2 Into Combat

To war and arms I fly.

Richard Lovelace, 1649

Fighting Squadron Nine was, in the words of one pilot, “a happy crew.”¹ It had already been together through one short combat tour by the end of 1942, flying F4F-4s from the Ranger (CV-4) in support of the North African invasion in November. During that brief fling the VF-9 Wildcats had been credited with six Vichy French aircraft shot down in French Morocco. Now, a few days after New Year’s Eve 1943, Commander Jack Raby and his pilots were preparing to take delivery of the first F6F-3s assigned to an operational squadron.

It had not been planned that way. Upon its return, Fighting Nine was to convert to F4U-1s, but in January 1943 Vought production was insufficient to allow all squadrons slated for the Corsair to receive it. As a result, Raby’s squadron was in line for Hellcats and would take delivery of the first few airplanes in mid month.

Raby and two of his experienced pilots, Lieutenants (jg) Herbert N. Houck and Armistead B. “Chick” Smith, brought back the first Hellcats from the factory at Bethpage to Chambers Field near Norfolk on 16 January 1943. Deliveries continued three and four planes at a time for the next few weeks, weather allowing. As Grumman completed technical inspection and acceptance flight tests, Raby’s pilots were sent up to Long Island to sign for the Hellcats and bring them to Chambers Field. One such expedition on 5 February again involved Chick Smith along with Lieutenant Keenan “Casey” Childers, Lieutenants (jg) Mayo “Mike” Hadden and Reuben H. Denoff.

Even under the press of wartime needs, the Hellcat program was not yet nearly as efficient as it would become. This early in the production program there were still no pilot handbooks available, so Grumman test pilots gave the four Navy fliers cockpit checks, helped them start the big Pratt and Whitneys, and sent them on their way. All four took off without difficulty.

About halfway home, Casey Childers was leading the flight when he suffered an engine failure. He was 30 miles north of Cape May, New Jersey, over a heavily wooded area sown with young pine trees. There was no choice but to make a wheels-up deadstick landing. He set up his glide path and plunked the heavy fighter down among the trees, sliding for what seemed an interminable distance. Looking down from their cockpits, Smith, Hadden, and Denoff watched Childers’s Hellcat cut a swath through the pines, destroying itself as it went. When the F6F slid to a halt and the dust and debris settled, Childers was seen to climb out and wave to his friends. Thanks to the rugged Grumman airframe, he was unharmed.

Despite Childers’s misadventure, Fighting Nine took to the big new fighter with enthusiasm. Unlike its little brother, the F4F, the F6 had a large roomy cockpit, was some 60 mph faster than the F4F-4, and had a one-third better climb rate. Pilots like Denoff, Smith, and Hadden who had flown against the Vichy French over Morocco also appreciated the Hellcat’s greater ammunition capacity.

The squadron performed its F6F carrier qualification landings on the escort carrier Long Island (CVE-1). The pilots found that the Hellcat’s large wing area gave it surprising stability on landing approaches for so heavy an aircraft, and that it came aboard about five mph less than the Wildcat. Some pilots had only 12 field landings in F6Fs before their first carrier landings in the type. When Air Group Nine departed the West Coast that summer, bound for Hawaii, most of the fighter pilots had over 50 hours in their new Grummans. Another 30 hours were flown before the squadron entered combat in August. Rube Denoff, for instance, had a total flight time of 680 hours before his first Pacific mission, including 85 in F6Fs. By later wartime standards this was unusually low; many fighter pilots would log 300 hours in Hellcats prior to their first missions. But in the summer and fall of 1943, when the offensive against Japan was building rapidly, planes and pilots were needed “the day before yesterday.”

In mid-August, while still in Hawaii, Jack Raby became Commander Air Group Nine and VF-9 acquired a new skipper. He was Lieutenant Commander Philip H. Torrey, son of a Marine Corps general but Regular Navy. Fighting Nine was frankly disappointed to get a new and—to them, anyway—untried CO, especially after serving so long under Raby. But Torrey quickly proved himself a capable leader, an accomplished aviator, and he shared his pilots’ enthusiasm for the Hellcat. “You wouldn’t catch me flying around in anything else,” he told a correspondent.²

Meanwhile, several other F6F squadrons were in Hawaii preparing for the start of the Central Pacific offensive. One was VF-6 under Lieutenant Commander Edward H. O’Hare, already famous for an exploit off Rabaul in February 1942. Flying an F4F-3 from the old Lexington (CV-2), O’Hare was credited with downing five Japanese bombers in one sortie, probably saving the ship from heavy damage or destruction. For this feat he became the second naval aviator to win the Medal of Honor in World War II. At 29 the dark, stocky O’Hare was highly esteemed by his men as both a leader and fighter pilot.

O’Hare preached the Bible According to Thach. He had flown in Commander John S. Thach’s VF-3 early in the war, and his combat experience had intensified the principles learned there. Teamwork and marksmanship were the virtues O’Hare stressed, and the factors he looked for when selecting a wingman. He settled upon Lieutenant (jg) Alexander Vraciu, the 24-year-old son of Romanian immigrants who had grown up in the Chicago area. The two became close friends, but that didn’t mean O’Hare was inclined to overlook anything. Quite the contrary.

“There were some Army P-40s near us in Hawaii,” Vraciu would recall, “and several of us wanted to fly them.” O’Hare was vocal in his disapproval. “Why do you want to fly a P-40?” he asked. “Just so you can say you’ve flown one and look like a hot pilot?” He told his fliers in no uncertain terms that it was much more important to gain as many hours as possible in F6Fs, the planes they would fly in combat. In retrospect Vraciu said, “Butch was right, of course. But we flew the P-40s anyway.”³

Marcus Island lies about 2,700 miles west of Pearl Harbor. Since the early days of the war, it had been one of the larger Japanese bases in the Central Pacific, and as such it was selected as the first target in a series of training raids by the new generation of aircraft carriers. Rear Admiral Charles A. Pownall took two CVs and a CVL—the Essex (CV-9), Yorktown (CV-10) and Independence CVL-22—to Marcus at the end of August and thereby initiated the F6F into combat.

