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Griffin, W.E.B.
THE CORPS VI - CLOSE COMBAT
THE CORPS is respectfully dedicated to the memory of Second Lieutenant Drew James Barrett, III, USMC Company K, 3d Battalion, 26th Marines Born Denver, Colorado, 3 January 1945 Died Quang Nam Province, Republic of Vietnam, 27 February 1969 and Major Alfred Lee Butler, III, USMC Headquarters 22nd Marine Amphibious Unit Born Washington, D.C., 4 September 1950 Died Beirut, Lebanon, 8 February 1984 "Semper Fi!" And to the memory of Donald L. Schomp A Marine fighter pilot who became a legendary U.S. Army Master Aviator RIP 9 April 1989
[ONE]
Henderson Field
Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands
0515 Hours 11 October 1942
First Lieutenant William Charles Du
A ta
Captain Bruce Strongheart, fearless commanding officer of the Fighting Aces Squadron, carefully adjusted his silk scarf and then nodded curtly to Sergeant Archie O'Malley, his happy-go-lucky, faithful crew chief O'Malley saluted crisply, and Captain Strongheart returned it just as crisply. Then, adjusting his goggles over his steel-blue eyes, his chin set firmly, not a hair of his mustache out of place, he pushed the throttle forward. His Spad soared off the runway into the blue. Captain Strongheart hoped that today was the day he would finally meet the Blue Baron in mortal aerial combat. The Blue Baron, Baron Eric von Hassenfeffer, was the greatest of all German aces. With a little bit of luck, he would shoot down the Blue Baron (in a fair fight, of course) and be back at the aerodrome in time to share a champagne luncheon with Nurse Helen Nightingale.
Du
Du
Seven in all, representing one hundred percent of the available aircraft of VMF-229, were prepared to soar off into the wild blue. According to the table of organization and equipment, VMF-229 should have had fourteen F4F4s.
Du
I wish to Christ he wouldn't do that.
Tony Florentino had large expressive eyes; it wasn't hard for Du
He's not questioning my flying skill, Du
You can't reasonably expect to go up day after day after day and expect to survive-not against enemies who not only outnumber you, but are flying, with far greater experience, the Zero, a fighter plane that is faster and more agile than the Wildcat.
Du
For Christ's sake, Tony, please don't do that Catholic crossing-your-self-in-the-presence-of-death crap until Fm out of sight.
Lieutenant Du
He dropped his eyes to the manifold pressure gauge. He was pulling about thirty inches. The airspeed indicator jumped to life, showing an indicated sixty knots. He was pulling just over forty inches of manifold pressure when he felt the Wildcat lift into the air.
He took his right hand from the stick and grabbed the stick with the left. Then he put his free hand on the landing-gear crank to his right and started to wind it up. It took twenty-eight turns. The last dozen or so, as the wheels moved into their final stowed position, were hard turns. When he was finished, he was sweating.
Du
When he was clear of the beach, he reached down and grabbed, in turn, each of the four charging handles for the.50 caliber Browning machine guns (these were mounted two to a wing). He reached up and flipped the protective cover from the GUNS master switch, then pulled on the stick-mounted trigger switch.
All guns fired. He was not surprised. VMF-229 had the best mechanics at Henderson. And these were under the supervision of Technical Sergeant Big Steve Oblensky, who'd been a Flying Sergeant when Bill Du
But he would not have been surprised either if there had been a hang-up... or two hang-ups, or four. This was the Cactus Air Force (from the code name in the Operations Order) of Guadalcanal, located on a tropical island where the humidity was suffocating, the mud pools were vast, and the population of insects of all sizes was awesome. Their airplanes were in large part made up of parts from other (crashed, bombed, or shot down) airplanes, and were subjected to daily stresses beyond the imaginations of their designers and builders. Flying them was more an art than a science. That anything worked at all was a minor miracle.