WSS in WWII May 9, 2024 draft
Preface
This book covers some aspects of the WWII service of my
father-in-law, William Sanford Stevenson (WSS or Bill or Steve here), as an
aircraft carrier fighter pilot during World War II. Since my father also served
in WWII in the China Burma India theater as an infantry lieutenant, I have had
an interest in the war in Asia and the Pacific. Then in 2013 Connie and Beth
and I went to Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, and Papua New Guinea on a cruise, and I
started to wonder whether Rabaul in New Guinea which had a large Japanese base
during the war might have been near where WSS flew (it was, and he did attack
Rabaul on his very first day of combat flying- see below). This speculation led
to more curiosity about where he flew and what life was like as a carrier
pilot. Regrettably Bill died in 2006 and I just never asked him about any of
his time in the South Pacific. This is my gap filled attempt to reconstruct
those days. Another purpose is to put many, many bits of information about WSS
in WWII into one place for my family. Other family members may recall hearing
about different aspects of his service and I am very willing to be corrected.
My sources have been Bill’s wife Ingrid’s memories, his discharge papers, a couple of vignettes Bill himself wrote, two books on the history of his first carrier, the Bunker Hill ("The USS Bunker Hill November 1943-November 1944" abbreviated here as "The USS" and "The History Of The USS Bunker Hill CV-17 December 1942- " (can’t read the rest), abbreviated here as "The History Of"), the cruise log from his time on his second carrier, the Wasp, some stories from Cliff, and external sources I found on the internet and elsewhere.
Training
Bill and Ingrid were students at Middlebury College in
Vermont during the build up to the war and then the start of US involvement
with the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. I don’t know how much
discussion Bill had with his parents (his father was a partially disabled
veteran of WWI), with Ingrid, or with any friends or others, but he enlisted in
the US Naval Reserve in March 1942, four months after Pearl Harbor. I am
speculating that the Navy let him keep his student deferment until the end of that
academic year. Completion of college was postponed. Active duty began in Boston
in June 1942. Bill was 20 years and 9 months old!
These next two photos of the Middlebury student pilots to be on September 15,1942 come from photos Cliff has mounted:
Each should be full page in End Notes-
Bill recalled these days as follows-
“There were 12 Middlebury College students who went into the Navy Air Corps program in June 1942. Ted Ogden and I were the only two that managed to stay together for the full 3 ½ years before the war ended.
“After completing primary flight syllabus at Squantum [located on a peninsula roughly south of Boston, in Quincy Mass., and not far from where he would live in the future], we boarded a train for Corpus Christi (Tx). At Indianapolis Ted suggested we go in the station for an ice cream. We did and when the man hollered ‘All Aboard’ I ran out and got on the wrong train. I rendezvoused with the rest 500 miles later in St. Louis. Nobody even missed me.
“After Corpus we boarded a train for Miami for more advanced training. This took us by way of New Orleans, but you can understand that this part of our journey is censored. After wiping out half the Navy’s remaining F2A(s), (also known as) Brewster Buffaloes [footnote: see Google or aviation history entries on the Brewster Buffalo or F2A], we headed for Chicago… by train. We were to have a three hour lay-over in Atlanta and brother Ogden says ‘Let’s go downtown and see a movie.’ We did, and (we) came back to find out that our train had left for Chicago 45 minutes earlier. We caught up with everyone the next day, learned about landing aboard a carrier (on a discarded oil tanker on Lake Michigan) and then got aboard a fancy train called the Super Chief.
“Being a train, you know we are in trouble. We hadn’t seen a pay day in three weeks, and we get to LA dead broke. We have train tickets down to San Diego, but it’s hot, we have a two hour lay-over and we want a sarsaparilla [a soda drink I know only from old cowboy movies where the toughs in the bar would always abuse the tenderfoot who didn’t drink alcohol, or was Bill really referring to some other libation?].
“ We venture into the first pawn shop we find and put the hard sell on the lady proprietor to lend us $5.00 on this pocketknife one of us has. The lady said we probably needed the money more than she did, so she gave us $5.00 and told us to keep the knife.
“That’s real patriotism.”
Details behind these anecdotes- The Squantum flight course lasted 12 weeks. The Corpus training was for another 24 weeks. Advanced training in Miami ran 12 more weeks. Then what Bill refers to as Chicago was Glenview, Illinois Carrier Class training that was 8 weeks. It astounds me that in 56 weeks the Navy could train 20-21 year olds as officers, as pilots, and then to be able to land on an aircraft carrier substitute.
This is a photo of some aspects of pilot training-
As the story from Cliff goes, once while training in Corpus, WSS landed
his plane in a field because his gas tank was empty. He called the flight
commander to get picked up. The commander came, jumped into the plane, flipped
the switch for the reserve tank and flew off, leaving WSS in the field.
The timing for Corpus would place WSS as completing training in about August 1943 and this timing matches Ingrid’s memory.
The SlipStream is a publication like a High School or
College yearbook. It was the annual for the Corpus Christi training center in
Texas. In it you can see WSS as an air cadet (bottom row, fourth from the left) in the single photos of the
members of his class 9B 42 C (C).
First Tour of Duty as a Carrier Pilot on the USS Bunker Hill
WSS’ first deployment was on the USS Bunker Hill (CV-17), built in Quincy, Mass and named after the Revolutionary War battle. It was commissioned in mid-1943.
