Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [85]
Seventh Air Force fighters were ready to move to Iwo as soon as facilities were readied. Planning for very long range (VLR) escort missions had begun the previous summer, as Brigadier General Ernest M. Moore alerted his VII Fighter Command “Sunsetters” for the challenging mission.
“Mickey” Moore was typical of the young flying generals in the Army Air Forces. A thirty-seven-year-old West Pointer (class of ’31), he was an experienced fighter pilot who had been in the Pacific since 1939. Having assumed command in August 1944, he led from the front and landed the first Mustang on Iwo on March 6. Behind him were the three squadrons of the 15th Fighter Group. Eleven days later the first element of Colonel Kenneth Powell’s 21st Fighter Group arrived at Airfield Number 2. Many of his pilots were new, averaging about 300 hours flight time with perhaps twenty in P-51s. Though the group had recently transitioned from P-38 Lightnings, the pilots and the Mustangs were equal to the task.
Iwo Jima was crammed with airplanes: two Army night fighter squadrons, Navy and Marine strike aircraft, and air-sea rescue planes. But the P-51s were the most numerous and strategically the most important. They broke in slowly by flying local patrols, but Japanese aerial intrusions were rare—only two during May and June.
Other than flying, pilots on Iwo had precious little diversion, but some didn’t mind, preferring to focus on the job. Captain Harry Crim said, “Iwo was perhaps the most hostile ground environment an airman could find himself in. Nature provided an active volcano [Mount Suribachi], and man provided the war.”
There was literally no place to go, not much to do, and precious little to see. The Army fliers did, however, find ways to spend their off-duty time—primarily in commerce with the eminently “negotiable” Navy Seabees. Busily engaged in expanding Airfields 1 and 2 (Number 3 was never completed), the sailors’ motto was, “We’ll do anything for whiskey.” When it was discovered that the Seabees had an ice machine but no booze, the law of supply and demand took over. The 21st Fighter Group traded fifteen bottles of whiskey for the ice machine, installation included.
The next priority was an officers club, which was constructed with the same interservice negotiations that attended procurement of the ice machine. Said one pilot, “When the war ended, we had enough supplies to last us another year and all the material and equipment to build a swimming pool—including a concrete mixer.” Eventually there was even a spa—the brainchild of the 21st Group’s flight surgeon, who suggested converting a bomb shelter into a sauna with piped-in hot water from Iwo’s sulfur springs. Harry Crim observed, “It really took out the kinks and probably added to our embellishment of mission accomplishments.”
Crim, an aggressive twenty-six-year-old Floridian, was one of the Sunsetters’ most experienced pilots with 2,200 flight hours. He had flown fifty P-38 missions in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy, enduring sand, flies, and disease while losing fifty pounds. Consequently, he became “an Iwo booster.” He believed that being able to concentrate 100 percent on combat training, without serious diversions, was one of the island’s strong points. He helped his pilots devote their attention to flying and fighting and thus prevented their going “rock happy.”
Before the first VLR mission, something entirely unexpected literally brought the war to the pilots’ front door. The 21st Group had been ashore barely a week when, at 4:00 A.M. on March 27, eight dawn patrol pilots were walking to the field. They were suddenly overcome by 350 to 400 Japanese who poured out of underground caves and tunnels. Instantly the Mustang pilots were embroiled in a vicious infantry war.
Responding to the attack, Harry Crim and others established a skirmish line, moved the wounded to the rear, and shot it out with .45 pistols, .30 caliber carbines, and even Browning Automatic Rifles. After five hours of intermittent fighting, the marines ended the affair: