Belleau Wood (CVL 24) - Naval Cruise Book

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tions system were .ill at Kanoya. The BELLEAU WOOD made its first lunge at this important base with a series of bombing and strafing runs which destroyed two Zekcs and started fires in two hangar areas, warehouses and shops. March IS was also a strenuous day for the ships in the force. At battlc stations all day long and long past mid' night, the gunners saw more fireworks than they had ever seen before. The enemy's attacks were not coordinated groups of planes, because these were broken up by the combat air patrols miles away from the fleet. The japs that did get through to the ships slipped in one or two at a time for sporadic runs. Shortly after sunrise a lone Jap peeled off at 4,000 feet for a dive at the HGRNET. He was erased in a blinding blaze from the flagships guns. In midfmorning a George, zooming up for a getaway after dropping a nearfmiss on a cruiser, ran smack into a 5 shell from a destroyer. A blinding flame flashed for a moment and volumes of black smoke puffed out in all directions, marking in space the Jap's vanishing point. Not a visible trace of the George dropped out of that black cloud. Shortly after noon a second Nip tried to suicide the HCRNET which, master ship that she was, blew him out of the skies. Not long after, destroyers in the screen shot down another single plane. An hour after sunset more bogies appeared but only one got close enough to be seen as he plunged afire out of the darkened sky, shot down by a night fighter. At 0230 the following morning we secured from General Quarters. The sack felt good-for 45 minutes at least. At 0315, March 19 we heard that gong again. General Quarters! Just 60 miles off Kyushu the Green Hornets fKamikaze boysj were resuming their Lamplighter's Serenade with flares around the sky. But only one enemy came close and he was hit by AA fire just as he unwrapped his flares -they popped out in all directions. Our first patrol that morning covered Gita and Saeki 83 ..

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We headed straight for Kyushu, the nearest to Okinawa of the major Jap islands, the home of innumerable air' fields, and the solar plexus of Japan's air force. This was the hornet's nest. For us was the job of blasting these Helds and destroying planes, paralyzing Nippon's air power. We were after planes, airborne or on the ground. Of secondary importance were field installations, repair facilities, transportation and industrial targets. The planes came first! Q15 Action off Kyushu, March 18 - 21 Shortly after midnight on March 18 enemy fliers dis' covered us. No surprise this time. The first bogey fthe first of ten single plane raidsj was picked up at 0144. Section one in CIC with Hghter director officers Jack Colter and Frank Sloan on watch vectored out night fighters from the ENTERPRISE to intercept. Splash one bogey several miles from the ship. When at 0400 a number of bogies closed the formation, the ship went to General Quarters. Up to this time enemy air attacks had been heard about but not seen by half the crew, their introduction was coming up. Platoon Sgt. Russel F. Greenleaf dashed out to his gun station on the forecastle quad 40MM mount to find the sky ablaze with clusters of flares which seemed to hang in midfair. Every ship, particularly the carriers BENNINCTCN, HCRNET, and WASP, was a perfect silhouette. At high speed the formation swung into emergency maneuvers turning sharply, churning the water furiously to confuse the enemy's attack. From CIC a continuous stream of reports flowed to the bridge, keeping the skipper posted on number, range, and bearing of the incoming raiders: Bogey at six o'clock, seven miles. Alert to the north The squawk boxes broke the eerie silence with com mands from the flag Flan speed execute now Turn Right i Turn Left. Raid Six is getting close-Nanyone with a good solu tion, let him have it. --- Suddenly off our port bow the destroyers and cruisers opened fire. Five inch bursts and forty millimeter tracers crissfcrossed in the flareflight, lighting off a brilliant, flam, ing, orange comet which streaked down into the ocean, Then all was quiet. The lazy flares gradually inched their way down, down, down, to be snuffed out in the inky sea, The darkness deepened. An hour passed. Then a roar split the night over our bow and a huge dark object fthe Marines said it was a Bettyj zoomed overhead. At the same time ships off our starboard quarf ter were opening up on still another Jap which went down in billowing flames astern All was quiet again. Another hour passed. Maybe we would be free for breakfast. But radar scopes began to blink, there were bogies in the air. It wasn't long until the ships astern opened fire. A plane was overhead. With one engine ablaze, this Jap looked like a fast moving flare which made him visible to everybody in the formation. He headed for us and was met by our forties. Veering off, he crashed in aball of flame amid a cone of ire from every vessel that could bear. At 0545 as the shrouds of night fell away, our own planes took off to join hundreds of other carrier planes rendezvousing outside the formation. For hours we had been on the defensive, beating off desperate blows in the night. Now for the offensive. The dawn patrol shot down two Zekes and an EIDHY- The 8 o'clock strike ripped Inujo airfield. The 11 o'cl0Ck Strike sank a 10 000 ton freighter in Kagashima Bay H W up five planes at Ibusuki Now the nerve center' Japan S H11 Organ1SID in both Kyushu and the whole Philippine sea arei was an expansive advanced deve P nt Ht K9-HOY21 T116 high commind ranking staff me 5 the Planlwrs the he irt of thc military commun1C , nd L6 , , C - ble ' of U Z xx I l . Y E C L L Y. c I 9 , fi Q f me , . ' . ' m' c 4 - r 1 I 9 s. . be 1- , , K 2 Y . . ' an 82 ..L'! v iz. . .. rs. 1-W. AIKQ, X mx x t 1 M t I 'Jug M A-',4 gb:-,NA A I l,l--, . gm V Q ILAF V Q .ng-AWTQTAI V V W, .. A V , .. I V L, r. g s I

