March Anson and Scoot Bailey of the U.S. Navy

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

SCOOT MEETS TWO ZEROS

Scoot Bailey lounged in the ready room of the aircraft carrier Bunker Hill as the big ship plunged through heavy seas at top speed. They had been at sea for some weeks now, in company with a cruiser and three destroyers, heading southwest from Pearl Harbor for scenes of battle. For the last two days the five ships had put on full steam, and everyone aboard knew that something was up.

“Something’s cooking up ahead,” Scoot said to Turk Bottomley, who sat next to him, legs stretched out on a straightback in front of him.

“Obviously, my friend,” Turk said. “Something’s been cooking in this part of the world almost all the time lately.”

“I thought we’d be heading for the Marshalls and the Carolines,” Scoot said, “to get in on the fighting there. But I guess they’ve got things well in hand in those parts. We’re well past them now, and to the south.”

“No flying for two days now,” Turk said. “That’s what’s been bothering me. Before we got off once in a while for a look around, anyway. I want to fly, that’s all. I won’t worry about where. Let the Admirals send me where they want me, but let me fly and fight when I get there—and, if possible, on the way, too.”

“Gee, I thought I loved flying,” Scoot said, with a laugh, “but I never held a candle to you.”

“Yeah, I even resent walkin’,” Turk said. “Seems like I should’ve had wings instead of legs—just for gettin’ around short distances. I’d still want that Grumman Hellcat for longer jumps.”

“They’re sweet ships, all right,” Scoot said. “I used to dream of flying a Wildcat—thought there just couldn’t be anything better than that. And I still thought so when I finally flew one off the training carrier. She was an old one, but still a Wildcat. Then when I get here on the Bunker Hill, I find the brand new F6F’s—and Hellcat is the right name. They’re what a Wildcat pilot dreams up as impossibly perfect when he thinks about what kind of plane he’ll have in Heaven.”

“Poetic, now, aren’t you, Scoot?” Turk said. “I can’t put words together that way, but it sounds nice when you talk about planes. Sometimes, when you get real excited, you almost talk the way I feel.”

Suddenly they sat up, as did the four or five others in the large room. Other pilots began to pile into the room followed by most of the big-shot officers on the ship.

“Oh-oh—here it comes!” Scoot said. “Now we’ll find out. It looks like a briefing.”

There were fighter pilots, the pilots, gunners and observers of torpedo and scout dive bombers, and the squadron leaders of each group, accompanied by the particular vice-admiral in command of the force now racing across the Pacific. This rugged, beetle-browed gentleman lost little time in getting down to business. Addressing the flying officers before him while other officers hung a huge map on the wall behind, he quickly gave them the information they wanted.

“You’ve all known we’ve been heading for something as fast as we could get there,” he said, in clipped tones. “Now I can tell you, because we’ve made speed and are not far away. Within a few hours we should contact other carriers and ships going to the same objective. That objective is the Jap Naval base at Truk.”

There was a gasp of surprise throughout the room as the Admiral paused for a second.

“There’s a mighty fine batch of ships in Truk Harbor,” he said, “and, we have reason to believe, not too much protection. Carriers—and there’ll be six of them—will go in close enough to launch all planes. Battleships, cruisers, and destroyers will go in closer.”

Turk Bottomley was sitting on the edge of his chair, as if he would bound from the room and race to his plane in a second, but the Admiral continued.

“The time is now about 1600. We shall rendezvous with the others of the task force at about 2030. You will take off on a schedule your squadron commanders will give you beginning at 0430, arriving over Truk about dawn—the first wave, that is. All scout and torpedo planes will go to Truk, one-half the fighters will remain as protection with or near the carrier. Your squadron commanders will go over all necessary details with you now. That is all.”

The Admiral stalked from the room, and the commanders prepared to go over all details. They launched at once into detailed descriptions of the objective, the schedule of flights.

“If we’ve figured right,” one of them said, “we’ll stick around two days, throwing in wave after wave. We must meet our schedule because it ties in precisely with the schedules of the other carriers in the group. We’ll not give them a minute to catch their breath. There’ll be planes coming at them continuously.”

For two hours the briefing session continued. Photographs and maps were shown, man after man asked questions. Finally every flier felt that he knew Truk and its environs as he knew his own home town. Then came the announcement of the fliers who would remain with the carrier instead of going to the attack on Truk and there were groans about the room as men heard their names called.

