My First Combat Patrol: Fly East or Fly West?

Air Group 4 was assigned to the Essex at this time. It was an old line Air Group, which had served aboard the Saratoga in peacetime. As indoctrination into the group, I flew a Combat Air Patrol, and had my first carrier landing under combat conditions.

 

The fighters of Air Group 4 were assigned to conduct a Fighter sweep over the Island of Leyte on 12 December 1944. A sweep is designated as a flight over enemy territory looking for targets of opportunity. In contrast, a strike is assigned a specific target. The only specific target for the day was the Ormoc Bay .

 

We took off shortly after dawn. The weather was overcast, with a ceiling of about 1,000 feet, and impending rain. After the join up we received a signal to form a line abreast in order to test fire our machine guns. As an omen of what was to come, try as I might, I could only get one gun, out of the six, to fire. This should have been sufficient grounds to abort my flight. However I was anxious to get my first combat mission out of the way, and thought, one gun is better than none. So I stayed with the formation as we began to climb through the overcast. We hadn't been climbing long, until I noticed my Cylinder Head Temperature approaching 275 degrees Centigrade. Above 275 C. the engine is overheated and begins to sputter and conk out. I opened the Cowl Flaps and enriched the Mixture, trying to cool the engine. I could only do this for a few seconds at a time, because the man on whom I was flying wing, began to pull away from me in the clouds. I kept up with this routine until we were at about 20,000 feet. The clouds became more dense and in order not to lose the plane I was flying with, I was unable to open the Cowl Flaps or enrich the mixture. I flew on hoping the engine would hold until we were above the instrument weather. A few minutes later, a division came into view, climbing up and into my starboard wing. In order to avoid a mid-air collision, I pulled up sharply. At that instant the engine conked out, and the rest of my division left me behind.

 

We had been climbing at a steep angle, and were only a few knots above stalling speed. The combination of the sharp pull up and the failure of the engine precipitated a stall. I was like the proverbial one-armed paper hanger trying to cool the engine and get it restarted, as well as recover from the stall. I made a partial recovery, but pulled up too sharply and entered a second, higher speed stall. I realized I was involved in a very dangerous situation known as "progressive stalls." Progressive stalls develop when the recovery from the first stall is incomplete, because the pull up has been too sharp. The wing then stalls out again at a higher speed. If recovery from this stall is also attempted before attaining sufficient airspeed in the recovery dive, a third stall is the result, and so on. Each stall occurs at a higher air speed. If not corrected soon enough, the speed required to recover would be so high that the pilot would either pull the wings off,.or run out of altitude. After my second stall, I finally made a complete recovery. By the time I had recovered from the stalls and got the engine restarted, I was at 8,000 feet. Recovery had been complicated by the fact that I was on instruments in thick clouds.

 

I began to climb slowly, to prevent overheating the engine again. I needed to gain altitude in order to receive the ZB -YE signals from the Essex and know which way to head home. The ZB -YE is a low frequency signal broadcast from the carrier. The signal is a line of sight transmission. This means, the greater the distance between pilot and carrier, the greater the altitude he must attain to insure that he is not below the curvature of the earth, and unable to receive the line of sight transmission.

 

The ZB-YE sends out a coded signal, a different letter of the alphabet for each 15 degree segment in a 360 degree pattern. Each day the letters are changed, to foil any enemy attempt to locate the Fleet if the code were to be recovered from a downed plane. The pilot listens to the code for each letter in the 360 degree circle, determines which segment has the greatest intensity, and flies the reciprocal bearing indicated on the circle to arrive at the Carrier.

 

As I passed through 17,000 feet, the clouds thinned out, and I was in a huge open area with clouds all around me. I saw two planes headed toward me. I thought they might be Japs, so I took my one gun off safety and prepared to fight. Shortly before they passed over me, I saw they were two F6F's. I immediately went into a vertical turn, in an effort to join up on them. By the time I had completed my turn they had disappeared into the wall of clouds, and I was alone.

 

There had been no opportunity to record the headings and times on each leg flown after we left the Essex, so I had been unable to keep a navigation log, and had no idea where I was. We had headed east after takeoff and the gun check, so I had the feeling I was still some place east of the Fleet. I listened to the ZB -YE, and the reciprocal of the strongest signal indicated I was west and should fly east to find the fleet. My intuition still told me that I was east of the Fleet and should fly to the west to intercept my carrier. I then had to make one of the hardest decisions I have ever made. Should I believe my instruments or my intuition? If the ZB -YE was wrong, or I had read the signal incorrectly, I would be flying east to a watery grave. My training paid off and I selected the course to the east. As I progressed eastward, I made a gradual letdown, hoping to break out below the overcast. The radio signal became stronger, as I flew, so I knew I was headed in the proper direction.

 

I broke out of the overcast at about 1,200 feet, but could see no ships. My view was partially blocked by low scud. At last, I spied a gray silhouette at a distance of several miles. As I approached the gray form, more ships appeared. I saw a carrier and headed for it. As I passed over, I checked the number on the Flight Deck and identified it as the Hornet. I had a diagram of the relative positions of the ships in the Task Group, so I knew where to look for the Essex. As I entered the traffic pattern and let down for a landing I thanked the Almighty and heaved a sigh of relief.

 

After I landed, the ship continued into the wind, and every few minutes another plane, or two made a landing. The sweep had been a total disaster. Most of the planes became separated in the dense overcast, and eventually made it back to the fleet. The Flight Leader and his wing-man thought they had made it over Leyte, but found the overcast was so low they were unable to get below, and so returned to base. We were extremely lucky, all of our planes returned. Some pilots from other carriers were lost at sea.