3 With the Fast Carriers

We will go up and fight.

Deuteronomy 1:41

On 6 January 1944 the Fast Carrier Task Force came into its own. It had a new designation, TF-58, and a new commander, Rear Admiral Marc A. Mitscher. And it had a big job. Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, just north of the now-conquered Gilberts, was the next target for amphibious invasion.

Organized into four task groups, the task force now consisted of six fleet carriers including the Saratoga and Enterprise (CV-6), and six light carriers. The aircraft complements of these 12 flattops included over 350 Hellcats, plus another 36 F6F-3s on three of the escort carriers which would lend tactical support to the infantry.

As usual, a dawn fighter sweep was planned to open the campaign. On 29 January, TG-58.2 was responsible for putting 30 Hellcats over Roi and Namur, and they were all in the air before 0600. Lieutenant Commander Herb Houck led 18 other planes of VF-9 from the Essex, and the light carrier Cabot (CVL-28) put up 11 under the leadership of Lieutenant Commander Robert A. Winston, a fighter pilot for eight years. Kwajalein was the first operation for Winston’s VF-31, which on this deployment would set the record for the most kills by a CVL squadron in one tour.

In the dark predawn sky three of the Cabot pilots failed to rendezvous with Winston, but rather than wait he proceeded towards Roi’s airfield. The Essex fighters were to strafe parked planes there, and would need top cover. The VF-31 skipper didn’t know that his missing trio had joined forces with VF-9.

Climbing to 20,000 feet on instruments, Winston unexpectedly received a radio call from Houck. Approaching the target, the Fighting Nine CO had found a 6,000-foot overcast above the island. He decided to break radio silence in order to provide Winston with this information, and he was right. Japanese radar had picked up the incoming Hellcats, and over 20 Zekes were upstairs waiting. The Cabot fighters followed Houck’s advice without question, Winston placing his division below the cloud cover and sending the other division well above it.

Fighting 31’s top cover could see target markers being dropped over the airfield by TBFs, then the tracers of Houck’s low-flying Hellcats as they began to shoot up visible enemy aircraft in the still-dim sunlight. Then the Zekes appeared, dropping onto the strafers with a height advantage. One VF-9 plane went down early in the battle, but whether to Zekes or flak was difficult to say. The Essex fighters had orders to refuse combat if possible and to concentrate on destroying grounded planes, but several pilots were forced to engage.

Meanwhile, at 5,000 feet Bob Winston caught sight of a column of aircraft and led his wingman, Ensign Cornelius Nooy, over to join up. But the darkness had played a trick on him; the planes were Zekes. Fortunately, the two Hellcats had approached from behind and Winston fired at the last plane in line. He missed, and the Zekes broke formation like a flushed covey of quail. Then they turned back.

The two Hellcats immediately initiated a defensive weave, pulling high-G turns to force the bandits off their tails. There were at least seven Zekes, however, and they persisted in their attacks. One pressed too close to Nooy’s tail and Winston had enough time to pull deflection and fire a burst which dropped the Zeke into the lagoon. After more weaving and snap-shooting, both Grummans disengaged and outran their assailants, heading for the rendezvous point.

Another Cabot pilot got distracted on his way to regroup. Lieutenant Douglas Mulcahy and his wingman, separated from Winston under the clouds, were jumped by several Zekes and had to dive away to evade them. Now alone, Mulcahy found five Zekes heading towards him but as they passed, one latched onto his tail and hit his F6 with a burst of machine-gun fire. Again Mulcahy evaded by diving, but then climbed up to 20,000 feet in search of his assailants. Remarkably, he found them. Diving from six o’clock high, the New Yorker drew a bead on the rearmost Zeke and shot off its port wing. Evidently the other Japanese never saw their friend’s demise, as they maintained formation. Thus encouraged, Mulcahy climbed for another crack at them but the four broke when he opened fire and he wisely decided against pursuing the matter.

By singles, sections, and divisions 26 Hellcats returned to the task group and landed. One of Cabot’s damaged fighters ditched near a destroyer and the pilot was rescued, but three Essex planes were missing. Houck’s pilots, forced to defend themselves, claimed eight victims and Winston’s crew turned in their first five tallies. Essex dive bombers which struck the field shortly after the fighter sweep saw only a few Zekes, and by mid morning there were no more enemy planes over Roi-Namur. Over 100 had been destroyed on their airfields.

But the atoll was not yet entirely free of Japanese aircraft. During the afternoon CAP, ten VF-6 Hellcats found seven airborne targets. Six were Bettys, apparently based on Burlesque Island. Lieutenant (jg) Alex Vraciu and his wingman ran across four of them.