“One minute,” the fighter squadron commander called. “I think the Old Man gave a wrong impression. The names I’m calling won’t stay with the carrier both days. They’ll stay behind the first day but go on to the attack the second day, while the first group remains with the carrier.”

Groans turned to laughter, but Turk Bottomley was furious. He was going out the first day, but he wanted to go out the second day, too. He made his feelings known in no uncertain terms.

“Never mind, Turk,” the commander laughed. “You can go up and fly around and around the Bunker Hill all day!”

So it was that Turk flew off in the dark morning hours, while Scoot Bailey stayed behind envying those lucky men whose names had been opposite the odd numbers on the list instead of the even. As plane after plane rolled across the heaving deck of the flat-top and roared off into the overcast sky, Scoot muttered under his breath, wishing that each one might have been his.

Dawn came and there was no word. Scoot went up with half a dozen other fighters to keep eyes on the sea, to attack any Japanese craft that came through to get them. But for hours there was no sign of a plane—either of the enemy or of their own.

Then Scoot, just after he had landed again, heard them far away—the roar of many powerful engines. And in a moment he saw the tiny specks that raced so fast they soon became planes circling in mighty sweeps around the carrier. The first one came in as the signalman waved his paddles for a landing. Deck men and the fighter pilots who were not up in the air lined the edge of the deck, and officers crowded the bridge. As the first pilot scrambled from his plane, the deck crew grabbed it, folded its wings, and raced it back to the elevator so the next plane could land.

In a moment the pilot was talking—and in a few minutes he was joined by another, then another and another.

“We caught ’em with their pants down!” the first yelled. “Flatfooted. We caught ’em right on the airfields! They couldn’t get off.”

“And when the bombers came in,” cried the next, “they had a clear field. How those boys dove! Oil tanks blew up! Ships strewn all over the place, clogging up the harbor!”

One after another the pilots told their stories while mechanics checked their engines, filled the tanks with gas, the guns with ammunition. They all told of how the Japs had been taken by surprise, how plane after plane had been wrecked on the field, how torpedo planes and scout-dive bombers came in with little more than scattered antiaircraft fire to get in their way.

“We’ve hardly lost a plane so far!” one said. “And have we got planes around there! I haven’t seen so many planes since I was at Corpus Christi—but these are not trainers. Fighters, torpedo planes, bombers—coming in like flocks of wild geese. Why, I was just as worried trying not to bump into some of our own craft as by any opposition the Japs put up. The Old Man must be mighty happy. Has he got full reports?”

“He’s gettin’ ’em first-hand right this minute!” the executive officer of the carrier replied. “He’s up there himself in a scout, looking over the whole business. And you can bet your bottom dollar he’s the happiest man on earth!”

“What was prettiest,” another joined in, “was seeing the planes from the other carriers coming in. From every direction! We were in the first wave, and just as we pulled up and away, there they came—wave number two from the northeast, and a little farther away wave number three from the southeast. You had to hurry and do your job so you could get out of the way of the next batch coming along.”

“Where’s Turk Bottomley?” Scoot asked. “Did any of you see him?”

“I saw him circling around for another go at one of the airfields,” a torpedo-plane pilot said. “At least I think it was Turk’s Hellcat I saw. He was joining up with the second wave and going in again.”

“He ought to be back by now,” someone said. “All the other fighters are in—except Tommy Mixler. I saw him go down in the harbor. Ack-ack.”

There was a moment’s silence at this unwanted mention of a casualty, of a friend they’d see no more, and then—as if they were forcibly clearing their minds of any such thoughts—the pilots went on chattering again. Their planes were almost ready for them to take off again when they all saw a lone fighter circling the ship. Zooming his engine and doing a beautiful wing-over turn, the pilot brought his plane around into the wind for a landing on the heaving deck of the carrier.

“That’s Turk, all right,” Scoot said. “Home from the wars.”

And it was Turk, almost out of gas and completely out of ammunition. He had stayed around as long as he could, and now he wanted to be off again within five minutes. As soon as his plane was shoved out of the way where it could be checked and get its new supplies of gas and ammunition, the fighters who had come in earlier began to take off again. They were off on schedule, going in for their second attack on Japan’s Pearl Harbor of the Pacific!

All day long it went on, with Scoot and the others staying aloft, on the alert for the Jap planes that would surely come through to attack them. No matter how great the surprise, some planes would get off the airfields at Truk and others would race in from other Jap strongholds. They would go for the carriers first, of course, for the flat-tops were the big prizes. With the base ship gone, the planes would be lost without a “home” to return to.

