How We Beat The Zero
By Lieut. Comder. E. Scott McCuskey, USNR
Flying Magazine September, 1944 *
This story goes back to the day when the bad news of Pearl Harbor began to filter in over the radio of the old Yorktown. We heard that the Japs were hitting everywhere with their Zeros, and we tried to evaluate the fearsome reports of the unbelievable climb, speed, and fire- power of that mysterious airplane. We knew that our little lady, the Wildcat, was all we had. Before we started for the Pacific, plane crews worked day and night in Norfolk making the first installations of armor plate, self-sealing tanks, adding radio equipment and guns. Under the load, our poor little Wildcat lost much of her maneuverability, speed, and climb-the things for which she had been designed. However, we gained the protection that was to bring us back from many a battle.
Few fighters in the fleet realized that our planes weren't good enough to dogfight the Japs; the last we'd heard, the nips were far behind the times. Our tactics against fighters at the beginning of the war were built around individual combat and on the assumption of our superiority in this department. In training maneuvers we scored victories, technically, by turning inside our opponent and getting on his tail or by out-climbing him and pouncing down in a gunnery run, preferably from fore or aft. These tactics assumed the superiority of our own planes in turn, climb, and speed.
Moreover, such tactics assumed that we were better flyers and marksmen. This proved true, thank God! Unbelievably thorough drills on the gunnery sleeves, practicing deflection runs from every practical angle of fire- that’s how Lieut. Comdr. "Butch" O'Hare, Lieut. Comdr. "Swede" Vejtasa and some of the other high-score boys were able to cut down bombers the way they did.
They shot with deadly accuracy from wherever the enemy's free guns were blindest.
According to the "book" by which we got our early training, the fighting squadron had been organized around the three- lane section as a basic unit, maneuvering in six or nine-plane divisions. The three planes of the section flew in a V and one of the commonest formations was for the sections themselves to go into "V of V's"-the nine planes of the second section bringing up the rear to form double-header V, like a corporal's chevrons. On parade it was very very impressive.
For attack, six planes would string out in echelon, like half of a V of ducks. Fighter after fighter peeled off,, leader first, to dive on the enemy. From then on it was a matter of individual combat, each plane making a run on a plane in the enemy squadron until the fracas was over and all pilots in the division joined up on the leader again.
At the time the war began, some squadrons had gone over to the more flexible two-plane section, but there was still little conception of defensive teamwork as we know it now. The divisions usually flew as a string of four planes manipulated by the squadron leader. Their standard defensive tactic was for the leader to turn back and shoot any attacking fighter off the tail of the last plane in line the point where the enemy usually struck. This was a bit tough on "tail-end Charlie," we discovered in the Pacific. He had a way of not coming back.
Despite the combat reports we kept getting in the first few months of the war, most of us still believed that in a dog fight we could knock down anything the Japs brought out. We didn't really get the bad news until they jumped us in the Battle of the Coral Sea.
I got mixed up with three Zeros at Coral Sea. I was one of a pitifully small escort of four Wildcats conveying a squadron of torpedo planes in an attack on the Jap task force. Just as antiaircraft fire from the Jap ships began to rock our planes, I looked up to see three Zeros high above in 'perfect position to peel off and dive on one E. Scott McCuskey.
I turned into the first attacker as he dropped at me. But my slow Wildcat couldn't bring me about to face him, so I had to sit there and watch him open fire. A shock like electricity went through my body as his smoking tracers approached. How lazily they moved.
But the oncoming tracers began to drop astern; my attacker had underled me. Immediately, the second Zero came screaming at me but he, too, proved to be a poor marksman. At almost the same instant I saw the first Zero pull up in front of me in flames, shot down by a team-mate, Billy Woollen, as the Jap dived past me and pulled up for another attack. My second attacker made a tactical error of pulling up in front of me, and as he did I was able to bring my guns to bear: It was my first Zero!
In pulling up to shoot, I lost speed and the third Zero made a run on me.
