The Pacific (6 page)

Moebus's letter betrayed more than just the exasperation of a commander, though. He attributed the problems in his ACTU to "inaptitude incidental to entry of large numbers of cadets and the forced draft method of training in large training centers which does not entirely eliminate mediocre material." Put another way, the navy's new flight training program was failing. Commander L. A. Moebus expressed the frustration many graduates of the Naval Academy at Annapolis felt toward the hordes of civilians now coming through the Naval Aviation program. Men like Vernon Micheel, who had attended college to become a dairy farmer, could never be a professional on par with an Annapolis man.

While waiting for a reply from the bureau, Moebus ordered his wayward ensign to stay with the wounded SNJ. Beginning the next day, as the mechanics repaired it, Ensign Micheel prepared a report listing the cost of each new part and of each hour of labor expended. The roar of aircraft engines echoed through the big hangar constantly. Mike tried not to think about where he would wind up if he was expelled from the ACTU.

THE JAPANESE STOPPED BOMBING THE ROCK IN MID-JANUARY, MUCH TO LIEUTENANT Shofner's relief. The pause gave the Americans time to prepare. General MacArthur issued a statement to all his unit commanders. He ordered each company commander to deliver this message to his men: "Help is on the way from the United States. Thousands of troops and hundreds of planes are being dispatched. The exact time of arrival of reinforcements is unknown . . . it is imperative that our troops hold out until these reinforcements arrive. No further retreat is possible. We have more troops in Bataan than the Japanese have thrown against us; our supplies are ample; a determined defense will defeat the enemys' attack. It is a question now of courage and determination. If we fight, we will win; if we retreat, we will be destroyed."
²³
The message improved morale on the island, even as the sounds of the battle on Bataan reached them.

In early February, the enemy began shelling Corregidor with their artillery. It became clear to all immediately that shells fired from big guns hurt a lot more than bombs dropped from twenty thousand feet. The whistle of incoming rounds lasted only a few seconds, as opposed to the long, monotonous hum of an approaching bomber squadron. The whistle came on rainy days and at night. It made walking aboveground hazardous. The marines, who lived on top of the island, began to envy the army, most of whom had crowded into Malinta Tunnel, deep under the Rock.

Shofner was promoted to captain on January 5 and took command of the 2nd Battalion's reserve company. His two rifle platoons and one machine-gun platoon stood ready to answer a call from any unit on the beaches. The shelling usually cut the communications wires, however, so there were more and more periods of time when he only knew what he could see. He had his men shovel several feet of dirt into the walls of Middleside Barracks to create a final defensive line. He had them dig caves to give them shelter from the barrages.

Shofner, nicknamed "Shifty" by his friends because he always had an eye for tricks and shortcuts, would have certainly begun to notice the problems with the island's renowned defenses. Some of the great ten-inch guns could not be turned to engage the enemy's artillery because they had been built to face ships at sea. A few of the other main gun batteries already had been destroyed because their concrete barbettes left them open to the sky. The island's power plant had been built in an exposed position. The Fourth Marines learned quickly how to keep low. They suffered fewer casualties in February than they had in January, although they received more gunfire. At night they stood their posts, watching for landing boats and hoping for their navy. If an electrical storm brought flashes of light, one of Shofner's guards was sure to report, "that's our fleet coming in."

The departure of the president of the Philippines, Manuel Quezon, could not be hidden from the men. The gold and silver of his treasury had departed already. These troubling signs put the same questions to everyone's lips: "Where the hell's the navy?" and "What's the matter back home?"
²⁴

ENSIGN MICHEEL TRACKED THE COST OF REPAIRING THE AIRPLANE WITHOUT complaint. While his colleagues roared aloft, he spent his days watching the mechanics work. He enjoyed learning the intricacies of engines and ailerons. Three weeks passed before the CO called him into the office to inform him he had been reinstated. Commander Moebus did not elaborate, but Mike could guess the truth. The chief of the Bureau of Naval Aviation had reviewed his file, concluded that the wheels-up landing had been an isolated lapse, and sent a reply to Moebus that fell just short of saying, "Hey, there's a war on, you know."