Vraciu noticed the first emerge from a pall of smoke on the south end of the island and quickly caught up, diving from 7,000 feet. He made a high side run from starboard, fired one long burst, and the Betty went down in flames from 400 feet. The pair from Intrepid (CV-11) had hardly pulled up when another Betty was seen about 300 feet over the lagoon. As Vraciu and Ensign T. A. Hall closed from astern, the Betty descended to within 100 feet of the water but Vraciu’s first burst exploded the fuel in one wing.

Yet another pair of bombers was sighted as the Hellcats climbed to about 3,500 feet. The section dived to engage, and the Bettys split up. Hall took the leader, which was bagged by other VF-6 planes, and Vraciu went after the Betty which turned west. Vraciu’s first pass had no visible effect, and he found on the next run that only one gun was firing. With the Betty ducking and turning below 100 feet, Vraciu had all he could do to keep his one gun functioning and line up the target. He pursued the bomber for 25 miles, making eight or nine passes, before it nosed into the water. These three kills made Alex Vraciu an ace, but it would take more than five enemy planes to compensate him for the loss of Butch O’Hare.

Lieutenant (jg) Alexander Vraciu of VF-6 aboard the USS Intrepid after the first carrier strike on Truk. In that raid, 16 February 1944, Vraciu shot down four Japanese fighters, raising his confirmed victories to nine. He made two subsequent deployments to the Western Pacific, ending the war with a total of 19 victories. Photo: R. M. Hill

The other three task groups were unable to scare up much opposition at Taroa, Wotje, or even Kwajalein Island itself. Only 14 Japanese aircraft were encountered in the air, and all were shot down or wrecked on landing. Another 45 bombers, fighters, and floatplanes were destroyed on the ground or in the water. It was a rather disappointing operation to the pilots in some respects, as heavier opposition had been anticipated, but the invasion of Kwajalein proceeded without interference from Japanese aircraft.

Mitscher’s keen young fighter pilots may not have felt that way, had they known that in another two weeks they would fly into the teeth of the most formidable enemy naval base in the Central Pacific.

Truk Atoll in the middle of the Carolines was known as “The Gibralter of the Pacific.” It was the main Japanese fleet anchorage beyond the home islands, yet the U.S. Navy knew almost nothing about its facilities or base forces. Because of its foreboding reputation—founded more on rumor than on evidence—Truk was widely considered to be the toughest objective the carrier pilots would encounter. Beyond that, little was known—not even its pronunciation, which is actually “Trook,” not “Truck” as the fliers called it.

In mid-February, Japanese air strength at Truk was twice that calculated by U.S. intelligence. The estimated strength was 185 aircraft, but in reality Truk’s three island airfields held 365 planes, including transients bound for the Solomons.

Task Force 58 was well on its way before the senior officers let the destination be known. All air group commanders flew to the Yorktown for a conference and returned to their respective ships to pass the word. When Commander Phil Torrey, newly promoted to CAG-9, heard the task force’s destination, he confessed his first instinct was to jump overboard.

Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, flying his flag in the battleship New Jersey, planned a two-day raid on Truk. If things went well, the Hellcats would gain air superiority the first day. Then dive bombers and torpedo planes would deal with Japanese warships found in the vicinity. Submarines stood by to provide rescue services for downed fliers—now a standard practice. The nine carriers deployed in Task Groups 58.1, 58.2, and 58.3 contained over 250 Hellcats for fighter sweeps, strikes, and CAPs.

The force arrived at the launch point, 90 miles east of Truk Atoll, nearly two hours before dawn on 16 February. Five carriers prepared to launch 70 Hellcats on the fighter sweep, and by then the pilots knew they would find combat that day.

The first F6Fs lifted off their flight decks well before dawn, which came at 0640 local time, and began joining formation. The Bunker Hill’s VF-18 contributed the most planes to the day’s first fighter sweep, with 22 Hellcats led by the CO, “Sambo” Silber. His five divisions were assigned “what we considered the choice role of top cover”¹ at 20,000 feet. The Bunker Hill CAG, Commander Roland H. Dale, also launched in a Hellcat to coordinate the sweep and subsequent strike. Twelve Hellcats were put up by VF-10 from the Enterprise and Intrepid’s VF-6, while the Yorktownalso contributed 12 and Fighting Nine launched 11 from the Essex.

Leading the sweep was Lieutenant Commander William R. “Killer” Kane of the Enterprise, whose dozen fighters joined the 12 from the Intrepid. These six divisions were in the vanguard and, completing rendezvous at 1,500 feet, swung around on a course which would take them north of the atoll for the final approach. The 24 Grummans maintained an altitude of about 1,000 feet halfway to the target before they began climbing. Once the 30-mile-wide lagoon was visible in the early light, Kane led his force into a climbing spiral to gain more altitude before proceeding. At this same time VF-5 approached below while the 22 Bunker Hill fighters were almost out of sight overhead. There was no sign of enemy activity, though radio monitors back in the task force heard Truk go off the air at 0714.