I rolled into a cloud and climbed for altitude. As I came out, I found the Zero and closed in on him for a shot, but he spotted me and pulled into a tight loop which I was unable to follow because of the superior maneuverability of his plane. So I ducked back into the cloud just as his tracer ripped my tail.
Coming out once more I nosed my Wildcat over and dived straight down to the water where I was safe from overhead runs, since my attacker would only have gone into the drink. Then I zig zagged rapidly from side to side to duck his tracer fire as he hung on my tail. Finally I reached a nearby rain squall.
My inglorious performance on this occasion illustrates the first step in the tactics we adopted against the Zeros. We simply dived away from them and ran away, taking advantage, of the one performance superiority of our planes, superior speed and control in a dive.
Low on gas, I had to take the nearest landing spot, which turned out to be the Lexington. When she was hit I couldn't fly off and had to abandon ship with her crew.
Soon I was back on the York bound for Pearl Harbor. There we got new planes and 18 of us in Fighting 42 joined forces with Fighting Three under Comdr. Jimmy Thach, to form a new Yorktown squadron.
At the Battle of Midway I had shot down three dive bombers and damaged three others when two of us broke the first wave of attackers, but four them fouled up the York's decks so she couldn't land us for gas and ammunition The whole situation brought home the need for more fighters, as well as planes with greater range and ammunition capacity. Ducking into clouds, diving and running, we ganged up in desperate little groups to fight our way back through the swarming Zeros. I had to land aboard the Enterprise. As plane after plane came back shot full of holes, punch-drunk and weary pilots stumbled into ready rooms and stood looking at each other in stunned silence.
The boys in all the air groups were pretty low. Though we'd turned back the Japs at Coral and again at Midway, we'd lost two carriers and a lot of airplanes. Torpedo Eight was gone and some' of the bombing squadrons were missing half their men. Moreover, in these two battles the fighters learned first hand that the Zeros could fly faster, out- climb and outmaneuver us.
After Midway, fighters all over the fleet went into huddles with their squadron leaders-such men as Comdr. Jimmy Flatley, Comdr. Jimmy Thach, and Comdr. Charles Fenton. We got our heads together on ways of bringing against the Zeros the best assets of our training and our planes.
The day of the dogfight was over for us because the Japs could run circles around us in single combat. Our first emergency defense was to dive for the water and "jink" away, skidding out of the path of the pursuers' tracer. But running away got tiresome; so we ganged up on them. In mass melees, we'd all stick together and buzz around "like bees in a bottle," to use the words of Comdr. Roy Simpler, formerly skipper of Fighting Five. We'd just swarm around, with every pilot getting the Zero on someone else's tail. If you got stuck with one, the idea was to swing around in front of another Wildcat so your pal could shoot -him off. It took plenty of self-control to let some Jap pepper away at your own tail while you went after the Zero on your wingman's tail.
This tactic was successful because the Zero couldn't take two seconds fire from a Wildcat while a Wildcat could take sometimes as high as 15 minutes fire from a Zero.
Our practice of swinging around in front of another plane when a Zero got on our tail was a natural step in the evolution of the maneuver known as the Thach Weave, one of the greatest contributions ever made to combat tactics. Based on the common experience of many squadrons, the weave was interpreted and crystallized as a tactic by Commander Thach after the Battle of Midway. He spread the gospel to the other
squadrons and then went back to operational training headquarters to work out and teach a whole new system of fighter tactics.
So much for the defensive. On the offense, we always maneuvered for altitude, bearing down on the Japs in high speed runs, with our six .50-caliber machine guns. We hit and kept going, and then jockeyed into position for another run.
We had the Japs with our marksman- ship, a product of 20 years of Navy stress on gunnery. Highly trained in deflection shooting, we did not have to depend, like the enemy, on a straight shot from fore or aft, but fired away from all angles abeam, leading our Nip targets like clay pigeons. Our little Wildcat, with her armor and leak-proof tanks, took everything the Japs could deal out and began to pile up a three to one ratio on the enemy.
