machineguns chattered and the incendiary tracers disappeared into the murk, but I couldn’t see whether I had hit him or not.

I dove on through the cloud and quickly reoriented myself, got my fighter flying straight and level, and looked back over my shoulder. There beneath the cloud was the Pete spinning down in flames. When I saw the enemy airplane smash into the water, I almost couldn’t help patting myself on the back—I had shot him down while flying on instruments.

I learned later that the Pete was the only plane shot down that day by our task group.

The next day, November 19, 1943, our division was on combat air patrol when we received vectors from the ship’s fighter director to intercept a low-flying bogey about twenty miles away. We started a shallow descent from 12,000 feet, pushed the throttles up, and turned in the direction of the unidentified aircraft. When we were about four or five miles from where the fighter director was calling the target, I was the first to sight the bogey, low on the water. It was a Mitsubishi G4M twin-engine bomber, codenamed “Betty” by the Allies. The most widely used bomber the Japanese had, the Betty was employed in a variety of roles aside from just bombing, including reconnaissance and torpedo attack.

Having identified the airplane as hostile, I went to full power and increased the angle of my dive. The Betty carried a 20-millimeter cannon in its tail for self-protection, so I headed for a point in space about a thousand feet to its starboard beam. That way I could set up for an attack from the side without worrying about being hit by the cannon.

Looking back over my shoulder I saw our division leader, Mike Hadden. He had started his dive also but was headed straight for the tail of the enemy bomber and directly into that cannon. I wondered to myself about that. The Betty was very low—only about 10 feet above the water—so low that the propwash from its two engines churned up a wake on the ocean’s surface. I closed the distance and saw muzzle flashes from the Betty’s tail cannon as it fired at Hadden and his wingman, Jack Kitchen.

I was traveling much faster than Hadden and arrived perfectly set up for a full-deflection, flat-side shot on the enemy bomber, which was painted a medium blue on top with those classic big red meatballs on its wings and fuselage. I could barely see that the underside was painted a lighter color.

Coming in from the Betty’s right side, I closed the range to about 400 feet and opened fire with a short burst. I learned later that my roommate and wingman, Gene Valencia, was shouting to himself, “Miss it, Mac, miss it!” He wanted that bomber for himself.

But I didn’t miss. I saw my rounds strike the wing root and cockpit area. Almost instantly the far engine, the port one, caught fire. The Betty immediately yawed to the left, hit the water, skipped once, and then crumpled into the waves in a ball of fire and spray.

This aerial victory, my fifth, made me the squadron’s first ace—and the world’s first all-Hellcat ace. It also earned me a new nickname.

When I got back to the ship, they counted my ammunition and discovered that I had fired a total of only 86 rounds out of all 6 guns, including what I had fired when I tested my guns. The skipper, Phil Torrey, decreed that thereafter I was to be known as “One Slug” McWhorter.

At Tarawa, McWhorter became VF-9’s first ace, and the Navy’s first Hellcat ace, when he shot down a Mitsubishi G4M bomber, codenamed “Betty,” on November 19, 1943.

I never did use a lot of ammunition. I believe that some pilots used the six machineguns on the F6F to put out a huge curtain of fire in the hope that they would catch an enemy plane inside of it. Personally, I set up to fire my guns as if I was going to shoot down my target with a single shot. Every round that followed was gravy. I don’t know if it was my Depression-era upbringing or not—certainly everybody else in my squadron had also come of age during the same period. But I never came close to using all of the 2,400 rounds of ammunition that were loaded into the Hellcat.

There were other guys, though, who clamped down on the trigger and never let up. Their gun barrels practically melted—drooping out of the wing. This type of firing necessitated that the gun barrels be changed out quite often as it wore out the rifling in the barrel. It essentially turned them into “smooth-bores” that were terribly inaccurate.

As it turned out, Gene Valencia didn’t need that bomber after all. He went on to score a total of 23 aerial victories and became the Navy’s third-highest ranking ace of all time.

