Bunker Hill (CV 17) - Naval Cruise Book

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really operating from the same field. The life of 'Torpedof Squadron Eight began to merge with theilarger, more significant life of the air group. But the spirit was un- -changed. Now the friendships which had been exclusively of the individual squadrons ,grew to encompass allthree. Team-work be- tween the squadrons developed as the day .approached when together they would rendez- vous, turn further westward, meet and con- -quer the enemy. On the afternoon of March 15, Torpedo Eight flew aboard the Bunker Hill somewhere south of Pearl Harbor. - u 5 Egg LM gvgkwg res e a iz fm 1 ' , i .Q ,M Q X ,Lx 5,-1-,xv jf. '-F42 . l -. K 'F 'HU MS . . iiiiiis i5S9?1ihs?Z5???fi?-'i'5Yif5iii'?75?fiiaiif PA ff PA ,Q ei l F., are W, - ':51S'f'oL 'lf' - Ii U v:-, ' -., '7ETu.'X'.'Q '1Zf? jf llllsifnfig., 'ffl ll ' ' Jr i l?-L ' Q 'l ' Ii ' l Jig gli ,'-' '14 ' ll? ? ',52i'21f' Co ,I M X - . . ...ga Lf. ar.. Q... .mfs M 440' it P l 3 I iq ' my ,if i .,.1 gg 7, xg f T5 ar.. ips -R'-1 . .I 9 N lr-N. 1 f 'Q . ' ,.p1 -- . Q as WAW 'MWF f if - iw ,fa 4--is ' fig, li 1 J J lr 5 il : ,fr '- 5fi'.-ig 'i' 5' 'S 'fi' ' -4- - -gkt ill j : -QB-gg'-'wrf'X9' 'ilk' H, ? r w. Nwxlfj La-it L , f Z vs, ' ,Q mil V 3: 1 will -i ri ft' mlb J -' f i qw ii' ,,.,i,-,-,, , me-4,4 g 7 .4,,,., . ,,,.,. wrt., .X ,gm ., 5, ,, ,pq ---- 4 ,3, . !HH'l - ,f'ff:2', Life. ,.-: 5Ff1gg l '-new e- .a,-a - - . f fr: 51-P' :2 ' ffl?-2,11 iff' f The men of Torpedo Eight were ready- sand they knew. they were on the spot. They Were carrying on the most famous name in Naval aviation, a name sanctified by the heroism of the original Eight at Midway. .And they were following in the footsteps of 'Torpedo Seventeen, which had set a record .for hits in the great operation at Truk in February. , Then-the Hrst strike. i The greatest task force of the war was 'charging through Qthe seas off Palau, 3,840 miles from Pearl. Interrupting the frantic .last-minute preparations in Ready Room Two, the Skipper stood up and quietly as-ked for a minute of silent prayer. Heads bowed and hearts quickened. FQ, a second all eyes rested proudly on the Sr per. They knew they would follow him any. Where . . . - Palau . . . Woleai . . .Hollandia. , , Truk . . . Those prayers before each strike had been answered. Torpedo Eight had not lost a pilot, even though every man in the squadron had felt Death's chill breath flit past him at least once. The Marianas--Death's holiday ended. Youthful Swede Swenson and George Wild- hack made the mission from which there is no return. J The others carried on for them. There was no time to think and mourn-the Jap fleet was coming out. The squadron's most agonizing days fol- lowed. Sitting and waiting. Memories of what happened to the original Eight when it attacked the fleet. But the humorin the ready room was still sharp and spontaneous. F ire Chief Haley, when he wasn't taking watches apart, dared anyone, particularly Lunde, to prove that he flew into the water. at Hollandia. ' Rugged Len Mason daily ran the deck , on Bill Gillerlain in double solitaire, a game which also made the moments pass for Ernie Leggett, Andy Andrews, Jim Gagnon, K. K. King and Johnny Peacock. ' John Shonk and'Will F olkedahl alternately dozed and read. Fifty Jap fleets could have been coming outand it wouldn't have worried John and Will. Eddie F ranze and Bob Oscar argued abOl1f the influence of the Norman invasion on Eng- lish literature. Robbie Robinson and Sheep-Dip Pittman extolled the merits of Texas and Wyoming ranch lands. - Fish Cake Sewell and Meat Head Phillips compared notes on the plantation belles of Mississippi and de goils of Long Island. Dave Carter drew groans every half hour by playing the recording of The Mor1kCY