See full page in End Notes as with many of the photos where you should want to read the details-
The first planes for the carrier were Vought F4U Corsairs. The first fighter squadron on the Bunker Hill, VF-17, and WSS’ group of trainees were very acquainted with Corsairs. However, the Corsair (nicknamed by the Japanese “Whistling Death” but not out of awe for the plane) had problems. To quote the War History Network, “the elongated nose severely restricted visibility, particularly when the airplane was on the ground, making the Corsair difficult to taxi. It also limited forward visibility during the critical approach to landing, as the end of the runway would completely disappear from the pilot’s view when the airplane was on short final. Unfortunately, the lack of forward visibility reduced the Corsair’s capabilities as a carrier airplane.”
As an aside, because the Navy didn’t want the Corsairs
during this time period, the land-based Marines (and VF-17 which later became
land based in the Navy after the switchover to WSS’ squadron on the Bunker
Hill) got them.
In the mid-1970s there was a TV show called Black Sheep
Squadron depicting the ace pilot Pappy Boyington and his squadron of Marines
who were flying Corsairs in the Solomon Islands in 1943, possibly those brought
over on the Bunker Hill. The show has 154 episodes, but You Tube also has a
documentary from the History Channel called “The Truth about the Black Sheep
Squadron” which is worth watching to see actual footage of the Corsairs in the
air and the real Pappy’s pugnacious history.
The Navy wanted to replace the Corsairs on Bunker Hill with Grumman F6F Hellcats, but, somehow, and this amazes me, the Navy relented and let the Bunker Hill depart San Diego for Hawaii with the Corsairs aboard. Then, in route the Navy changed its mind. Besides the difficulty landing on a carrier, the Navy decided it did not want to stock parts and equipment for two types of planes.
WSS, now to be called Steve since that was his carrier nickname, and his group were on the same trip on the Bunker Hill with VF-17 and replaced them, as VF-18. (The “V” in the designation dates back to WWI and refers to “heavier than air”.) VF-18 was led by Sam Silber whom I do recall both Bill and Ingrid mentioning.
Here is a photo of Sam Silber and the VF-18 Hellcat insignia-
WSS’ only written comment on his service (the same source as quoted above about the trains and ice cream etc) for this period of time says, “We learn about flying the F6F [the Hellcat], complete a tour of duty in VF-18 aboard the USS Bunker Hill, and head back for Boston.” Ingrid only said he was in the South Pacific from September 1943 until March 1944.
Actually, this was a very busy 6 months. We don’t know when Steve got to San Diego after his train ride and sarsaparilla but, from the book "History Of…", we know the Bunker Hill left the Panama Canal on September 18,1943 and arrived in San Diego on September 26. She was ready and waiting for Steve and the other pilots. The Bunker Hill did not tarry. She departed for Pearl Harbor on September 28 and reached Pearl on October 2. Close your eyes and imagine what Pearl Harbor and the wreckage from the Japanese raid must have looked like then to the 21-year-old pilots. No longer a lark and time away from school, this war was suddenly very real. I imagine there were some serious cases of nerves.
October 6-19th, 1943 were spent in and out of Pearl doing more training, in the Hellcats for Steve’s VF-18. On the 21st they departed on the Bunker Hill as part of a task force headed for Espiritu Santo Island in the South Pacific. (Espiritu Santo used to be part of the Cannibal Islands and is now part of the nation of Vanuatu. On the island now tourists are taken to Million Dollar Point where the US Armed Forces dumped tons of surplus materiel from WWII instead of paying the expense to ship it home.)
Long days at sea, with a bunch of mostly young men in their twenties provided time for some foolishness before the seriousness of war really took hold. The second source about time on the BH, "The USS", mentions that crossing the Equator for the first time for someone on board a ship led to the transition from slimy pollywog into a hardened shellback and a certificate from Neptunus Rex and frequently another scalping Navy haircut.
Equator crossing certificate signed by Neptunus-
The BH reached Espiritu on the 5th of November. Between the 5th and the 8th VF-17 and their Corsairs left the BH to become a land-based squadron.
On the 8th the BH was underway for New Britain, in striking distance of the big Japanese Naval Base in Rabaul, New Guinea.
The Pacific Theater (full page in End Notes):
On the night of November 10, the day before Bunker Hill’s and VF-18’s first ever engagement with an enemy, the BH ran up the famous “Slot” off Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands (where an earlier carrier the USS Wasp CV-7, not Steve’s future Wasp CV-18, was sunk) while the crew got everything ready for the next day. The pilots had a briefing and then a huge pre-battle supper. One pilot was heard saying, “I hope this isn’t the Last Supper”, but sadly it was for him. (The next day he went down in flames into a hail of Japanese fire.) November 11- Armistice Day- it was beefsteak for breakfast and then 69 pilots including Steve and the “green” Fighting Eighteen Squad took off at 0645. The USS comments that VF-18 sunk several ships in the harbor and shot down 24 enemy fighters out of the sky. It mentions a handful of pilots by name, all of whom Steve would have known. The squad came back and then went out for a second raid at 1300. At the end of the day VF-18 had 34 kills in all. VF-18 could be called “green” no more.