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airields and hit a submarine in Bungo SuiClO Channel- Thc morning's lustiest wallop was directed at enemY naval units hiding in Kure Harbor where BELLEAU WQOD planes larrupped an Oyodo class cruiser with five direct hits. The afternoon strike hit the Kanoya airC11'Om6 and a seaplane base at Ibusuki. around somewhere. We lost track of the number of de, troyed planes which crashed flaming into the sea. Most thrilling were the suiciders which weren't hit until the closing seconds of their dives exploding in flames abovg their targets. Most spectacular were the knockdowns at night when the astonishing night fighters or the magic fire control of the five inchers struck blazing snoopers out of the blackened sky. Most gruelling was the continuous tension and loss of sleep as we remained alert, a few of us for over eighty continuous hours. Early in the afternoon of March 21st DeWayne Cole, studying the radar up in LIC exclaimed, We're not s I C25 The Betty-Baka skirmish Back at the ships there was trouble. A dive bomber found his mark with a bomb which pierced a small hole in the WASP's flight deck 'and plunged down through the hangar deck to explode below. Smoke and flames hlled the hangar. In a remarkably short time the fire was under control-in time for the next flight operation! Their crew had accomplished this so quickly that we judged the injury only slight. Later we learned how vast was the damage and the large number of killed and wounded. A great ship, that WASP! The Nip that got the WASP was slapped down right over the formation by a daring Hellcat pilot who risked his neck in our AA fire. After noon another desperate suicide diver on the HORNET was blown up right over the flagship. In the face of these threats the carriers kept slinging strikes and launching patrols. It was into the wind, out of the wind, all day long as the planes shot off, socked the enemy, ref turned to be refarmed, gassed up, repaired, checkedw and off again. Cn the 20th and 21st we withdrew two hundred inlcs from Kyushu. No strikes were launched against the island but a special combat air patrol was flown to assist the withdrawal of the tragically crippled, kamikazefgutted FRANKLIN several miles away in another task group. For these four days, March 18f21, nobody got much sleep. As we churned around off Kyushu, sometimes only 60 miles away, heckling attacks by snooping laps kept the ships at battle stations with few interruptions. The radar screen was seldom clear there was always 1 Jap anywhere near land are we? On the radar scope was a large blip which was large enough to be an island but was actually a traveling mass of Jap planes doing 150 knots in our direction. Approximately 60 enemy aircraft bearing 340 def grees true, 50 milesf' At the time, twelve BELLEAU WOCD fighters were cruising through space on their patrol in the vicinf ity of the FRANKLIN. Eight of these were prompt' ly ordered to dash for the bogey. What they found was 24 Bettys flying in formation sandwiched between two protecting layers of innumerable hghters. With a snarl our eight Hellcats clawed that vastly supef rior force. The fur flew. In the most vicious scrap in BELLEAU WQGD's history, 21 laps C10 Bettys, 11 Zekesj flamed and tumbled out of the sky. Five Ofh6IS broke away trailing heavy smoke. To the aid of the eight came other friendlies who helped ring up a score of 47 enemy planes that March 21st afternoon. Two Zekes blown up, two Bettys flamed-all with just 500 rounds ef ammunition and by one pilot! Using six guns, that figures out to be 20 rounds per squirt or 2 'B seconds per kill:-an Ensign named Reber shooting. Five enemy planes destroyed in the air is the requirement for Ace , Ensign Johnny Miller qualified in this one action. Eight bruised and scratched Hellcats fimped back to us that afternoon. Every single one had strings of Heat machine gun bullet holes pierced through the metal' some h id elevitors ind st ibilizers shot awaj Engines were tv 3 r Q ' r c ' 2 f , 2 ' 2 , 2 E . - ' , .- 7, ' ' e,