Mid-October to Mid-November 1943
New Guinea
Two days after McGuire went down, Kearby destroyed a pair of Japanese floatplanes on another hunting mission over Wewak with his “Musketeers” flight, as his handpicked group of four tigers came to be called by the reporters covering the race. Kearby was the one constant; the other Musketeers changed often. In this fight, Neel took Bob Rowland, Capt. Frank Oksala, and Capt. Meade Brown. The leading active aces in theater now included Bong with seventeen, Kearby with twelve, Danny Roberts of the 475th Fighter Group with nine, Gerald Johnson with eight, and Jay Robbins of the 80th with seven.
With the invasion of Bougainville in the northern Solomons fast approaching, Kenney needed to get his Rabaul blitz underway. Weather defeated most of the attempts, but on the eighteenth the B-25s got through, with Johnson leading the 9th fighters as part of the cover for the raid. The Knights of October 1943 were a vastly different outfit than the one Gerald and the Eskimos had joined six months before, during the spring. He and his peers were the institutional experience now, and all the leadership slots were filled with pilots who had been in New Guinea about the same time as Gerald.
Between May and September, the squadron lost two pilots killed in action. In two October missions, Gerald’s command lost three pilots to weather and its executive officer, Harry Lidstrom, to combat. Wally Jordan took over as XO after Harry’s death on the sixteenth. Four men missing in less than a week battered the squadron’s morale, especially when the unit counted probably less than thirty-five pilots on its roster.
Replacement aircraft for those lost proved in short supply. The Knights made do with P-38s that the ground crews kept patching and repatching together with parts stripped off wrecks. At the moment, when Kenney demanded the utmost of them, the Knights could not field anything close to a full squadron of fighters. The birds were old, worn out by months of service in terrible jungle weather. They sat outside during thunderstorms. The humidity and moisture caused electrical issues. The gun sights failed. Tanks hung. Crashes took out even more birds, the worst of which happened to Clayton Barnes, who was nearly burned alive in his cockpit after losing an engine on takeoff. He had been evacuated to Australia, never to fly again.
Gerald faced one other issue that October. Though Dick Bong remained the top ace in theater, he had not really come back after losing Fagan in September. In fact, the short trip down to Eagle Farm hadn’t done much good. He flew a few more combat missions after he returned, shooting down a Mitsubishi Ki-46 Dinah reconnaissance plane. Gerald sent him down to Brisbane on leave again. In the past two months, Dick had spent almost three weeks out of combat in Australia. He was at the end of his combat effectiveness, fighting his own demons, and just needed to rotate home with the other pilots who’d been in theater for a year. That would come, hopefully soon. For now, Gerald needed his best-functioning pilots to get the squadron through this ordeal.
On the twenty-third, the Knights reached Rabaul as high cover for heavy bombers targeting the airfields. The weather closed in yet again, but that didn’t stop the Japanese from trying to intercept. Gerald, leading fifteen other P-38s, ran into about ten Zeroes at twenty-six thousand feet. The Japanese made diving attacks on the heavy bombers below. Johnson led the Knights down to keep the bombers safe. In the fight that followed, the Knights sent the Zeroes diving away from the bombers, damaging one that broke clear of the fight while trailing thick, black smoke. Johnson swung in behind another Zero that had just finished a gunnery run on a B-24 Liberator. He hammered the Japanese plane with all guns as he zoomed into point-blank range. He cut the throttles to keep from overshooting the fighter. Then an explosion rocked the Zero. A second one followed, blowing debris back into Johnson’s P-38. The Zero flipped inverted and went straight, as observed by Gerald’s ever-faithful wingman, Stanley Johnson, who confirmed the kill.
The 475th got into a similar fight that day, and Charles MacDonald shot his third plane down while protecting the bombers. Danny Roberts got two more. The next day, when the 5th returned to Rabaul for a low-altitude B-25 strike, Jay Robbins of the 80th bagged four Zeroes in a wild scrap over the Japanese base. Danny Roberts also scored. Rabaul was serving as high-octane fuel for the ace race. With McGuire out of action, George Welch home with malaria, and Bong at the end of his tour, the chance to gain fame and catch the leaders was never better.
