Marine Air: The History of the Flying Leathernecks in Words and Photos

Chapter One

Battling the Zero in the South Pacific

What Happened

The first hint of morning light seeped over the horizon at 5:45 a.m. on Sunday, December 7, 1941. The warships of Japan’s First Air Fleet turned into the wind to launch their first Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero fighters. Fifteen minutes later at 6:00 a.m., Comdr. Mitsuo Fuchida took off from the wind-lashed wooden deck of the aircraft carrier and flagship, Akagi, to lead 189 Zeros, dive-bombers, and torpedo bombers from six carriers that would attack the Hawaiian Islands.

At 6:43 a.m., the sun came up. It silhouetted Fuchida’s warplanes high over the ocean en route to the principal Hawaiian island of Oahu. At 7:15 a.m., Lt. Comdr. Shigekazu Shimazaki led a second wave of 170 aircraft launching from carrier decks.

When he’d originated the plan 11 months earlier, Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of Japan’s Combined Fleet, used brush, ink, rice paper, and the rich flourish of calligraphy to write down his preliminary idea in a letter to Navy Minister Koshiro Oikawa.

Yamamoto’s letter was hand delivered. It was marked to be burned without showing anyone else. Japan had more aircraft carriers and bet-ter

Capt. William P. Boland, Jr. August 8, 1943 Grumman F4F-4 Wildcat Marine Fighter Squadron VMF-441, Black Jacks Funafuti, Ellice Islands

Capt. William P. Boland wasn’t at Pearl Harbor, but some of his buddies thought he was looking for revenge when he mounted a weeks-long, one-man campaign against a Japanese Nell bomber in the South Pacific. Boland was in one of the last squadrons to operate the Grumman F4F-4 Wildcat, the corpulent combat plane that was the standard Marine Corps fighter on December 7, 1941. [U.S. Marine Corps]

carrier-based warplanes than any other nation. Japan also had the formidable Zero fighter, regarded as markedly superior to the F4F Wildcat operated by the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. But despite advantages, secrecy was vital. The planned attack had to be a surprise. Although the Americans were reading Japan’s diplomatic codes, they did not detect the Japanese carrier task force when it set forth from the Kurile Islands and crossed the North Pacific in secret. The Americans did not know about the carriers until 7:53 a.m. at Pearl Harbor.

Pearl was a Navy outpost, home of the U.S. fleet. It had a significant Army presence. Adm. Husband E. Kimmel and Lt. Gen. Walter C. Short later sustained career-ending criticism because the Navy and Army were unprepared for a Sunday-morning assault that sank or crippled 21 vessels and killed 2,388 Americans.

Marine Corps aviation came under attack at Pearl Harbor, too. In fact, Fuchida’s airmen found their first target in the Marine Corps air station at Ewa Plantation on Oahu. Some Zeros strafed Ewa while the bulk of the strike force continued across the island. Marines were thus among the first to come under fire.

The Japanese attack force at Pearl Harbor was spearheaded by the famous Zero fighter, otherwise known as the Mitsubishi A6M, which became the nemesis of Marine fighter pilots in the Pacific. This is a late-model A6M5 Zero of the kind introduced in 1941 and used until the end of the war. It was not a Zero but a Nell bomber that captured the ire of Marines in the Ellice Islands in 1943. [U.S. Navy]

Marines had been flying in support of their own troops since long before this war. Marine aviation was a maturing military arm. About a hundred Marine aviators were stationed on Oahu, most at Ewa, where the SBD Dauntless dive-bombers of squadron VMSB-232 were parked in the open. Other Marine aviators, on the morning of the Pearl Harbor attack, belonged to squadron VMF-211 with F4F-3 Wildcat fighters and were hundreds of miles away aboard the carrier USS Enterprise (CV 6). Still other Marine aviators were out in the Pacific with SB2U Vindicator scout bombers aboard the USS Lexington (CV 2).

