Belleau Wood (CVL 24) - Naval Cruise Book

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but-ned out. They returned in the craziest Wildfwcst landings a carrier ever saw. Taxiing by the bridge the pilots grinned at the skipper and held up 2, 1, 4 lingers, They had a lot to grin aboutef-the engines of their flying seives rattled like buckets of broken glass falling downstairs. There had been something funny about those Bettys. Slung beneath the fuselage of each was a strange looking contraptionf-something like a fat midget planefwbich was jettisoned as each Betty was attacked. Little did our eight hotfshots realize that they had uncovered the Baka bomb-a midget jet propelled plane carrying a suicide pilot and a tremendous explosive charge in the nose-all to be released from the mother ship as she neared the target. Had this raid penetrated the screen, the Bakas could have raised havoc with our carriers. Such a success would have given great impetus to the laps for wider use of this dangerous weapon. Our pilots won a brilliant vicf tory which thus was doubly important. The entire episode tickled the skipper so much that he had his goodfnatured cook Zeeck, assisted by sleepyfsmiled Joe Mott, prepare a feast of everything to be served in the Captain's cabin that evening to eight special guests: Lt. Cdr. Doug Clark, Lt. Lew Behrend, Ens. Johnny Miller, Ens. Bob Reins, Lt. Harv. Sturdevant, Ens. Jim Reber, Ens. jim Ward, and Ens. Carl Foster. The old man, with business on the bridge, missed the banquet. - f-uZ 'Xg.2'L,2g,l -Jim Wilhelmsen ANU ws mites me gm Time we HAVE sunk u.s.FLsef With radio again tuned to Radio Tokyo, we heard the Nip claims of 16 American carriers sunk by a new secret weapon off Kyushu a few hours earlier. ,ss Curs was a strange sensation after fueling on March 22 to see the WASP turn out of the formation, pull away, diminish in the distance, and nnally drop over the horizon. We were saying goodbye to a wounded fighting comrade going home. To fill her place came one of our sister CVL's, the SAN JACINTO. Q35 The Jap convoy Two days later, March 24, we were 90 miles south' east of Ckinawa, and it wasn't good flying weather either. You couldn't expect a morning search to discover much. But 225 miles to the northwest, Lt. Roy Gillespie and his 1 m-....-..- I i l i six fighters spotted a fleeing Jap convoy of 2 destroyers, 3 cargo ships, and 3 subchasers steaming northward as fast as they could go. Sent out primarily as a search mission, the planes could attack only with rockets, but with these and strafing fire they set ablaze one SC which soon disappeared. As soon as the report was flashed back to the ship, ordnancemen scrambled to break out tor' pedoes and bombs. The second strike by planes from the four carriers sank every one of the seven remaining vesf sels in ten minutes. Back on the carrier we waited for the returning strike. At length the planes appeared far out on the horizon, but as they broke off into the landing circle and dropped aboard, torpedo planes T6 and T7 were missing. Several minutes later a lone speck appeared in the distance ap' proaching the ship. It was T7 limping in. As the big Avenger lumbered to a stop on the flight deck we realf ized for the first time that the afternoon's victory had not been without cost, Radioman L. M. Parker had been struck by a fragment of antifaircraft fire and was dead by the time the plane landed. T6 never returned. Flown by Lt. fjgj Francis E. Hedges, it was hit by enemy AA and crashed, killing him and his two aircrewmen, T. F.

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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,

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McDavid and L. L. Burton. From Rear Admiral L'Jocko Olark: U. S. Naval Communication Service THE PERFORMANCE OF YOUR SEARCH PLANES TODAY WAS DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CONVOY X TO' YOUR PILOTS MY CONGRATULATIONS X WELL DONE FROM CTG 58.1 C4-D Invasion of Okinawa March 24 was an important day for another reason. Task Force 58 stationed itself east of Okinawa and comf menced a long period of sustained attacks at the island in preparation for the invasion scheduled just one week later. During the early morning of March 27 a flurry of enemy planes broke through to attack our task group. The AA opened up. One dove into the water near the BENNINGTON, two crashed near screening destroyers, and four were shot down on the horizon by the combat air patrol. A11 in a few minutes, this was one of the liveliest skirmishes we saw. ' Easter Sunday, April 1, was DfDay for Okinawa. For a week Task Force 58 had prowled up and down the Nansei Shoto from Sakashima to Kyushu sweeping for planes and busting Jap defenses For days after the Army and Marines swarmed ashore vie bombed rocketed and strafed enemy positions Our daily job while cruising 60 miles off Okinawa was supporting the occupation by attacking enemy installations and shipping all along the defense against enemy planes flying down from Kyushu This was important No Jap planes remained on Okinawa The Army in Luzon kept Formosa covered the other place from which they would come was Japan itself with Kyushu the springboard For the first few days air opposition over the island was surprisingly light. Absent was the fury of airborne resist, ance which had marked those four days off Kyushu two weeks earlier. But not for long. QSQ Kamikaze On April 6 the ,Taps threw their first big thunderous punch, a mass flight swooping from Kyushu. The Yellow Cloud split into two prongs, one pointing at Okinawa, the other swerving east at the fleet. While the BENNINGTON was conducting landing operations an enemy plane dived at her fantail. It was touch and go for several seconds as the Nip rode down a curtain of AA fire. The gunners won. Another Jap, taking advantage of the interrupted cloud cover, slipped through on a glide for our starboard side. An alert Dick Saunders on Director 3 spotted him first. Mount 3 immediately opened fire. The other mounts quickly joined. Five hundred yards from the ship the plane's engines burst aflame. Men on the flight deck and catwalks dashed fore and aft trying to escape a sure hit. It was hell on water for a few seconds. But the 40's stayed with the Nip fidentihed as a Zekej. He crashed with a violent explosion in a tremendous fountain of water SO yards from the stacks The plane must have carried a bomb for shrapnel bomb fragments and other debris shot out in all directions The propeller careened high in the air spinning and dancing across our flight deck slashing deep gashes through the deck planks and underlying metal plates directly inboard of mount 9 Paul Stubbs Slc range setter on Director 5 when asked after It was all over what range he had used merely turned his head and with excitement filled eyes replied I don t know It all happened so quick I dont know what I did . ,gt n Y ' . - ' . . ., . . , , , 3 island chain. Some planes patrolled as the first line of ' ' ' I . , ' . ' 9 9 l , . 7 u n LL 5 . 1 !