In order to achieve tactical surprise, a predawn launch was called for. First in the air were 45 aircraft of the Yorktown’s Air Group Five, including 16 Hellcats of VF-5 under Commander Charles L. Crommelin, a ten-year veteran naval aviator who had already flown in two fighter squadrons and an observation unit. It was 0422 when the first F6Fs rolled down the Yorktown’s deck, guiding only on the shrouded stern lights of leading destroyers. Appropriately, the brightest light shining in the inky tropical sky was Mars, visible in the direction of the target.

The Essex strike included VF-9 Hellcats led by the skipper, Phil Torrey, who insisted he was afraid of the dark and would rather go home. It was fortunate that stars were visible for some sort of reference, as none of Torrey’s Hellcats had operable gyro horizons. The rush of training and transport had been such—and would remain so—that Fighting Nine flew all through its North African and first Pacific tour with the gyros in “caged” position.

In a minor way, the launch sequence was to have repercussions in F6F history. Since the Yorktown launched first, VF-5 could claim the honor of being the first to fly the Hellcat in combat. On the other hand, two VF-9 aircraft strafed Japanese picket boats on the way in—the first shots fired by the new fighter.

The last F6F to leave the Yorktown was piloted by the CAG, Commander James H. Flatley. One of the oldest hands around the Pacific, Flatley had earned a formidable reputation in F4Fs dating from Coral Sea and then as CO of Fighting 10 during the Solomons actions, where he brought his personal victory score to six and one-half kills. Now he had a larger responsibility, directing the air strikes on Marcus from his Hellcat with two under-wing tanks added to prolong its endurance.

The strike planes were led to Marcus by navigation TBFs, which broke off when the attack began. Surprise was achieved in the early dawn light; very little return fire was experienced during the first strafing runs as the Hellcats slanted down on Marcus’s airfield. Eight twin-engine planes were destroyed on the ground, after which the bombers went to work on runways and facilities while F6Fs engaged in flak suppression.

No Japanese planes got into the air, and Butch O’Hare’s VF-6 detachment, flying CAP from the Independence, had little to do. Orbiting high above it all, taking stock, was Jimmy Flatley who by 0700 estimated the island’s facilities were one-third destroyed or damaged. By the middle of the afternoon even the AA guns had ceased firing, though not without first taking a toll. Fighting Five lost two Hellcats to antiaircraft fire and the Yorktown also lost an Avenger. These were the only combat casualties, though Lieutenant Mike Hadden of VF-9 had to put his F6 in the water with engine trouble. Fortunately he splashed down near a U.S. destroyer.

Hadden bobbed in the swell, supported by his Mae West, anxiously awaiting rescue as he repeatedly thought of the last words spoken during briefing: “The waters around Marcus are infested with sharks.”⁴ Abruptly his thoughts were interrupted by a splash next to him, and he glimpsed a round dark form in the water. Hadden grabbed his knife from its sheath and desperately swam away, only to find two more threatening shapes around him. He seemed in the midst of a school of sharks. At that moment the destroyer let down a cargo net and the fighter pilot scrambled up, immensely thankful to escape a horrible death.

Once on deck, Hadden heard a sailor remark, “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen anyone swim away from a life preserver.”⁵

Far to the southeast the next day, 1 September, more Hellcat history was made. Light carriers Princeton (CVL-23) and Belleau Wood (CVL-24) provided a continuous CAP over Howland and Baker Islands where a landing force was going ashore. The Princeton embarked VF-23 and a detachment of VF-6 while the Belleau Wood operated Fighting 22 and 24, all equipped with F6Fs.

A VF-6 division under Lieutenant (jg) Richard L. Loesch had launched at noon and was assigned a CAP station over the landing force at Baker. Loesch had first entered combat a year before when Fighting Six was engaged in the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, and had scored his first victory in that engagement. Now his division received a vector from the fighter director, ordering the four Hellcats at 10,000 feet onto a bogey heading east towards the task group at 7,000 feet.

The intruder was a Kawanishi H8K flying boat, called “Emily” by the Americans, and apparently it never saw the four fighters coming. Loesch and his wingman, Ensign A. W. Nyquist, made a high nose-to-nose gunnery run, opening fire at 500 yards and pressing the attack down to 100 yards. They both fired about 300 rounds, getting a good concentration of hits on the cockpit and inboard engines. The Emily fell away in an easy right-hand dive, completing a 180° turn as it exploded on the water.

The Hellcat had made its first kill, and Dick Loesch became the first pilot to score in both Grumman “cats.”

Two days later it was VF-22’s turn as an Emily fell to the Belleau Wood’s fighters. Then on 8 September the Princeton FDO vectored two VF-6 Hellcats onto a third Emily. The tail gunner opened fire but scored no hits as the Grummans sent the big flying boat down from 8,000 feet. None of these snoopers had been able to get off a radio report to their base in the Gilberts, so quickly had they been dispatched.

The new fleet carrier Lexington (CV-16), with Air Group 16 aboard, led the Princeton and the Belleau Wood into a two-day strike on Tarawa Atoll in the Gilberts during mid-September, but no aerial opposition developed. The Hellcats would have to wait till six fast carriers merged to form Task Force 14 for their first crack at real aerial combat. That opportunity developed during the strike at Wake Island on 5 and 6 October.

It was the first time in the war the U.S. Navy had been able to put a half-dozen carriers on the line, though they operated in two-ship groups. The Independence and the Belleau Wood were assigned “shortstop” position northeast of Wake to intercept Japanese reinforcements flying up from the Marshalls. The Essex and Yorktown, along with the Lexington and Cowpens (CVL-25), were responsible for reducing Japanese strength on Wake Island as much as possible during the two days allotted for the operation.