As the scream of aircraft engines and the boom of guns resounded over Oahu, Marine Capt. Richard C. Mangrum was reading the Sunday comics in his bungalow at Ewa beach, near the air station. The sounds were not unusual in a location where men practiced at war frequently. Still, Mangrum told himself, it seemed to be a lot of gunfire. Mangrum dropped the newspaper, walked to a window, and saw a Japanese aircraft passing by at low level en route to Battleship Row at Pearl Harbor. In the weeks to come, Mangrum pinned on major’s leaves and commanded a Marine air group in the South Pacific. He was a Dauntless pilot, but other Marines were flying the F4F-4 Wildcat, the principal Marine fighter of the era. One of them was Capt. Robert E. Galer. Also at Ewa that morning, Galer looked up and shook his head vigorously at the sight of the red meatball painted on the wings of the Japanese planes. Galer had no idea that his own experiences would symbolize Marine aviation over the next 20 years.

At Ewa Field, four Marines were killed and 33 aircraft were torched. The contingent of squadron VMF-211 that hadn’t gone to sea on the Lexington lost nine Wildcats on the ground. Although a handful of Army P-36 and P-40 fighters got into the air to challenge the attackers, not a single Marine fighter engaged the foe as the Pearl Harbor attack unfolded.

Wake Island

The Japanese also launched immediate attacks on the American outpost at Wake Island. VMF-211 followed up its Pearl Harbor losses by losing seven more Wildcats on the ground at Wake on December 8, 1941. But Wildcats also scored victories: a pair of twin-engine Mitsubishi G3M2 Type 96 Nell bombers were shot down by 1st Lt. David S. Kliever and Tech. Sgt. William Hamilton of VMF-211, flying from Wake on December 9. Capt. Henry T. Hammerin’ Hank Elrod, also of VMF- 211 and soon to be briefly the most famous Marine pilot in the world, also shot down a Japanese aircraft that day.

During the heated defense of Wake Island, Marines kept their Wildcats flying by cannibalizing wrecked aircraft, improvising tools, and handmaking some parts. When the Japanese attempted their first landings on Wake early on the morning of December 11, 1941, four Wildcats attacked the invasion force with 100-pound (45-kilogram) bombs and .50-caliber (12.7-millimeter) machine gun fire. That’s when Elrod achieved a direct hit on the Japanese destroyer Kisaragi with a bomb dropped from his Wildcat, apparently sinking the ship and forcing the Japanese invasion fleet to retire.

In the months after Pearl Harbor, the F4F-4 Wildcat was the best fighter Marine aviators could lay their hands on, although it was usually not a match for the Japanese A6M Zero. Seen taxiing at Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, this Wildcat displays the raffish and disreputable look attributed to it by pilot Capt. Thomas M. Tomlinson, as well as the narrow track of its landing gear and a 58 US-gallon extra fuel tank carried under the right wing only. [U.S. Marine Corps]

It was a temporary stay. On December 21, 1941, the Japanese returned, reinforced by carrier aircraft. Just two Wildcats survived to attack a 39-aircraft raid from the Japanese carriers Soryu and Hiryu. Zeros quickly shot down one Wildcat, but the second ship shot down two of the raiders before the pilot, Capt. Herb Frueler, was wounded. Frueler struggled back to the island where he crash-landed, wrecking Wake’s last Wildcat.

When Hammerin’ Hank Elrod no longer had a Wildcat to fly, the 36-year-old captain demonstrated that Marines are, first and foremost, riflemen: Elrod assumed command of a flank of the line set up to make a last stand against the Japanese landing. He conducted a spirited defense, enabling his fellow Marines to hold their positions and repulse waves of attacking Japanese and to provide covering fire for unarmed ammunition carriers. Elrod seized a discarded automatic weapon, gave his own firearm to one of his men, and fought on, losing his life but earning the Medal of Honor plus a posthumous promotion to major.