The sun wasn’t quite above the horizon when Kane’s formation arrived over the target at 0805, heading southwest at 13,000 feet. The Hellcats circled Moen Island before attacking, drawing some AA fire which was mostly wide. Fighting Six pilots sighted two Bettys taking off just as Kane led his “Grim Reapers” down to strafe the field.

Ten Intrepid Hellcats had followed VF-10 and the last section was about to peel off when the section leader, Alex Vraciu, called out bandits about 2,500 feet above and to port. But his tally-ho went unheeded by the rest of Fighting Six. They were following Kane in a steep spiral to get at the planes parked on the field.

A1 Vraciu identified the bandits as Zekes and led Ensign Lou Little in a break into the Japanese attack. The enemy leader was forced to abandon his run and dive below the two Hellcats. But Vraciu and Little were quickly surrounded by more Zekes and the hassle was on.

Vraciu led Little into a steep chandelle and came down on a Zeke which had been on their tails. The Zeke stalled out of its climbing turn and found a pair of Hellcats rolling hard behind it. When cornered in this manner the Japanese inevitably rolled over and dived for the water or attempted to dodge into the clouds. It was a fatal error, for the big Hellcats easily reeled in the Zekes during a dive. Vraciu gunned down two Zekes and a Rufe floatplane this way, all within the confines of Truk lagoon. Lou Little also got a Zeke.

Climbing back to altitude, Vraciu spotted another Zeke near a cloud and turned towards him. The Mitsubishi ducked into a cumulus cloud bank and Vraciu gave chase, occasionally catching glimpses of his quarry. After several inconclusive moments he climbed upsun and waited for the Zeke to reappear. When it did, Vraciu dropped down into the four o’clock position and closed the range before firing. Vraciu was sure the Japanese pilot never knew the Hellcat was there.

Meanwhile, VF-6 was downing a dozen more hostiles as the dawn fighter sweep erupted into the largest dogfight most of the Americans had been in. With the sun tinting the clouds reddish-white and scores of planes suddenly engaged in combat, the air over Truk reminded Fighting Five skipper Ed Owen of “a Hollywood war.” As he later recalled it, “Jap airplanes were burning and falling from every quarter, and many were crashing on takeoff as a result of being strafed on the ground. Ground installations were exploding and burning, and all this in the early golden glow of dawn. At times it might have been staged for the movies.”² Owen had more than a bit part, with two kills.

It was beautiful, it was fascinating, and it was deadly. Killer Kane and his wingman Lieutenant (jg) Vern Ude splashed five planes in five minutes before they could devote their attention to strafing.

The Japanese had barely scrambled an estimated 40 to 50 interceptors when Kane led his two squadrons in a dive towards Moen Field. The 47 low-altitude Hellcats were all engaged, with more enemy planes taking off all the time. For the next several minutes it was estimated that not 30 seconds ticked away without at least one aircraft falling somewhere over the atoll. Some F6F pilots swore they saw Japanese pilots parachuting in colorful pajamas—evidence that surprise had been achieved. But the enemy fliers were both aggressive and competent, and in the heat of combat the wrong targets sometimes got hit. Alex Vraciu saw one Hellcat shoot down another. It wasn’t entirely unheard of—he’d seen similar things before—but the “victim” quickly bailed out.

Fighting Ten found the Rufes surprisingly tough opponents, despite the unwieldy floats mated to the Zero airframes. Lieutenant J. E. “Frenchy” Reulet flamed a Zeke after a short fight and then followed a Rufe into a loop and burned it at the top. He then shot a Hamp off an F6’s tail and shortly thereafter was gratified to see his wingman perform a similar service by knocking a Rufe off his own tail.

Lieutenant Jack Farley, another Grim Reaper, shot one of the float fighters out of a tight turn seconds before a 20-mm shell exploded in his own cockpit, shattering the instruments and wounding Farley. He got away with a damaged Hellcat, but evidently the same unseen Rufe had shot down Ensign Linton Cox, his wingman.

The Enterprise Hellcats finally got through the fighters and flak to work over their target, and burned 17 planes on the ground to go with the 14 they shot out of the sky. But not everyone did so well. Sambo Silber’s VF-18 saw only 16 enemy planes during the three-hour mission and could engage only half of them for one destroyed and one probable. Silber had decidedly mixed emotions about the combat: “Our fellow squadron commanders did a fantastic job of clearing the sky of the Japanese before they got over 15,000 feet. So there were almost none left for us at 20,000!”³

Lieutenant Commander Harry W. Harrison, an old friend and flying buddy of Silber, considered it more than equitable. As instructors the two had often argued about which one was the better fighter pilot. Silber had seven kills to his credit, including three in the course of one 360° turn during a January strike against Kavieng, and contended that this proved his superiority. But Harrison returned from Truk with his first and only victory, a Zeke, which was one of two enemy aircraft he saw during the whole war. With a batting average of .500, the VF-6 CO now claimed he was the better.