Commander Charlie Crommelin, newly promoted to CAG-5, added a bit of personal incentive to the Wake raid. The night before launch he gathered Fighting Five in its ready room and made an announcement: he had a bottle of Old Crow which he would personally present to the first pilot to shoot down a Japanese airplane. The pilots needed no such stimulus, but it did add a bit of spice to the whole affair. Fighting Five had been Crommelin’s squadron, and the pilots knew and respected him. He hailed from a well-known Alabama family which made a significant contribution to the war effort. He had four brothers in the Navy, all Annapolis graduates, including three like himself who were aviators. They were all known as pilots’ pilots.

Each of the four strike carriers launched three fighter divisions, beginning 30 minutes before sunrise on 5 October. As if darkness weren’t enough to contend with, a strong squall blew up. Several planes got lost in the predawn gloom and missed rendezvous with their squadrons. One VF-5 pilot spun in, probably from vertigo. It was hardly an encouraging way to start the day, catapulting off a pitching deck into a black void.

Things got more unpleasant even before the sun was fully up. Wake’s radar detected the 47 Hellcats about 50 miles out and the Japanese got 27 Zero fighters into the air, plus five Betty bombers. What resulted was the first in thousands of individual confrontations between Hellcats and Zekes.

Lieutenant M. C. Hoffman and Ensign Robert W. Duncan of VF-5 were the first to engage the Zekes. Duncan spotted several bandits initiating an attack and turned into them, drawing a bead on the nearest. He put a full deflection burst into the Zeke’s cockpit and saw it flame brightly in the dark sky. Duncan then engaged the next Zero, forcing it off a Hellcat’s tail, but he took hits in his own fuselage just aft of the cockpit. The Zeke pulled out of its gunnery pass and hauled up into a loop with Duncan close behind. As both fighters hung seemingly motionless for a second as they went over the top, Duncan fired and scored. Like the first one, this Zeke also burned and spun into the water.

During the same short dogfight, two other Yorktown pilots claimed a third Zeke and a Betty. Fighting Five then devoted its attention to strafing parked aircraft, destroying at least four Bettys. Hoffman and Duncan were regaining altitude when yet another Zeke appeared overhead. They both fired but Duncan spent the last of his ammunition and Hoffman completed the kill. A highly experienced flier, “Boogie” Hoffman had come up as an enlisted pilot and had test-flown the A6M2 Zero which had been made airworthy at NAS North Island after force-landing in the Aleutians in June 1942. Consequently, he was knowledgable about the Zeke, and proved it by chasing another and shooting it down.

It wasn’t all one-sided. Heavy and accurate flak came up from Wake, knocking down two VF-5 Hellcats, but one pilot was rescued by a U.S. submarine.

Back aboard the Yorktown, Commander Crommelin kept his word by presenting the fifth of Old Crow to young Bob Duncan. With two kills in his first fighter combat, Duncan was bound to admit the CAG’s offer worked powerful medicine.

Meanwhile, the Essex Hellcats also found action. Fighting Nine skipper Phil Torrey tangled with three Zekes over Wake, shooting down the first in a one-on-one fight and evading the second two by dodging in and out of clouds. Upstairs at 16,000, Lieutenants Mayo Hadden and J. S. Kitchen turned into a pair of Zeros which jumped the formation, then were pounced upon by two more. All four bandits muffed their gunnery passes, failing to score any hits. The last Zeke was overhauled by the two Hellcats, who shared him for breakfast. But while tall, youthful Mike Hadden watched his victim fall into the ocean, he was bounced by an unseen Zeke which shot him up pretty badly. Like Torrey, he ducked into some convenient clouds and got back to the Essex with his engine oil almost completely siphoned out through several 20-mm holes.

Lieutenant (jg) Robert W. Duncan of VF-5, the first Hellcat pilot to shoot down a Zero. He was credited with two of the Mitsubishi fighters during the first Wake Island raid of October 1943. Photo: R. W. Duncan

Lieutenant (jg) Hamilton McWhorter III had his Zeke virtually served up on the proverbial platter. He estimated there were nearly 20 bandits all around him when one unexpectedly appeared in his gun-sight. The Georgia pilot triggered one burst and the Zeke exploded. They didn’t all come that easily, however, as “One Slug” McWhorter would later testify.

The Cowpens’s VF-25 found out that very day. Two Hellcats failed to return from the dawn mission, presumed lost to AA fire. A third was so badly shot up that its pilot made an emergency landing aboard the Lexington.

The two detached CVLs also saw combat. Butch O’Hare was leading his VF-6 division south of Wake when he spotted three Zekes and gave chase. The outnumbered enemy dove for the safety of their airfield but O’Hare downed one before they got there, his first since his only previous combat a year and a half before. O’Hare’s section leader was Alex Vraciu who, despite an inoperative radio, sensed what the skipper was up to and closed on the second Zeke. He was almost mesmerized by the enemy fighter, so close did he attack, before he shot it down. The third Zeke hastened to a landing, lurched to a stop, and the pilot jumped out just in time. The Independence pilots were right behind, burning the Zeke and two bombers despite the thick AA. On the way home Ensign Hank Landry got a Zeke while flying O’Hare’s wing, and then O’Hare picked up an airborne Betty below the cloud layer. With Landry covering him, O’Hare pressed a close attack which left the bomber in the sea. It was his seventh confirmed victory, and it would be his last.

Aerial opposition was considerably reduced by 6 October, and when the carriers retired they left 22 of Wake’s 34 aircraft destroyed. The Zekes had shot down six Task Force 14 planes, but enemy AA gunners proved just as dangerous—raising total carrier aircraft combat losses to 12.

The Wake Island raid inflicted considerable damage upon an important Japanese base, but for the Hellcat pilots it had more significance. For the first time the F6F had met the Zeke, and had more than held its own. It wouldn’t have been safe to draw too many conclusions from this first, brief encounter, but the dogfights did indicate that the tactical doctrine was correct: maintain a high airspeed, fight in the vertical when possible to negate the Zeke’s low-speed turning advantage, and stick together. Teamwork got results.