It was apparent, however, that with the Wildcat we could fight only a defensive fight. Pilots were crying for a plane with more speed, climb and range- something that would take us out farther and carry a heavier load. Their plea was answered by the Hellcat and the Corsair, which embody the combined experience of flyers since Pearl Harbor. As a carrier-based pilot, I have been interested principally in the Hellcat, since this is the plane particularly adapted to carrier use.
While the Hellcat was in production, most of us who had been in Fighting 42 since Pearl Harbor were sent back to the states to pass on our experience to the new flyers so urgently needed. We had set up what I believe to be the high mark for planes shot down in those early days of the war, with a score of 54 Japs to only four of our own men. Seven of the Japs were mine, plus several assists and probables. Exhausted and jumpy from long combat duty, we boarded a ship for San Francisco, long overdue for a rest.
After a year of training Naval aviator at Jacksonville, Commander Co11ins invited me to join his squadron as tactic officer. Then began one of the stiffest workouts in my experience. At Norfolk during June, July and August, we poured on the heat from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.-seven days a week. Besides their previous flying as instructors, most of the new pilots in our squadron had over 200 hours in Hellcats before we ever hit the decks of our carrier. The Hellcat Squadron, as was called, shaped up rapidly into a polished combat machine.
Though it had the jump in flying experience, the squadron was to see mary more hundreds of hours in the air before it went out to combat, consisting for the most part of intensive gunnery training. Navy squadrons usually have around 4 hours of flying together before they hit combat and this extensive practice (of a squadron) is one secret of the fantastic combat ratios we are running up in the Pacific- ratios often as high as 10 to one but averaging more than four to one.
Having long since dropped the three-plane formation, our fighters now work in two-plane teams, the teammates flying abreast of each other to form a division of four.
To protect ourselves and the planes under escort from lurking Zeros, we fighters must keep a flawless lookout every minute we are in the air. Our present flight formation is very effective. Flying opposite each other, the lead and the wingman of each section watch in a semi-circle- each looking in the direction of the other- and there is no part of the surface, horizon or sky that is not under constant observation.
Though we fly the Hellcat and the Corsair, vastly superior to our old planes in speed, maneuverability and range, the backbone of our tactics is the same protective maneuver we developed in our Wildcats- the Thach Weave.
Simple in theory, the maneuver is difficult in practice and we really need those hundreds of hours of team practice to stick together continuously through long melee and maneuver violent enough to bring our guns to bear on the enemy without having his bear on us. If one plane in a section is shot down, the remaining plane flies as a section. If one section is lost, the remaining section splits and conducts the same tactics. Thus every man in the division must be able to act as a section leader.
So much for the defense. Going the offensive, the three primary jobs the fighters are:
1. Escorting bombers and torpedo planes.
2. Shooting down attacking bomber and torpedo planes.
3. Intercepting enemy fighters.
4. Strafing enemy ships and shore installations.
On escort, it is the unvarying duty the fighters to stay with their charges and not allow themselves to be draw off in mass dogfights with enemy interceptors during which other enemy planes might swoop down on their own bombers. When under enemy attack, the escorting fighter divisions weave back and forth over the bombers, the teams mutually protecting each other against attack from any quarter even though the enemy may have the altitude advantage.
Pilots are drilled endlessly on fundamental approaches, whether from overhead, aft, side, or below, but this is teamwork which makes these approaches count in the battle tally. Just as fighters work in teams on the defense, so they operate on the offence. The minimum team is two planes, although whole divisions team up under some circumstances.
“In modern aerial warfare,” says the Navy fighter manual, “the lone eagle is a dead duck.”
The target of two-plane team is one enemy airplane. The two teammates gang up on the Zero and keep him under control until one or both fighters can shoot him out of the air. Larger units, such as the section or the division, may team up to attack an enemy formation; this is the usual routine when there is an enemy dive bomber squadron to be cut down. One unit feints while the other jabs, and the two vary their punches, always striking from the point of greatest vulnerability.
I’ve tried to give some idea of what teamwork really means to us in aerial combat.
*Note: These words were from a combat pilot in 1944 and published in a popular American aviation magazine. Many of the terms and/or references may offend some readers 56 years later.