Bong flew on the twenty-fourth but failed to encounter the enemy. It was his first combat mission in almost three weeks. The next day, he wrote home, acutely conscious of the contenders nipping at his heels. “As for the number of planes I have, why I actually have nineteen, but only have official credit for seventeen. It’s still more than anyone over here has… Received orders on the Distinguished Service Cross today, so that makes four medals I have received. The Silver Star, Air Medal, Distinguished Flying Cross, and the Distinguished Service Cross.”
To keep the squadron functioning through these brutal long-range missions, Gerald had to balance the daily duty roster with a mix of experienced veterans whose leadership he could trust. He and Wally flew every other day. On days when they weren’t aloft, Capt. Bill Haney led the squadron, with Dick Bong one of his flight leaders. As a result, Dick and Johnson did not fly together through the last week of October. It was something Gerald later had cause to regret.
On the twenty-ninth, Haney led the Knights to Rabaul as high escort for the bombers. This time, Dick flew with a young Greek-American pilot named George Hanniotis on his wing. George had arrived in the squadron only a short time before these maximum-effort strikes began, but already he’d proven himself a brave and reliable pilot. He was also popular on the ground, easygoing with a great sense of humor. He was also a workout warrior, always lifting weights or exercising in some way while off duty.
Over Rabaul that day, the Knights protected the bombers as they targeted the Japanese airfields near the harbor. A veritable cloud of Japanese fighters rose to intercept, climbing for the Americans north of the bombing area. They turned south and dove through the P-38 escort blanket and hit the bombers. Haney rolled in after them, leading the entire squadron down in a furious chase to save the B-24s. Zeroes began to fall in flames as bombs exploded on their runways. The fight started at eighteen thousand feet and quickly spread all the way down to the waves and treetops as the P-38s spiraled and zoomed after fleeing Japanese fighters. Bong caught a Zero after it went through the B-24 formation, but missed it as two more Japanese pounced on him. George saw the Zeroes getting behind his flight leader and tried to scrape them off. Bong was forced to dive away, Hanniotis sticking with him as the P-38 ace extended clear of the Zeroes and pulled up at three thousand feet. He whipped around and went after one of his pursuers, Hanniotis hanging on to his lead with dogged determination.
The Zero went head-to-head with Bong. After one pass, it fell in flames before the merge, its fuel tanks set afire by the farm boy’s cannon. Two more Zeroes joined the fight, and soon a low-altitude, high-speed steeplechase ensued. Bong nailed one from dead astern, sending it into the water of Open Bay. The other he tried to catch, but he ran out of ammunition after scoring a few hits. He broke for home, George Hanniotis still right with him despite all the wild maneuvers.
Back at Dobodura, the Knights returned without loss and with six kills under their belts. It was a big morale boost to a squadron on the ragged edge of exhaustion. When word spread that the 475th and 80th were having big days too, that Danny Roberts, Charles MacDonald, and Jay Robbins were all running their scores up over Rabaul, Bong took comfort that he’d padded his lead with two more Zeroes. He wrote home, “Got two more, so that makes nineteen. That puts me three up on anyone over here.”
It was a good day, but the string of maximum-effort strikes continued to take their toll on the squadron’s aircraft. For the next three days, the ground crews worked day and night to repair the aircraft left to the outfit and get them ready for the biggest Rabaul raid yet.
On November 1, 1943, Allied troops went ashore at Bougainville Island, only about 250 miles from Rabaul. If the Allies could build an airfield complex here, the Japanese base would be in easy range of dive-bombers and fighters. Rabaul would become unusable to the Japanese Navy. Recognizing the urgency of the moment, the Japanese sent a task force of cruisers and destroyers to obliterate the Allied amphibious task force off Bougainville in a night battle. The U.S. Navy was waiting for them, and, in what became known as the Battle of Empress Augusta Bay, dealt the Japanese a stinging defeat. Their cruiser task force turned around and limped back to Rabaul, where it dropped anchor just in time to be attacked by the full might of the 5th Air Force.
Tuesday, November 2, 1943, went down in history as the largest single air battle of the Southwest Pacific campaign. Kenney ordered every B-25 and P-38 in his command to strike at the airfield and shipping in Simpson Harbor. Whitehead and Wurtsmith tasked Johnson with leading the escort force that day.