Aerial duels with the vaunted Japanese Zero fighter at Wake, Coral Sea, and Midway became the stuff of legend. The Wildcat became the standard fighter amid the heat, stench, and muck at Henderson Field on Guadalcanal.

The First Marine Division captured the nearly completed airfield on August 7, 1942. Marines named the field for Maj. Lofton Henderson, the first Marine pilot killed in action in World War II when his squadron engaged the Japanese fleet that was attacking Midway. Henderson was commander of Marine Scout Bomber Squadron VMSB-241.

At Guadalcanal, Marine aviators did some of the toughest flying of the war. To stand against the Japanese, they had to struggle not with one enemy but with many. To the pilot of an F4F Wildcat taxiing at Guadalcanal’s Henderson Field in a torrential downpour, struggling through geysers of water and mud, the list of enemies included bad weather, corrosion, primitive conditions, and even tropical disease. Marine fliers sometimes needed a roll of toilet paper or a protective bunker—or a hot meal—as much as anything else. It was hard to stay ready to repel the next wave of Japanese bombers when you had to spend time plucking leeches from your skin with a bayonet or running to the latrine to disgorge the foul water and poor food.

Maj. John L. Smith’s VMF-223, Rainbow squadron, was launched from the escort carrier USS Long Island (CVE 1) on August 20, 1942, and landed at Henderson. The next day, Smith’s squadron was strafing Japanese troops along the Tenaru River. On August 24, accompanied by five Army Bell P-400 Airacobras, Smith intercepted a Japanese flight of 15 bombers and 12 fighters. VMF-223 pilots shot down ten bombers and six fighters, with Capt. Marion Carl scoring three of the kills. Soon Carl became the first Marine air ace of the war while Smith became the second Marine Wildcat pilot to rate the Medal of Honor. Another Marine, Capt. Joe Foss, racked up 26 aerial victories and received the nation’s highest award, too. So did Maj. (later Brig. Gen.) Robert E. Galer, the Pearl Harbor survivor and veteran of VMF- 211 who now commanded squadron VMF-224 and who scored 13 aerial victories and waged a point-blank campaign against the Japanese for 29 days. Smith, Carl, Foss, and Galer operated from an airfield that an official history called a bowl of blast dust or a quagmire of mud while piloting the stubby, square-wing Grumman fighter that Marines loved and hated. Galer will reappear in this narrative in a subsequent war.

Guadalcanal

At Guadalcanal, Japanese bombers typically approached 26 at a time in V formation, and Wildcat pilots refined their technique of trying to avoid Zeros and get at the bombers. Wildcats dived on the bombers, seeking to destroy some before the Zeros pounced them. These hit-and-run tactics forced the Zero pilots to overuse precious fuel. Once dogfighting began, the Americans learned the importance of teamwork, finding that reliance on one’s wingman was crucial and that no lone wolf survived for very long.

The Wildcat was no Zero. The Japanese fighter was light and fast and had cannons instead of machine guns. The American fighter was sturdier and gave the pilot a much better chance of surviving if he were hit. As they gained experience, Marines (and the Navy fliers who fought in the Wildcat) learned how to coax greater maneuverability from their ships. They learned how to make better gunnery compensate for the lesser killing power of their guns. And because their aircraft was tough, they stayed in the fight, day after day. The Hellcat and Corsair came along in time to give hard-pressed pilots a better craft in their hands, but before that, the Wildcat became one of the near-great fighters of the war.

In the same class as Carl, Smith, Foss, and Galer, one of the great Wildcat pilots at Guadalcanal was Lt. Col. Harold W. Indian Joe Bauer.

Bauer was a Naval Academy graduate and athlete who commanded Marine Fighter Squadron VMF-212, Devil Cats, shot down eleven Japanese aircraft, and paid the highest price to win the nation’s highest award.