Corsair in the air:
When we visited Rabaul in 2013, we learned that Rabaul has a volcano very close by. Our guide said that one US strategy for attacking Rabaul was to bomb the volcano in the hope of getting it to erupt. I wonder if any of Steve’s bombing squadron shipmates participated in that.
After Rabaul the BH went to the Gilbert Islands to lend support for the huge invasion of Tarawa during November 18-25, mostly destroying airplanes on the ground. Then the group made strikes against Nauru and Kavieng in December and the first few days of January 1944. During this time there were huge Christmas dinners with turkey, other American holiday fare, and melted chocolate (due to tropical heat), a notation about the 400th landing on the carrier by a member of VF-18, and at least two giant mail deliveries which I am sure were more welcome than the banquets.
The end of January found the BH and VF-18 raiding Kwajalein and Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands. At Eniwetok, the fighters caught by surprise a massive number of Japanese planes “shimmering” on the runway.
Eniwetok’s fighting took place on February 2, 1944. Then the fleet rested a bit and the BH changed Captains. The USS book says we “were drinking in the sky-colored lagoon waters and, before our imaginations ceased letting us chase Varga [a cartoonist of this era famous for drawing voluptuous women] designed nymphs down palm-frond boulevards, someone said a bad word: TRUK!”. Truk was the Japanese fleet’s version of Pearl Harbor, Japan’s “mythical bastion”.
Bunker Hill Corsair ready to take off:
The ship had a view that the Japanese did not know they
were coming. The fighters took off on the 16th of February for a three-hour
foray in which they were scoring hits in the air and “visiting destruction to a
lagoon full of shipping.” The new skipper on the BH sent a message “’First
strike took Truk by surprise. Destroyed many planes on field, air opposition
light’.” The US fleet hit Truk again on February 17 but it was mainly just
cleaning up what hadn’t been hit or sunk.
This action marked the end of Fighting Eighteen on the Bunker Hill. Some final comments on VF-18’s tour of duty from "The USS"- “One day Fighting Eighteen was a new squadron in training- the next day they were tossed into Pacific combat, their half-completed drills, their carefully scheduled growth {thrown out} to the winds… {T}he radiomen of the squadron wrote: …. ‘Fellows… We sweated your first landing with all our hearts. It was said more than once: “They’re trying harder than any outfit we have ever seen” ’ . ” And a gunner on a bomber dependent on the fighters for its protection said “a fighting squadron means everything- and that’s what you were. We’ve seen times that you could have broken off cover, gone down, dropped a Jap, and picked up personal glory for yourselves. It would have been easy to dive off range and not have drawn all the ack-ack you took at Kaveing, Kwaljalein, and Truk . … Thanks.”
From "History Of", it is recorded that on February 28 the USS Bunker Hill left Majuro Lagoon in the Marshalls for Pearl Harbor. (Most of the other dates cited here are from this same source.) On March 4th, 1944 the BH moored in Pearl Harbor and VF-18 had some shore leave and then faced reassignment.
This is Steve’s in plane photo and profile from the equivalent of the Bunker Hill cruise log. Note the line saying “single”-
To wrap up the story of the Bunker Hill before progressing with the rest of the story of Steve, Wikipedia states that the USS Bunker Hill was badly damaged on May 11, 1945 by 2 Japanese kamikaze attacks, with the loss of 346 of her crew, becoming one of the most heavily damaged carriers to survive the war. This attack and its consequences made an indelible impression on the Navy sailors that is mentioned below by one of the Wasp sailors in August, 1945. The BH was sold for scrap in 1973, or as Navy folks say, she was turned into razor blades.
This next photo shows the Bunker Hill after being struck.
And this is the cover of the cruise log for the Bunker Hill during Steve's time- you can see why I don't know the full title.
Sweet interlude in the US
Now more direct quotes from Steve himself- “When we reach Hawaii on the way home, I call Ingrid, my college sweetheart, to see if the spark was still there. It was and we set the first Saturday we were home, April 1st, as our wedding day. Ted was our best man. Then he bursts our honeymoon bubble by announcing that orders had come through and we were to report to Naval Air Station [Oceana back then too?] Norfolk ASAP.”
Ted and Steve reported to Norfolk on April 17 and 18. In May they were assigned back to Squantum in Massachusetts. According to one source, the custom was for pilots to fly 250 hours or six months or 25 missions and then to come home to be flight instructors, so I suspect that is what Steve expected this post combat assignment was supposed to be.
Ingrid remembers that at this time WSS and two of his buddies (Theodore Roosevelt Ogden from Middlebury and Reuben Jesse Hopkins (Hoppe) from Lynchburg, Va and Hampden Sydney College) were not happy with this assignment. They were placed with some pilots from the North Africa campaign who considered themselves "hot stuff". Given Steve’s South Pacific experience on the Bunker Hill which Wikipedia summarizes as "Reporting to the U.S. Pacific Fleet in the autumn of 1943, Bunker Hill participated in carrier operations during the crucial carrier air raid on the major Imperial Japanese Navy base at Rabaul, ... on 11 November 1943; Gilbert Islands operation, including support of the landings on Tarawa Atoll (13 November – 8 December); the air raids on Kavieng in support of the amphibious landings in the Bismarck Archipelago (25 December 1943, 1 January, and 4 January 1944); air raids in the Marshall Islands (29 January – 8 February); the huge carrier air raids on Truk Atoll (17–18 February), during which eight I.J.N. (Imperial Japanese Navy) warships were sunk; air raids on the Marianas Islands (Guam, Saipan, and Tinian) (23 February)," Steve and his fellows did not think the North Africa guys had any reason to act superior to them.