The attack was a complex one, with lots of moving parts that demanded exceptional timing. The 3rd Attack Group would take its B-25s around the coast of New Britain to attack the shipping from the north. Two other B-25 groups would bomb and strafe the airfields while laying a smokescreen to blind the land-based antiaircraft gunners. The 475th, 80th, and 39th would cover the bombers hitting the airfields. Johnson’s Flying Knights would have the extraordinarily difficult task of staying with the 3rd Attack Group as they skip-bombed the ships in the harbor. They’d have to be low to cover those B-25s, which would make the P-38s vulnerable to getting bounced from above by any patrolling Japanese fighters. This made surprise an essential part of the plan.
Weather delayed the mission for several hours that morning. The Knights assigned to fly sat around the alert shack, waiting for the “go” order and reading copies of Reader’s Digest magazine that Gerald’s family had sent to the squadron. Blev Lewelling, a new pilot with the squadron, sat beside Gerald, talking with him of home. Blev grew up in Oregon, in a little mill town called Albany, about fifty miles north of Eugene. His dad was a judge, and as the two pilots talked, they grew convinced that their fathers must know each other, at least professionally.
For this mission, Gerald pulled together his most experienced leaders along with his freshest remaining pilots. Bill Haney, who usually took the squadron on alternate days when Gerald didn’t lead it, would take a flight on November 2. Johnson would take Captive Red. Wally Jordan had Captive Green. Significantly, Gerald left Bong off the roster that day. Why, when all his other best pilots were slated to fly, did he leave the USAAF’s top ace off the mission? In fact, Bong hadn’t flown since the twenty-ninth, a clear indication that Johnson was starting to see him as a liability—to himself and those around him. He was combat weary, still hurting over the loss of Fagan. Wurtsmith needed to send him home for a long rest. Every man can only take so much combat, stress, and repeated adrenaline rushes, and Bong didn’t need any more of those. He needed a ticket back to Wisconsin.
At ten, the phone rang. Gerald snatched it up, listened, and told his men to get to their ships. The mission was on.
They sped to Kiriwina, landed, and refueled, only twelve strong. Despite all the work and sweat the weary ground crews put in, a half-strength squadron was the best they could do with the aircraft left to the Knights.
Back in the air, Wally Jordan’s P-38 soon suffered mechanical failure. Cursing with frustration, he reversed course and headed back to Kiriwina as the rest of the squadron linked up with the 3rd Attack Group. The B-25s stayed right on the water while Gerald kept his squadron above them at a thousand feet. If the timing worked right, the 80th Fighter Squadron would go in first on a sweep, clearing a path for the two B-25 groups slated to hit the fields and lay the smoke. Thirty seconds later, the 3rd Attack Group would go into the harbor.
The entire raid swung around the east coast of New Britain, following the shore northward and past Rabaul. They turned left, then came down at the Japanese base between two volcanoes.
The timing was perfect, but at the last possible minute, the Japanese saw them coming. They scrambled every available fighter, and the Headhunters plowed right into them as they lifted off from their airfields. In seconds, the 80th faced over a hundred Japanese fighters. A wild, desperate fight broke out even as the other two B-25 groups rushed over the jungle, between the two volcanoes and down into Rabaul proper, covered by the Cobras and the 475th Fighter Group.
Last in came the Grim Reapers, the 3rd Attack Group. Jock Henebry, one of the great veteran skip-bombing pilots of the war, led the bomber force. Dick Ellis, with daredevil reporter Lee Van Atta in his B-25, led one of the 3rd’s squadrons that day. They raced right into the teeth of the storm. Zeroes filled the sky ahead of them. Antiaircraft fire stitched after the strafing B-25s, whose crews flayed the airfields with hundreds of thousands of .50-caliber bullets.
The smoke screen rose along the shore behind another formation of B-25s from the 38th Bomb Group. The 3rd Attack Group’s B-25s reached the harbor and went after the shipping. Cruisers, destroyers, cargo vessels, luggers, and troop transports lay at anchor, all with guns pointed at the onrushing twin-engine bombers.