When Marines landed on Guadalcanal and seized Henderson Field in the first U.S. offensive action of the war, Bauer’s squadron was at Efate, New Hebrides, preparing to enter the fray. Bauer left them there and flew down to Guadalcanal to inspect the airfield, which was under constant Japanese air attack. On September 27, 1942, he borrowed a Wildcat from friend and rival Carl, took off to intercept approaching Japanese bombers, and shot one of them down.

Also during his inspection visit, Bauer shot down four Japanese Zero fighters on October 3, 1942. His squadron hadn’t reached the combat zone yet and he was already an ace.

The Japanese mounted a major effort to dislodge the Marines in a furious counterattack. It happened just when Bauer was bringing in the Wildcats of his Devil Cats on October 8, 1942.

He arrived to find a Japanese air raid under way. In the waters off the great island, Japanese Aichi D3A Val dive-bombers were swarming down on the USS McFarland (AVD 14), a destroyer transformed into a freighter and carrying aviation fuel and ammunition that was desperately needed on Guadalcanal.

Bauer spotted the dive-bombers withdrawing. He was low on fuel. Nevertheless, he gave chase. There was a 55-gallon external fuel tank stuck beneath the right wing of his Wildcat, reducing his airspeed and maneuverability. Still, Bauer dived from 3,000 to 200 feet and closed on the Japanese warplanes. He had superb targets and a full load of ammunition. Bauer shoved throttle, mixture, and prop controls to the fire wall, overtook the dive-bombers from behind, and began squeezing off bursts. In a matter of minutes, he sent three Vals falling in flames into the sea near Savo Island.

On the day of that fight, Bauer was placed in charge of all fighter operations on Guadalcanal. On November 14, 1942, he took off to investigate a Japanese convoy of 11 troop transports escorted by 11 destroyers bearing down on Guadalcanal—the big heft behind the enemy’s planned counteroffensive.

Bauer attacked the ships and was met by Japanese fighters. He battled Zeros and shot two down. But bullets ripped into his Wildcat. Unable to maintain control of the F4F-4, he parachuted into the sea.

Also in the air with him during that slugfest were Foss and Maj. Joe Renner. Foss and Renner raced back to Guadalcanal, traded their Wildcats for a J2F Duck amphibian able to land on water, and set forth to attempt to locate Bauer at sea. They were defeated by the arrival of darkness.

Bauer was never seen again. A recommendation for a Medal of Honor for him was approved in May 1943.

THOMAS M. TOMLINSON A fire hydrant with wings, somebody said. The barrel-like, mid-wing configuration of the F4F-3 Wildcat gave it a certain raffish appearance. It was anything but a beauty, and it didn’t handle well in the wrong hands. For takeoff, the Wildcat required especially careful handling because the fuselage blanked the rudder, and it had a nasty tendency to veer to port. The tail wheel had to be locked and checked, and the plane didn’t perform well in a crosswind. Until you got the tail off the ground, you had to concentrate on stick and throttle every second.

In a dogfight with a Zero, the Wildcat could not maneuver the way the Zero could. It wasn’t fast enough or heavily armed enough. It did have some advantages over the Zero, including armor for the pilot and self-sealing fuel tanks which—unlike the Zero—prevented it from being transformed into a burning torch when it sustained hits. The F4F-3 also was a solid, stable gun platform. Once you got past the awkward arrangement of some of the instruments and controls, the F4F-3 was probably about as good an airplane as you were going to get in the early days of the war. It was sturdy and the cockpit had plenty of room. It was responsive. If you mastered it, you could probably stand a chance of beating that Zero, but the real answer was a newer and better fighting machine.

FRANK C. LANG This was very elementary flying. Grumman made the F4F-3 and it was simple and tough, but out of date. I think I logged all of five or ten hours in it.

Sitting in the cockpit, you had to roll the landing gear down and roll the landing gear up, manually. When it was on the way up, you got your hand out of the way real fast because the handle really twisted around while it was coming up.