At this time the threesome were assigned to VF-4 which
was part of Carrier Air Group 4, officially based on the carrier USS Ranger.
The ship itself was not in US waters for most of the time while Steve was
assigned to its Air Group. It had been called away in April to transport
personnel to Casablanca and returned home May 16.
Gerald Thomas was a Torpedo pilot on the Ranger and a flyer in Air Group 4. Here is one of his log entries from his book Torpedo Squadron 4… at about the time when Steve was in the unit. It gives some insight into the Ranger, into being in the Navy, and into being a pilot during this time period- “April 16, 1944: Spent the day packing and moving off the Ranger. Air Group 4 has been detached from the USS Ranger to Fort Devens, Massachusetts [Squantum] to be enlarged to a 90 plane outfit [this probably refers to the addition of Steve and his buddies]. Lunch aboard today was probably my last meal on that flat-top. I’m leaving with some vivid memories, centering around hazardous day and night carrier landings, rough seas, foul weather, crap games, bull sessions, good friends… .The ability of personnel to start and spread scuttlebutt will not be forgotten, either. … She’s a great old ship, the Ranger, cussed and loved by many people, honored and spat on, but always the same when she’s the only landing spot in an enormous ocean- a welcome sight to the naval aviator coming up the groove.”
Corsair touching down on deck:
Steve’s dilemma
Now I am speculating- Steve is a newlywed. There is a war on and he can’t opt out of the service. The unit he is with is close to home and he can see Ingrid a lot; maybe they are living in married officers’ quarters at Squantum or near there. No one is shooting at him as he flies, and he doesn’t have to worry about finding that sole landing spot in an enormous ocean. But, he is sick and tired of all the airs the hot shots from the Ranger are putting on. And he feels his duty to help with the war and has had the rush of being where the action is. What to do?
Well, according to Ingrid, the three friends got an appointment with a senior officer they knew in Washington, DC and met him to ask for a different assignment. He arranged for them to be transferred to Atlantic City where a new carrier-based unit was being formed (VF-86, see below). They were in Atlantic City from June 1944 through September 1944 for training and then moved to Cape Cod (Otis Field) for more training.
(Many people center their ideas about WWII on where they or their friends or family were on D-Day in Europe, June 6, 1944, also known as The Longest Day. Steve was based in Atlantic City and training. From the point of WWII veterans of the Pacific campaign, Steve had already participated in any number of Pacific D-Days- Tarawa, Guam, Saipan, Tinian.)
Steve’s Close Call(s)
I guess all that training could get pretty routine. Time for another Steve and Ted adventure…
To continue with WSS’ personal reflections, “We… got assigned to Air Group 86 which was forming in Atlantic City and then on to Otis on Cape Cod for further training. One Sunday there we had nothing to do, and Ted says, ‘Let’s check out a couple of planes and head up to where it all began… Middlebury College, high in the hills of Vermont. We did and put on a two man, two plane, flat-hatting Air Show extravaganza that gave new meaning to air raid shelters. We then land at Burlington, and we got this nice lady at the counter in the airport to lend us a car for the 35 mile trip down to Middlebury.
Middlebury campus:
“We went down, cruised the campus and then on the way back, the car breaks down and we have to hitch hike a ride back to the airport at Burlington. We give the poor lady the keys, told her where she could find the car, and that we had to get going ‘cause it was getting dark. It’s now pitch dark and we are 300 miles from Otis (the Navy Air Base). I never was much for navigation but Ted redeemed himself for his previous miscues with the train system, and got us home safely. It was 9 pm and those in charge were really steamed. But they were so happy to get their planes back that they said, ‘Yes, we could stay in the Navy.’”
I wonder what Ingrid thought of this caper, or whether she knew at the time.
In December 1944 VF-86 was sent to San Diego for transport to Hawaii to join the USS Wasp (this explains WSS email address years later- “wingsting” which cleverly included flying, the ship Wasp, Bill’s initials, and Ingrid’s name). VF-86’s nickname for itself was the Wild Hares.
Here is a Wasp carrier insignia (available for purchase on Ebay) but I can't verify that this was used during Steve's time on the Wasp:
Let’s let Steve pick up here- “Jump ahead to early December 1944. We are in San Diego getting ready to board the ship for Air Group 86’s foray into battle. But we get 2 days off with the understanding that we be back aboard ship by 6 am on the day of departure. Ted says, ‘Let’s rent a car and take a trip to LaJolla.’ We did and got back to the ship just in time, only we hadn’t an opportunity to turn in the car. This good-looking Marine corporal, pride of the Corps, is about to pipe us aboard but first we ask him, ‘will he turn the car in for us? It’s due back late that day.’ ‘Yes, sir. I certainly will, sir’. [He] being a Marine, and with such willingness and enthusiasm, we knew that we, and the car, were in safe hands.