The B-25s opened fire, raking the ships from bow to stern in hopes of suppressing the incoming flak. Bomb bays open, targets swelling before them, the Mitchell crews pickled their bombs. Jock Henebry pulled up over a merchant ship to discover the Japanese heavy cruiser Haguro, right in his path, its profile dotted with muzzle flashes. Flak pounded his B-25 as he fought to get the nose down and suppress the guns on that warship. He ran out of time and space, passing right over the ship, so close he could see the bridge crew gazing up at him as he thundered past.
The 3rd was getting hit hard by the ship-based flak. Overhead, Johnson’s Knights rushed into the scene at three thousand feet.
“Bandits! Six o’clock high!” somebody called out. Gerald twisted in his seat just in time to see about a half dozen Zeroes above and behind, dropping their belly tanks in preparation to attack.
Feverishly, the Knights worked to prep their P-38s for battle. They shed their tanks, milked their engines for full power, then chandelled right into the diving Zeroes. The squadron raced at the threat in the worst possible tactical position. The Japanese, strung out in pairs a few thousand feet apart, saw their targets turn into them but did not break off their attack. Head-to-head, the two forces collided in a fury of tracers and booming cannons.
Blev Lewelling stayed tacked onto his flight leader, Carl Planck, as they made the turn into the Zeroes. Bob Wood, flying with them, lost them in a low-hanging cloud. The Zeroes loomed. Guns blazed. Carl held his course and refused to break first. Blev watched in horror as he flew straight into a Zero, the two planes exploding with all the violence of a 500-mile-an-hour collision.
As the formations merged, Gerald opened up on a Zero in a forty-five-degree head-on pass. Pieces blew off his target. The pilot rolled his crippled bird down and out of the fight. Haney and Glade Hill both saw it go into the side of one of the volcanoes.
The fight devolved into a low-altitude slugfest. More Zeroes and Japanese Army fighters dove into the battle, forcing the Knights into the defensive. Blev Lewelling found Bob Wood just in time. Zeroes were everywhere, slashing past, then flitting up and away with their remarkable agility. The two young pilots weaved and covered each other’s tails, ducking through clouds and taking snap shots at speeding Japanese fighters.
Gerald and his wingman, the dauntless Stanley Johnson, kept each other alive the same way. Teamwork overcame tactical disadvantage, but they were overwhelmed too. Zeroes dashed in and among them, guns blazing, while the two Americans tried to turn into these attacks. They couldn’t outrun the Zeroes, couldn’t dogfight them, and they couldn’t dive clear and reengage. All they could do was get their guns in the enemy’s face.
Meanwhile, the Grim Reapers streaked across the harbor, heading south for home after expending all their bombs on the Japanese shipping. Zeroes broke through the fighter cover, and with the 9th totally defensive now, Henebry’s B-25s were subjected to repeated fighter attacks. A running battle ensued, with the Knights trying to break clear of their fight to go help the Reapers.
The two Johnsons were trapped by Zeroes on the northwest side of the harbor. Gerald took a snap shot at one, setting it afire, and Stanley saw it crash. A moment later, as he ducked and weaved right on the deck northeast of Vunakanau Airdrome, Stanley tacked onto a Zero’s tail and chased it until his guns set it afire. Gerald covered him and watched the Mitsubishi plunge right into a coconut plantation and explode. He whipped past the coil of smoke rising from the wreck and bull-rushed another group of Zeroes entering the fight. By now, Gerald had only two guns firing. He snapped out bursts, watching pieces fall off a few of the Zeroes, but no lethal damage was done. In each case, though, the Zeroes broke off their attacks, giving Stanley and him another minute of life.
The Johnsons broke clear at one point, speeding after the rest of the American planes, only to see a crippled P-38 with one engine out about to get attacked by another Zero. The two Johnsons raced to the rescue, driving the Japanese fighter away. Together, they headed for Kiriwina.
