On Saturday, January 28th, 2006, I went to a talk at the Museum of Flight (
http://www.museumofflight.org) in Seattle. It was a panel discussion with veterans of the Battle of the Philippine Sea, which took place on June 19th and 20th, 1944. This was the last large-scale carrier-to-carrier battle of WWII and is often referred to in the US as the “Marianas Turkey Shoot.” I don’t like calling it that, though, as it seems to me a disrespectful name, as if it wasn’t a life-and-death struggle for many Americans or as if the Japanese who fought and died in it posed no threat.
In attendance were author Barrett Tillman as moderator of the discussion, Hellcat ace James Duffy, Hellcat ace John T. Wolf, Avenger pilot Warren Omark, and landing-signal-officer John Harper. Alexander Vraciu, one of the leading Navy aces, was scheduled to be there, but due to illness could not attend.
The event started with Barrett Tillman giving a brief history of the Marianas battle, giving information on the lead up to the battle, on various commanders in the battle, and about various participants in the battle. He was a very interesting speaker and had a lot of historical photographs to show during his introduction, including wartime photos of all of the panelists. One interesting thing he mentioned was the the US put a battleship group out in front of the carriers, so that they would be the first big ships the Japanese pilots would see. Most Japanese pilots who got through the fighter screens did indeed go after the battleships and did not press through them to the carriers. After his introduction of the battle and of the pilots, he turned over discussion to each of them in turn.
First up was James Duffy, Hellcat pilot of VF-15 with 5 kills. VF-15 was the squadron led by David McCampbell, leading Navy ace. VF-15 was flying off of the Essex. (The following, I believe, was part of his story. It’s possible that I am misremembering, and it was John Wolf who related it. If so, I sincerely apologize, but I didn’t take notes and am going on memory here.) He talked about his flight of four attacking an airfield in the area. Two of the Hellcats were to attack aircraft down low and on the field, and two were reserved for top cover at about 12k. He was one of the cover planes. As they got into the area, though, instead of there being almost no aircraft up, there was a large circling mass of planes from about 12,000 feet on down. He said it looked like buzzards circling in the air. He was concerned about the two pilots who went in low. He and the other cover pilot dove in to attack. He made a pass on one Zero, and got hits into its tail, but pulling as hard as he could (since he was going so fast), he couldn’t get the nose up enough to walk the shots up the fuselage. He climbed back up after this run and came down for another. He pursued this one, got shots into the cockpit area, and the cockpit erupted in flames. The Zero snapped into a spin and spiraled down into the ground. He climbed back up again, came back around, and even though total elapsed time in the fight by this point was maybe a minute, there was no one around that he could see – everyone had dispersed.
He talked about how the Hellcat was a much better plane that the Zero, as it was faster, could climb better, and could take more damage. He said that they didn’t dogfight with the Zeros, as the Zero could outturn the Hellcat at lower speeds by a lot; but as long as they kept their speed up, they had a lot of advantages over the Zero.
Second was John T. Wolf, Hellcat pilot of VF-2 (the “Rippers”) with 7 kills. VF-2 was flying off the Hornet. He talked about some of the choices people make in war. During the battle, one of the planes in his flight was hit, and its pilot bailed out. Although he was completely out of ammunition by that time, Wolf stayed in the area circling, calling out the position to assist in the pilot getting picked up. After some circling, he noticed a Japanese pilot parachuting down seeming right on top of the US pilot. Wolf was worried that this would endanger the US pilot. So he flew his plane through the Japanese pilot’s chute. When he landed, portions of the chute were still attached to his aircraft. He wasn’t sure if that action was the right thing to do, but he pointed out that in battle, you have to make those sorts of decisions and hope that it is the right thing. The pilot who bailed out, for whom Wolf had killed the enemy parachutist, was captured by the Japanese on a nearby island and beheaded.