Some Fighters Stayed With the Carrier

But Scoot searched in vain through the skies as the afternoon turned to evening. The Bunker Hill’s own planes came back for the last time but still no Japs appeared. Scoot was raging—all day long without a crack at a Jap! And they were right in the heart of what the Nips considered their private ocean!

“Is there anything left of Truk for us to get?” he asked that night. “Didn’t everything get blasted off the map?”

“There’ll be plenty left for everybody,” the squadron commander replied. “We’ve got half the ships in the harbor and we’ll get most of the rest tomorrow. Some of them scattered and ran but the boys from the carriers to the north are catching them. There are emergency airfields around that will be in use tomorrow, and you can be sure that there’ll be planes from other Jap garrisons in this area. You boys will have a fight on your hands tomorrow all right.”

“We’d better have!” Scoot exclaimed. “Imagine! Not a lousy Jap showed up today!”

It was with grim anger that Scoot took off the next morning, reveling in the almost unlimited power of his Hellcat as it roared up into the blue skies and circled, heading for Truk. Scoot was in the squadron leader’s group, and their objective was the big airfield south of the city. The Japs would have been working on it all night, despite constant attacks by the bombers, and they’d have at least one landing strip in shape for their planes to get off. The fighters were to strafe the field, then go up as protective cover for the dive bombers. These would be coming into the harbor right after them, to get the rest of the ships that still lay there.

Roaring low over the choppy waters of the Pacific, the speedy planes raced toward the tiny group of islands that the Japs had made into a great naval fortress, a fortress that was being knocked to pieces by American planes.

As they approached the island, Scoot saw ahead several American ships—two cruisers and half a dozen destroyers.

“They’re doing it, boys,” his squadron leader’s voice came over the radio. “The surface ships are moving in close to shell the island!”

Scoot almost laughed in happiness. It was daring enough for American carriers to penetrate supposedly Japanese waters and give a pasting to their impregnable fort. Carriers could stay a couple of hundred miles out while their planes flew in to the attack. And they were fast ships which could get away in a hurry if they needed to. But here were the big-gun ships moving to within fifteen or twenty miles to shell the island. And the Jap Navy was either hiding or running away—in its own back yard!

The fighter planes gunned their engines in greeting as they passed the American ships, and Scoot could see the crews waving and laughing happily on the decks of the ships.

“They’ll start their shelling just about the time the dive bombers finish the first part of their job,” Scoot guessed. “And when they’ve pounded away a couple of hours the bombers will come back in again for another attack.”

Up ahead lay the island. At better than three hundred miles an hour the huge flight of fighters went over the shore, heading straight for the airfield. They paid no attention to the twenty or thirty Jap fighters high above them, did not even notice the bursts, of ack-ack shells that puffed around and ahead of them. They were too low and traveling too fast for ack-ack to be very effective or accurate—and as for those Zeros, the American planes would take care of them in just a few minutes.

Scoot saw the airfield up ahead, saw Jap planes on the runways ready to take off. And the next minute he was roaring over the field, not thirty feet above the runway, watching the Jap ground crews running for cover, seeing a few firing rifles futilely into the air at the speeding planes. He pressed the machine-gun button and felt the slight backward push to the plane as the battery of fifty caliber machine guns poured out its converging fire of destruction. Jap after Jap, fleeing toward the hangars, was cut down in his tracks. Scoot concentrated a terrific burst of fire on the plane directly ahead of him, saw a flash as it caught fire, then pulled up and away with a shout that could have been heard half a mile away had not the air been filled with the roar of powerful engines.

He circled and came back over the field the other way, this time dipping to pour a hail of lead into the open doors of a hangar.

“How did the other boys happen to leave that one standing?” Scoot wondered. “The others are all down in ruins.” It was not easy to demolish a big hangar with a fighting plane, so Scoot left that for the bombers, knowing that he had taken care of a few Japs huddling inside the building and had put forty or fifty holes in the plane standing near the front.

After one more sweep over the field, he pointed his Hellcat’s nose at the sun and climbed. But there was something up there on the sun, he thought, looking intently. Sunspots? What a funny thing to think of at a moment like this. He’d hardly be noticing sunspots—but he would almost instinctively notice Jap Zeros when they were diving at him out of the sun.

