Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [56]
First blood was spilled at the southernmost tip of the Chiba Peninsula, twenty miles south of Yokohama. Five Essex Hellcats spotted a cigar-shaped Mitsubishi Betty and pounced. A Louisianan, Lieutenant (jg) E. J. “Nic” Nicolini, won the race. He shot down the twin-engine bomber at 0800, beginning nine hours of almost uninterrupted combat.
Lieutenant Commander Herbert N. Houck, leading twenty of his own Lexington Hellcats with twenty more from Hancock and San Jacinto, was an old hand, having led Fighting Squadron 9 since December 1943. Moreover, it was one day short of a year since his last combat: the frantic hassle over Truk Atoll in February 1944. In worsening weather, his pilots shifted targets, opting for Katori Airfield near the coast. Minutes later Houck’s formation piled into a half-hour combat.
The dogfight spread as if by cyclonic action, drawing outriders into its vortex as Zekes arrived from Mobara and Katori. Several carrier pilots got repeated opportunities: Lieutenant (jg) Henry K. Champion fired at seven bandits in succession, claiming a kill and two probables. Lieutenant Commander W. J. “Pete” Keith, leading Hancock’s Fighting Squadron 80, became an ace in a day, claiming five victims. So did one of his division leaders, Lieutenant William C. Edwards, who had flown dive bombers in 1942. Unusually old for a combat pilot, “Bulldog” Edwards was a week short of his thirty-first birthday.
By the time the cloudy sky cleared of aircraft over Katori, the Americans had claimed forty-eight Japanese planes destroyed. Though the results were exaggerated, the outcome was American control of Japanese airspace. But it could be a tough education: Bunker Hill’s virgin Air Group 84 launched its initial combat sorties just twenty-one days out of Alameda, California. At some targets the flak was described as “pedestrian” because, in the words of one squadron commander, “you could get out and walk on it.”
From the best-known dogfight of the day emerged the legend of Kaneyoshi Muto. With eight years of experience, the diminutive warrant officer was described by no less an authority than leading ace Saburo Sakai as “a genius in the air.” Yet on the ground he was “a friendly and cheerful ace who was liked by everybody.”
Breaking into combat in China in 1937, Muto returned to Japan and became a tactics instructor. From 1941 he increased his victory log in the Philippines and Java, later leaving his mark in the Solomons and New Guinea. He survived Iwo Jima’s Darwinian summer of 1944, cementing his reputation as “the toughest fighter pilot in the Imperial Navy.” Now he flew with the Yokosuka Air Group’s operational evaluation unit at Atsugi.
On February 16, the twenty-eight-year-old Muto was awaiting news of the birth of his child when word came of Grummans inbound. The noontime scramble pitted seven Bennington F6F Hellcats against ten or more Zeros, Mitsubishi Jacks, and Kawanishi Georges led by Lieutenant Yuzo Tskuamoto. Muto revved his George into the air to intercept the Hellcats.
The Americans were well trained but inexperienced, entering their first combat against some of the elite of the Imperial Navy. It was a shattering initiation: two Bennington pilots were lost and two captured. In the frantic low-level dogfight Muto used his four 20mm cannon to good effect, claiming multiple victories. Almost as soon as he landed a corrupted version of the