“Three weeks later during our Christmas celebration at Maui, Ted gets a letter from the garage that rented us the car (Coronado Motor Service), wanting to know ‘What happened? Where is their car?’ They wrote Ted because he was the oldest and the only one that had an unexpired driver’s license. Ted writes back, and he gets a second letter from the garage.” The second letter which is attached in full but is hard to read, says, in part, “we contacted military intelligence…[but] after a thorough check they were unable to locate said car…[and] we then turned the matter over to the local and state police…[For] your protection and record your name was not mentioned…
“ ‘On January 2, a month after you had taken the car out, the State Police located it in Campo, California- out of gas; spotlight, radio, and spare tire removed.
“ ‘[You] are culpable [and] at fault in this matter.’
“ ‘I believe that a settlement of $100.00 would be more than fair … as we have lost the month’s rental as well as the stolen equipment in addition to the expense of bringing the car back [which] was a 90 mile trip. … Yours very truly,....”
Here's the real letter from Coronado Motor service- they needed a new typewriter (full page in End Notes)-
VF-86 and the Wasp
Steve's story now becomes well documented as he becomes a
member of VF-86 since it is covered in the Carrier Air Group 86 cruise log. This is the cover of that log-
As above, VF-86 was commissioned in June 1944 in Atlantic City. The squadron was flying F6F-3s also known as Hellcats at this time.
In October the squadron moved to Cape Cod. In December the unit was given orders to go to Hawaii via San Diego and performed training flights out of Maui. I believe it was when the unit was in Maui that it was converted to flying Corsairs. (The bent wing and four propeller blades distinguished the Corsairs.) By this time the Navy had learned a landing flight curve that addressed the problem with getting landing instructions from the flight officer. Still VF-86 had three months of training in Maui and this possibly explains why the cruise log jokes a lot about water landings. Each Corsair could carry 6 machine guns, one bomb under each wing, or one bigger bomb under the fuselage. Toward the end of the war, they started firing rockets.
The cruise log comments that Steve and his friend Ted Ogden "had the social event of the season" at their house on Maui- a Christmas party complete with a tree decorated with "empty beer cans and Scott tissue" This is referred to above about the letter from the car rental. Reading the cruise log gives the impression that the life of a carrier pilot on shore and onboard a carrier for these men in their twenties was a cross between an ongoing fraternity party and an ongoing life or death dogfight with the enemy. There are many inside jokes, references to bars, parties, and Officers Clubs, and then recovery from the same as well as moments of fear, reverence, and terror.
To support the frat party aspect of this, the following quote is from the Wasp cruise log, Vapor trails section, regarding Maui- "The pile of beer cans reaches a zenith. Can hardly move because of the BOQ (Bachelor Officer's Quarters) debris. Steve doing his little bit to keep the flame of the perpetual party going." The next part of the log comments on how hard the unit is working and wonder when they will ever get a day off. “We trained and trained…and trained."
I think we should all be glad they did all this training. Cliff says his Dad told him he had one pancake landing on a carrier (no mention of which one) when his wheels wouldn’t come down. Going back to the reference about the end of the Middlebury escapade (“I was never much on navigation”), Cliff says his Dad told him about coming back from a mission (training or combat unknown) in low to no visibility, with WSS probably as wing commander. Two other planes couldn’t see and WSS told them to just follow him. When the group came out of the clouds, they were about 30-50 feet from the surface of the ocean.
There are also several comments in the cruise log about practice runs to Molokini Rock near Maui. “The last thing at night and the first thing in the morning to do was hit Molokini Rock." Steve’s group strafed and bombed it repeatedly for practice and referred jokingly to it as "Molokini, symbol of Tyranny."
Now VBF (Bombing Fighting) Squadron 86 (self-assigned nickname the Vapor Trails)
On January 1, 1945 VF-86 split into VF-86 and VBF (Bombing Fighting) 86, the part of Air Group 86 Steve was with from then on.
Air Group 86 shipped out of Hawaii in March 1945, with some pilots aboard the USS Franklin (see the fate of USS Franklin below and in the End Notes). Others were aboard the USS Nassau (an escort carrier capable of carrying troops and aircraft and called the Nausea in the cruise log, along with references to long lasting card games). Both proceeded to meet the Wasp (Appendix 4) at Ulithi (the name for a group of islands forming a coral atoll in the larger group of Caroline Islands, now part of Federated States of Micronesia). The previous air group was departing on the same day that CAG 86 was arriving (March 4), it was raining torrents, and, in true US Navy fashion, the handoff was a confusing melee (there’s a military acronym for this). CAG 86 rode in small Higgins boats (made in Louisiana and the reason the WWII Museum is located in New Orleans today) to the Wasp and had to climb rope netting to get on board. All made it, but every piece of gear and baggage was dropped to deck and totally soaked. Carrier Air Group 86 flew combat the day after arrival.
Higgins boat:
This photo is of pilots in training climbing a net ladder like what the Wasp pilots (in uniform) had to climb on this day in the rain-
Short aside- One small island in the Ulithi atoll was called Mog Mog. The cruise log notes that the pilots often went to Mog Mog for some “grog grog”. Mog Mog must have held an officer’s club well known throughout the Pacific- A book by an officer on the Buettner which took my Dad from California to India also mentions it.