The staging base was chaos. Desperate pilots with wounded men aboard their bombers ignored the pattern and set down any way they could. A P-38 exploded short of the runway. Jock Henebry, his B-25 crippled by Japanese, crash-landed in the surf short of the runway, his crew rescued by a PT boat. Another P-38 careened into a jeep parked on the flight line. By the time Gerald and Stanley returned, the field was covered with crippled B-25s and P-38s, bleeding oil and hydraulic fluid into the ground. Crash crews pulled wounded gunners out of the B-25s while the P-38 pilots gathered to see who was still alive.
On the flight line, Dick Ellis ran into Gerald. The two men embraced. They’d become good friends over the past few months. On previous escort missions, Gerald would sometimes drop down beside Dick’s squadron, flipping inverted, and flying along with them upside down. Such antics were Gerald’s hallmark—he never outgrew that wild adrenaline rush he’d get from such flying. But he also did it to give the bomber crews a moment of levity in an otherwise tense moment. He also reassured them that their escort leader was a tiger of an ace.
Lee Van Atta appeared beside Dick. He’d spent the entire run home typing up his bird’s-eye view of the mission in the navigator compartment of Ellis’s B-25, Seabiscuit. Now the three men took a moment for photographs, the reporter snapping away at Gerald and Dick beside a P-38. Gerald held up two fingers for the pair of Zeroes he shot down. He smiled broadly, showing the trademark grin that Barbara found so irresistible. Then, the PR moment over, he went off to see after his squadron.
He found the Knights bone-weary and depressed at the loss of two more of their brothers. As they talked through the raid, the chaos around them gradually diminished while the last planes staggered home. The wounded received treatment; the ground echelon went to work trying to patch together the damaged planes. It had been a hell of a day. Seventy B-25s and seventy-eight Lightnings battled more than a hundred Japanese fighters in twelve minutes over Rabaul. Nearly fifty American aircrewmen were killed, wounded, or missing. The 80th lost two P-38s; the 9th lost two as well. The 475th lost five over Rabaul and another at Kiriwina. The 5th claimed sixty-seven Japanese fighters shot down by the B-25 gunners and P-38 pilots, two destroyers sunk, and over a dozen other ships damaged. The truth was, the raid was largely a bust. Only a couple of merchant vessels were sunk, and the claims against the Japanese interceptors were unrealistically high.
Part of the squadron flew home that afternoon. The rest remained behind until the ground crews finished working on their P-38s. Bob Wood was one of those who stayed behind, sleeping in a transient tent with P-38 pilots from other squadrons. The next morning, he struck up a conversation with one of those pilots. The two sat on their cots, chatting away about the previous day’s mission. Suddenly, the other pilot’s arms flailed up and he pitched backward off the far side of his cot. Bob stood up and rushed to him, finding the man convulsing on the tent floor. His body twitched and writhed, his arms jerking uncontrollably.
Bob rushed out of the tent, looking for medical help. He quickly returned with medics in tow. The man’s seizure had passed. He was sitting tranquil on his cot again. A doctor arrived, and while he seemed to be completely healthy, the attack wiped the P-38 pilot’s memory completely. He had no idea who he was, where he was, or what he was doing. Confused and frightened, he was led away by the medical staff.
Everyone had a breaking point. Rabaul pushed the Lightning pilots to the brink and beyond. As Bob watched the pilot go, he wondered how close to the edge he was.
A lot of pilots spent the night after November 2 thinking the same thing. The raid went down in 5th Air Force lore as “Bloody Tuesday.” It was a catastrophe for the Lightning squadrons, whose birds were now on their last legs. The Knights managed to scrounge together a mix of aging P-38Fs, some Gs that reached the theater almost eight months before, and a few newer H models. That was it. And there were no replacements for the Lightnings lost. Rabaul was slowly bleeding the squadron to death. Even the better-equipped 475th was suffering the same shortage. The 80th and 39th were down to about half strength as well.
Kenney, seeing the beating his men were taking, tried to turn Bloody Tuesday into a major victory. With Lee Van Atta’s firsthand account leading the way, the press blitz went into full gear, filling Stateside papers with action-packed accounts of the destruction wrought on the Japanese that day. Kenney’s inflated shipping claims earned him considerable resentment from the Navy, whose squadrons battled Rabaul from bases in the Solomons. Between the services, it earned Kenney a bad reputation for showboating, and the Navy’s bias against the maverick general never waned.
