Well it was another typical steamy morning at our South Pacific base. We had rotated to this little island base with our Hellcats a couple of weeks earlier, and a routine had already set in......Wake up, shower off yesterday's sweat to make room for today's sweat...grab some chow in the mess hall, and get today's briefing.
There had been some harassing enemy air activity up and down the slot over the last few days, but on every patrol we came up empty. Today seemed abit different though, the enemy was making big push at A24 and reports were that it was a very large effort. We knew the Carrier task force had to be close into A24 to support this enemy advance. At least that's what the intelligence guys were saying, but we all know what an oxymoron naval air intelligence can be.
So off we went to get into our Hellcats for another try at locating the enemy task force. Our beautiful blue Hell Kitties were loaded with 1000 lb bombs and looked mean as hell. We taxied onto the flight line behind our leader for today's mission , Zigrat. In tow were HBlair, Dingy, TS, Jagdneun, Oddball (woof, woof) and myself.
Climb out was uneventful except for Oddball whose engine was feeling some negative waves and wasn't able to keep up, although he nursed it enough to stay in the mission.
As we passed through 10,000 ft on our way to our cruise altitude of 11,000 ft we came into a cumulus formation that is typical for this area of the Pacific (for once the meteoralogy guys got it right). Large puffy white clouds that could lead a formation of Hellcats into the body shop if we weren't careful. No problems though, as we passed in and out of each cloud bank our formation held together beautifully. Only problem is those same clouds could hide a carrier task group down there as well.
At 11,000 Zigrat called level and to tuck it in. Done!
Just as we passed through the last cloud bank we spotted some low cons.....hmmm maybe we just might see that carrier today. And as if to add an exclamation point to that thought we started entering another cloud bank, but these were different.....these were black, mean, and angry.....that's right fella's, we found our target and the flak going off all around us confirm it!
Zig calls out on the radio for everyone to arm bombs and tuck it in even closer. Hehe...already done!
Just as we start to make out individual ships we see the enemy fleet's air cover approaching.....not going to be in time though...we got the target sighted and are boring in!
Now the flak is absolutely murderous, large orange and black puffs are going off all around us, buffeting our planes and raining shrapnel on us. But we press on, we've got a job to do and a base to relieve. Time to create an artificial reef with some Bish scrap iron!
Just as a flak burst goes of close to my canopy, Zigrat calls for the formation to dive on the flattop! The formation peels down together, one-by-one targeting the carrier specifically with our 1,000 lb easter eggs.
Now the small caliber stuff comes alive, and I mean alive, tracers are ripping past us and around us. The whole scene starts to happen in slow motion, flak bursts, tracer fire, small adjustments to my dive angle....lots of angry lead being thrown into the sky!
At 3,500 feet we let loose our ordinance and pull out of our screaming dive for all we got!!! That flattop fills my windscreen as I release and try to pull as many G's as I can to get out.
Then on pull-out I sneak a look back and BOOM..BOOM...BOOM....it seems that each of our hellcat's eggs have found their target and the flattop is taking mortal damage.
SCRATCH ONE FLATTOP comes the call over the radio frequency!! Quickly Zigrat calls for a damage check, and to our amazement and relief, not 1 Hellcat took any serious damage. Now it was on to A24 to sweep the remaining enemy fighters out of the area!
A job well done by our big, beautiful, blue Cat!
Cobra