While the first F6F carrier squadrons were acquiring their sea legs, a few other Hellcat units were flying from advanced airfields in the Solomons. The first of these was VF-33 under Lieutenant Commander Hawley Russell, with 24 Hellcats and 36 pilots based first at Guadalcanal and then at Munda. The squadron entered combat on 28 August and in the next three weeks flew ten bomber escorts against such notorious Japanese air bases as Kahili, Ballale, and Morgusai. In the course of this first tour, Russell’s pilots claimed 21 victories, all Zekes, against four F6Fs and two pilots lost.

Fighting 33 returned to the Solomons in October and was joined by two additional Hellcat units, VF-38 and VF-40, the latter having become operational there in September. They were just in time, as November would be an exceptionally active month, the F6F’s busiest to date.

Much of the work load fell upon the venerable 33,000-ton Saratoga (CV-3) and her new teammate, the light carrier Princeton. “Sara” operated Air Group 12, which had been in training in the Southwest Pacific since June. The fighter squadron was led by colorful Commander Joseph C. Clifton, the energetic Paducah, Kentucky, aviator who had been universally known as “Jumpin’ Joe” since his Annapolis days.

Fighting 12 had collected its Hellcats at Nandi in the Fiji Islands, but almost had them “borrowed” before it could start flying them. In July, VF-11 staged south from a successful tour at Guadalcanal as the last squadron to employ the F4F in prolonged combat. Some of the senior VF-11 pilots, including the operations officer, Lieutenant William N. Leonard, took advantage of the opportunity to fly some of the F6F-3s being held for Clifton. Immensely pleased with the Hellcat’s potential, Leonard and a few other enthusiastic Fighting 11 troops requested to return to Guadalcanal and initiate the new Grumman into combat. Clifton got wind of the scheme and quickly made his views known—he wasn’t about to have his airplanes taken away, even “on loan.”

Clifton’s concern was in one way well founded, because in late 1942 VF-12 had received the Navy’s first F4Us, but the Corsair had flunked its carrier qualifications and Clifton’s embryo unit was rescheduled for Hellcats. In the end, Jumpin’ Joe got his way because, as Bill Leonard recounted, “He yelled louder than we did.”⁶

The Saratoga and Princeton began November by supporting the landings at Torokina on Bougainville, but were quickly directed to strike well-defended Rabaul Harbor at New Britain after intelligence learned of a heavy Japanese shipping concentration. There was no time for planning, as the orders were received on 4 November and called for an attack on the fifth. Only one launch was planned—a hit-and-run raid to get in fast, do the job, and get out of shore-based air range as quickly as possible.

Shortly before 0900 on 5 November, big old Saratoga and new little Princeton began launching all their 97 operational planes into rainy overcast skies some 230 miles southeast of Rabaul. Between them, VF-12 and VF-23 put up 52 Hellcats to cover the 45 SBDs and TBFs, leaving only a few fighters with the ships. The strike coordinator was Commander Henry H. Caldwell in his CAG-12 Avenger, but both Clifton, with 33 Saratoga Hellcats and Commander Henry L. Miller leading 19 of the Princeton’s VF-23, had big jobs. Their duty was to keep the Hellcat escort intact and properly positioned to ward off the heavy fighter interception that was sure to develop. The 52 F6Fs flew a stepped-up formation above the bombers with Miller’s four divisions providing top cover.

The poor weather improved considerably en route, and the fliers picked up Rabaul visually from 50 miles out. Simpson Harbor was crammed with Japanese ships—about 40 merchantmen plus 8 heavy cruisers and perhaps 20 light cruisers and destroyers. There had been little hope of achieving complete surprise, and this proved to be the case. Nearly 60 Zekes were up and waiting when the carrier planes swung over St. George Channel two hours after launch.

Keeping their air groups together, Caldwell and Miller denied the Japanese a chance to strike two unsupported formations until the last moment. By then the F6Fs, SBDs, and TBFs were into the thick, well-directed flak and the Zekes demonstrated no interest in pursuing the Americans into the AA fire. Instead, enemy fighters stooged around just out of range, stunting and playing with one another in hopes of sucking the Hellcats away from the bombers. Though they were sorely tempted, Clifton’s and Miller’s pilots refused the bait. One fighter division remained with each bomber flight all the way to the target.

Only a few Zekes intercepted until the Dauntlesses and Avengers had attacked, and by then, of course, the damage had been done: bomb or torpedo hits on six cruisers, including three badly damaged.

Once the SBDs and TBFs were strung out during retirement, they were more vulnerable to interception. Between the AA and the Zekes, five bombers went down and a pair of Hellcats fell to the flak gunners. But the F6s covered the strike planes most of the way, and Joe Clifton showed Fighting 12 how it was done by smoking one Zeke with his wing-man and bagging a second as his number two lured it into the skipper’s sights. The Saratoga’s Hellcats thought they’d downed at least 11 Zekes and probably 14 more at a cost of four F6Fs, but this was clearly on the optimistic side. Total Japanese losses were about a dozen.

The VF-23 fighters that remained topside were persistently picked at by large numbers of Zekes, but with little result. Miller’s Hellcats returned with a claim similar to Clifton’s, though Lieutenant H. M. Crockett and Ensign Carlton Roberts, escorting Commander Caldwell’s Avenger, had more business than they could easily handle. Bounced by eight Zekes, the three Grummans were all badly shot up but fought their way clear, claiming three kills. Wounded and without the use of his flaps, Crockett put his fighter down on the Princeton with 200 bullet holes in the Hellcat’s tough hide. Roberts diverted to the uncompleted field at Vella Lavella.

Ten carrier planes were lost in this important strike which deprived the Japanese Navy of the bulk of its surface warships in the Solomons. Five Hellcats had been shot down, but Fighting 12 and 23 had stuck with the bombers and earned the appreciation of their crews. Clifton’s pilots were now convinced that the Hellcat was “far and away the best fighter in the air.”⁷

A follow-up strike was quickly planned to finish the shipping at Rabaul, and appropriately—or ironically—it came less than a week later, on Armistice Day.

