Clash of The Carriers

THE CARDIV TWO SQUADRONS WERE under orders: Jettison remaining ordnance before landing. Since few of Joshima’s pilots had found a target, they began dropping bombs and torpedoes into the sea prior to landing on Guam. The extra few minutes required were not wasted by American fighter directors.

Lieutenant Commander Gaylord B. Brown had a dozen Cowpens fighters capping 58.2 when the low-level gaggle appeared on shipboard radar. The acting VF-25 skipper (Lieutenant Commander Rice was still MIA) approached Orote and gawked at the spectacle. Though he had splashed two planes earlier in the day, he could hardly believe his eyes. He keyed his mike: “Forty enemy planes circling Orote Field at angels three, some with wheels down.”

The remainder of Air Group 652—nearly fifty planes—made for safe haven at Orote Field on Guam. Forty-one Hellcats dropped onto Orote and shot down at least thirty. The F6 pilots claimed twice as many, but the Japanese recorded another nineteen damaged beyond repair.

First to respond were three Essex divisions, launched at 1425 to cap Guam and Rota, preventing reinforcements from landing and others from getting airborne. Dashing Dave McCampbell coasted in at twenty-four thousand, keeping the invaluable advantage of height, and spotted pairs and singles winging toward Orote.

Some of the inbound Japanese had reached the end of a long tether. They included thirteen Zekes of Air Group 253, led by Lieutenant Commander Harutoshi Okamoto. After the long flight from Truk in the Carolines, they were low on fuel, and Okamoto was anxious to land. He should have known better: He had been flying combat since 1937.

With an altitude advantage, McCampbell picked off a Zeke with little trouble, but the others were flown by pros. Two Zeroes reversed and came up shooting. They damaged McCampbell’s plane and shot his wingman’s full of holes. Ensign Royce L. Nall’s elevators were shredded and his engine began streaming smoke. The CAG tried to lead the stalkers away from “Bird’s Legs” Nall, but the Zekes were too cagey for that. The only way out of the situation was through it.

McCampbell weaved with Nall, sliding across the turn to confront the nearest Japanese. A quick sight picture, a trigger press, and the Mitsubishi exploded, McCampbell’s seventh of the day. Seeing his partner converted to heat and light, the other Zeke called it quits and put his nose down for Orote. McCampbell chased him, drawing a bead as the Zeke performed an elegant aileron roll. Reported the new ace, “It was so perfect [that] there was no need even for changing point of aim or discontinuance of fire.” Miraculously, the Zero escaped destruction and let down for Orote. McCampbell declined to pursue; he went looking for Nall and gathered up other errant Hellcats.

One of the errant Essex pilots was the fighter exec, Lieutenant Commander James F. Rigg. He had a frustrating mission, plagued by gun malfunctions. He shot at five Vals and a Zeke, getting hits on each, but could claim only probables. As if that weren’t enough, he drew the attention of a competent Zeke pilot who thoroughly perforated the Hellcat. Rigg decided to trap aboard Enterprise in 58.3 rather than risk the longer flight to 58.4.

Another senior VF-15 pilot was Lieutenant Commander George Duncan, erstwhile floatplane aviator. Sticking in the low-level dogfight, he gunned three Zekes—all flamers. His wingman, Ensign Wendell V. Twelves, splashed two with deflection shots barely two hundred feet off the water. Known as “Doz” (for Dozen), Twelves was a soft-spoken Mormon who had just turned twenty-three—a long way from Spanish Fork, Utah. But he and Duncan proved a potent team: Both finished their tour with thirteen victories.

One of Twelves’s victims apparently was twenty-four-year-old Warrant Officer Sadamu Komachi, who had claimed eighteen victories in most of the major battles since 1942. Known as “a wild character,” Komachi was a survivor: He had flown at Coral Sea, Eastern Solomons, Santa Cruz, and Rabaul. In the low-level scrap with VF-15, his Zero took hits in the fuel tank and burst into flames at 150 feet. Sitting in a burning airplane, he pushed the stick forward and splashed down offshore. Badly burned, he was evacuated by air a few days later.

Close behind McCampbell’s slipstream were two Hornet divisions led by Lieutenant William K. Blair. All eight VF-2 pilots scored, Blair and three others claiming doubles, while Ensign William H. Vaughan Jr. got a triple for a total of fifteen.