Fighting Nine also had good hunting, as the Essex Hellcats engaged large numbers of bandits. Eight VF-9 pilots claimed 19 enemy planes between them. Two of the pilots were Lieutenant (jg) Gene Valencia and his friend Lieutenant Bill Bonneau. Separated from one another, Valencia was set upon by half a dozen Zekes. They chased him miles out to sea, firing continually, without results. The 22-year-old Californian finally decided “they couldn’t hit an elephant if it was tied down for them”⁴ and racked his Hellcat around to challenge the enemy head-on. He gunned down three in short order and the others disappeared towards the horizon, making knots. Valencia returned to the Essex and found that Bill Bonneau had claimed four victories during their separation.

Exultant after the mission which made him an ace, Gene Valencia bubbled over with praise for the Hellcat. His remarks, widely reported in the U.S., pretty much summed up what most Navy fighter pilots felt towards the F6F: “I love this airplane so much that if it could cook I’d marry it.”⁵

By the time the smoke had subsided and no more airplanes fell into the lagoon, over 30 Japanese had gone down and as many as 40 more were shot up on Moen, Eten, and Param Islands. The most spectacular fighter battle of the Pacific War to date had ended in an overwhelming American victory, with the loss of but four F6Fs. However, there were still plenty of targets left for the Hellcats escorting the incoming strikes.

During the early afternoon, Admiral Mitscher decided to eliminate enemy access to undamaged runways. Consequently, Fighting Ten launched five F6Fs, each armed with a delayed-action bomb. Their target was Moen’s bomber field; other air groups struck remaining airdromes that also posed a threat. All five Hellcats put their bombs on Moen’s single runway and were followed by 14 bombers. Additional Hellcats conducted a free-wheeling strafing party which left 11 single-engine planes burning in addition to the 12 bombers destroyed by dive-bombing Dauntlesses.

Most pilots flew two or even three sorties during the day. But Lieutenant (jg) Walter Harman of VF-10 was one of the few to score on two different missions. In the morning he claimed two Zekes and a Rufe. During the Enterprise’s afternoon strike against Moen, an odds-even dogfight developed when four Zekes jumped Harman’s division as it completed a strafing run. For the next quarter-hour, Harman and a Zeke engaged in a rare one-on-one combat in which both pilots were so evenly matched that neither could gain the upper hand. At last Harman got off a burst which connected, and the Zeke crashed into a mountain.

Harman barely jumped back into the dogfight before it was too late, for Lieutenant (jg) Larry Richardson found his plane falling apart around him. Part of his windscreen was shot away, his engine had been hit, there were two large holes in one wing and another in the fuselage. A portion of his rudder was gone and the hydraulic system was out. The rugged Grumman stayed in the air long enough for Richardson to find a destroyer and splash down alongside.

Though it hardly seemed possible, Lieutenant W. M. Hampton of Harman’s division had bigger trouble than Richardson. Hit during the scuffle with the Zekes, Hampton started back towards the Enterprise but encountered three Japanese fighters evidently on the prowl for lone stragglers or cripples. Woody Hampton definitely fit that description. With no other F6Fs around, the Mitsubishi trio—composed of a Zeke, a Hamp, and a Rufe—went after the damaged Grumman.

The Hamp got careless and passed close to port and a little above, climbing for another try. Hampton pulled up, boresighted his target, and fired. The Hamp expelled a large cloud of smoke and disappeared towards the water. Then the Zeke elected an overhead pass, but it was a fatal mistake. Hampton met him nose-to-nose and set him on fire with only three guns still firing. The Rufe gave up and left.

The dauntless Hampton finally located a destroyer and ditched nearby, but banged his head on the gunsight. Momentarily stunned, he was pulled out of the sinking Hellcat by swimmers from the ship.

The top VF-5 score was turned in by Lieutenant (jg) Bob Duncan, who got the first two Zeke kills of any F6F pilot back in October during the Wake Island raid. Escorting the Yorktown’s 1300 bomber strike, Duncan’s division was flying rear side cover when he sighted 10 to 15 Zekes diving out of the sun from 20,000 feet. The Yorktown’s planes were caught at a 6,000-foot altitude disadvantage, and the Hellcats began a defensive weave.

Duncan and his wingman turned into one Zeke attacking from port. The Japanese pilot opened fire, hitting the second F6F in the fuselage, but Duncan flamed the Zeke as it passed his nose. Almost immediately he set another afire when it tried a head-on pass.