The plan called for Rear Admiral Frederick C. Sherman’s Saratoga and Princeton to put their planes over the target 30 minutes before the main strike by Alfred Montgomery’s Task Group 50.3 arrived from the Essex, Bunker Hill (CV-17), and Independence. Hopefully the timing would catch Japanese fighters refueling on the ground. Sherman approached from the north and launched 225 miles east of the target on 11 November. But unlike before, this time the weather was in the enemy’s favor. The 55 Hellcats, 25 Avengers, and 21 Dauntlesses had to contend with clouds and squalls most of the way to Rabaul, then at 0830 found Simpson Harbor almost completely hidden beneath an overcast. The bombers concentrated on the three visible cruisers in the big harbor—the others were hidden by clouds or rain—and hit one of them. Nearly 70 Zekes were up, chasing the raiders in and out of the weather, but they intercepted only seven. Five of these returned with battle damage, and VF-12 claimed a solitary kill. The main blow was still on the way.

Montgomery had launched 160 miles southeast of Rabaul, and Air Group Nine’s formation barged straight into five dozen Zekes in limited visibility over Cape St. George at 0900. Lieutenant (jg) Ham McWhorter was one of VF-9’s 12 pilots who tangled with about half the bandits over the harbor mouth. In a short, confusing dogfight McWhorter claimed three Zekes but didn’t have things entirely his own way. He headed back to the Essex with 11 nonregulation holes in his airplane. Chick Smith, leading the second section of Phil Torrey’s division, got a pair of Zekes.

Lieutenant Casey Childers, who had mowed a swath through the pine trees back at Cape May, New Jersey, was escorting SBDs when several Zekes bounced his division from above. He never saw how many there were, except for the one which got on his wingman’s tail and opened fire. Childers saw the Hellcat pull up, trailing flames from its drop tank, and then plop down to a water landing. Fighting Nine then took the strike planes home, minus two bombers. The Essex Hellcats claimed 14 enemy aircraft shot down.

The brand-new Bunker Hill put the next formation over Rabaul giving Air Group 17 its combat initiation. Her fighter squadron was VF-18 under Lieutenant Commander Sam L. Silber, a husky former Maryland football star. Lieutenant Commander John Blackburn’s Fighting 17 had been orphaned from both ship and air group when the Navy decided the Corsairs were unsafe for carrier operations. The VF-17 pilots would see action that day, however. They were based at Ondonga, New Georgia, and were scheduled to provide CAP over the task group, as they had during the raid on the fifth. So were seven VF-33 Hellcats under Lieutenant John C. Kelley, which landed aboard the Independence and took up CAP again.

“Sambo” Silber’s pilots tangled with several Zekes over Rabaul but, like VF-9, they stayed close to the bombers. Lieutenant (jg) James D. Billo did get involved with a pair of Japanese and returned to Bunker Hill to report both went down. Air Group 17 lost six planes to Zekes and flak, then withdrew as the Independence planes went in. Her Air Group 22 was augmented by a 12-plane detachment from VF-6, and four Independence fighter divisions claimed four for three.

Within some 30 minutes of the Essex planes’ arrival, the cloudy sky above Rabaul was clear of American aircraft. A Japanese destroyer had been sunk and four other warships damaged, but only six Zekes had gone down—half the U.S. losses. In the hectic, confused dogfights amid heavy cloud cover, the four Hellcat squadrons thought they had shot down 30 enemy aircraft over Rabaul.

Both carrier groups planned to launch second strikes, but increasingly poor weather forced Sherman to cancel his follow-up blow. Little more than an hour after Montgomery’s planes returned, search radar picked up a large bogey 120 miles out, approaching the task group. Hellcats were scrambled to investigate, and refueling and rearming for a second strike continued. Under the circumstances, it was the only thing Montgomery could do. By 1330 the bombers were again being launched, but only to clear the flight decks.

About 20 minutes later some VF-33 Hellcats spotted the bogey only 40 miles from the task group. A fighter controller asked for an estimate and was informed “There are millions of them!”⁸ Actually, there were 69 Zekes, Vals, and Kates from carrier squadrons temporarily based ashore at Rabaul. An undetermined number of Bettys were also seen.

The next three-quarters of an hour was absolute mayhem. Hellcats and Corsairs hammered away at the determined enemy squadrons flying in beautiful formation under a three-tenths cloud cover. The Val dive bombers attacked first, concentrating on the Bunker Hill, though the Essex and Independence also received unwelcome attention. All three carriers had near-misses, but no direct hits were scored.

The Essex and Independence handled the fighter direction, but there were mistakes both in the radar rooms and fighter cockpits. The earliest interceptions were made against Zekes instead of the Vals and Kates, and four divisions of fighters were vectored far from the battle to investigate another bogey—12 Hellcats from the second strike which unaccountably were not recalled to help repel the attack.

As a result, the Corsairs of VF-17 had much of the early combat to themselves until the rearming Hellcats could be launched. Four VF-33 Hellcats made the first interception, chasing some Zekes and two Bettys back towards Rabaul.

By now there was no further thought of continuing with the second strike. The hard-pressed carriers were relying on their AA guns as their primary defense. Confused fighter pilots, either hearing no vector instructions or being confused by what they did hear, simply headed for the bursting flak over the task force. Many others lifted off their decks and were instantly engaged. One was Ensign C. T. Watts of VF-18, who was the last off the Bunker Hill and was raising his landing gear as the dive-bombing attack began. Watts sighted a Val, quickly armed his guns, and shot the Aichi down in flames.

Lieutenant (jg) Rube Denoff of Fighting Nine had a similar experience. He had no sooner cleared the Essex’s deck when a Val crossed his sights. “I didn’t even have time to retract my wheels,” he would recall,⁹ but he shot it down. Moments later, joined by his wingman, Denoff latched on to one of the few Kates to survive VF-17’s initial pass and splashed it for his second kill. Then he was hit in the port wing by “friendly” five-inch shrapnel and returned to the Essex. As Denoff’s Hellcat dropped onto the deck with the customary jolt, his guns fired several accidental rounds over the heads of the plane handlers. Investigation showed that the flak splinters had cut the charging wires to the Brownings, leaving them armed even though Denoff had turned the switches to “Off.”

