The First Hellcat Ace

We returned to the anchorage at Ulithi for some rest and refit time before our next operation. We got ashore several times to have big parties at the little officers club on Mog Mog Island. We played softball and such, but mostly we drank a lot of warm Acme beer. I will never forget that name. In honor of where we were—and because we were sailors—we called it “Grog Grog.” One day, after quite a few beers, the junior officers decided that it would be the greatest idea in the world to toss the senior officers into the lagoon. What fun! And so they did. Even Charlie Crommelin got a good dunking. It was a great break in the action and helped to relieve a lot of tension.

On March 9 and 10 we went back out to sea for some simulated combat operations, making attacks on a sled towed behind the carrier. The sled simulated a surface vessel. Although it was relatively small, it was designed to kick up quite a wake, which made it more visible from the air. And because it was moving at the same speed as the carrier, we had to adjust our aim point—putting in some lead—just as we would for a real warship. We got quite a bit of practice with this sled with strafing, firing rockets, and bombing.

Even this practice proved costly, though. One of the TBMs crashed into the water near the sled and the crew was lost. The pilot had probably fixated on the sled during his bombing run and pulled out of his dive too late.

On the evening of March 11, 1945, I was sitting in the squadron office tending to some paperwork when a tremendous explosion rocked me out of my chair. Dazed, I hesitated a moment as I collected my wits, then picked myself up and threw open the hatch to the gangway that ran along the side of the ship just below the flight deck. Rushing outside, I pulled myself up a ladder and saw a tremendous conflagration on the aft portion of the flight deck. I scrambled back down to the gangway and ran down to the hangar deck to find out what had happened and to see what I could do to help.

Jay Finley, McWhorter and Stoney Carlson were the remaining members of McWhorter’s four-plane division after Norm Sandler was killed on February 25, 1945. Here they are at Mog Mog Island in March. (McWhorter Family)

Mog-Mog Island, part of Ulithi Atoll, included sports and beach and other facilities to meet the rest and recreation needs of many thousands of sailors, to include these VF-12 pilots. Drinking beer was popular. Note the beer cans are camouflaged olive green. (McWhorter Family)

Kamikaze damage to the Randolph (CV-15) cause by single Yokusuka P1Y1 medium bomber, codenamed “Frances.” (U.S. Navy)

The aft end of the hangar deck was absolute mayhem. Flaming pieces of the kamikaze that had hit us were strewn all over. Worse, its bomb had also exploded, and bits and pieces of bodies were spattered everywhere. Sailors were running all over the place, some in panic, others in a hurry to get to their damage-control stations. The noise from the screams and shouts and the explosions from the ammunition stored in the area was deafening.

The best thing I could do was get out of the way. I worked clear of the smoke and heat and carnage until I got as far forward on the forecastle as I could. I stayed there until Charlie Crommelin passed the word for all pilots to report to the wardroom for a head count. Fortunately, we had lost no pilots.

The damage-control parties did a marvelous job. Within minutes, the initial panic had subsided and the sailors turned to the task of saving the ship. In only an hour, the fires were contained and the ship was no longer in any mortal danger.

The kamikaze that had hit us was an Imperial Navy Yokosuka P1Y1 twin-engine light bomber, codenamed “Frances.” It had carried a single 1,750-pound bomb. With a flight of 19 others, it had left Kanoya, Japan, earlier that day with the ships at Ulithi as its primary target. During the 1,300-mile, 10-hour flight, half the would-be kamikazes got lost in poor weather and darkness, 4 crash-landed on Yap, and only 2 actually made it to Ulithi. The airplane that crashed into us hit near the stern on the starboard side of the ship, at hangar-deck level. It exploded as it traveled through the hangar deck, blowing a 40-foot-by-40-foot hole in the starboard side that went up through the flight deck. Thirty-five of the Randolph’s sailors were killed and more than 100 were wounded. The remains of three Japanese airmen were found in the wreckage.

The repair ship Jason pulls alongside Randolph to begin making repairs to the kamikaze damage. (U.S. Navy)

In a strange way, we were largely saved by the movies. Whenever the ship was at anchor, movies were shown forward on the hangar deck, but because the ship’s crew was so large—more than 2,600 of us—there had to be two showings. When the kamikaze hit, just after eight o’clock, the first showing had just ended, and the audience was trying to exit through the crowd of sailors who were waiting at the rear to get seats for the second showing. Had the kamikaze struck at any other time, many more men would have been in the aft section of the ship, and our losses would have been much higher.

A Yokusuka P1Y1 medium bomber, codenamed “Frances.” (USAAF)

The other kamikaze that reached Ulithi mistook a small island for a ship and crashed into a lighted baseball diamond. It injured no one, but the wreckage made covering second base a bit dicey.

The repair ship Jason pulled alongside the morning after and commenced repair work. On March 15, we catapulted 25 airplanes off, along with a contingent of bombers, and flew to the nearby Marine airstrip—codenamed “Topaz Base”—on Falalop, one of the islands that made up Ulithi Atoll. In keeping with our tendency to rename things at Ulithi, Falalop Island inevitably became “Flop Flop.” The new name seemed to work better with Mog Mog Island and Grog-Grog beer.