Engaging a third Zeke, the Illinois pilot scissored violently on his opponent, who then attempted to disengage by diving. Duncan caught up at 8,000 feet and this victim, too, fell in flames. While he was climbing back through 8,000 feet another Zeke attacked from 300 feet above, then rolled inverted and bored in. It looked like a suicide attempt. Duncan pulled up sharply after firing head-on, though all three port guns were inoperative. He banked around hard for another shot but the Zeke was falling in a slow graveyard spiral toward the hills of Dublon. Bob Duncan thus became the fifth pilot to score a quadruple victory over Truk.

Fighting Nine was also escorting bombers, and Commander Phil Torrey’s division was the Essex strike’s first flight over the target. As usual, his section leader was Chick Smith, the amiable North Carolinian who had brought one of the first three Hellcats to Ream Field 13 months previously. In a fierce, hard-fought dogfight, Smith claimed three victories and emerged with his Hellcat badly damaged. He tried to nurse the shot-up fighter back to the task force but couldn’t quite make it. Like several other F6F pilots that day, he plunked down to a water landing and was rescued by a destroyer.

Escorting the same strike was Ham McWhorter, who spotted three bogeys in the distance. From three miles away they looked friendly, but as the SBDs dived and the strangers turned towards him, McWhorter led his wingman in for closer examination. Not until the bogeys were 3,000 feet away were they recognizable as three bizarre orange and black Zekes. The enemy leader had proper deflection on the F6s but unaccountably held his fire.

McWhorter and his number two, Lieutenant (jg) Bud Gehoe, turned in behind the Zekes. Each shot one into the water, then McWhorter wrote off the third with a single burst. All three Japanese went down inside ten seconds. Less than a mile away another Zeke was fast approaching but, like the first, inexplicably passed up a shot. Another of “One Slug” McWhorter’s economical bursts set the Zeke afire and the pilot bailed out. From this brief scrap, Ham McWhorter, with ten victories, temporarily emerged as the top scorer among carrier fighter pilots. Alex Vraciu of VF-6 was right behind with nine.

Fighting Nine claimed top honors during this spectacular day of combat, with a total bag of 36 planes. Twelve of Herb Houck’s pilots were now aces, not to mention Houck himself who had brought his own score to five.

At dawn there had been 365 Japanese aircraft at Truk. By 1400 the Hellcats had made a considerable dent in that number, claiming 204 destroyed in the air and on the ground. Nearly 130 had been claimed on the wing, and though Japanese records only showed little over half that number downed in air combat, it was a fact that Hellcats owned the sky over Truk from early afternoon onward.

Fighting Squadron Nine was the first F6F unit to complete a combat tour, leaving the USS Essex (CV-9) in March of 1944. Here, VF-9 pilots pose with their scoreboard, showing six Vichy French planes shot down while flying F4Fs over North Africa in 1942, as well as Japanese aircraft destroyed in the Pacific.

It was now becoming evident that greater destruction was done to grounded aircraft than to those that were airborne. But regardless of the relative claims, the Japanese lost some 270 aircraft, including at least 200 on the ground during the 17th and 18th. About 110 transient aircraft were destroyed at Eten Island’s field alone; nearly 70 of 150 planes were destroyed at Moen.

Task Force 58’s dominance was such that no Japanese aircraft were seen in the sky during the second day of the raid. In fact, by evening of the 18th there were only six operational planes left at Truk. The SBDs and TBFs went about their business, sinking 47 Japanese merchantmen, warships, and auxiliaries, completely unhindered from the air. The only enemy success came the night of the 17th when the Intrepid was torpedoed by a nocturnal raider, but she returned safely to Eniwetok.

U.S. aircraft losses were much lighter than had been anticipated; eight F6Fs were lost to enemy action during the two days, mostly to AA fire. One was flown by the VF-6 exec, big, red-headed Lieutenant George C. Bullard. He already had four air and five ground kills to his credit, but outdid himself over Moen’s bomber strip. In a dozen passes Bullard left six Bettys and four Zekes burning where they sat. Then he went after a light cruiser. But return fire damaged his engine, and he made a water landing too close to shore for rescue aircraft to retrieve him. When the Japanese came out and took “Bull” Bullard, they saved themselves much future grief. He remained a POW until 1945.

There were other raids on Truk in coming months, but none exceeded the first for prolonged intensity of aerial combat. As Ed Owen summarized: “Up till that time the Truk raid was the greatest show in town, and I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”⁶

After Truk, the fast carriers briefly dispersed to handle various assignments in the mid Pacific. Task Groups 58.2 and 58.3 swung immediately north to take a look at the Marianas. In four months these strategically located islands would become the focal point of the Pacific war, and more intelligence was required about them.

Early in the morning of 22 February, some 40 Japanese bombers assaulted the force, losing over half their number to radar-directed AA fire and operational accidents. No ships had been hit, but the Betty attack forced an hour’s delay in launching the 48-plane fighter sweep.

