A Full-contact Sport

AS IN ANY MILITARY ORGANIZATION, each sailor and airman fit into an orderly, disciplined framework, but some were better trained; others were better led and likely more motivated. And as in any drama, motivation counted for a great deal off Saipan. The Japanese were defending the outer rampart of their empire: Drawing a straight line almost due north, only Iwo Jima in the Bonins stood between the Marianas and Tokyo.

For most of the Americans, whether “snipes” in the engineering spaces, lookouts perched topside, or shooters in Hellcats and Avengers, Saipan represented “another damned island.” It was one step closer to the ultimate battle expected on Japanese soil sometime in 1945 or 1946. What distinguished the upcoming battle as Task Force 58 drew nearer the Marianas was a chance to come to grips with the Imperial Navy. Two of the six carriers that had committed the Sunday murders on December 7 were still afloat. Off Saipan in June 1944, the youngsters manning Admiral Raymond Spruance’s warships anticipated their appointment with history.

 
Aboard ship, pilots and aircrews spent most of their downtime in the squadron ready room. Generally located beneath the flight deck, ready rooms were at once the operational and social center of each squadron. Padded leather chairs resembling theater seats were provided with folding trays that could be laid across the arms as a writing platform. Beneath the seat was a built-in drawer for assorted gear and personal items.

At the head of each ready room was a large screen that clacked out Teletype messages: everything from navigational and weather data to current events and the latest “hot dope” from Rumor Central. From the overhead frequently dangled one-seventy-second scale models to sharpen fliers’ recognition skills. The bulkheads were festooned with flight gear, squadron emblems, and leggy Vargas pinups with saucy smiles, sculpted derrieres, and perfect breasts. Today they seem quaint; sixty years ago they were considered racy. Overall, the ambience was a cross between a locker room whose team played an especially violent full-contact sport, and a fraternity house where admission was based on surviving more than a year of intense training, and acceptance was ceded only to those who could “hack the program.” A pilot or gunner who couldn’t hold his own in the crucible of the ready room was ill prepared to fly and fight for any star-spangled banner.

Ready rooms also offered pleasant diversions: endless card games (acey-deucy was almost de rigueur), bull sessions (women and flying and women), a coffee urn and cold cuts in the back, and occasionally air-conditioning. Good squadron skippers worked hard at building and maintaining morale, and some advocated old-fashioned sing-alongs. The topics of ready room doggerel often took two forms:

 
Oh, those who want to be a hero, they number almost zero.

Those who want to be civilians—Jesus! They number in the millions.

 
Then there was flying:

 
Oh, I wanted wings and I got the damn things and I don’t want them anymore.

I want my hand around a bottle, and not around a throttle. Oh, I don’t want to fly anymore.

Some flying songs were specific:

 
Oh, Mother, dear Mother, take down that blue star,
Replace it with one that is gold.
Your son is a Helldiver pilot;
He’ll never be thirty years old.
The people who work for Curtiss
are frequently seen good and drunk.
One day with an awful hangover,
they mustered and designed that clunk.