Mog Mog map:
“Wasp recorded—from 17 to 23 March (1945)—what was often referred to as the busiest week in flattop history. In these seven days, Wasp accounted for 14 enemy planes in the air, destroyed six more on the ground, scored two 500 lb (230 kg) bomb hits on each of two Japanese carriers, dropped two 1,000 lb (450 kg) bombs on a Japanese battleship, put one 1,000 lb (450 kg) bomb on another battleship, hit a heavy cruiser with three 500 lb (230 kg) missiles, dropped another 1,000 lb (450 kg) bomb on a big cargo ship, and heavily strafed "and probably sank" a large Japanese submarine. During this week, Wasp was under almost continuous attack by shore-based aircraft and experienced several close kamikaze attacks” (quoted from Wikipedia).
Part of VBF- 86 in flight-
The cruise log notes hitting Kyushu in the Japanese home islands was "easier than Molokini Rock". As the next paragraph shows, there was no reason to become complacent.
The Bomber gets bombed
The above quote omits the fact that a Japanese plane
dropped a bomb on the Wasp, but it was very significant. The bomb hit at 7:09
am on March 19 (four days into the mission) off the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, and Ingrid reports
that Steve’s was the last plane to take off before the bomb struck. Later, after enough blackout time, the Daily Boston Globe published an article by Carlyle Holt titled "Wasp Fired by
Bomb….” which is also included as a full page in the End Notes.
This bomb hit a plane which started one fire, then went through the decks, killing
102 sailors and wounding another 270. The crew got things fairly under control
quickly and the planes which had been out in combat returned to the deck hardly
noticing the damage. However, to quote the cruise log, "the ship's laundry
and galley had been knocked out and we were short of food, dirty, tired, and
ragged." See also the article called “First Hand Account” below and as a full page in the End
Notes. Also note this is about two weeks after the Wasp reached the battle theater.
I could not find a photo of the hole from the kamikaze hit on the Wasp on this day but here is the hole made in the Bunker Hill when it got hit so you can get a mental image-
The crew was probably too busy trying to make the carrier available for the returning planes to take pictures of the hole.
The carrier USS Franklin CV-13, which had shipped some of the Air Group 86 pilots from Hawaii to the South Pacific had been bombed much more seriously earlier in the same day the Wasp was hit, and you can see what the reaction to being bombed was like at the youtube video cited in the End Notes. The attack resulted in the loss of 807 of her crew and Franklin became the most heavily damaged United States aircraft carrier to survive the war. (If Steve rode on the Franklin from Pearl Harbor to Ulithi, then he may be among the luckiest WWII veterans- shipping on three aircraft carriers all of which were hit by kamikazes. The Japanese kamikaze effort came too little too late to influence the war but they did tremendous damage when they struck.)
The damaged Wasp, repaired in makeshift fashion, fought on for a few days but then limped back into Ulithi where further inspection indicated a need for more extensive repairs. The Wasp and pilots went back to Pearl Harbor and then proceeded to Bremerton, Washington, arriving on April 11, 1945.
The CAG 86 pilots got 2 weeks leave and then were sent to various bases in Northern California. Steve was assigned to Modesto in the Bay area. I don’t know whether Ingrid came out west to be with him.
Back to the South Pacific for the end of the war
Repairs took place in Bremerton, Washington for about 3 months. The unit regrouped and left for Pearl Harbor on the freshly repaired Wasp on June 13, 1945. Wasp then headed for the South Pacific again on July 11. The Wasp’s flyers “whacked” Wake Island (“many hits and no errors”) and arrived at Eniwetok on July 19th . Wasp joined the rest of Admiral Bull Halsey’s Third Fleet for the push toward the Japanese home islands. On the way it went by Iwo Jima and the sailors and pilots paid respects to the many soldiers and marines who died there. The VF log says they re-entered combat on July 26. That same day also marked five and a half weeks of no mail service, something which Ingrid also commented on.
Repaired Wasp on August 6, 1945 with planes on deck:
During this time the Wasp airmen hit the Yukosuka Naval Base near Tokyo, airfields, and manufacturing locations in coordination with planes from the USS Shangri-La and the USS Yorktown. The Weymouth Gazette article on display at our house commends Steve for leading his section of 10 planes in bombing two war materiel factories on Honshu, the largest of the Japanese Islands. See full page article in End Notes.
Leo Burrows was a radio man and a gunner on the Wasp and gave some oral history of WWII to students at Brookdale Community College in New Jersey. He said, “On the 7th of August the first Atomic Bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and a second on Nagasaki on the 9th. On the 9th and 10th we were busy bombing airfields on Honshu, which were suspected of launching Kamikaze attacks. The planes were in position for take-off on the 10th, when the Task Force came under an air attack. We were ordered to get out of our planes and take cover. Gus Clucas and I headed for the fantail, taking half of the air crewmen on the strike with us, while the others went forward to the bow. The BUNKER HILL had lost half its flying personnel when hit mid-ship. The WASP did not want a repeat.
“Back on the fantail we watched the action, all ships firing away. Suddenly a Kamikaze broke through and headed straight for the WASP. Gus gave me an anxious look, at the same time he pointed to the flight deck sixty feet above us, and then to a destroyer about a quarter mile aft of us. I got the message. There were sixty planes parked up there, with a total of about 20,000 gallons of gasoline in their tanks, 36 tons of explosives in their bomb bays and 38,000 rounds of ammo in their guns. If that Kamikaze hit, we are deep in hell. Our only salvation is swimming to that can.