The Marines also had a few F2A Buffalo fighters at the start of the war. The Buffalo was very similar and it wasn’t very effective in combat, but at least you could raise and lower its landing gear hydraulically. The F2A had a very small tail section and you could actually fly that airplane in a spin. It had an electric prop, as did the Wildcat. Previously, a manifold controlled our props. On the F2A and F4F-3, you had an electric prop, but the difficulty with that was it could get away from you.

The F4F-3 flew wonderfully for an airplane of its day, but it couldn’t fly effectively against the Japanese Zero. That’s why we developed newer fighters like the F6F Hellcat and the F4U Corsair, which the Japanese called the Whispering Death.

THOMAS M. TOMLINSON I was one of the Americans who volunteered to fly with the Royal Canadian Air Force before the United States entered World War II, so I didn’t undergo the flight training at Pensacola, Florida, that most Marines experienced. I went directly into the Marine Corps when the opportunity arose and took a circuitous route into fighters, but I found myself at Ewa and then at Guadalcanal as a member of fighter squadron VMF-214, Swashbucklers, flying the F4F-4 Wildcat.

No, I don’t mean the squadron you’ve heard about that had another name, the Black Sheep, and had its identity heisted by the ambitious Gregory Pappy Boyington. That came later. Those of us who were in the squadron at the beginning saw more fighting and shot down more Japanese airplanes than the squadron did later when its identity was swapped and it became Boyington’s outfit. I was in VMF-214 when it began, at Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, living in a coconut grove with an outdoor head and not much in the way of amenities. The commander of VMF-214 Swashbucklers was Maj. George Britt.

On April 7, 1943, after the Japanese no longer had any hope of taking back Guadalcanal, they launched the biggest raid they ever sent against the island—67 Aichi D3A Type 99 Val dive-bombers escorted by 110 Zeros. We intercepted them with portions of three Army and four Marine squadrons flying Wildcats, F4U Corsairs, P-38 Lightnings,

A mechanic works on an F4F-4 Wildcat in the southwest Pacific. When Capt. William P. Boland, Jr., took a half-dozen Wildcats to Funafuti in the Ellice Islands, he was able to use the Wildcat to ambush a Japanese bomber. [U.S. Marine Corps]

P-39 Airacobras, and P-40 Warhawks. Our Swashbucklers squadron was credited with shooting down four Vals and six Zeros over Cape Esperance.

I found myself going after one of those Val dive-bombers. The six .50-caliber guns in the F4F-4 Wildcat were lubricated with Cosmoline, which thickened in the extreme cold at high altitude and could prevent the guns from working. When I locked onto the last Val in the Japanese formation, five of my six guns froze and refused to fire. I gave it some throttle and got up right behind him, which gave me a close-up look at the two men in the Val. I could see the disturbed reaction of the gunner in the rear cockpit of the Val. He was shooting at me when my bullets hit him and chewed him up. This was not pretty at all. I knocked off pieces of the Val and got it smoking, then banked near Lunga Point just in time to get away from a brace of Zeros.

That battle over Guadalcanal was one of the last major actions in the Pacific for the Wildcat. Thereafter, only two squadrons in the Ellice Islands continued to fly the F4F. In June 1943, my squadron converted to the F4U Corsair.

WILLIAM P. BOLAND Ours was the last squadron to fly the Wildcat fighter in combat. We were still flying Wildcats when other Marines were defeating the Japanese in air battles while flying Corsairs and Hellcats.

My squadron was VMF-441. It was one of the very few Marine squadrons to actually be commissioned in the combat zone, organized on October 1, 1942, at Tafuna airdrome, Tutuila Island, American Samoa, with Maj. Daniel W. Torrey as our first commander. Torrey was due for assignment elsewhere, so on December 4, Capt. Walter J. Meyer became our commander. Torrey, Meyer, and most of the Marines in Samoa had been fighting on Guadalcanal, and to them, Samoa was a pleasant backwater after months of harsh fighting—a place of respite and refuge. The war was a lot less active there.