Mike had missed out on advanced instruction in tactical flying, navigation, and scouting. He took his first flight in the backseat of an SNJ, watching one of his peers work through a navigation problem. A schedule of classroom instruction mixed with flight time followed. Ten days later, on February 19, the ACTU received the navy's modern combat aircraft. For some of his classmates, this meant climbing into an F4F Wildcat, the navy's best fighter. For Mike, it meant climbing into the SBD Dauntless, the navy's scouting and dive bombing aircraft. His squadron had received SBD-3s, the latest version. He began flying an hour or so most every day. Sometimes an instructor flew in the plane, with Micheel riding in the rear seat gunner's position, but usually Mike flew himself as part of a group led by an instructor. Although his daily instruction varied somewhat, two advanced maneuvers came to the fore.

Micheel made his first attempts at dive-bombing. Putting a plane into a seventy-degree dive from twelve thousand feet and dropping like a stone took a young man's courage. By deploying special flaps on the SBD's wings, called dive brakes, the pilot could hold the plane under 245 knots. But the steep angle lifted him off his seat and had him hanging in his harness, with one hand on the control stick and one eye stuck on the telescope set into the windshield of the Dauntless. Through the bombsight, he watched the target grow in size rapidly. At about two thousand feet above the target, he toggled the bomb release and pulled out of the dive. The force of gravity squished him into the bottom of his seat.

Part of every day had to be spent on the other great challenge of naval aviation, landing his Dauntless on the deck of an aircraft carrier. The difficulty of a carrier landing had loomed on the horizon since flight school. Pilots practiced it, logically enough, by landing on a strip of the runway that bore the outline of a carrier deck.

It began with a specific approach pattern. The pilot approached the ship from behind. He flew past the carrier on its starboard (right-hand) side at about one thousand feet. The pilot was now "in the groove." Once he passed the carrier by a half mile (depending on how many planes were also in the groove), he would make a left-hand turn and come back toward it. Lowering his elevation, his landing flaps, his wheels, and most important, his "tail hook," the pilot made his final preparations for landing. Looking to his left as he approached the ship's bow, he had an unobstructed view of any other planes landing on the deck ahead of him. Spotters on the carrier deck would signal him if they saw a problem with his plane or on the deck.

As the pilot reached the stern of the ship, he began a hard left-hand turn that would bring him around 180 degrees and just over the stern of the ship. At this point the pilot could look down and see a man standing on the stern port corner of the carrier with large paddles in his hands. Usually dressed in a suit of yellow to make him clearly visible, the Landing Signal Officer (LSO) gave the pilot directions by waving his big paddles and tilting his body. If the pilot followed those commands exactly, the LSO slashed one paddle across his neck. The pilot cut the engine and his plane dropped onto the deck, its tail hook caught a wire, and he was home free. It was a controlled crash landing onto a moving target.

Mike and his classmates spent many hours mastering the fundamentals of carrier landings on a remote section of runway. A pilot could not come in too fast, nor too slow, or too high or too low. His plane also had to be in the proper "attitude" in the air, with its nose up and hook down, in order to make a perfect three- point (one for each wheel) landing. In a few hours of flying time, the ensigns simulated as many landings as they could: circle the deck, get the slash (or "cut"), crash, power up and away. Then they met back in their classrooms with the LSO, who reviewed each of their techniques in detail.

None of their practice took place on a carrier. The navy, as the ensigns likely found out through scuttlebutt, was running short on those.
Saratoga
had been torpedoed in January and had sailed to Bremerton, Washington, for repairs. To keep the enemy guessing about whether the Sara had survived, her status had not been made public. Instead, the newspapers carried stories of Admiral Halsey using
Enterprise
to strike Japanese strongholds in the Marshall Islands, in the central Pacific. "Pearl Harbor Avenged" read one headline, but about then the British fortress on Singapore fell.
²⁵
The enemy now controlled half of the Pacific Ocean. In the bull sessions held at the officers' club, the ensigns would have discussed the futures of the three remaining fleet carriers in the Pacific
--Yorktown
,
Lexington
, and
Enterprise--
and
Hornet,
due to be commissioned in early April. Each pilot already had been assigned to serve on one of them. Ensign Micheel knew he would be joining USS
Enterprise
. As a dive-bomber pilot, Mike likely wondered just how many big carriers the enemy had, exactly, since he had to go sink them.