He also talked about a time he was flying along and spotted a Zero ahead and above him, flying through some cloud cover. He pulled up into the cloud to go after the Zero, then thought that such a maneuver wasn’t such a good idea, since he couldn’t see anything in the cloud. He also didn’t want to come out of the cloud in front of the Zero, so he cut back on throttle. When he came out of the cloud, the Zero was in front of him. The Zero saw him and started to maneuver around some. Wolf just cut back throttle some more and let the Zero maneuver around in front of him and stayed on its tail (I assume the Zero was doing rolls, not hard turning). At one point, the Zero rolled inverted and started down. Now Wolf followed and got ready to take a shot when he noticed that it didn’t look like the Zero would be able to pull out of the split s before hitting the water, so he broke off and watched the Zero crash into the water. A little after that, he noticed a parachute in the air. It turned out that the Zero pilot had bailed out when the plane had rolled inverted. Wolf was puzzled because he hadn’t fired a shot. Also, at that time, they were 150-200 miles out to sea, and he figured there was no way the Japanese pilot would get picked up out in the middle of the ocean.
Third was Warren Omark, Avenger pilot of VT-24, flying off the Belleau Wood. He talked about his flight’s attack on a Japanese carrier. They (four of them) were flying toward the target area, broke out of some clouds and spotted the carrier. The flight leader, George T. Brown, ordered the four planes to attack from different directions, so they spread out and did so, without any fighters, divebombers, or other torpedo bombers in the area. Omark said it was terrible to have to approach ships at 250 ft. altitude, at low speed, straight and level, and just sit there while you were getting shot at by an enormous amount of antiaircraft fire, but that’s what you did. He also talked about how hard it was to judge aim and when to drop your torpedo, as it was all just by eye and involved a lot of guesswork. He attacked the carrier from the rear quarter, and then broke away to get out of the area.
During the attack run, Brown’s plane got mauled by AA and caught on fire. The crew of the plane, George Platz and Ellis Babcock, tried to reach Brown on the intercom, but got nothing back. They decided to bail out. The Mae West lifejacket belonging to one of them had been punctured by flak, so they both clung to the one working lifejacket. They were in the middle of the Japanese fleet, and at one point got caught in the wake from a Japanese battleship and got tossed around. They survived the night in the water and luckily got spotted by a seaplane the next day. They witnessed the Japanese carrier that they attacked sink. It was the Hiyo. Omark’s rear-quarter torpedo hit the Hiyo and was in whole or part repsonsible for the sinking. The Hiyo was the only Japanese ship sunk during “the mission beyond darkness.”
On the way back to the carrier, Omark spotted Brown’s plane. Apparently, the fire had gone out. Omark could see Brown’s plane maneuvering a bit aimlessly. Omark maneuvered over to Brown and communicated with him (I assume through hand signals) for Brown to join up on Omark, so that Omark could lead him back to the US carriers. Omark could see that Brown’s arm was bloody and knew that Brown was severely wounded. This was during the famous late raid of the Marianas battle, though, where the US found the location of the Japanese forces and launched a raid late in the day and at extreme range knowing that the planes would be returning in darkness and that many would run out of fuel before they could make it back. By this time, it was getting very dark, and although Brown had joined on Omark, at one point, Omark looked back around, and Brown was gone in the darkness. That was the last anyone ever saw of George T. Brown.
Omark continued back to where he thought the US carriers should be. Again, it involved a lot of guesswork in those days. When he got there, it was only open ocean. He called on his radio, and got a response. The response said that the carrier group would send up a night fighter to come find him and point him in the right direction. Omark said he was so very happy and thankful when he saw a night fighter show up on his wing and point him in the right direction. He didn’t know the night-fighter pilot’s name, but the moderator and author, Barrett Tillman, had done research and was able to tell Omark who that night-fighter pilot was. Omark made it back to a carrier, but now he had to land. For the 10-15 minutes prior to making it back to the carrier, his fuel gauge had been showing empty. So, he was expecting his engine to stop at any moment. As he turned on final for a landing, another plane was approaching for a straight-in landing. Omark said his thought at that moment was “No way!” and he kept on approach. The other plane broke off, and Omark landed successfully in the dark. Afterwards, he asked the refuelers how much fuel was remaining in his Avenger. They told him there was none in his tanks.
[continued in part 2]
