Part 9

The Vought F4U-1 _Corsair_ fighters began to go into service in the Pacific soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The _Corsair_ was a single-place fighter of unusual design. Its wing had the shape of an inverted gull wing. This design allowed clearance for the _Corsair’s_ 13-foot, 4-inch propeller. A straight wing would have needed a dangerously high landing gear to provide clearance for such a large propeller. Originally designed for carrier use, the 2,000-horsepower, 400-mile-an-hour _Corsair_ was adopted for land-based operations by the United States Marine Corps. Marine Corps aviators used the _Corsair_ with deadly effect against the Japs from Guadalcanal on. Navy pilots flew the _Corsair_ as a night-fighter to put a stop to the Jap’s habit of bombing our Pacific airfields at night.

The Navy’s newest torpedo plane, the Grumman TBF _Avenger_, first appeared in the battle off Midway. The big _Avenger_ had a speed of 270 miles per hour, a range of 1,400 miles, and carried a 2,000-pound bomb load or a full-sized torpedo concealed in its fuselage. The famous Torpedo Squadron 8, in fourteen weeks sank as many Jap warships including two aircraft carriers and one battleship; bombed one heavy cruiser, one light cruiser, and a number of smaller ships.

_Avengers_ helped to pave the way for the establishment of bases in the Pacific. _Corsairs_, used as the Navy’s first night-fighters, broke up Japanese night bombings of the newly won island bases and allowed our hard-worked men to rest at night.

THE U. S. NAVY’S DEADLIEST FIGHTER PLANE

In the months following Pearl Harbor the tough little Grumman F4F _Wildcat_ was ever in the thick of the fight in the Pacific. Based on the few carriers available for use against the Japs, the _Wildcats_ outfought overwhelming numbers of enemy warplanes. Over the Marshall Islands in February, 1942, _Wildcat_ fighters bagged ten Jap fighters and three bombers without any American losses. At Wake Island, a lone _Wildcat_, manned by a Marine, bombed a Jap cruiser to the bottom. Lieutenant Commander Edward (“Butch”) O’Hare was flying a _Wildcat_ when he brought down six Jap bombers singlehanded in a few minutes. Such incidents were typical of _Wildcat_ action in the first year of the war.

When President Roosevelt presented the Congressional Medal of Honor to “Butch” O’Hare, he asked him what kind of fighter was needed to beat the Japs. O’Hare replied, “Something that will go upstairs faster.” Commander John Thatch, master Navy combat technician, had told Grumman officials the same thing, and had added a request for more speed in general. Not many months later, the roar of a 2,000-horsepower echoed over Long Island, New York, and a new Grumman fighter began to “go upstairs faster.”

The new fighter that answered the Navy pilots’ demand for more speed and more power was the Grumman F6F _Hellcat_. Much larger than its baby brother the _Wildcat_, the _Hellcat_ was powered with an eighteen-cylinder Pratt & Whitney radial engine. The big radial developed over 2,000 horsepower and put the _Hellcat_ in the 400-mile-an-hour class. It proved to be one of the most maneuverable fighters in the world and could climb like a skyrocket. The cockpit housed atop the big fuselage at its highest point gave pilots excellent visibility to train the _Hellcat’s_ six .50-caliber guns on the enemy.

The _Hellcat_ has plenty of protective armor for its pilot. It has rubber gasoline tanks encased in canvas hammocks giving them great flexibility in resisting the penetration of bullets and shell fragments. The _Hellcat_ handles beautifully at all altitudes. At high altitudes it could more than outfight any plane that the Japs sent up. It is also a deadly weapon when used in low-altitude strafing attacks against airfields and shipping. The _Hellcat_ has now replaced the _Wildcat_ as the standard fighter based on our aircraft carriers. Much of our success in driving the Japs out of the air over the Pacific is due to the _Hellcat_. These powerful fighters, based on the carriers of Admiral Halsey’s famous Task Force 58, carried their devastating attacks to the Japs’ homeland.

Although dive-bombing was originated by Navy airmen it was a number of years before an airplane was built that was rugged enough to stand up under the shock of repeated dives. The first airplane built specifically for dive-bombing was a Curtiss F8C _Helldiver_, built in 1929. This original dive-bomber was a biplane. The series continued until 1935 when Curtiss introduced the SBC type of dive-bomber. This was also a biplane with wire bracing. The streamlining in the SBC was much improved and it was equipped with a retractable landing gear. The SBC was also called the _Helldiver_. While the SBC series marked advance in dive-bomber performance, the biplane wings and wire bracing created a drag which held down its diving speed. In 1939 the Curtiss Company began to work on a new dive-bomber design.

In the meantime Douglas had brought out the all-metal, low-wing SBD _Dauntless_ dive-bomber. This was a fast, clean airplane equipped with flaps for diving. The flaps, attached to the trailing edge of the wing, could be dropped down to act as brakes. The flaps created a resistance which cut the speed of the plane at the will of the pilot. Powered with a 1,000-horsepower radial engine, the SBD had a speed of about 200 miles per hour. It carried a 1,000-pound bomb under its fuselage which, when released by the pilot, was swung clear of the plane by a yokelike gear. The SBD usually started its dive at an altitude of 10,000 feet. From that height the plane could pick up a speed of from 450 to 500 miles per hour. The best speed for dive-bombing is about 275 miles per hour, and the flaps on the SBD enabled the pilot to control his speed as he dived on his target.

At the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the SBD was the standard dive-bomber based on our carriers. From the very start it was a star performer in our war in the Pacific. In the first years of the struggle SBD’s destroyed more enemy planes, ships, and property than did all our other air and surface weapons combined. SBD’s were in the forefront in our war in the Pacific. But a giant new dive-bomber suddenly appeared over Rabaul, New Guinea, in the fall of 1944, the deadliest bomber which had yet dived on the Japs. Another _Helldiver_ was in action.