Hornet produced two instant aces that day, including Ensign Wilbur “Spider” Webb; barely twenty-four but no tyro. Before winning his wings and joining VF-2 he had been a scout-observation backseater at Pearl Harbor, Coral Sea, and Midway. Launched at midafternoon, Webb was covering a downed aircraft offshore when he noticed a Japanese air group orbiting overland. Closing to investigate, he found a shooter’s dream. He keyed his mike: “Any American fighter pilot, this is Spider Webb. I’ve got about forty of ’em cornered over Orote Point and I could use some help.”

The young Texan piled into a clutch of Val dive-bombers, following his victims over Orote Airfield. Then, despite malfunctioning guns and heavy return fire from Japanese rear gunners, he systematically attacked eight. By the time he pulled away his F6F was full of holes. He “trapped” safely aboard Hornet, but the deckhands judged his Grumman too shot-up to repair. They retrieved his gun camera before ditching the Grumman, but the film ended with “only” six kills. Webb was credited with two probables as well.

Also airborne was Lieutenant Russell L. Reiserer, an erstwhile Stanford student and two-victory Enterprise pilot of 1942 vintage. Now leading Hornet’s night-fighter detachment, he had not expected to fly during the day. It was a frustrating situation, as he related: “We spent the early part of the day watching the air group operate continuously with the VF pilots holding up the number of fingers of their victories as they taxied out of the arresting gear.”

Finally, with VF-2 fully occupied, Reiserer and two of his VF(N)- 76 pilots were assigned to suppress flak at Guam’s Orote Field. Because the night owls used the torpedo ready room (“it wasn’t as crowded or as boisterous as the fighters’ ”), they had no knowledge of Spider Webb’s mission. However, Reiserer’s trio flew Fighting 2 aircraft, including skipper Bill Dean’s pet photo bird.

When Reiserer pulled up from his strafing run he noticed an SOC taxiing out of the bay with downed fliers on board. He directed Lieutenant Junior Grade Fred Dungan and Ensign William Levering to photograph Orote while he contacted the duty rescue team.

While orbiting, Reiserer noticed in the distance “a large number of planes coming in and circling Orote Field prior to landing.” That was meat on the table. He went to “gate” speed, engaging water injection for a temporary boost in power, and called a quick Mayday to Hornet.

Years later Reiserer recalled, “Spider and I must have hit the group at the same time, because the formation was intact as I fired at a Zero and went on through as fast as I could. As I pulled up to make a turn for another run, I noticed a group of seven or eight Vals turning to the right, away from the field. I looked around and couldn’t believe my luck. The rest of the formation was all over the sky, but my group stayed together.”

Reiserer tagged on to the rear of the Val formation and hauled into range. While strafing he had switched off his two inboard guns as “get-me-home insurance” and chased the Aichis at treetop level. The first two fell within five miles of each other. The third was more elusive: After several minutes of a lethal game of tag, in and out of the clouds, Reiserer dropped it from dead astern.

With ammo remaining, the veteran pilot caught three more Aichis at the island’s southern tip. He dropped wheels and flaps to avoid overshooting them, and killed one with the last of his ammo. Another evaded, but the remaining bomber fled out to sea. Reiserer made a few dry runs, hoping to force his quarry into the water. It worked. The Val splashed down in a successful ditching three miles offshore. As the instant ace flew past, he glimpsed the pilot and gunner shaking their fists at him.

Back aboard ship, Reiserer found that his wingmen, “Buck” Dungan and “Scoop” Levering, had added a Zeke, a Kate, and a Val between them. But both of their VF-2 “loaners” were badly shot-up—Levering’s so badly that it was jettisoned, while Commander Dean was peeved at Dungan “for bringing back such a wreck.”

The episode that began with Russ Reiserer’s spotting the SOC ended later that afternoon. He had called fellow night fighters from Enterprise, as Lieutenant Commander Richard E. Harmer’s Corsairs provided “ResCAP,” protecting rescue aircraft that retrieved downed aviators. Four fighters were launched in the afternoon with two F4Us capping a downed floatplane while Harmer and VF-10’s executive officer flew a mixed section on similar duty. At 1600 the Corsair and Hellcat found an SOC picking up two fliers off Guam. Burdened with two extra men, the floatplane could not take off and elected to taxi the long miles out to sea.

Approaching Orote Point, Harmer and Lieutenant Henry C. Clem heard a frantic call from the Curtiss biplane with the incongruous call sign “Ace.” He was being strafed by a Zeke, and though other F6Fs tried to intervene, the Japanese proved elusive. As Clem bent his throttle to engage, Harmer arrived overhead the SOC, awaiting events.