“That’s what they are!” Scoot exclaimed. “But they made one big mistake. They thought we were going to strafe the field a couple more times and they’d come down on us out of the sun while we were busy doing it. I’ll bet they’re confused now, seeing us coming right up at them head-on.”

The first groups of the fighter squadrons were all aiming for the clouds after their attack on the field, while the next groups were carrying on the strafing job. And Scoot knew, too, that two groups were high in the air, serving as cover for just such a Jap attack.

“Those Nips may not know it,” he muttered to himself, “but I’ll bet there’s a flock of Hellcats coming out of the sun right behind ’em.”

The Zeros were larger now, growing larger every minute as they dived down at the formations of American planes trying to climb away from the field. It looked as if all the planes were determined to crash head-on into each other at the greatest possible speed.

Scoot heard a short command come over the radio from his squadron leader. He grinned.

“Just what I thought he’d do,” he told himself, and then shoved the stick hard to the right, as he pulled back on the throttle. The American group split, half going to the right, half to the left, in a maneuver so sudden and sharp that the Japs in their Zeros could hardly believe their eyes at seeing planes which had been almost in their gunsights disappear so quickly. They still thought that their lightly armored Zeros were the most highly maneuverable planes in the world. They’d not had much experience yet with the new Hellcats.

Scoot’s wing tipped sharply, and the craft seemed to stall. Then, giving her the gun again, he flipped completely over. He knew that the Japs, in that part of a second, would have roared past the spot he had just been in and now the American planes could chase them on down toward the field, coming in from the side and rear.

“There they are!” Scoot cried. “Just about set up in position!”

The first Jap planes were pulling up desperately from their dive, attempting to get back in position to meet the attack of the Americans. Scoot picked the leading Jap plane, got it in his sights and roared up on it from a little below. He held his fire, held it a fraction of a second longer, then pushed the fire-control button with a vicious jab that almost drove it out of its socket.

Black smoke crept back from the Zero, then flame which fast grew into a huge sheet of fire enveloping the entire craft. It slowed, seemed to stagger a moment in the air. Losing power at once because of its climbing position, it twisted and turned.

As Scoot pulled up and away, he kept his eye on the blazing Zero as it fell—at first lazily, then faster and faster—toward the ground.

“Is it going to—Yes, by golly!” Scoot cried as the flaming plane crashed into the huge hangar still standing at the edge of the Jap field below. There was a roar of fire, a great cloud of black smoke and Scoot threw back his head and laughed loud and long.

“Who said a fighter couldn’t take care of a hangar?” he demanded. “Why did I think I had to leave it for the bombers? Boy, oh boy, is that good?”

“That’s puttin’ ’em in the right pocket, Scoot!” It was the voice of his squadron leader over the radio. “But watch out behind you! A little sneak attack coming!”

Yes, there were two Japs coming in on him. Now where did they come from, Scoot wondered. But he didn’t spend much time on that question for he had other things to do. If these Japs weren’t familiar enough with what the new Hellcats could do he’d show ’em. So, instead of diving to get away, as he knew they expected, he put his fighter into a steep climb that pulled him up toward the clouds as if a giant hand had reached down and grabbed him.

That took the first Jap by surprise, as Scoot hoped, but the second had just enough time to meet the maneuver. As Scoot closed in on the first, he knew that the second was coming in behind him. He concentrated on one thing at a time. Maybe, he thought, he could take care of the first one fast and get away quickly enough. With a roar of speed, he brought the first Jap into range, opened fire, saw smoke, and waited no longer. He plunged into a diving turn, looked back over his shoulder and saw the second Jap ship already plunging earthward in a cloud of smoke.

“Who did that?” Scoot demanded, almost to himself.

“I did, my friend!” It was Turk Bottomley’s voice.

“What are you doing here?” Scoot demanded.

“No Jap planes showed up at the carrier,” Scoot said, “so the Old Man let a few of us come over to have some fun. I just got here.”

“And just in time, lad,” Scoot said. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” Turk laughed. “The pleasure was all mine.”

So that is how Scoot managed to paint two little Jap flags on the side of his plane the next day, as the Bunker Hill steamed westward, away from a smoking and flaming Truk.

“That’s something like it!” Scoot exclaimed to himself. “I’ll bet poor old March isn’t having any fun like this, cooped up in that stuffy submarine.”

It was at that moment that March was listening with pleasure to the explosion of the Kamongo’s torpedoes against the sides of a Jap tanker at Wake Island.

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