“As the Kamikaze closed, the accuracy of the twenty millimeter gun crews improved. Their shells were now slamming in to him; suddenly he began to smoke and break up. A section of the fuselage, with a flaming wing attached, broke off and tumbled towards the WASP. It crashed into the radar antenna, hung there, and then fell harmlessly into the sea. It was the last Kamikaze attack of the war.” (Leo Burrows Brookdale CC.)
Last kamikaze attack:
The airmen were in the air heading for more raids around Tokyo on August 15 when they received a message that hostilities had ceased and the war was over. At first, they did not believe the message (neither di my Dad in India at the time) but then many dumped their bombs and headed back to the Wasp. To quote Leo Burrows again, “On our way we received a call from Admiral William "Bull" Halsey, telling us that according to the terms of surrender, there were to be no Japanese planes airborne. If we were to see any of them up there, we were to remember Pearl Harbor and, "shoot the bastards down in a friendly sort of a way."
It turns out at least two of the Japanese pilots did not get the message and tried to attack the task force, but some pilots had not jettisoned their weapons. The Japanese planes went “smoking into the sea”.
The Wasp cruise log then notes ironically “somebody reported a typhoon nearby so we immediately headed into it” and received a "facial alteration". The result of 140 mph winds was the loss of 27 feet of carrier deck from the bow. Bull Halsey had the distinction of leading his flotilla into two typhoons.
Typhoon damage August 25, 1945:
Admiral Bull Halsey got his nickname because he was a fighter and pressed for action. He was a hero to the American public, but he was also a rogue. He and his ships disappeared for a few days in the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944. His fleet ran into a typhoon in mid December 1944 also because of ignoring the weather report. Twenty-seven ships were damaged and two destroyers were sunk. Wasp was one of the ships damaged in this typhoon too, but Steve was in Hawaii training. As for the second typhoon, the higher ups in the Navy did not want to tarnish Halsey’s reputation so the blame was pinned to Admiral John McCain, grandfather of the POW, war hero, Senator, and presidential candidate. Admiral McCain was transferred to a desk job and died shortly after that.
In spite of the
shortened flight deck the Wasp pilots then began to fly mercy missions over
Japan, dropping “everything from Old Grand Dad to medical equipment” to POWs
held in the Narumi camp near Nagoya. This picture of the roof of the camp shows
a message in sheets saying “Bataan Corregidor POWs thank Wasp.” According to
Ingrid, Steve and one of the prisoners of war there corresponded a bit after
the war. In the second picture you can see some prisoners standing in a sort of parade ground (photos may have been taken by Steve's friend Ted Ogden who was now trained to take intelligence photos).
The final section of the CAG 86 Wasp cruise log, presumably referring to the July-August time period, notes that 40 planes were damaged by the enemy, 29 returned to the ship while 11 were lost; there were 25 water landings with 20 pilots rescued; they shot down 19 planes, destroyed 70 on the ground plus hit 22 warships and 28 merchant ships. Here's the scoreboard for the Wasp, also in the End Notes but it is very difficult to read as well as a clearer example of a scoreboard from the Bunker Hill.
Cliff has seen Steve’s personal flight log from the war and remembers seeing drawings of Japanese flags. He also said Steve told him, reluctantly, of three “kills”. These quite possibly occurred at the very end of the war, perhaps between August 7th and August 15th. Steve remarked to Cliff that the Japanese were very short of pilots and were sending very young inexperienced flyers into action. When we find the actual flight log, we may know more detail.
The cruise log also has a group shot of the 76 pilots in VBF-86- as well as individual photos, mostly in their planes. It notes that Ted Ogden was an assistant editor of the cruise log for VF-86 and that Steve was an assistant editor for the VBF-86 section. I can’t tell what parts of the cruise log text either may have written.
Steve’s group VBF-86 (he's standing first on the left, near the wing):
Notice that the individual photo and profile are different from the one from the Bunker Hill- Steve is now “married:
Steve from Wasp cruise log:
For the Wasp, the members of CAG 86, and for Steve, it was back home safely via the Panama Canal to Squantum at last on October 27, 1945. It must have been quite a relief- no more harrowing moments or close calls on deck or in the air. According to Steve’s Military Discharge sheet, he left the service December 14, 1945 to finish college and to enjoy a much more settled married life. Then there was first son Phil, with more children to come. As shown above, on August 12, 1946 WSS was recognized with the Distinguished Flying Cross for his service.
Steve's discharge summary:
In the Bent Wing section of the Wasp cruise log there is a poem cited by John Magee which probably expresses Steve's elation on reflecting about his time flying and surviving the horrors of war-
End notes and photos:
>Corsair (Vought F4U): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vought_F4U_Corsair
>USS Franklin bombed by kamikazes- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTAViMX-w6c
Appendix 1: From Wikipedia- USS Bunker Hill (CV/CVA/CVS-17, AVT-9) was one of 24 Essex-class aircraft carriers built during World War II for the United States Navy. The ship, the second US Navy ship to bear the name, was named for the Battle of Bunker Hill. Bunker Hill was commissioned in May 1943, and served in several campaigns in the Pacific Theater of Operations, earning eleven battle stars and a Presidential Unit Citation. She was badly damaged in May 1945 by Japanese kamikaze attacks, with the loss of hundreds of her crew, becoming one of the most heavily damaged carriers to survive the war.