The Zeke pilot was Lieutenant Shinya Ozaki, leader of Air Group 343, who saw the threat and climbed. Clem, overly aggressive, pulled his stick back in a high-speed zoom, trying to get a shot. Watching from a distance, Chick Harmer feared the worst. An old hand in fighters, he knew the Reapers’ exec was vulnerable.

As the Hellcat bled off airspeed, Ozaki saw his chance. He was a veteran by 1944 standards, graduating in the sixty-eighth naval academy class four years before. He winged over, stooped like a hawk, and fired a well-aimed burst. Clem’s F6F stalled, nosed down, and went into the water. “Ace” also saw the short fight: “They got one of our guys!”

Harmer wasted no time. He shoved throttle, prop, and mixture full forward and gave chase. Ozaki, seeing his chance, made for shore, offering the Corsair only a long-range shot. Firing from dead astern, Harmer triggered his five guns and drew smoke from the bandit, which never slowed. Frustrated, Harmer returned to his perch overhead Ace until relieved by Princeton Hellcats.

Years later it was learned that Chick Harmer’s parting shot had struck home. Lieutenant Ozaki was hit by a .50-caliber round and, though he crash-landed in a swamp, he died of his wound.

Other Big E fighters were more heavily engaged. Lieutenant Richard O. Devine took his division to Guam, finding good hunting in the milling, low-level enemy formations. He selected from a smorgasbord of Japanese planes, ultimately reckoned to include Zekes, Vals, Judys, Kates, and even an ancient Nate (an Army type; the comparable Navy fighter was dubbed Claude). Whatever their types, they were ripe for plucking. Devine summoned help, then dived on Orote Field, trying to prevent more bandits from getting airborne.

Devine screamed in downwind, spotting a Zeke ready to take off. His .50-calibers churned the runway; he raised his sights and spattered the A6M. Pulling up, he picked off a Judy and a Zeke while Lieutenants Junior Grade Vernon R. Ude and Philip L. Kirkwood went after dive-bombers. Ude dropped his without difficulty; Kirkwood’s maneuvered well, the rear gunner gamely popping away. But one 7.7 against six .50s was no contest.

Then “Rod” Devine caught sight of two Kates (recognition may have been in error) and went after them. He hammered one and Kirkwood the other. Next Devine climbed beneath a Val at two thousand feet and executed it.

But the Reapers weren’t finished. When another Zeke and Kate cruised through the area, they were downed by Devine and Ude, respectively. It rounded out Devine’s four-plane “flush,” doubling his previous score. Ude reported that he dropped a fixed-gear Nate-cum-Claude fighter, but it was almost certainly a Val.

Early in the fight Devine’s wingman became separated. However, Lieutenant Junior Grade James F. Kay formed up with Robert F. Kanze and Peter Long, forming a dangerous trio. Kay sent a Val burning into the water, then claimed a Zeke. Long matched the toll with two fighters over Orote Field, where planes were still trying to land. Kanze had the most cost-efficient kills: He gunned a Val and, when he aimed at its partner, the pilot abandoned ship.

From 1510 to 1645 elements of six Hellcat squadrons had plucked the feathers of Air Group 652. Total claims amounted to sixty kills, and though “only” thirty were shot down, as many as nineteen more were unserviceable on landing. Some piled up while landing on Orote’s cratered runway, a residual of Task Force 58 bomber attacks earlier in the day.

The lead Hellcat rolled wings-level low in the groove as Essex’s LSO picked him up. Ordinarily an approach below optimum glide slope would elicit a “low” signal, but “Paddles” knew better. After waving the air group for several weeks, he recognized each pilot’s style; this was Commander McCampbell. Himself a former LSO, Dashing Dave certainly knew the error of his ways. But he was CAG and liked to do things his way. Low at the ramp, he took the perfunctory cut signal and snagged a wire.

Upon reaching the fighter ready room, McCampbell found Nall safely back, reporting a kill. Meanwhile, Commander Charles Brewer was briefing another hop to Guam and the CAG told the fighter skipper to take his sweep in high “and be extra cautious.”

On station at 1825, Brewer spotted some planes landing at Orote. He led his wingman down to attack and bagged one for his fifth kill of the day. But he lost his altitude advantage, and high-flying Zekes dropped on the Grumman pair, killing the CO and Ensign Thomas Tarr. Other VF-15 pilots claimed eight more kills but considered it a poor exchange. San Jacinto also lost a pilot, Ensign Thomas E. Hallowell.