Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [79]
Beyond combat casualties, the log of a Marine Corsair squadron on Essex showed that during a typical fortnight, one plane “splashed” taking off on each of two successive days; on the second of these, another plane crashed on landing. Three days later, one Corsair was lost at sea. Thereafter, three more went into the sea at two-day intervals. Hard deck landings damaged airframes. Sherwin Goodman, an Avenger gunner222, suffered a typical mishap one morning when the flight deck hydraulic catapult failed in mid-launch. His plane slumped into the sea. Seconds later, the huge ship passed close enough to strike the sinking Avenger a glancing blow. A destroyer retrieved the crew intact, however, collecting the usual six gallons of ice-cream ransom for returning them to their carrier, and to operations.
“Oh I’d rather be a bellhop than a flyer on a flattop,” the pilots sang, “with my hand around a bottle not around the goddamn throttle.” Unpredicted violent weather could write off whole squadrons of aircraft, because it made navigation problematic. Error meant a descent into the sea when gas ran out. As on shore, almost every aviator wanted to be a “fighter jock,” with the thrill of engaging enemy aircraft in the war’s best carrier fighter, the Grumman Hellcat. It is intoxicating to go into battle knowing that your own side possesses much better trained, and thus more proficient, pilots than the enemy. By late 1944, the average Japanese flier had just forty flying hours’ experience before entering combat. His American counterpart had at least 525 hours, and it showed. In the last phase of the war, U.S. carrier fighters were inflicting amazingly disproportionate losses on their failing foes. Commander Winters: “Most of our kills were223 from the rear end. [The Japanese] are scared to death of the Grummans. Only when they outnumber you terrifically will they even stay near you. They will make passes, but stay far away and scram when you turn on them.” Such cautious enemy behaviour seemed a long march from the kamikaze spirit, of which so much would be heard in 1945.
Flying became more hazardous, however, when planes were committed to ground strafing or ship attacks. Low-level dive-bomber and torpedo-carrier missions remained gruelling to the end. Lamade of Hancock was shocked by the intensity of the Japanese barrage as he and his men dive-bombed targets around Hong Kong. With unusual sophistication, enemy anti-aircraft gunners followed the American planes down almost to ground level, from 15,000 feet to 8,000, then 3,000. “From pull-out, I looked back224 and saw five planes of my group going down in flames. We’re going to have to figure out some way to combat that AA,” Lamade told navy debriefers. “After that attack, Admiral McCain said he was very sorry we had lost so many pilots. I told him we…can’t go on fighting Japs continually without suffering some losses.”
To beat flak, pilots learned to dive faster and more steeply than they had ever trained for. Cockpit glass fogged with the dramatic change of atmosphere as they pulled out of a descent and soared upwards after releasing bombs. As ever in combat, the men who survived were those who were determined but careful: “We had four or five pilots who were over-eager,” Fred Bakutis of Enterprise told debriefers. “They were excellent boys, very energetic and hard to hold down. It is these people who generally don’t come back, because they are so anxious to do damage to the Japs that they take risks beyond reason.” Yet there were also shy pilots, content to release their bombs and swing away towards safety with a carelessness of aim that exasperated their commanders. And because these were very young, sometimes wild young men, they were sometimes reckless in the use of their lethal weapons. Senior officers were irked by the frequency with which American planes misidentified