It was probably a blessing, as the weather proved deplorable—a 300-foot low, drizzly overcast with few breaks. Saipan, Tinian, and Rota were all scouted by Hellcat pilots who had very little reliable information about them, so they simply looked for something promising and acted accordingly. Numerous Zekes were up but the weather tended to disperse them, and in scattered dogfights during the day, 20 were shot down for the loss of five F6Fs—including those downed by flak.

Lieutenant Commander Edgar Stebbins led the Yorktown strikes on Saipan and Tinian, and Phil Torrey took the Essex squadrons into a cloud-shrouded area which his plotting board told him should include Saipan. “All of a sudden God opened a hole in the soup,” he said. “I looked down, and so help me, there was the Jap airfield.”⁷ He called his dive bombers, informing them of the providential break over the target, but he had to persuade them to come down and take a look. Twenty planes were thought destroyed on Saipan, 70 on Tinian.

A VF-18 flight off the Bunker Hill took advantage of a navigational error which put the Hellcats over Guam. They fortuitously ran across a large airfield and wrecked 11 planes on the ground, then shot 4 more out of the leaden clouds.

But most of the combat occurred over the water, where a large number of Bettys and Judys threatened the task force. Nearly 40 of these bombers were shot down by the F6F CAP, but several came perilously close to some ships. One Betty passed the Essex 50 feet away, without a shot being fired.

Fighting Nine was experimenting with a new close-defense tactic which seemed ideally suited for such a situation. It was called “Vector Base Pronto,” and was intended to simplify many last-minute interceptions by routing fighters directly to their ship in order to cut off hostiles that had penetrated the CAP.

Chick Smith had splashed a Betty within easy sight of the Essex when he was ordered “Vector Base Pronto, 270.”⁸ The troublesome Betty escaped, but task group AA gunners kept their fingers depressed on their triggers. Smith’s wingman was shot down by the “friendly” gunfire. Vector Base Pronto was subsequently abandoned.

With their recon photos filed for future reference, the fast carriers made another safe getaway. Nearly 170 Japanese aircraft had been destroyed—almost 50 more than claimed. Sixty-seven of the 74 hostiles that got in the air were shot down.

The operation also marked an end to Air Group Nine’s tour, making VF-9 the first Hellcat squadron to complete a combat deployment with the task force. But it would return to the Western Pacific in less than a year.

And the fast carriers would return to the Marianas.

March and April found TF-58 heavily engaged in a series of three raids in the Western Pacific. For the Hellcat these operations offered relatively little in the way of tactical innovation, but did reinforce the lessons of previous combats.

A two-day strike on the Palaus began at the end of March. The main objective was Japanese shipping, of which there was plenty. This was the farthest westward penetration the task force had yet made; the Palaus are on the same longitude as Osaka, only about 500 miles east of the Philippines. Another big dogfight along the lines of the Truk battle was widely expected.

But it didn’t develop. At least not on the first day. Though the force was snooped on the way in, and a few shadowers were shot down by the CAP, only about 30 enemy fighters were met by the 72-Hellcat dawn sweep of 30 March. These included several planes of a type not previously encountered by F6Fs—Japanese Army Air Force “Oscars.” The Nakajima-built fighters were similar in appearance to the Zeke but were a good 20 knots slower than the Zero at altitude. Fighting Five had little trouble with any of them and claimed ten kills upon returning to the Yorktown. The rest of the first day, the Hellcats devoted most of their efforts toward suppressing AA fire for the dive bombers and Avengers.

The next day air combat picked up dramatically. Over 40 enemy fighters had flown from the Philippines into the island group during the night. Hellcat pilots reported that most of the enemy planes looked factory-new, but so, apparently, were most of the Japanese pilots. Lieutenant John Gray of VF-5 declared that the most frustrating part of the hour-long combat over Palau was beating some other F6F to a bandit. Nevertheless, Gray and his wingman dropped all four of a Zeke flight between them.

Palau was the first combat for the Bunker Hill’s new Air Group Eight. And it was the first combat test of an amazing new device which Lieutenant Commander W. M. Collins’s VF-8 employed. This was the brand-new zero-gravity, or Z-, suit. In early 1943 VF-8’s tactical officer, Lieutenant E. Scott McCuskey, had been one of three instructors at Cecil Field, Florida, who tested the “zoot suit.” A veteran of VF-42 at Coral Sea and Midway with six and one-half kills, McCuskey immediately recognized the value of the suit, which allowed him to pull about one and a half more Gs than he normally could without graying out. The result, of course, was improved maneuverability for almost no weight increase. The suits, with air-activated bladders over the pilot’s calves, thighs, and abdomen, weighed about five pounds, and required only minor modifications to the F6Fs to install the air system.