Exaggerated combat estimates put enemy losses at 90 in the attack on the carriers, plus nearly 30 claimed over Rabaul. But it was a fact that the Japanese had taken a beating. Over 40 of the enemy strike planes were actually shot down—17 of the Vals, all 14 Kates, two Zekes, two Judy recon planes, and several Bettys. Thus, true enemy losses for Armistice Day 1943 were on the order of 50. Fighting Nine alone claimed 55, including 41 over the carriers; this figure demonstrates how heavily engaged were Torrey’s pilots. They carried the main burden of the day’s fighter combat, and at one time Essex sailors counted 11 Japanese planes burning. Sam Silber’s VF-18 claimed 20 kills, and John Blackburn’s F4Us of VF-17 reported 18½. The fraction was a Kate shared with VF-33, which also claimed five other kills. But the land-based Hellcats lost their leader, Lieutenant John Kelley, who was last seen chasing a Betty into the task force AA fire. Another three Hellcats fell to the strong Zeke escort, raising the carrier-plane loss to 18 in all.

The Rabaul raids were successful in their immediate objective in that they sank or crippled numerous Japanese warships, relieving the surface threat to future operations in the Solomons. But enemy air power was also crippled, and had been unable to defeat carriers operating well within range of land-based bombers. Three Japanese air groups totaling 173 aircraft had been operational at Rabaul on 1 November. Two weeks later only 52 were available for return to Truk, and nearly all of them were Zekes.

The way was now clear to the Gilberts.

After Rabaul, the Fifth Fleet carriers were reorganized as Task Force 50. The six fleet carriers and five light carriers were assigned to four task groups, with Montgomery’s 50.3 keeping its designation. Pownall had 50.1, Arthur Radford had 50.2, and Sherman’s Task Force 38 became TG-50.4. For the first Central Pacific operation—the invasion and occupation of the Gilbert Islands—these task groups were deployed over a wide area in order to provide protection to the landing forces and to prevent enemy air reinforcement from getting through.

D-Day for Tarawa Atoll was 20 November. In addition to eight escort carriers which would provide tactical air power to the Marines, TG-50.3, still composed of the Essex, Bunker Hill, and Independence, would also be on hand. The choice position, as far as the Hellcat pilots were concerned, was Pownall’s 50.1 location between the Gilberts and Marshalls. From there, the Yorktown, Lexington, and Cowpens fighters would be almost certain to contact Japanese aircraft shuttling between the island groups.

An F6F squadron brand-new to the carrier force was not destined to remain with it very long. This was VF-1 under Commander Bernard M. Strean, a career professional from the Annapolis Class of ’33. A naval aviator since 1936, “Smoke” Strean was a highly experienced fighter pilot with 4,000 hours’ flight time. His 44 Hellcats were equally divided between the escort carriers Nassau (CVE-16) and Barnes (CVE-20), and began ground-support missions against Tarawa on the 21st. Fighting One was to be the atoll’s garrison air force and would remain there after the invasion.

Japanese air strength in the area was considerably reduced by D-Day, largely due to transfers earlier in the month to Rabaul. At dusk on the 20th, 16 Bettys from the Marshalls were belatedly sighted in the failing light, deploying against TG-50.3 which was then landing the day’s last strike. The Bunker Hill CAP dropped on the intruders, but too late to prevent them from launching their torpedoes. One struck the Independence in the stern, forcing her out of the campaign, and she shaped course for Funafuti in the Ellice Islands to the south. Fighting 18 and the antiaircraft gunners shot down nine Bettys, but this and other nocturnal attacks clearly indicated the need for full-time night fighters in the task force. Butch O’Hare, newly promoted to CAG of the Enterprise’s Air Group Six, was lost the night of 26 November in an early night-flying experiment.

Until now, the Lexington’s air group had seen relatively little action, but Lieutenant Commander Paul Buie’s VF-16 was rewarded by being in the right place at the right time—not just once, but twice in a row.

Patrolling with the Yorktown and Cowpens in the waters between Makin in the Gilberts and Mili in the Marshalls, the Lexington fighter pilots made their first significant contact on D-Plus Three. Buie was up with 11 of his “Pistol Packin’ Airdales” at midday when the Lexington’s controller called that he had a contact. The dozen Hellcats were directed to what Buie called “a fighter pilot’s dream position,”¹⁰ 4,000 feet above and upsun of 21 Zekes. The Japanese were flying their usual exemplary formation, evidently unaware of the Hellcats overhead.

Hellcats of VF-1 on Betio Island, Tarawa Atoll, 25 November 1943. Fighting One flew ashore from escort carriers on D-Plus Three, 23 November, and remained until January 1944.

Buie led his pilots down in a coordinated side and overhead attack at 23,000 feet. Buie himself splashed two Zekes, and by the time the first few passes had been made, only a few stragglers remained. Most of these were pursued to low level. The 12 Hellcats returned to the Lexingtonwhere the score was tallied: 17 confirmed and 4 probables. Even more impressive was the bag of Ensign Ralph Hanks, a young Philadelphian. In his first combat he had scored five confirmed victories—the first Hellcat pilot to achieve ace status, and the first to become an “ace in a day.” Over 40 more F6F pilots would equal or exceed Hanks’s one-day score in the next two years.

About noon on the 24th, Buie was again leading three divisions on CAP at almost the same location as the day before. The FDO directed VF-16 to 20 Zekes and 2 Bettys, again at 23,000 feet, but this time the Zekes held the altitude advantage. Buie turned his formation to meet the first attack, and though one Hellcat went down, the enemy “never got another chance,” Buie recalled.¹¹ The scrap developed into a vertical combat which topped out at 28,000 feet and worked down to 5,000. Buie got another kill, and Lieutenant (jg) Francis M. Fleming also scored again. The day before he had bagged a pair of Zekes and split a third, then scored another double in the second dogfight. In all, VF-16 claimed 13 confirmed and 6 probables on the 24th. Their two days ended with a total of 30 enemy aircraft destroyed and 11 probables, against the loss of one Hellcat.

