June 11
DESPITE WHEATLEY’S SUCCESS, AND THAT of some long-range Liberators, the task force was snooped on June 10, approaching the Marianas from the east. Consequently, Mitscher ordered high-speed steaming to be within range half a day early.
During the task force’s approach, more Japanese patrol planes poked around. But radar controllers were alert, and again Bataan got the call. On the morning of the eleventh, Yorktown’s FDO, Lieutenant Alexander Wilding Jr., directed VF-50 Hellcats to splash a snooper. Rear Admiral Ralph Davidson, Jocko Clark’s understudy, showed his gratitude with a box of cigars.
Proving that the first kill was no fluke, during the noon hour Wilding vectored his own fighters onto two more snoopers, one within seventy miles of the force. Moments later Yorktown’s teammate, Hornet, controlled Fighting One in another splash only thirty miles south.
Most Hellcat pilots eagerly anticipated the fighter sweep, especially Yorktown’s Fighting One, which awaited its first big fight. The CO, Commander Bernard M. “Smoke” Strean, had flown missions from Tarawa but had never tangled with Japan’s first team. He was so distracted that he was almost to his Hellcat when a VF-1 troop caught up with him, carrying the skipper’s parachute harness.
As Hellcat pilots manned their aircraft for the first CAP, some pilots noticed unusual gestures in “vulture’s row,” the gallery on the carrier’s island overlooking the flight deck. Some sailors conducted pantomime rooting sections, holding up five fingers, meaning “Make ace!” Not every fighter pilot was so inspired. One said, “To hell with that. I might run into a Jap looking for his fifth one.”
All four task groups contributed to the massive show of airpower. At 1300 the carriers’ helmsmen spun their wheels, turning into the fourteen-knot wind in preparation for launch. The F6Fs’ Pratt & Whitney engines coughed blue-gray smoke as starter cartridges kicked the big cylinders into motion. Three-bladed propellers turned reluctantly by fits and starts, then blurred to invisibility as 2,800 cubic inches of raw power took hold.
In surprisingly few minutes the carriers steadied up on their heading, and launch officers waved the tricolored fighters off the decks. The Hellcats quickly formed up: fighting pairs of section leader and wingman; two pairs to a division; three or four divisions to a squadron. Each Essex-class ship launched sixteen fighters; the Independence-class ships contributed a dozen each.
Depending on their assigned targets, the pilots launched between 180 and 230 miles east of the Marianas. Jocko Clark’s Task Group 58.1 drew the plum assignment at Guam. Saipan and Tinian were the venue of Al Montgomery’s 58.2 and Black Jack Reeves’s 58.3, while Keen Harrill’s 58.4 shared Tinian and staked out Pagan for itself.
Before launch, Mitscher sent a message to the Hellcat squadrons: “Cut their damned throats. Wish I could be with you.”
Flying low over the gray-tossed sea, the top cover F6Fs avoided Japanese radar until thirty minutes out. Then the pilots adjusted throttle and prop controls for a fast climb through the two thousand-foot overcast. Successively the midlevel and low fighters slanted upward at five-minute intervals.
Some of the pilots had been to the Marianas before. In late February Task Force 58 raided Saipan and Tinian, expecting a shoot-out, as Mitscher had said, “We will fight our way in.” But Japanese air strength there was still building: Two days of strikes netted only thirty-six Japanese planes splashed. Mitscher’s force also was growing at that time. He tackled the islands with six fast carriers: Essex, Yorktown , Bunker Hill, Monterey, Cowpens, and Belleau Wood. Among the February shooters still embarked in June were Mighty Moo’s Air Group 25 and most of the night-fighter detachments.
That had been the third time Mitscher took the fast carriers against a land base and emerged the winner. Now February’s exercise was a dimming memory, as few of the same squadrons remained.