OUR FLYING NAVY

_From Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal, and Midway to Tokyo Bay Our Gallant Navy Men, Carriers, and Planes Led the Way to Victory and Have Added Many Heroic Chapters to the Glorious History of the United States Navy._

When the Japs struck at Pearl Harbor on Sunday morning December 7, 1941, United States naval aviation had just passed its thirtieth birthday. At no time in its history had the U. S. Navy been confronted with a greater task. Many of our great warships lay in the mud at Pearl Harbor. Many of our Navy planes had been destroyed, and Japan controlled the greater part of the western Pacific.

Though the future looked black, our Navy possessed one great asset, invisible to most of us. It was that small group of Navy airmen who had lived and breathed flying since our first carriers were launched. So thorough had been the schooling and the thinking of our pioneer flat-top men that, when war did come, they were ready. These naval aviators who had created and tested every form of air tactics were ready to put them into action. They also were able to pass on their lessons to the large group of young men who were to man the thousands of warplanes being built for the Navy.

As the new planes were rolling off the production lines and the new naval aviators were in training, the old-timers went to work on the Japs in the Pacific. That they did their job well is testified by the fact that the Japs did not get back to Pearl Harbor or attack our west coast. With only a few carriers to cover the vast Pacific area, and a pitifully small number of airplanes, our naval aviators carried the fight all the way down to the Solomons. They helped take and hold Guadalcanal. They stopped the great Japanese fleet at Midway and drove them out of the Aleutians. Navy flat-tops took “Jimmy” Doolittle and his Tokyo raiders almost to Japan’s front door. Wherever our naval aviators met the enemy they knocked him out of the air at the rate of five to one.

In spite of our favorable ratio of victories over the Japs in the air, they still outnumbered us ten to one in the Pacific. During 1942 many new Navy airplanes were delivered. Thousands of young naval aviators were trained at our naval air stations. A great naval air transport service was created to fly men and materials to distant Pacific islands. With only one carrier, the _Enterprise_, left in the Pacific, a great new carrier fleet was rushed into service.

By the Fall of 1943 a tremendous change was wrought in the Pacific. In September the first three new carriers, the _Essex_, the _Yorktown_, and the _Independence_, were battle-tested in the raid on Marcus Island. _Avengers_ and _Hellcats_ began to appear in great numbers to take the place of _Wildcats_ on the decks of our big carriers. Raid followed raid. The Gilbert Island chain, Tarawa, Kwajalein, Truk, Palau, Saipan, and other islands fell before the blows of our new carrier-based air power.

More big new carriers continued to appear in the Pacific and a new type of sea power came into being, the carrier task force. Here we saw air power based on a great fleet of large and small carriers forming the spearhead of a naval offensive. The flat-top had truly become the “Queen of the Fleet.”

Now we see come into being the ideas born in the minds of a group of pioneer naval aviators twenty years ago. The airplane has not only gone to sea with the fleet but, as the striking power of the Navy, it is leading the fleet to victory.

It was the work of the fighting planes based on Admiral Marc A. Mitscher’s carrier Task Force 58 that hammered a path to the very front door of Japan.

Since Pearl Harbor, naval aviators have shot down over ten thousand Japanese aircraft with the loss of less than two thousand of our own planes. This gives our Navy pilots a score of better than five to one. These figures include the dark days of the first year of war when our Navy boys were outnumbered ten to one.

From a force of a few carriers and a handful of moderately fast warplanes, naval aviation grew, in three years, to the world’s greatest sea-borne air force. The speed of our fighters increased by more than a hundred miles an hour. Our dive-bombers and torpedo planes, the world’s finest, tripled their bomb and torpedo loads. Our big patrol bombers and transports fly the Pacific unarmed.

Jack Towers, who in 1911 was one of the Navy’s first three aviators, is now Vice Admiral Towers, Air Chief of the Pacific. John Pride, one of the first aviators to fly from the deck of the _Langley_, is now a rear admiral with our Pacific aërial task forces. Pioneers of naval aviation such as Admirals Ballentine, Sherman, Clark, Radford, and others are all in the Pacific. These men, none of them much over fifty years old, are practical flying officers. Many of the other men, who for the past twenty years or more have devoted themselves to the development of naval aviation, are also rear admirals. That is fitting, for it was they who kept naval aviation alive in the days of peace.

Forty-two years after the birth of the airplane, we see aviation on the threshold of a great new era of progress. Fighting planes with a speed of nine miles a minute are an actuality. A giant transport plane, capable of carrying 100 passengers, has flown across the continent in six hours. This means that a passenger may eat lunch in New York and dinner in California. It means that postwar air travelers will become accustomed to flying at the speed of our 1939 fighting planes. Air travelers soon will be crossing the country at a speed of eight miles a minute. Boys and girls reading this book will, a few years from now, marvel that we even got excited over the eight-mile-a-minute airplane.

The year 1944 saw a twelve-and-one-half ton fighter go into action on the war fronts. This plane, the Northrop P-61 _Black Widow_ night-fighter, is one of the most powerful airplanes yet to go into action. Powered with two 2,000-horsepower engines, the P-61 flies at 400 miles per hour. Equipped with radar and powerful guns, it can search out an enemy plane at night and destroy it.

The new Bell P-59 _Airacomet_ is America’s first jet-propelled fighter. Its performance has amazed expert test pilots. It has no propeller (note diagram below), and the pilot hears no engine roar or propeller scream. He feels no vibration. Yet he whizzes along at a tremendous speed which is still a military secret. This lack of vibration reduces pilot fatigue, adding hours to his safe flying time.