That constituted the major portion of aerial combat in the Tarawa operation. Commander Strean took his Fighting One Hellcats ashore to tiny Betio Island on D-Plus-Three, before the last of the Japanese defenders were rooted out. The airfield had a 3,000-foot runway which was more or less operational, but was hard-pressed to handle nearly four dozen aircraft. Staff planners estimated the island could support 100 fighters, but on 30 November when Joe Clifton brought 36 Saratoga Hellcats ashore, both squadrons became almost immobile. “Neither of us could move after Clifton arrived,” recalled Strean, “so his squadron stayed only one night, during which we had one of our biggest night attacks.”¹²

High-flying Japanese bombers appeared virtually every night, and were opposed only by searchlight-directed AA guns. No night fighters were available, so Strean and Lieutenant Paul M. Henderson took turns flying night patrols at over 30,000 feet, hoping to catch one of the night riders in the glare of a searchlight. They had no such luck, for no bomber was ever illuminated for more than 90 seconds.

In December, VF-1 moved to nearby Mullinex Field on Buota, which had a longer runway. Living conditions were little improved from Betio, however. There were numerous false-alarm scrambles and missions escorting Army Air Force bombers, but no Japanese aircraft were engaged. Strean summarized his squadron’s stint in the Gilberts: “We slept with our aircraft, flew a lot, but did little damage. There were no combat or operational losses. We always had 44 aircraft up and in the air at appropriate times.”¹³

Half the squadron was returned to Hawaii in mid-January while the other half remained at Tarawa for another six weeks. Fighting One was eventually reunited for a two-month deployment aboard Yorktown in June and July of 1944, at which time the lack of combat at Tarawa would be more than offset.

Meanwhile, the war continued at sea, and it didn’t go entirely in the U.S. Navy’s favor. Early in the morning of 24 November, a Japanese submarine torpedoed the escort carrier Liscome Bay (CVE-56) and she sank in 22 minutes. One of the survivors was Captain John Crommelin, a senior staff officer whose younger brother Charles was the Yorktown CAG. John had a formidable reputation as a pilot—he was capable of putting a TBF into an inverted spin at 1,500 feet and recovering at sea level.

A Hellcat landing at the newly won Tarawa airfield in late November 1943. Two F6F squadrons, VF-1 and VF-12, both operated from this crowded field shortly after it was captured from the Japanese.

But Charlie was also a skilled aviator, as he demonstrated under extremely adverse circumstances. Leading an Air Group Five strike against Mili the same morning that his brother swam away from the sinking CVE, Charlie Crommelin’s Hellcat took a direct hit while strafing a grounded bomber. A 40-mm shell exploded against his cockpit, smashing most of the instruments and fracturing the windscreen with thousands of hairline cracks which destroyed forward visibility. His own injuries were serious: no vision in the left eye, broken right wrist, a bad chest wound, and numerous minor cuts.

It was 120 miles back to the Yorktown, but Crommelin ignored the pain enough to maintain formation with VF-5 Hellcats all the way back to the ship. Then he showed why he was CAG. Looking into a 100-knot slipstream through one eye, he made a perfectly normal carrier landing. As if that weren’t enough, he taxied forward, parked his shot-up Hellcat, and started to climb out. But that proved too much. He collapsed in his cockpit and was rushed to sick bay. After three months in the hospital, he returned to command another air group and lead it into combat. They grow tough airmen in Wetumpka, Alabama.

Lieutenant Commander Edgar Stebbins replaced Crommelin as CAG-5. Stebbins was a 3,600-hour SBD and TBF pilot, previously CO of VB-5, but he chose to fly an F6F as air group commander. More CAGs were selecting the Hellcat at this time, as it afforded the defensive merits of a fighter, but also had sufficient range and endurance for a command aircraft. Stebbins’s pet Hellcat was fitted with an oblique-angle K-28 camera that he used to obtain strike photos.

Two carrier groups were assigned to the Marshalls strikes which began on 4 December. These were Pownall’s 50.1 (Yorktown, Lexington, and Cowpens) and Montgomery’s 50.3 (Essex, Enterprise, and Belleau Wood.) The Lexington’s air group commander, Ernest M. Snowden, pressed for a fighter sweep before the first strikes went in, but was turned down by Rear Admiral Pownall. Ever cautious, Pownall assumed that the carriers would be seen on the way in, and as a result all of the fighters would be needed for CAP and escort. It was one of a series of defensive-minded decisions which would cost him his job.

Launch commenced at dawn 150 miles north of the target area. The carriers put up an unusually strong strike force—nearly 250 planes—which included 91 Hellcats. Pownall’s pessimistic assessment that surprise could not be achieved during the approach proved inaccurate, for the Japanese only learned of the Americans’ presence by radar when the strike was 40 miles away.

The Essex and Lexington formations went to Roi, where about 50 Zekes had scrambled into the air. This was one of the first missions for Commander William A. Dean, Jr.’s, VF-2, temporarily attached to the “Big E’s” Air Group Six. The 22 “Rippers” were stacked up as top cover above 20,000 feet and consequently missed the aerial combat which occurred mostly at low altitude. But 12 of Dean’s Hellcats were called down by the Enterprise strike leader to work over numerous moored floatplanes at Ebeye Island, which they did, leaving 11 burning ashore or on the water. Only one flight of Fighting Two tangled with any Zekes. That was Lieutenant R. J. Griffin’s division, covering a photo TBF over Roi. The Hellcats saw four Zekes climbing up from takeoff and, leaving one F6 upstairs with the Avenger, three Rippers caught the bandits at 2,000 feet. Nose-high at low airspeed, the Zekes turned to get out from under, but it was too late. Three went down burning and the fourth barely got away with a whole skin.