(Reading further in the Wikipedia article, the number dead is cited as 346. One last minor distinction for the Bunker Hill- Paul Newman, the future actor, served as an enlisted hand on her in the spring of 1945.)
After the attack she returned to the U.S. mainland for repairs and was decommissioned in 1947. While in reserve she was reclassified as an attack carrier (CVA), then an antisubmarine carrier (CVS), and finally an Auxiliary Aircraft Landing Training Ship (AVT), but was never modernized and never saw active service again. Bunker Hill and Franklin were the only Essex-class ships never recommissioned after World War II.
Stricken from the Naval Vessel Register in 1966, she served as an electronics test platform for many years in San Diego bay, and was sold for scrap in 1973. An effort to save her as a museum ship in 1972 was unsuccessful.
Appendix 2: From Wikipedia- USS Ranger (CV-4) was the first ship of the United States Navy to be designed and built from the keel up as an aircraft carrier. Ranger was a relatively small ship, closer in size and displacement to the first US carrier—Langley—than later ships. An island superstructure was not included in the original design, but was added after completion. Of the eight pre-war US aircraft carriers CV-1 through CV-8, Ranger was one of only three to survive World War II, the others being Enterprise and Saratoga. Deemed too slow for use with the Pacific Fleet's carrier task forces, the ship spent most of the war in the Atlantic Ocean….
As the largest carrier in the Atlantic Fleet, Ranger led the task force that comprised herself and the four escort carriers. These provided air superiority during the amphibious invasion of Vichy-ruled French Morocco and the resulting Naval Battle of Casablanca, beginning on 8 November.
On 3 January 1944, Ranger became a training carrier out of Quonset Point, Rhode Island….
Gerald W. Thomas was a pilot in VT 4 (Torpedo) based on the Ranger and later became President of New Mexico State University. He wrote a book called "Torpedo Squadron Four: A Cockpit View of World War II" which makes use of his daily journals to portray the life aboard the Ranger and in flying at that time. This would not have been exactly Steve's experience but it would have been somewhat close. Dr. Thomas remarks "After Air Group Four was detached from the USS Ranger, we were assigned to Fort Devens Airfield.” He further quotes "Red Rippers", a history of VF 4- "Washington, learning that Fort Devens Airfield was too small for an Army pilot to land on, dispatched Air Group Four to the spot to keep the field in use and to dispense a bit of Navy goodwill and propaganda in the surrounding area."
Ranger and Bon Homme Richard, both US Navy carriers in WWII, were named after Revolutionary War hero John Paul Jones' two ships.
Appendix 3: The Carrier Air Group 86 cruise log (reprinted by Schiffer Press in 1997)
The log is very similar to a high school annual. It has pictures of all the members of the air group and the supporting members of the crew of the ship. The text is divided into two sections each on the VF squadron, the VBF squadron, the VB squadron (bombing), and the VT squadron (torpedo). One of these sections was mostly inside jokes about life ashore and on the ship- these sections portray what one might expect from a group of 20 year olds placing their life on the line, away from home ("while at sea a favorite pastime was wishing"), and up to a lot of mischief when not flying- a bit like a long running fraternity party. The second section usually includes commentary about what actually happened when flying missions- whom they lost, what they encountered in the sky etc.
After VF 86 was formed in June 1944, as noted VF 86 was split into VF 86 and VBF 86 at the beginning of 1945.
The log shows Steve as one of the assistant editors for the VBF sections, the parts of which are called "Travelogue of a Bent Wing" (look at any of the pictures of the Corsair) and "Vapor Trails". I believe Steve may have written the section called "Bent Wing"- The brief bio with his picture in the log quotes him as saying "this is Steve, sixteen weary chicks wending their way home…" and the "Bent Wing" section uses the "chicks" analogy from the first sentence through the last paragraph.
Appendix 4: The Wasp (best sources are Wikipedia, http://navysite.de/cv/cv18.htm, and the Wasp Association web page (cv18.com).
The Wasp, the 9th ship in the US Navy to have that name, was initially named Oriskany but renamed the Wasp to honor previous Wasp sunk in 1942. It was built in Quincy Mass. and designated CV 18. After WWII, it performed long service into the 60s, but it was decommissioned in 1972 and, quoting another Navy pilot about the fate of these old ships, "turned into razor blades". The ship received 8 battle stars during WWII.
If you Google USS Wasp CV-18 you can easily get diverted into a deep rabbit hole with many photos of the carrier, with stories about the Wasp’s predecessor Wasp CV-7 and its sinking off Guadalcanal and the discovery of the sunken ship more recently, the Wasp’s collision with the Hobson, and the Wasp’s role in picking Gemini astronauts in the 1960s.
These are the photos I mentioned as meriting a full page in order-
Middlebury students (2 photos)
Corpus class photo
Bunker Hill cruise log cover
Corsair specs
Hellcat specs
Neptunus
Map of Pacific Theater
Rabaul
Card games and mail sacks
Marshall Islands map
Steve "single" profile
History of Bunker Hill cover
Coronado Motor letter
Wasp fired
First hand account
Repaired Wasp
Steve gets Flying Cross article
Typhoon damage
Score board Wasp
Score board Bunker Hill
VBF-86 in flight
Steve "married" profile
Discharge papers
Magee Poem