PRIVATES SIDNEY PHILLIPS, W. O. BROWN, AND JOHN TATUM, WHOM THEY HAD taken to calling "Deacon" because of his penchant for quoting scripture, departed Parris Island wearing the emblems of the United States Marine Corps: an eagle, globe, and fouled anchor. While few of their cohorts had failed to make the grade, each of them came away with a few firm beliefs. The USMC was the world's best combat unit. The marines were the first to fight. Their mission, amphibious assault, was the most difficult feat of arms. Once marines seized the beachhead, the army "doggies" would come in and hold it. These beliefs had been burned into them while they had learned to perform the manual of arms with precision, slapping their rifles so hard the sound carried a hundred yards. Being one small part of this great team gave Sidney a feeling of strength and comfort unlike anything he had ever experienced.

After arriving by train at New River, North Carolina, one afternoon in mid-February, they formed into ranks on a great muddy field. Ahead of them stood a large tent, its open flaps revealing bright lights and busy activity. One by one, each man was called forward. Inside, NCOs (noncommissioned officers, such as corporals and sergeants) met and interviewed him. Sid walked through the mud, answered the NCOs' questions, and was assigned to How Company, 2nd Battalion, First Marines (H/2/1). So was W.O. The Deacon received the same assignment. What luck, they thought. After a time Sidney realized everyone in their group had been assigned to the 2nd Battalion, First Marines.

The three friends stuck together and were assigned the same hut. The next morning they found three inches of snow on the ground and no orders to follow. For the next few days they just had to keep the stove in their hut hot. More men arrived, as did the USMC's newest uniform, the dungarees. The two-piece uniform of heavy woven fabric, intended for use in the field and in combat, was the first piece of equipment issued that had been designed for the new war instead of the last Great War. Sidney preferred it to his khaki uniform because it had large pockets and a stencil of the corps' emblem on the breast. The helmet he wore was the same kind his father had worn in France.

Instruction began on February 18, when the NCOs introduced them to some of the weapons used by their company: the .30-caliber Browning Machine Gun and the 81mm mortar. These and the other heavy weapons of How Company, they were told, would support the assault by the riflemen of the other companies of their battalion (Easy, Fox, and George). The 81mm mortar captured the attention of Sid and Deacon. Big guns had always fascinated them and they made sure their NCO knew it. W.O. was happy enough to stay with them. Other men disparaged the 81mm as "the stovepipe" and tried to get assigned something else. The self- selection worked. After a few weeks, the NCOs assigned the three friends to the same mortar squad, #4 gun, of the 81mm mortar platoon. All six members of #4 gun squad were Southerners except for Carl Ransom from Vermont. Ransom, hearing the others naming themselves the Rebel Squad, quickly asserted that he had grown up in the southern bedroom of a house on the south side of the street.

Although they occasionally had an afternoon of instruction on something else, the #4 squad quickly became focused on their weapon. Sid repeated sections of its manual over and over, chanting it like a rhyme. The 81mm mortar was "a smooth bore, muzzle loading, hand fed, high angle type of fire . . ." Corporal Benson, who commanded #4 gun, had them begin mastering the precise movements for assembling and firing the weapons by repetition. At Benson's command, one man set down the base plate, another the bipod, and a third the tube. The job of clamping the three parts together naturally fell to Deacon. A bit taller and a bit older, John Tatum took it all more seriously than Sidney and W.O. Corporal Benson took the mortar sights from the case and attached and adjusted them.

The endless repetition and chanting quickly led to competition between the gun squads. Deacon wanted to be the fastest. He studied
The Marine's Handbook
, the red book issued to all privates. By early March Deacon became acting corporal even before he had earned his stripe as a private first class. Sid and W.O. had no wish for promotion. They enjoyed the rivalry, though, and #4 squad assembled their mortar in the respectable time of fifty-five seconds. Corporal Benson never praised them.