Was the press blitz designed to pump Kenney up back home and earn him more headlines? Or was it a concerned general’s attempt to bolster morale among his men by getting them recognition back home at a time when their last full measure was not enough to overcome the Japanese at Rabaul? Only General Kenney knew the answer to that question, though plenty of postwar historians have speculated on his motives and sided with the Navy’s view.
Whatever the case, morale among the fighter pilots was fast reaching a crisis point unseen since Kenney first arrived in theater. Building that dispirited force up into the powerful, Japanese-thrashing command had been an incredible achievement over the past year. Now, the repeated raids against such a well-defended target using tactics that put the P-38 pilots at a significant disadvantage threatened to undo all that progress.
Meanwhile, the attacks against Rabaul continued. On November 5, General Wurtsmith ordered his P-38 pilots to take the bombers back to Rabaul. This time, a Navy aircraft carrier raid was laid on for the morning against the shipping in the harbor. The 5th was to strike the airfields with twenty-seven B-24 Liberators escorted by all available P-38s shortly after the Navy cleared the area. The six Lightning squadrons put sixty-seven birds in the air, with many aborts. In the 475th, one squadron had four of eleven P-38s turn for home with mechanical trouble. Kenney had moved the group temporarily to Kiriwina, and the pace of operations was clearly overtaxing the ground echelon there.
The Knights managed to get a dozen P-38s aloft. Johnson returned the unit to the staggered schedule, resting his pilots when he could. By now, losses had so drained the unit, he had no choice but to send Bong on this mission. He flew with George Hanniotis on his wing. One aircraft aborted en route, leaving eleven to stay with the B-24s.
Stacked in three flights from twelve to twenty thousand feet, the Knights were spread thin over the B-24s when the Japanese intercepted them over Rabaul. All the P-38 squadrons ended up in the fight that followed. The 9th went after about fifteen Zeroes spotted below them. Bong dropped behind one Zero, whose pilot never saw him coming. Closing to a hundred yards, Dick held his fire until absolutely sure of the setup. Dead astern, point-blank range. The Zero filled his sight. He triggered his guns. The Zero blew up as the Lightning’s concentrated cone of fire tore into it.
Bong dodged the debris, chased after the Zero’s wingman, and opened fire again. This time, he held the trigger down, hosing his target until it began to smoke. The pilot rolled the plane upside down and dove away into a split S. He didn’t get far. As he dove away, a fuel tank exploded, blowing the plane to pieces.
Two kills, in a matter of minutes. Bong checked the sky around him. Hanniotis was nowhere to be seen, but there were still Zeroes engaging P-38s all around him. He went after another Zero. As he did, Hanniotis showed back up and tacked onto his wing. Bong shot at the Zero, but failed to inflict fatal damage. A moment later, George was gone again.
The fight continued, but Bong soon ran out of ammunition and turned for home.
A voice cut through the radio chatter. “Dick, where are you? Are you still in the area? I’m in trouble.” It sounded like Hanniotis. Bong keyed his microphone and replied.
George called for help again as if he hadn’t heard Bong’s response. He tried again. No luck. George was nowhere in sight. A few more calls for help, and the radio went silent.
The squadron linked back up outside of Rabaul and headed for Kiriwina. As they did, Hanniotis’s voice came over the radio one last time, giving his position somewhere off the southern shore of New Britain near Arawe.
Back at Kiriwina, Blev Lewelling reported seeing George’s P-38 diving out of the fight, one engine trailing smoke. Search-and-rescue planes were dispatched to search for him, and over the next four days the Knights flew search missions of their own. They found him several times, adrift off the south coast of New Britain. Each time, they reported his position, but some snafu fouled up the rescue attempt. Finally, four days after Hanniotis went down, Johnson pulled seven members of the squadron together, including Blev, and told them they were going to go find their downed man and stay over him until a flying boat came and picked him up.
They found him again, deeper out to sea this time. Eight P-38s circled overhead while Johnson tried to get a PBY flying boat to their position. No luck. Finally, a PT boat responded that they were on the way. The Knights, low on fuel, waited overhead as long as they dared. Finally, they were almost to the point of no return and Johnson was forced to order the squadron home. He and Blev stayed over George’s raft, nursing every bit of endurance out of their Allisons until the PT boat at last appeared on the horizon. Johnson talked them onto George’s raft. The crew reported seeing it. Gerald and Blev broke for home and barely got back to Kiriwina.