The Yorktown fighters found more of a contest. “Boogie” Hoffman’s division was homeward bound after shooting down a lone Dave scout biplane northeast of Kwajalein. Climbing through 4,000 feet, Bob Duncan saw 18 Zekes coming down and shouted a warning into his microphone, but his radio was out. The bandits hit the four F6Fs unexpectedly, making expert use of sun and clouds. Hoffman quickly recognized the Japanese pilots as “a first-line team.”¹⁴ They put six Zekes on each two-plane section with the remainder keeping above. Caught at low level, almost out of ammunition from strafing, the Hellcats were in serious trouble. All they could do was weave, turning into each attack. But the Zekes’ numerical advantage allowed them to make high side runs in pairs regardless of which way the Grummans broke. With detached professionalism the Yorktownpilots considered the enemy tactic “a pure and simple, graceful and beautiful aerial display of the best in fighter attacks.”¹⁵

Though Duncan’s plane was holed from the port wingtip clear back to the cockpit aft of the armor plate, it kept flying. But Lieutenant K. B. Satterfield’s Hellcat was hit on the outside of a weave. Streaming flames from both wings, the F6F hit flat in the water and then was gone.

After several interminable minutes, the other three Hellcats got away. The action report summarized, “Why they didn’t shoot us all down is a mystery. We would have destroyed them if the situation had been reversed. The one thing we did learn was that they weren’t as good gunners as we are.”¹⁶ Sy Satterfield would remain the only VF-5 pilot lost to enemy aircraft.

It was a day of mixed fortunes for Fighting Five. The skipper, Ed Owen, was alone when he picked one of two Zekes off the tail of another Hellcat, and was then surrounded by four or five more. By the time he disengaged, his plane was a flying wreck—one aileron shot off, most of the instruments out, a wheel dangling down, and his engine rapidly losing oil. En route home another pilot formed up and asked, “You don’t expect to land that crate, do you?”¹⁷ Owen didn’t have to, for his engine packed up and he bailed out. A destroyer returned him home to the Yorktown.

The Lexington’s fighters had things more their own way. Twelve of VF-16’s planes locked horns with an estimated 30 Zekes and gunned down 19, with a Betty for good measure. In dogfights over the atoll, Hellcats claimed a total of 28 Zekes for three F6Fs. But returning pilots reported “a field full of torpedo planes”¹⁸ which hadn’t been dealt with. Though the Kates and Jills attacked in small groups beginning at noon and were consistently beaten off or shot down by AA gunners, still they came. Rather than remain longer in reach of land-based planes, the carriers pulled out, launching preemptive strikes against Wotje on the way. Fighting Five got a Betty taking off and claimed four planes destroyed on the ground, but the main threat would come from Bettys on Roi and Maleolap after dark.

Though the two task groups bent on 24 knots to the northeast, they could not outdistance the long-range bombers. From 1850 until 0130, when the moon finally set, attacks were made by as many as 37 Bettys. Only one of them got a hit, but it was enough to send the Lexington limping home with torpedo damage.

The only other noteworthy carrier operations of the year involved the Bunker Hill and Monterey (CVL-26). They convoyed five battleships from the Gilberts to the Solomons, striking Nauru on 8 December and Kavieng Harbor, New Ireland, on Christmas Day. There was poor hunting for the Hellcats; they had only a brief scuffle with some torpedo bombers.

A Hellcat of VF-16 comes to an ungraceful but successful landing aboard the USS Lexington after sustaining a 3-inch antiaircraft shell which knocked out its radio and injured its arresting gear.

Land-based F6F squadrons were still active in the Solomons at this time, and one of the pleasant surprises associated with them was an unusually high in-commission rate. On 17 December, for instance, the Solomons Fighter Command possessed 268 Army, Navy, Marine, and New Zealand aircraft, of which 199 were operational. Fifty-three of the 58 Hellcats were in commission—more than any other type, even though Corsairs and P-39s outnumbered the F6Fs. Therefore, Hellcats represented 21 percent of all fighters, but 26 percent of those available for missions. There were 71 F4Us, of which 47 were operational. This meant that two-thirds of the Corsairs were in commission, compared to 91 percent of the Hellcats. It was this comparison of the two Navy fighters which prompted Grumman partisans to observe that the F4U was faster than the F6F three days a week. The rest of the time, they said, the Corsair was down for maintenance.

So ended 1943. In the Solomons and Gilberts raids, nearly 230 Japanese aircraft were thought shot down by Hellcats, against a combat loss of fewer than 30. Tactical doctrine and refinements in equipment, both of which had been tested in late 1943, would be all but perfected in early 1944. A substantial shakeup was in store for the fast carriers, which in the new year would embark upon the most successful campaign in the history of modern naval warfare.

And the Hellcats would be right up front.

Hellcat Squadrons in Combat: August to December 1943

VF-1	Tarawa	Commander Bernard M. Strean
VF-2	Enterprise	Commander William A. Dean, Jr.
VF-5	Yorktown	Commander C. L. Crommelin, Lieutenant Commander E. M. Owen
VF-6	Independence	Commander Edward H. O’Hare
VF-6	Princeton	detachment
VF-6	Belleau Wood	detachment
VF-6	Cowpens	detachment
VF-9	Essex	Lieutenant Commander Philip H. Torrey
VF-12	Saratoga	Commander Joseph C. Clifton
VF-16	Lexington	Lieutenant Commander Paul D. Buie
VF-18	Bunker Hill	Lieutenant Commander Sam L. Silber
VF-22	Belleau Wood	Lieutenant L. L. Johnson
VF-22	Independence	Lieutenant L. L. Johnson
VF-23	Princeton	Commander Henry L. Miller
VF-24	Belleau Wood	Lieutenant Commander John O. Curtis (KIA), Lieutenant R. P. Ross, Commander R. H. Dale
VF-25	Cowpens	Lieutenant Commander Mark A. Grant
VF-30	Monterey	Lieutenant Commander J. G. Sliney
VF-33	Solomons	Lieutenant Commander Hawley A. Russell
VF-34	Solomons
VF-38	Solomons
VF-40	Solomons	Commander John P. Rembert, Jr.