Once They Were Eagles Read Free

got no tanks, torpedo bombers bogged down, airstrip out of commission, pilots all sick, am sending dispatch requesting instructions.”
    Cost to our Navy was high, too: two aircraft carriers, ten cruisers, and ten destroyers. But things got better after Operation Shoestring.By August 1943, Guadalcanal had become a rear area, subjected only to nightly bombing raids. Marines had landed on the Russell Islands, Rendova, and Munda and were eyeing Bougainville, 300 miles north of Guadalcanal. From Bougainville our fighters could reach the Japanese stronghold at Rabaul.
    Marine aviators had kept pace with their brothers on the ground, covering their landings, blasting ground installations, and knocking enemy fighters out of the sky. But these airmen, carrying too heavy a load on their shoulders, were beginning to show signs of strain. They flew daily from before daylight till after dark with only brief halts for refueling and rearming. During their catch-as-catch-can rest periods on the ground, they were subjected to nightly air raids. All through the night, Japanese bombers throbbed across the sky and sowed their deadly explosives. Their unsynchronized engines gave them an easily identifiable sound; the Marines called them “Washing Machine Charlies.”
    The route from Guadalcanal to Tokyo was blocked by many obstacles; major ones were Bougainville and Rabaul. Rather than carry on a costly, time-consuming island-by-island campaign, the Joint Chiefs of Staff settled on a plan to capture some of the islands and neutralize and bypass others.
    It was in this climate that Admiral Halsey decided to press forward up the Solomon Islands slot toward Tokyo. He was poised for an assault on Bougainville which would give him an air base from which he could reach the Japanese-held Rabaul, at the northern end of the Solomon Islands—the Japanese Pearl Harbor. At that time (mid-1943), Rabaul’s four airfields contained 400 aircraft; 100,000 Japanese troops were massed on the island of New Britain, where Rabaul is located. The Japanese considered the base impregnable. They did not intend to give up Rabaul.
    While the U.S. had no plans to seize it, Rabaul had to be neutralized if the drive toward Tokyo was to move forward. But Bougainville came first. Bougainville was protected not only by thousands of Japanese troops but also by five airfields, the most important of which was Kahili, on its southern tip. Off that tip was the island of Ballale, an airdrome surrounded by bristling antiaircraft guns. Obviously, air power was needed: bombers to demolish ground installations, fighters to protect the bombers while they did their job, fighters to take on the Japanese Zeros head to head.
    Halsey reviewed his requirements. One was a fighter plane that could hold its own against the Japanese Zero. He had it in the gull-wingedF-4-U Corsairs recently developed by the Chance-Vought Aircraft Corporation. They had started arriving in the Solomons in February 1943. By August, enough had been delivered to the combat theater to equip the Marine squadrons. Ironically, they were available to the Marines only because the Navy had turned them down as unsuitable for carrier operations.
    The Corsair was a clean, sleek aircraft with a 2,000-horsepower engine. Its rated speed of 415 miles per hour at sea level made it the fastest aircraft in the theater at that time. The Corsair carried six 50-caliber machine guns, three in each wing.
    Halsey had his fighter planes. Next, he needed pilots to fly them and a commander to lead.

 
3 | The Squadron Commander
    Normally, a Marine fighter squadron was formed in the States, given organizational and operational training as a unit, and then shipped overseas intact with its administrative staff and maintenance sections as well as its aircraft, flight echelon, and equipment.
    But Halsey needed another Marine squadron right now, and no organized unit was available.
    The solution was suggested by Major General James