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timeless lessons of war. As Flight Ofiicer he worked ceaselessly to give everybody the word. On July 8, when Lieutenant Lewis M, Ford reported aboard as Executive Officer, the squadron had reached its complement, Soon the roar of torpedo bombers had risen above the constant hum of Chinco's terrible mosquitoes, the owners of nearby poultry farms lamented the fact that their hens no longer got enough rest to lay eggs. Day and night the squadron worked. Those fellows who were fortunate enough to have their wives with them-Wildhack, Folkedahl, Gag- non and the rest-rode to and from the air station in jeeps and carryalls at all hours of the night and day-to Pokomoke City, to the Channel Bass Hotel on Chincoteague Island, to apartments and small houses all over the countryside. Unmarried officers and men slept in unpfartitioned, barn-like struc- tures which afforded no individual privacy nor collective security against roving hounds, bugs or thunder showers. There were many of each, but the fellows seemed to like it. By the end of summer, after days of solo familiarization, section, division, squadron and air group formation flying in theTBF, after weeks of glide bombing attacks along Virginia beaches, torpedo runs against rocks in the Chesapeake Bay, group attacks against visiting British warships, after numerous emergency landings, tail chases, 20-minute mail runs to Norfolk, sun baths on the parking strips, minor accidents and hair raising es- capes, after countless trips in a deathless carryall to pick up the laundry in Pokomoke city, after night flying above fog moving in from the sea, the breathless weekends at Ocean City, Washington, New York, after hand-to-hand combat drills and endless volley- ball games Conce the Skipper ripped the seat right out of his pantsj, and watermelon parties in the pines, after Ensign B0bbY Pittman had eaten more oysters than any man alive, after mistakes and lessons that Were hard to learn, misgivings, adjustments, triumphs, after a ten-day Quonset Point work- Out-Torpedo Squadron Eight came K0 feel the urge to get one with it, to go aboard a carrier, to test itself and prove itself, to do better. On August 16, three days after returning from Quonset Point, the squadron attended commissioning of the U.S.S. Intrepid in Portsmouth Navy Yard. On September 30, at 1300, jam packed into large Navy buses, the squadron shoved off from Chincoteague in a torrential rain and soon found itself in the Atlantic, bound south to Trinidad. The shakedown cruise was successful. Only one torpedo plane was lost during the month's fast-paced operations. No personnel was lost. But the most memorable phase of the cruise was not the flying the boys did, but the carni- val spirit of their liberties. The night at the Macqueripe Club, at Port of Spain, when Dave Carter wrested control of a bull fiddle in the orchestra and Meathead Phillips went swimming in the gold-fish pond, it was clear that this outfit was not so wrapped up in itself it couldn't have fun in a big way. It was evident, beyond the surface lunacy, beneath the double-talk of poker games, be- hind the spontaneous gaiety of the ready- room or the bemused calm of the more sober members, that these fellows had learned to live together, just as they had learned to fly together, and that one day, when aloft to fight together, they would again succeed. The carnival spirit never left them, never let them down. On December 10, 1943, having been stranded by an accident of fate on the Pacific side of the Panama Canal, they lost no time in setting up shop in downtown Panama City, with Fishcake Sewell prais- ing the Lord and Buck Buxton passing the ammunition. In San Francisco, temporarily stationed at NAS, Alameda, the squadron perfected an- other skillful blend of steady flying and high- powered schmaltz. Then, a few days after New Year's, 1944, the squadron moved west across the Pacific to NAS, Puunere, on the island of Maui, T.H. For the first time since it had been commis- sioned, the entire Air Group found itself

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Swings by Wilmot Houdini, the calypso king- Buck Buxton perused the works of James Farrell. Mel LeCompte and Ole Johnson listened while Art Teitelbaum dreamed up gastronomic delights. Shortly before 4 p.m. on June 20, the word that Torpedo Eight had been both hoping for and dreading was flashed over the tele- type: Jap Fleet Sighted! The first wave was on deck: the Skipper, Carter, Folkedahl, LeCompte, Gagnon, Bux- ton, Phillips and Mason. Minutes later, backed by' the greatest fiight deck crew in the fleet, they soared off the bow on the most important mission of their careers. . It was another night of destiny for Torpedo Eight. With the bombers and fighters of the Bunker Hill, they reached the enemy fieet first and made what Commander Ralph Shifiey, Air Group Commander, described as a perfect attack. Intelligence later credited them with a min- imum of three torpedo hits on a carrier, battleship and heavy cruiser. But they had gone far beyond the normal range of a TBF. The inevitable began to happen. They heard the Skipper say: Well, boys, this is where I get out and walk. Don't follow me down. His wing lights disappeared in the dark- ness. q They fought back through that black night with prayers on their lips. Meathead found his own force and made his historical call: Hello Rebel-this is Meat! Informed by the ship that the flight deck was fouled up briefly, he took to the air again: Rebel-this is Meat.-Goodbye, now! And he moved over to a CVL where he made 2 perfect landing with but ten gallons of gas in his tanks. Carter defied every written and unwritten stick landing on another CVL after his tanks had run dry. The Skipper and his crew parachuted and Were picked up by destroyers. LeCompte landed safely. Gagnon, Buxton and Mason wound up the long journey in the water and spent varying hours in their life rafts until they were pulled up to the decks of hard- working tin-cans. At the final count, Folkedahl was missing. Hope for him and his crew never has been abandoned. Torpedo Eight had met the test-and passed. You can't measure accurately the damage done to an airfield nor can you be sure whether the thunderclap kissing a bomb ex- plosion is an ammunition dump or oil. Tor- pedo Eight's bombs thundered from Palau to Formosa, ravaged Jap installations that had been planned and designed to stem American might. BOMBING EIGHT Cn the bright Spring morning of June 1, 1943, an eager group of young Naval Officers huddled together over coffee and doughnuts at East Field, Norfolk, Va., and opened an impressive manila envelope bearing the imprint of the Navy Department. En- closed was an ofhcial order authorizing the commissioning of Bombing Squadron Twenty- eight. As senior ofiicer present and act- ing squadron commander, Ensign Robert L. Spanky Spohn arose to assume the weight of his new office. Let there be a Bombing Twenty-Eight, said Spohn. His words prob- ably will not go down in history. Spank's reign of terror was short-lived. The very next day Lieutenant Commander Ralph L. Shifiey, USN, arrived and took over his rightful command, and the squadron repaired to an outlying base called Creeds Field sit- uated in a geographic division of Virginia l termed The Dismal Swamp. There, aPtY , rule of carrier aviation when he made a dead- outfitted with thirty-six brand new SBD s, 209