I think most of us liked the Wildcat. By this time in the war, we knew a lot about how to use it effectively against the Zero. The cockpit was spacious and comfortable. The plane had a few annoying features, like the hand crank to put down the landing gear, but every airplane had its idiosyncrasies.

From Samoa, we flew missions against bypassed Japanese outposts like Wotje and Maloelap. Later in the war, of course, VMF-441 flew a lot of combat in Corsairs—the squadron produced seven aces—but the Wildcat period was mostly unremarkable. At least, it was unremarkable until they decided to send a bunch of us to Funafuti. That island was only beginning to have an American presence, but it would eventually become a staging base for the invasion of Tarawa.

SMOKE SPANJER We were flying the older F4F Wildcats while the remainder of the fighter squadrons in the Pacific were transitioning to the F4U Corsair. We had a couple of older F4F-3 models, which had only four guns but carried more ammunition—a feature we liked—but we flew combat in the F4F-4 model. Early in March 1943, we were sent to provide air cover, at the urgent request of the Seabees on the island of Funafuti, in the British-owned Ellice Islands in the Southwest Pacific.

I was part of a four-plane advanced echelon flying north from Samoa to the Ellice Islands. With external tanks we flew 700 miles with only one stop at the French island of Wallis and arrived over Funafuti. A PBY Catalina escorted us during the flight.

To our dismay, the Navy Seabees’ desire for our protection exceeded their constructive efforts, and we were forced to land on barely 1,500 feet of unprepared coral surface.

The next day we were alerted for our first business and did, in fact, chase a Japanese Emily flying boat but lost it in some rather severe weather.

On March 27, 1943, the SCR 270 ground radar operated on Funafuti by the Army’s Fifth Defense Battalion detected the approach of unknown aircraft. Captain Boland and I were launched against a possible radar target and ended up in hot pursuit of four twin-engine Mitsubishi G4M Type 1 Betty bombers.

This was the latest in high-speed Japanese bombers, and our tired F4F-4s were straining to get in position for an attack. On the first pass, Captain Boland shot down the lead bomber, which exploded under fire from his six .50-calibers. Contrary to the official squadron history, my guns did not jam immediately. I maneuvered behind the number four Betty, got off several bursts, and was able to inflict some damage before my guns froze. Captain Boland and I made one additional flat pass but the bombers outdistanced us.

For the next four months, we hunted in vain during daylight hours. During the dark, we caught accurate strings of Japanese bombs on the installations on Funafuti. The night bombing raids were heaviest with Army Air Corps B-24 Liberators operating from the island. Even after regular bombing attacks by the Japanese became few and far between, a lone Nell kept flying reconnaissance missions high over our heads. No one wanted to get that Nell more than Boland. He began what some later interpreted as a one-man campaign to defeat that solitary Japanese bomber.

NORMAN MITCHELL The Japanese were scouting down through Nanumea and sometimes as far as Nukufetau almost daily in a Nell. That’s a twin-engine Mitsubishi G3M2 Type 96 attack bomber, dubbed a Nell by the Allies. William P. Boland got aboard a PT boat and had it drop him off with a New Zealand coast watcher on the island of Nanumea, where he observed the Nell’s operation for about a week. During that time, we sent up a section of two F4F-4 Wildcats from Funafuti every day to attempt an intercept over Nanumea. Boland tried from his position on the ground to vector the Wildcats up to attack the Nell. The Wildcats carried extra fuel tanks under the wings to give them loiter time and reach to catch the bomber.

Our communication seemed to be working. Our radar seemed to be working. We seemed to know where the Nell was, and Boland was giving us excellent guidance over the radio. But somehow that Japanese heckler managed to escape from us every time. Everybody wanted to get the Nell and we began to think it was not going to happen.

We learned a long time after the war that the Nell was from a Japanese unit called the 755 Kokutai and was operating out of Tarawa. While the war was going on, we didn’t know the Japanese names of their units or airplanes.