We flew daily combat air patrols over the anchorage and drank a lot of warm beer, something that wasn’t readily available—or permitted—onboard ship. The Marines had a small officers’ club—a well-appointed shack, really—that attracted every sort of vagabond in that part of the Pacific. There was always a crowd and the evenings could get quite raucous.

While we were waiting for the Randolph to be repaired, we flew strikes against the Japanese garrison at Yap which wasn’t much more than a rock about four miles wide and seven miles long, with an airstrip and lots of antiaircraft guns. The higher-ups wanted to make certain that we didn’t lose our keen edge as well as ensure that we kept our heads in the game. Yap lay only about 90 miles west of Ulithi. It was one of the many enemy-held islands that was bypassed, and we were pounding it into nothingness. That this Japanese base was allowed to exist so close to the powerful fleet anchorage at Ulithi was an indicator of how impotent the Navy had rendered its garrison. Nevertheless, since kamikazes might still be staged through Yap, we mounted several preemptive strikes against it, just to make sure that it remained unusable.

McWhorter, in Rayban sunglasses, enjoys time at Mog Mog Island with VF-12 squadron mates. (McWhorter Family)

But if Yap’s offensive punch—its airplanes—had been destroyed, it still possessed a potent defensive sting. It was common for strikes to the island to come back with airplanes missing—victims of antiaircraft fire. We were briefed accordingly.

I was airborne as part of a strike force against Yap on March 21, 1945. As we approached the island, I couldn’t make out anything that warranted our attention. The airfield appeared to be in ruins—hangars and other buildings were bombed-out hulks—and the rest of the installations were a shambles as well. As we came in range the enemy gunners started putting out antiaircraft fire. From my position ahead of the bombers, I pushed over into a dive to strafe one of the antiaircraft positions.

The Japanese airfield at Yap Island where McWhorter was nearly shot down was already in ruins even before VF-12’s attack on March 21, 1945. (USAAF)

Through my gunsight, I saw dirt and other debris kicked into the air by my machinegun rounds. The Japanese gunners had disappeared, gone to ground in an effort to escape the hail of thumb-sized bullets I was spraying down on them. As I pulled out of my dive at about 50 feet, I heard and felt a thump, and a sudden flash on my right wing caught my attention.

Not all the enemy gunners had gone to ground! About four feet from the cockpit, my right wing was engulfed in flames that reached all the way back past my tail. Thinking that the wing was about to depart the rest of the airplane, I felt I had to get out. My body reacted faster than my mind, and before I had time to think about it, my hands had thrown back the canopy and released my shoulder and lap harness.

As I stood up to bail out over the island I was surprised at the force of the slipstream, which pushed me back into the cockpit. At that moment, common sense began to prevail over panic. First of all, I noted that my airplane was still flying and gaining altitude. Second, although the midsection of the wing was still on fire, the portion of the wing that joined the fuselage was still sound. If I bailed out over the island, I was certain to be captured by a very angry and cruel enemy whom I had just finished strafing. My chances of survival would be slim-to-none.

I settled back into the seat and continued to climb my airplane out over the water. In a minute or so—it seemed like forever—the fire burned itself out. Soon after that I was joined by my wingman, Jay Finley. He looked my plane over and reported that he saw no damage other than a hole burned through the top of my right wing.

I stayed with the strike formation for the rest of the trip back to Falalop, but off to the side with Finley. I was still flying unstrapped and with the canopy open. If the wing fell off, I wanted to be sure that I wouldn’t run into any other planes and that I’d be able to make a quick exit. I got a call from Mike Michaelis, who suggested that I join up, but I told him what my problem was and opted to stay put.

Thanks to Mr. Grumman and his trademark practice of overengineering everything he built, the wing stayed attached. When I got back, we discovered that an enemy round had penetrated the gun boxes and ammunition trays. It had also ruptured the gun-charging lines, igniting the flammable hydraulic fluid. The burning hydraulic fluid had in turn cooked off the ammunition in the gun trays. Fortunately, most of the fire had burned aft of the load-bearing main spar.

Ensign Delbert “Snuffy” Martin, who had scored the squadron’s first aerial victory during the first strike at Tokyo, had not been so lucky. He was seen to crash straight into the ground, probably killed in flight by antiaircraft fire.

Privately, I questioned the wisdom of these strikes on an island that posed so little danger to our fleet. We had paid for this one with Snuffy Martin’s life—and nearly my own. It didn’t seem like a fair trade.

The crew of the Jason made remarkable progress in repairing the ship. We put to sea on April 1 for a brief shakedown cruise and returned on April 3. The next day, six replacement pilots reported aboard. One of them, Ensign Bill Townsend, joined my division as wingman for Stoney Carlson, who replaced Norm Sandler as my section leader.