Gene Valencia was McWhorter’s squadron mate and friend. A superb pilot and leader, he excelled during a second Pacific cruise and eventually became the Navy’s third-leading ace. (U.S. Navy)

With the Marine invasion imminent, we turned our attention to air-to-ground work. When we commenced our strikes against Betio in advance of the landing it was a classically beautiful south seas island, covered with green, swaying palm trees and ringed by beautiful beaches. By November 20, the day of the invasion, it looked like an ashtray.

The surface combatants—battleships, cruisers, and destroyers—contributed to the destruction as much or more than we did. They pulled up practically to the edge of the reef and let loose with their big guns, firing at point-blank range. On one flight, I watched a battleship fire at a concrete emplacement. The shell missed and went across the island, then hit the water and skipped like a stone for several miles across the lagoon until it finally disappeared.

By November 20, Betio had been worked over for two solid days and was still on the receiving end of more bombing and naval gunfire. It was nothing more than a smoldering, ugly spit of dirty sand. We watched the landing craft carry the Marines toward the reef, certain that our guys would have an easy time of it. No one could have survived the bombardment we had delivered during the previous two days.

Except the Japanese. We were incredulous when we learned later in the day that the Marines were taking catastrophic losses. We had done our best to kill or destroy anything that looked even remotely manmade on that island. The news was unsettling. The Pacific was full of islands like Betio. The war could go on a long time and cost a great many lives.

We turned our attention during the next week to providing close air support for the Marines. We usually made radio contact with a controller on the ground, and he talked us onto a target using a grid; we carried cards that had a map of the island overlaid with a grid. Sometimes he arranged for the target to be marked with a white phosphorous shell and talked us on to it from there. The white phosphorous—or Willy Pete—sent up a huge, easily visible plume of white smoke. Once it was on the ground the controller gave us directions, for instance, “From the Willy Pete, hit the bunker fifty yards to the north.”

This was the first time we did much bombing in our Hellcats. We could carry a single bomb of up to 1,000-pounds on the centerline rack, where we normally carried our drop tanks, and one underneath the wing on either side of the fuselage. Normally we dove on the target from about 10,000 feet at a 60-degree angle, then dropped our bombs at about 3,000 feet. We were quite accurate and could generally count on getting closer than 50 feet to the target. A direct hit was not uncommon.

This use of the Hellcat as a bomber was a harbinger of things to come. We carried about the same load of bombs as the dive bomber and torpedo bombers. Plus, we were faster than the bombers, we could go almost as far, and—most important—we could protect ourselves.

During this combat tour, unless we were flying dedicated bombing missions, we always flew with 150-gallon external fuel tanks slung underneath the bellies of our airplanes. These tanks almost doubled our range and loiter time without having much impact on our performance. We normally started transferring fuel from the drop tanks after we had burned 12 gallons out of the right main tank. If we didn’t make room in the main tank first, it overfilled and vented fuel overboard. By emptying our external tank first, we had as much fuel as possible onboard the airplane in the event we had to jettison the tank.

Because the Japanese were faring so poorly in their daytime air attacks against our carriers, they began to concentrate on night operations. We were called to general quarters so often because of these attacks that we finally just stayed topside on the flight deck. Otherwise, we were rousted out of our bunks several times a night and sent down to our general quarters station in the better-protected wardroom. But topside, we watched with excitement the fireworks in the pitch-black sky as the ships fired their antiaircraft guns against the intruders. When an enemy plane was hit it invariably flared into a huge flying torch, and a huge cheer went up from the men on the deck as we watched it—and its dead or dying crew—tumble slowly into the dark ocean.

These engagements weren’t entirely one-sided. On the evening of November 20, the Essex, Bunker Hill, and Independence were attacked by a flight of Betty torpedo bombers. We were treated to the terrifying sight of a Betty screaming right over the deck of our carrier at less than 100 feet. Fortunately, the pilot’s torpedo missed. The Independence wasn’t as fortunate. She was struck, and it wasn’t until December 7 that she was repaired well enough to return to Pearl Harbor for more extensive repairs.