Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [92]
Three means of rescue were available to downed fliers: seaplanes, submarines, and destroyers. Destroyers were generally stationed at 100-mile intervals from Iwo to Japan, while submarines and amphibious aircraft worked in enemy coastal waters.
From start to finish an airman’s chances of rescue from the Pacific were just about even. Overall, 654 of 1,310 Army fliers known down at sea were saved. Of those, half were aboard bombers that ditched, demonstrating that water landings afforded greater survival prospects than the risk of drowning under a waterlogged parachute.
The Mustang pilots faced an additional problem. The P-51 handbook warned that the aircraft would float for perhaps two seconds after hitting the water, so standard procedure was to bail out rather than ditch.
Fear of capture prompted some crews to exercise excess caution, to the point of shunning use of radios or even flares. But gradually the situation improved. The AAF and Navy achieved fully joint operations with B-29 men riding submarines from Guam, and naval rescue personnel flying in Superfortresses. Thus, each side of the team learned firsthand about their opposite numbers.
Once a man was down in Empire waters, at least one flight “capped” him, orbiting overhead to guide submarines or “dumbo” seaplanes and to disrupt Japanese attempts to capture him. In extreme cases, Mustang pilots spent ten hours in the air on such a mission, abandoning their briefed targets and circling a squadron mate for four hours before heading home. On one occasion pilots saw an American submarine within a half-mile of shore trying to pick up a flier. Later a submarine skipper tired of the game, went in close to shore, sank a harassing patrol craft, scooped up the airman, and departed. At one time the 21st Fighter Group had ten rescued pilots on the duty submarine.
Some B-17s and B-29s were employed as rescue planes, specially modified to drop large motorboats to downed bomber crews or even to a single pilot. Based on Iwo Jima, the “super-dumbos” circled fifty to 100 miles off Japan until called in, with as many as eight assigned at a time.
Despite all the rescue efforts, nothing was certain. The 531st Fighter Squadron watched while one of its pilots climbed into one of the air-dropped boats only five miles offshore, expecting him to crank up the motor and head out to sea. But the pilot could not get the outboard started, and when the Mustangs had to leave, the Japanese came out and took him. Quite naturally, that caused a sensation back on Iwo where all available boats were checked. “Sure enough, none of them would start,” Harry Crim recalled. “Needless to say, boat maintenance picked up after that.”
One of VII Fighter Command’s lingering concerns was that many new pilots had little or no idea of how to survive in the water. After watching one of its men drown because he couldn’t get out of his parachute harness, the 21st Group urged a weekly training program that included tossing pilots out of a boat while instructors stood by to demonstrate or lend a hand.
It was said that some pilots were so satisfied with the rescue service that they came back for more. Lieutenant Frank Ayres limped his gimpy Mustang almost 500 miles back from the first Tokyo mission before he had to bail out over a destroyer. Two and a half months later, after battling three enemy fighters, Ayres again hit the silk over a lifeguard submarine and landed so close that he didn’t have time to inflate his rubber raft.
By mid-August the Pacific command had fourteen submarines, twenty-one flying boats, nine super-dumbo aircraft, and five ships deployed for air-sea rescue. In all,