When McCuskey reported to VF-8 in June 1943 at NAAS Pungo, Virginia, he inquired about the Z-suits and was told they were unavailable. The west coast evaluation team had recommended against their use. But McCuskey remembered meeting the manufacturers of the experimental suits he had tested, and wasted no time. “I called the Berger Brothers in Hartford, Connecticut, whom I had met at Cecil Field, and they personally provided the suits,” he recalls. “Permission was granted by the Navy to equip the F6Fs in VF-8 with the anti-blackout equipment.”⁹ Thus did Fighting Eight become the only Hellcat squadron to receive semiofficial sanction for G-suits.

But acceptance was slow in coming. Some of the young VF-8 pilots were uncertain about using such a strange new piece of equipment. McCuskey figured the best way to get a vegetarian to eat a steak is to give him a taste. So he challenged every pilot in the squadron to a mock dogfight, he wearing his zoot suit, they without one. None could stay on his tail through mind-blurring three-to-five-G maneuvers. Scotty McCuskey made his point. All but three of VF-8’s 49 pilots elected to wear the suit by the end of training.

After the first few days of combat, even the three holdouts changed their minds. And small wonder. In the squadron’s initial dogfight over Palau, the Bunker Hill fighters racked up a score of 11 kills and 3 probables without a loss. McCuskey got two of the victories.

That evening, Lieutenant Commander Bob Winston of VF-31 was on CAP when his division was vectored 75 miles west of the task force to investigate a bogey. The four Hellcats found nine bandits inbound, flying in three “V of Vs.” Winston identified them as Zekes and immediately attacked. He shot down the Japanese leader and his two wingmen in about ten seconds before he realized they were not Zekes, but Judy dive bombers. Lieutenant (jg) Conny Nooy also splashed three, and the other two Cabot pilots finished the remaining four as the sun set. This combat brought the raid’s two-day total to 93 claimed aerial victories, including 29 by Fighting Five and 25 by VF-30 off the Monterey in the last operation of its tour.

The next day was the third in a row of sweeps, strikes, and patrols as Mitscher turned directly east to hit the nearby Western Carolines. In missions over Yap, Ulithi, and Woleai, Hellcats gunned down 18 more Japanese planes. The final official count—probably not much exaggerated—was 111 aerial victories and 46 planes destroyed on the ground. Only three U.S. planes were lost in air combat, though antiaircraft fire raised Hellcat losses to eleven.

After only a week for rest and refit at Majuro, the fast carriers again sortied for the Southwest Pacific. Their task was to neutralize Japanese air power on New Guinea’s north coast around Tanahmerah Bay. Army troops were due to wade ashore at Hollandia on 22 April, so the carrier air groups began working over the area on D-Day Minus One. Aerial opposition was scanty—only 30 kills were claimed in the next four days, and the major F6F activity was ground support.

Flying on the inland side of the coastal mountain range on D-Day was a formation of Lexington and Enterprise fighters, searching for apparently nonexistent Japanese aircraft. One of the VF-16 division leaders was Lieutenant Francis M. Fleming, the Lexington pilot who had been sweating out his ace rating for the past five months. Since the two-day back-to-back dogfights near the Gilberts in November, Fleming’s score had remained at four and one-half victories. Today didn’t look at all promising.

But luck was where one found it, and Fleming noticed a Japanese twin-engine bomber being harried at treetop level by two F6Fs. He tally-hoed the hostile and dived to the attack from 12,000 feet. His approach gave him a perfect quartering run from starboard as he opened fire at maximum range. “I made a slight correction after observing my tracers going over the plane, then I hit the Sally in the mid-fuselage and wing-root area. The plane immediately caught fire in the right wing tank and engine nacelle.”¹⁰

Fleming pulled out below and behind the Sally, which then dived into the ground and exploded on impact. He was now an ace—with half a victory to spare.

Only two Hellcats were lost to enemy action during the Hollandia operation, both to AA fire. Though air combat remained sparse, 103 enemy aircraft were thought destroyed on the ground by carrier planes. The actual tally was uncertain because a great many had obviously been shot up or bombed earlier by U.S. Army aircraft.

If the Hollandia operation was something of a disappointment to the Hellcat squadrons, they could have cheered up. The fast carriers were going back to Truk.

More than two months had passed since the first Truk raid, and in the interim Japanese air strength had been partially rebuilt. By 29 April, slightly over 100 aircraft were operational on the atoll’s airfields—far short of the number which had been mauled during mid-February, but respectable nonetheless. As a result, 62 Zekes were airborne when two divisions of VF-32 off the Langley (CVL-27) arrived in the early morning light of the 29th, well in advance of the main sweep of 24 bomb-toting fighters from the Enterprise and Lexington.

