McWhorter (left) and Gene Valencia (center) examine a .50 caliber shell casing in a publicity shot. Note that the “9” in VF-9 on the board behind them has been whited out by a censor. (U.S. Navy)
Chapter 20
Once again, having completed a job well done, we were ready to go home. And once again, we were sent to pound the Japanese. This time the target for Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher’s Task Force 58 was the Mariana Islands group.
Strategically located along many of the trade routes to Asia, the Marianas, composed of 11 smaller and 4 larger islands, were important stepping stones on the road to Japan. Magellan had discovered Guam, the largest island, in 1521, and since then various islands in the group had been under the control of Spain, Germany, Japan, and the United States. America won Guam from Spain in 1899 after the Spanish-American War; Japan was given a League of Nations mandate over the rest of the islands after World War I, following Germany’s defeat. Two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan overran the tiny American garrison on Guam and claimed that island, too, as her own.
McWhorter (left) and Gene Valencia (center) examine a .50 caliber shell casing in a publicity shot. Note that the “9” in VF-9 on the board behind them has been whited out by a censor. (U.S. Navy)
But now we were back to argue the issue. Taking Guam and Saipan, the second largest island, was part of the strategy for closing the ring around Japan. Little was known about the Japanese defenses on the islands and it was determined that a naval air strike would shed some light on what our invasion forces would face when the time arrived to assault the islands. Our task groups were ready and at hand, and so were given the mission.
Gathering intelligence about the islands was the primary objective of the strike, as good photographs and other information were needed for the coming invasion. Because there had been no overflights since Guam was lost, there was precious little data. So important was this gathering of information, that any damage we might cause to the Japanese during our strike would just be icing on the cake.
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On the night of February 22, 1944, the evening before the strike, an enemy airplane spotted our task group. We were under attack through the rest of that night and on into the next morning—even while we were launching airplanes. As at Tarawa, we spent most of the night on the flight deck watching the fireworks. So thick and deadly accurate was our antiaircraft fire that not a single ship was hit.
Hamilton McWhorter III, the Navy’s first Hellcat ace, aboard the Essex (CV-9) in early 1944. (U.S. Navy)
One of the primary reasons our antiaircraft fire was so effective was our use of proximity-fused ammunition. Codenamed VT, which was just a meaningless designation, the proximity fuse was a device fitted into the nose of a projectile that emitted a radio signal. When that signal was reflected back from a target in great enough strength, it triggered the projectile to explode. This enabled an antiaircraft battery to shoot down a target without scoring a direct hit, or without the inaccurate guesswork involved with air bursts set off by timed fuses. The VT fuse was a closely held secret and was first used operationally by the Navy in January 1943. In fact, the Allies were so fearful it might be compromised that it wasn’t until the British were confronted with V-1 attacks in June 1944 that it was released for use over land. In any event, neither the Germans nor the Japanese ever fielded a similar fuse.
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The brief we received for our flight the next morning was reminiscent of what we had received prior to our first strike in North Africa. Essentially, we were told to go fly over Saipan and hunt for enemy airfields. We were told to shoot them up if and when we found them and, importantly, to mark their locations.
This operation for me was pretty much a nonevent. The weather was atrocious over the island, and I didn’t see a single enemy plane in the air. Miraculously, underneath the one hole we found in the clouds was an enemy airfield. And just as miraculously, instead of a welcoming committee of enemy fighters, we found row after row of planes parked on the field. We dropped down and thoroughly strafed them. When we finished and started up through the break in the clouds toward the rendezvous point, I looked over my shoulder at the airfield one more time. Where only a few minutes before there were dozens of carefully parked aircraft, there were now nothing but burning wrecks. What had once been a neatly ordered military installation was now a smoking shambles.
Other strikes that day also did well, much better in fact than they realized. Although claims were put in for 48 aerial victories and an estimated 87 aircraft were destroyed on the ground, Japanese records indicate that they lost 168 aircraft in total. This is probably one of the few instances during the war when two big aerial forces came together and the damage done was underclaimed.
VF-9’s cut of the total was eleven enemy airplanes shot down. But these successes did not come without cost. Lieutenant Junior Grade Henry Schiebler failed to return, presumably lost to antiaircraft fire. Another tragic loss was Ensign Lewis Matthews, Chick Smith’s wingman. Their division was on CAP near the task force when incoming bogeys were detected. The fighter director gave them the command, “Vector base, two-seven-zero, Gate.” That command meant that Chick and Lew had to fly back directly over the task force, then turn to a heading of 270 degrees; and “gate” meant to fly at full power.
They headed back to overfly the task force and as they reached it, antiaircraft fire from practically all of our ships opened up on them. To the gunners on the ships, anything moving in the sky was a threat if enemy aircraft were thought to be inbound. A five-inch shell made a direct hit on Lew’s plane, which disintegrated. That particular command, which brought friendly aircraft directly over the fleet when enemy aircraft were inbound, was not used very often after that.
When we left the area later that evening, we had good photographic intelligence of the islands. This would save many lives during the coming invasion.
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We returned to Pearl Harbor on March 3, 1944. We had been in the Pacific for 10 months and had spent 127 days at sea. During 8 separate combat engagements VF-9 had spent 21 days in combat and had lost 10 airplanes and 5 pilots to enemy action. Only one of those airplanes was shot down by enemy fliers. In exchange for our losses, we claimed 120 enemy airplanes shot down in the air and 159 destroyed on the ground. By any measure we had performed superlatively and were ready for a well-deserved trip back to the States. It was time to go home.
VF-9’s pilots and officers with the scoreboard marking their successes during the squadron’s first Pacific cruise in 1943–44. McWhorter stands right-center with ballcap. (U.S. Navy)