Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [77]
Aboard a carrier, flight operations and aircraft maintenance demanded almost incessant activity. On other ships, however, weeks or months of monotony were only occasionally interrupted. There was seldom a sight of the enemy, only of the deadly projectiles which he launched. Lt. Ben Bradlee saw two Japanese in the whole war. Once he glimpsed a pilot whose frozen features were visible before he crashed into the sea a few yards off the ship’s bow. The second time, from Bradlee’s destroyer off Corregidor a solitary figure was spotted swimming, wearing what appeared to be a torn nightgown. Bradlee was dispatched in a boat to pick him up, while a raucous chorus of sailors lined the rail, jeering, “Throw him back.”
Naval war imposed abrupt, drastic transitions from routine to mortal terror and back again, which contrasted with an even tenor of discomfort and fear for infantrymen in combat ashore. At any hour of day or night, a ship might be electrified by a broadcast call. “Of all the announcements215 none packs quite the wallop of ‘GENERAL QUARTERS…GENERAL QUARTERS…ALL HANDS MAN YOUR BATTLE STATIONS!’” wrote an officer. “Though you may have heard it fifty times before, the fifty-first still has the freshness of the first.” A carrier officer, Ensign Dick Saunders216, said: “When the action does come, it happens so quickly you are never quite ready for it. It’s all over within a matter of seconds and then you wait, wait, wait again for some more.”
2. Flyboys
FOR ALL the majesty of the big ships, the thrill of racing destroyers and PT-boats dancing over the waves, by 1944 every sailor in the Pacific knew that the fleet’s airborne firepower was what counted: Avenger torpedo bombers; Helldiver dive-bombers; Hellcat and Corsair fighters. The fast fleet carriers operated in task groups of four, accompanied by appropriate escorts. Concentrating “flattops” economised on standing fighter patrols—CAPs, which covered their operations against Japanese air attack. The big ships sought to operate in open seas, offering maximum scope for manoeuvre, minimum exposure to surprise. They were screened by destroyer radar pickets, posted many miles out to provide early warning. A few years earlier, carrier-borne aircraft had been thought a poor substitute for land-based air support. In 1944–45, it remained true that heavy bombers could not operate from flight decks, but so vast was the U.S. Navy’s aerial armada that it could deliver a devastating punch against any target afloat or ashore. Each fleet carrier carried a mix of around fifty fighters, thirty dive-bombers, a dozen torpedo-bombers. The chief limitations on the ability of Nimitz’s fleets to support land operations were weather and the admirals’ yearning to pursue their own strategic purposes, unencumbered by responsibilities to soldiers or Marines.
The men of the air groups wore uniforms which implied that they belonged to the same service as seamen, but the “flyboys” of the “brown shoe navy” thought of themselves as a separate breed. Their lives were almost entirely divorced from those of their parent ships’ crews. Until the last stage of the war, around one-third of carrier airmen could expect to die, in combat or one of the accidents inseparable from high-pressure flight operations. A catapult failure, careless landing, flak damage which injured hydraulics or undercarriage—all these things could, and did, kill a crew or two most days—10 percent aircraft losses a month were factored into the planning of carrier operations.
Airmen were roused from their bunks two hours before take-off, to dress and eat—they were usually briefed for a dawn sortie the previous night. They received the order “Pilots, man your planes!” through bullhorns and the broadcast system, then ran through the hatches along catwalks to the flight deck, to be strapped into their seats by plane captains