Fortunately for Lieutenant Commander Eddie Outlaw’s Langley pilots, low thick clouds prevented the Japanese from organizing properly, and his formation had to deal directly with “only” 30 or so Zekes.

Approaching the lagoon at 10,000 feet, Outlaw orbited his eight planes for ten minutes to size up the situation. Then his second division leader, Lieutenant Hollis Hills, sighted a strange formation eight miles to the west at about 6,000 feet, heading toward the Hellcats. Hills’s flight remained as top cover while Outlaw went down to investigate with his own division.

The 25 to 30 Zekes were flying three-plane vees, but the formation abruptly scattered when enemy pilots at the rear opened fire, warning the others. Outlaw’s Hellcats waded into the Japanese from starboard with a 2,000-foot altitude advantage, and all four F6Fs scored in the first pass.

The Japanese showed no air discipline or planned tactics other than two Lufbery circles, one above the other. Outlaw dropped on to the tails of three Zekes in succession and burned them from almost dead astern. Lieutenant (jg) Donald Reeves also bagged three more Zekes, two of which exploded or flamed. Then Hills came down from above, lined up a Zeke and fired into the cockpit. He passed by close enough to see “the pilot’s head practically shot off.”¹¹ While Outlaw was engaged in his own shooting, Hills knocked two more off his skipper’s tail and also claimed one probable. Outlaw then shot down another Zeke, his fifth of the battle.

The two divisions were able to remain in range of one another for mutual support all through the combat, depriving the Zekes of any chance to destroy the Hellcats piecemeal. Outlaw’s element leader was tall, lanky Lieutenant (jg) Richard H. May, a debonair Oregonian who burned or exploded three bandits. May also hit three others which fell into the overcast and went unclaimed. His wingman, Ensign John Pond, claimed a pair.

Fighting 32 had recorded a lopsided victory, with 20 destroyed and two probables for one F6F damaged. Eddie Outlaw became an ace in this one combat, and Dick May ran his own score to five, counting two snoopers he had dispatched off Eniwetok and Woleai. But in one respect the most remarkable performance was that of Hills. The dark-haired Californian may have been the only American pilot of the war to gain confirmed victories against both major Axis powers while in the service of two countries. His first combat had come nearly two years before when, flying with an RCAF squadron in the Dieppe Raid of August 1942, he shot down a Focke-Wulf 190. It was the first victory scored by North American’s famous P-51 series, as Hills had then flown the Allison-powered Mustang I built for the Royal Air Force.

This VF-16 pilot flew his shot-up Hellcat back to the Lexington after the second Truk raid, 29 April 1944. Note the large shell holes and smoke stains on the port wing.

Another noteworthy event of the day was two Zekes shot down by Alex Vraciu. He had scored four kills over Truk in the first raid, but when VF-6 rotated home Vraciu transferred to VF-16 for more combat. When he had landed aboard the Lexington for the first time, his Hellcat sported an “A” gasoline ration sticker on the canopy. The “A” coupon allowed wartime motorists four gallons of gasoline per week. It took 400 gallons to fill a Hellcat with drop tank attached!

The second Truk raid lasted into the next day, but with little more air combat. The final claim was 65 aerial victories and 85 bombed or strafed to destruction on the ground. The aerial claim was quite accurate, as Japanese records showed 59 of their planes shot down, but they admitted to only 34 destroyed on the airfields. Five carrier planes were lost in the air and 21 fell to the always-dangerous flak. But by now it was apparent that Truk was mastered. No important ships were found, and when the carriers departed only a dozen or so enemy aircraft were left operational at Japan’s once-proud Gibralter of the Pacific.

Now the path was clear to the Marianas.

Hellcat Squadrons in Combat: January to April 1944

VF-2	Hornet	Commander William A. Dean, Jr.
VF-5	Yorktown	Lieutenant Commander Edward M. Owen
VF-6	Intrepid	Lieutenant Commander Harry W. Harrison, Jr.
VF-8	Bunker Hill	Lieutenant Commander William M. Collins, Jr.
VF-9	Essex	Lieutenant Commander Herbert N. Houck
VF-10	Enterprise	Lieutenant Commander William R. Kane, Lieutenant R.W. Schumann
VF-12	Saratoga	Lieutenant Commander Robert G. Dose
VF-18	Bunker Hill	Lieutenant Commander Sam L. Silber
VF-23	Princeton	Commander Henry L. Miller
VF-24	Belleau Wood	Lieutenant Commander Edward M. Link
VF-25	Cowpens	Lieutenant Robert H. Price
VF-30	Monterey	Lieutenant Commander J.G. Sliney
VF-31	Cabot	Lieutenant Commander Robert A. Winston
VF-32	Langley	Lieutenant Commander Edward C. Outlaw
VF-34	Solomons