George Hanniotis was never recovered. Shortly after Gerald and Blev cleared the area, the PT boat lost sight of his raft in the swells. They searched the area and couldn’t find him.
The raft washed ashore near Cape Ward Hunt, New Guinea, three weeks later. Deflated, it bore no signs of its occupant. George Hanniotis had simply disappeared.
Since Gerald joined the 9th Fighter Squadron in the spring of 1943, Dick Bong had lost three wingmen. Lieutenant Sibly disappeared out of his flight on July 10—nobody saw what happened to him. Fagan went missing in September. Now, Hanniotis. There was considerable talk in the squadron about the pattern, and the men were aligning around several opinions. One group believed that the issue wasn’t Bong but circumstance—war happens, guys die. Others thought Bong’s flying was so much better than the new guys’ on his wing that they couldn’t stay with him. The skill sets were too far apart, so in the wild heat of combat, Bong’s maneuvers threw them off, and they were killed by the Japanese.
But the harshest critics spoke bitterly about the trend. Most of the men did not see how Fagan’s death affected Dick. They just saw his stoic exterior. And some concluded he was coldhearted and didn’t care about others, only his score. The selfishness was highlighted by the whispers that he kept asking Gerald and Wally to let him fly alone.
Bong’s critics were right to the extent that he didn’t want responsibility. He didn’t want to be in charge of other people’s safety. He wanted to fight, but he didn’t want to lead. Fagan’s death took that out of him.
As the squadron kept trying to rescue Hanniotis, another Rabaul mission was laid on for the seventh. Gerald couldn’t fly the mission that day. Bong asked if Stanley Johnson could fly his wing. Gerald was very nervous entrusting Stanley to Dick in his current condition. He reluctantly agreed, but told Dick he’d better bring Stanley home in good shape. Dick promised he would.
The Knights went out only eight strong that day, Jump O’Neil leading the squadron. Over the target area, they ran into a patrol of Zeroes and dove to the attack. Dick’s edge was gone. He went after several targets, missed them, then saw Del Moore’s P-38 being chased by nine Zeroes. Dick charged in to save him, Stanley tight on his wing. The two pilots broke up the attack and saved Moore. But Dick lost Stanley in the attack. Last seen, Stanley was diving out of the fight with four of the Zeroes on his tail.
Dick returned to Dobodura and faced Gerald. He told him the news. Gerald was devastated. They both were.
The Montana banker’s fate would never be confirmed; his remains and aircraft were never found.
The death of one of the most liked and loyal members of the squadron was a grim capstone to Dick’s first tour of duty. He’d been hurting over the other men he’d lost on his wing all fall. This ripped those wounds wide open.1
Dick never wanted to fly with a wingman again. He couldn’t take feeling responsible for another death. Every man had his breaking point. Stanley’s disappearance pushed Bong beyond his. Gerald saw that and knew he had to get him out of combat.
Gerald’s relationship with Bong would also never be the same. Part of it was probably guilt. Gerald knew Bong shouldn’t have been flying and he’d let him go to Rabaul anyway. Part of it was the pain he endured over Stanley’s death.
Bong, never one to show much emotion, hid the depths of his despair from most. Gerald knew him perhaps better than anyone and saw beyond that hardened farm-boy facade. Others didn’t, and whispering around the squadron characterized Dick as coldhearted and uncaring. Nothing was further from the truth. He’d been crippled by these losses.
Enough was enough; the Wisconsinite needed an extended rest. Two days later, Dick flew to Moresby and back, probably to meet with Kenney. Kenney wrote after the war that he ordered Bong home. This undoubtedly came as the result of a strong recommendation from Gerald. However it happened, Bong packed his gear and headed for Australia. The top Army Air Force ace was finally going back to Wisconsin, twenty-one planes to his credit.
Neel Kearby learned of Bong’s departure and knew the ace race was now his to lose. Unknown to Neel, though, Kenney had other plans for him.