Bunker Hill (CV 17) - Naval Cruise Book

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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

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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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the squadron inaugurated its training, con- tinued, after becoming Bombing Eight, at neighboring Fentress Field which was to be the base for the summer. On the side of experience were Skippers Shifiey and Dew, six battle-scarred veterans of the valiant Enterprise, Red Carmody, Les Ward, john Ritchie, Bruce McGraw, Benny Shefchik and jim Keefeg and the redoubtable Flying Mustache-A. D. jones-back from many a Mustang sortie against the bloody ferries. As for the rest, the majority was composed of ensigns fresh from fiight training but none the less convinced they knew all the answers. It was a herculean task that confronted Skipper Shifiey, and he inaugur- ated an intensive training program with the emphasis on bombing and gunnery. Right from the very beginning one man emerged from the crowd to become the driv- ing force of the squadron, big, energetic, en- thusiastic M. D. Big Red Carmody. A veteran of some of the Enterprise's most grueling battles, he had the word on carrier operations and an incomparable ability to drive his point home. He and Les Ward toiled unceasingly in fiight, in lectures, and in bull sessions to mould an integrated squad- ron from the divers material at hand. They had to learn to fly alike, think alike, act alike and gradually with Red's ringing ad- monition, You've got to play it smart as a by-word, they began to round into shape. Early in December they were off to the war, or so they thought. However, due to an un- foreseen chain of circumstances, they laid over in Panama for a week and naturally embarked on another final whirl. After furthering Latin-American relations for several days they took departure again, but the ship hugged the west coast of the U. S. and docked at San Francisco, just in time for the holiday season! In 'Frisco the squadron threatened to dis- integrate entirely, Lieutenant Cjgj jack O'Neil recalled. The human constitution, it became apparent, could stand only just so many farewell parties. We managed to hold out through the New Year, though, and on January 6, 1944, we took sad leave of the U. S., headed West. After some nine months of training we were off to the war. But still another disillusionment was in store for us. Before we even came in sight of the fabulous Diamond Head the squadron was launched and we moved to Maui, the jewel of the Hawaiians. Bitter as was the initial disappointment, this was the luckiest move yet. It made two things possible. First, the polishing of a squadron grown stale from lack of fiying time during the farewell tours of the previous two months, and most important, it gave us our chance to move aboard the U.S.S. Bunker Hill, the finest carrier in the fieetf' At Maui the bombers dug into intensive training operations free- from the distractions of such worldly billets in San Franciscoand Norfolk. Meanwhile they sent emissaries to the Bunker Hill in the person of Arthur jones, Don Johnston, Perry Huntsman and Wilbur Bigger Ballance, who operated with Bombing Seventeen during the Marshalls and Marianas operations of February. They came 'back with glowing reports and the squadron climbed aboard on March 14, 1944. The rest was easy. After a couple Of group gropes, Ctraining exercises to the un- initiatedj they set out for the first encounter with the japs. On March 30 Skipper Shifley led the first of the strikes against Palau, the strategic Jap naval base in the Western Pacific. F ortwo days Bombing Eight pounded shipping and installations with wave after wave of Helldivers. When the smoke had cleared away conservative estimates gdVC them five ships sunk and many others badlY damaged. It was an auspicious beginning: and transformed the squadron into battle- tested combat pilots, baptized under fire. Heartened by its initial success, Bombing Eight began compiling one of the finest records made in the Pacific, marched their bombS across Hollandia, jinked through the Dubl011' Eton slot at Truk, and paraded on to the Philippines.