SMOKE SPANJER For weeks, our Wildcats had been trying to catch up with that Nell. Some of the missions were flown from Funafuti to Nui, where the Nell spent a lot of time. That was a round-trip of 280 miles, which meant that, even with wing tanks, the Wildcats wouldn’t have time to spend more than a few minutes attempting the kill. We tried for weeks to meet the enemy plane, sometimes missing only by minutes. On July 17, 1943, we believed we came within a minute or two of nailing the Nell.

On August 8, 1944, Boland took off in a two-plane section with 1st Lt. Samuel G. Middleman on his wing. Soon afterward, the Army radar people told us there was an apparent Japanese aircraft over Nui.

WILLIAM P. BOLAND We had to travel about 140 miles each way, from Funafuti to Nui. It was a good thing the F4F-4 Wildcat was so comfortable. On that August 8 mission, everything broke right. Our communications worked. Our ground radar worked. This time, we really knew where the Nell was. We had wanted to get that Nell for a long time.

We managed to come up behind the Japanese bomber. I made a firing  

pass from the left rear quadrant and sent some .50-caliber into him. The Nell started to disintegrate and sent back pieces of debris that narrowly missed me. The pilot somehow had enough control to get the bomber down to very low altitude before he lost it. The Nell went down in the Nui Atoll, in water so shallow it didn’t sink. People told me the wreckage of that Nell was still readily visible in the Nui lagoon 30 years later in 1974.

Who’s Who

Capt. Thomas M. Tomlinson, F4F-4 Wildcat pilot, squadron VMF-214, Swashbucklers, Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands

Maj. (later Brig. Gen.) Robert E. Galer, F4F-4 Wildcat pilot and commander of squadron VMF-224, Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands

Capt. (later Maj.) William P. Boland, Jr., F4F-4 Wildcat pilot, squadron VMF- 441, Funafuti, Ellice Islands

1st Lt. (later Maj. Gen.) Ralph H. Smoke Spanjer, F4F-4 Wildcat pilot, squadron VMF-441, Funafuti, Ellice Islands

1st Lt. Norman L. Mitchell, F4F-4 Wildcat pilot, squadron VMF-441, Funafuti, Ellice Islands

2nd Lt. (later Maj. Gen.) Frank C. Lang, a night fighter pilot who flew the F4F Wildcat in training and the F4U-2 Corsair (see chapter 2) in combat

I later commanded fighter squadrons VMF-215 from November 1944 to February 1945 and VMF-321 from March to August 1945. I flew other fighters, but the Wildcat enabled me to bag that bomber after weeks of trying.

Grumman F4F-4 Wildcat

To satisfy a 1936 requirement for a carrier-based fighter, Leroy Grumman’s company offered the Navy and Marine Corps a biplane fighter called the F4F-1. But even before Grumman grew into its famous Beth-page, Long Island, facility in April 1937, the Navy said it wanted the

This is an F4F-3 in flight over the South Pacific. Marines extracted every last ounce of performance and maneuverability out of the Wildcat but were often outgunned by their Japanese adversaries. We didn’t fly with the canopy open at Guadalcanal, said pilot Tomlinson. A pilot only did that if he wanted to have his picture taken.U [U.S. Marine Corps]

Brewster F2A-1 Buffalo instead. The Buffalo was a monoplane. With war clouds still gathering, the Navy had decided that the single-wing design was the wave of the future.

Grumman designed its own monoplane. Engineer and pilot Robert L. Hall took it aloft for the first time on September 2, 1937. The F4F-2 wasn’t really the second version of Grumman’s fourth fighter, as its designation suggested. It was a new aircraft. A 1,050-horsepower Pratt & Whitney R-1830-66 Twin Wasp engine powered the F4F-2, which acquired the name Wildcat in 1940.

In October 1938, the Navy ordered the bigger F4F-3, with an improved Twin Wasp and a wing having an area of 260 square feet (24.15 square meters). In August 1939, the Navy ordered a batch of F4F-3s and lower-powered F4F-3As (originally designated F4F-6). The first F4F-3 Wildcat took to the air on August 20, 1940. Soon Wildcats with names like Wasp and Ranger were aboard carriers. The Wildcat was the fighter piloted by Lt. Edward Butch O’Hare of Navy squadron VF-42 from the USS Lexington (CV 2), who shot down five Mitsubishi G4M Betty bombers in five minutes near Rabaul on February 20, 1942.

Wildcats achieved conspicuous success in the battles of Wake Island and Midway and in operations at Guadalcanal. The Wildcat really earned its spurs not on pitching, heaving carrier decks but in the heat, stench, and muck at Henderson Field on Guadalcanal where, slowly, the tide began to turn and Americans mounted the first offensive action of the Pacific conflict.

The designation F4F-4 went to 1,168 production Wildcats, whose wings folded manually, powered by the Wright R-1830-86 Cyclone radial. Delivery of F4F-4 fighters began in November 1941. Navy and Marine squadrons were flying the planes by the time of the Pearl Harbor attack.

At the outset of 1942, the Navy saw that Grumman was going to be exceedingly busy with the number and variety of warplanes it was producing. Not only was the firm building the F4F-4 Wildcat, TBF Avenger, J2F Duck, and J4F Widgeon, but plans were well advanced toward the F6F Hellcat fighter. General Motors took over Wildcat production. Under wartime pressures, all five GM plants were reorganized and the automaker’s Eastern Aircraft Division was created.

Grumman F4F-4 Wildcat

Type: single-seat carrier-based fighter

Power plant: one 1,200-hp (895-kW) Pratt & Whitney R-1830-86 Twin Wasp 14-cylinder radial piston engine with a 2-speed, 2-stage mechanical supercharger or R-1830-90 with a 2-speed, single-stage supercharger, driving a 3-blade, 9-ft 9-in (3.01-m) Curtiss Electric C5315(S) propeller

Performance: maximum speed, 278 mph (447 km/h) at sea level; 318 mph (512 km/h) at 19,400ft (5915m); cruising speed, 155mph (249 km/h); initial climb rate, 1,950ft (594m) per minute; service ceiling, 31,000 ft (9448 m); absolute ceiling, 34,400 ft (10485 m); range, 770 mi (1239 km)

Weights: empty, 5,758 lb (2612 kg); maximum takeoff weight, 7,952 lb (3607 kg)

Dimensions: span, 38ft (11.58m); span, wings folded, 14ft 4 in (4.37m); length, 28ft 9 in (8.76m); height, 9ft 2¹⁄4 in (2.81 m); wing area, 260sq ft (24.15 sq m)

Armament: 6 fixed .50-cal (12.7-mm) Browning M2 machine guns with 450 rounds per gun, plus two 100-lb (45-kg) bombs or two 250-lb (96-kg) bombs or two 58 US-gal. auxiliary fuel tanks, although only one was typically carried under the right wing only

Crew: 1 (pilot)

First flight: September 2, 1937 (XF4F-2); August 20, 1940 (F4F-3); November 7, 1941 (F4F-4)

The American industrial heartland turned out 7,825 Wildcats, including 1,988 built by Grumman and 5,837 from General Motors. Foster Hailey, correspondent for the New York Times, summed up the Wildcat’s impact on history in 1943. Hailey wrote, The Grumman Wildcat, it is no exaggeration to say, did more than any single instrument of war to save the day for the United States in the Pacific.

Chapter Two

Corsair in the Night Sky

FRANK C. LANG Our F4U-2 Corsair had the familiar lines of one of the most respected and beloved fighters of World War II, but it was a unique version. It was the first U.S. single-engine fighter to be equipped specifically for night fighter duties. Our outfit,