Our squadron went on the attack in support of the Third U.S. War Bond Drive.\u00a0 We bombed El Centro with “Buy War Bonds” leaflets.<\/p>\n
Mid-morning, we swept in from the West\u2014wave after wave, in close formation\u2014and we roared across El Centro at rooftop level.\u00a0 That rattled the windows and brought out the crowds.<\/p>\n
Beyond the fringes of town, we fanned out in high climbing turns, regrouped, and swept back over the town again, this time dropping leaflets.\u00a0 We continued this escapade for awhile, crisscrossing El Centro, buzzing the rooftops with a roar.<\/p>\n
Finally, our little War Bond disturbance ended.\u00a0 We wagged our wings and withdrew across the desert, returning to base.<\/p>\n
A couple of days later, the Imperial Valley Press gave us a warm salute in their lead editorial.\u00a0 I didn’t read the “Letters to the Editor” column.<\/p>\n
\u00a0***<\/strong><\/p>\n At about the same time, I received my appointment as a first lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps.\u00a0 That meant silver bars and a small increase in monthly pay.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em>*** \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n “Always remember, you fly an airplane with your head, not your hands.\u00a0 Never let a plane take you somewhere your brain didn’t get to minutes or even seconds earlier.”<\/em> <\/em><\/p>\n An old Marine instructor barked out those words of advice during close formation training at Corpus Christi.\u00a0 Months later, I mulled over his words at El Centro, the long night following Ox Wilson’s tragic accident.<\/p>\n Formation work is how most military flying is done.\u00a0 By this time in our final combat training, tight formation work was second nature.<\/p>\n We were experienced.\u00a0 We were confident.\u00a0 At the end of a simulated dive bombing attack, for example, we would climb rapidly back into a defensive formation.\u00a0 We would close in tight.\u00a0 Routine stuff.<\/p>\n On that ill-fated day over the Salton Sea, however,\u00a0 it was far from routine.<\/p>\n Regrouping after a fast skip bombing run, Ox Wilson had almost regained altitude and was moving into position on Jim O’Rourke\u2019s left wing when it happened. Ox slid into position too fast\u2014too close.<\/p>\n Ox’s prop cut into the fuel tank and sliced on into the cockpit of O’Rourke’s plane\u2014and into the Irishman\u2019s left leg.\u00a0 An immediate fireball explosion erupted.\u00a0 O’Rourke was blown clear.\u00a0 Both planes were aflame.\u00a0 And Ox\u00a0bailed out of his fiery cockpit.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Three of us coming up into position from behind saw two parachutes open and drift down towards the shoreline.\u00a0 But the trapped crewmen went down with the flaming planes.\u00a0 The burning debris of both\u00a0planes crashed into the Salton Sea.<\/p>\n On the ground, Ox was suffering from burns about the face and wrists, but he was saved from more serious injury by his helmet, flight gear, goggles and gloves.\u00a0 He immediately did what he could with a makeshift tourniquet to stem the flow of blood for O’Rourke until medical help arrived.<\/p>\n In the end, O’Rourke’s left leg had to be amputated at the hip.\u00a0 He was transferred out of the squadron.<\/p>\n After a lengthy hospital stay, Ox returned to the squadron with lasting scars on his face\u2014and in his heart.\u00a0 The remorse ran deep<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong>***<\/p>\n At Corpus and at Jacksonville, we had been taught how to use navigational plotting boards, which were located immediately below the instrument panel in a TBF.\u00a0 We continued this training at El Centro, where we flew 150-mile geographic sectors out over the desert and mountains east of the Imperial Valley.<\/p>\n Our night navigational flights, however, were something else.\u00a0 While new navigational aids were rapidly coming into service, the technology in l943, including our radar, was still relatively unsophisticated and subject to failure or damage.\u00a0 At El Centro, we concentrated our night flying practice on riding radio beams as backup.<\/p>\n A radio pulse sounding in our earphones told us where we were relative to a radio transmitter location on the ground or on a ship\u2014the fixed navigation point.\u00a0 Flying off-course to the right or left of the beam brought forth variations in the tone\u2014”dah-dit” for right and “dit-dah” for left.\u00a0 Heading away from the transmitter, the signal weakened.\u00a0 Flying nearer to the transmitter brought an increasingly stronger signal.\u00a0 It was a simple but effective method for finding a way back to the base on a dark night over the desert.<\/p>\n For a safe landing, however, there was no way to judge altitude by means of the radio signal.\u00a0 That required precision work with the altimeter, needle-ball gauge and the airspeed indicator.\u00a0 Sometimes at night that became a bit hairy.<\/p>\n \u00a0***<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0With the help of a nearby\u00a0Army Searchlight Battalion, we also practiced flying through the confusion of searchlight beams while on a nighttime “glide bombing” or skip bombing run.<\/p>\n \u00a0***<\/p>\n On November 10, <\/sup>1943, the Marine Corps observed its 168th<\/sup>anniversary\u2014an appropriate time for ceremony in the middle of a relentless training schedule.\u00a0 By mid-morning, VMTB 242’s Avengers were lined up side by side along the taxiway.\u00a0 The ramp was swept clean.\u00a0 All pilots, aircrews and ground crews were brought to attention in front of the planes.\u00a0 At a certain point, Maj. Bill Dean\u00a0strode forward, turned smartly to face the formation, and commanded Capt. Bill Ritchey, 1st Lt. Bud Main, and 1st Lt. George Nasif to step forward. Dean then read three individual citations for meritorious service on Guadalcanal and presented Ritchey, Main and Nasif with the U.S. Air Medal.<\/p>\n All I can remember about the revelry that night at the Officers’ Club is a bunch of drunken pilots heading back to the BOQ, belting out a lusty Marine Corps Hymn.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 “From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli, <\/em>\u00a0We fight our country’s battles in the air, on land and sea. <\/em>\u00a0 First to fight for right and freedom, and to keep <\/em>our honor clean; <\/em>We are proud to claim the title of United States Marine.”<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0***<\/p>\n Throughout our six months in the desert, small groups of pilots and their crews left every few days for the North Island Naval Air Station on Coronado Island in San Diego Bay.\u00a0 There, each group received a week of intensive torpedo training.<\/p>\n Each pilot made several runs with live torpedoes that had been set with exercise heads.\u00a0 A Navy Yard vessel was used as the target.\u00a0 The “fish” were set to run deeper than the draft of the vessel, and a photographer in an SNJ hovering overhead recorded all drops at the time the “fish” passed under the target.<\/p>\n After all of the dry runs we had made over the months, this marked the first time most of us had ever dropped live torpedoes.\u00a0 We made the most of it.\u00a0 Our squadron received a special letter of commendation for our high percentage of hits.<\/p>\n We made the most of San Diego, too.<\/p>\n \u00a0***<\/p>\n <\/p>\n North Island Naval Air Station still dominates the northern end of Coronado Island.\u00a0 The legendary Hotel del Coronado anchors the southern end, where it fronts on the white sand beach.\u00a0 This 114-year-old grande dame<\/em> still flourishes.\u00a0 She is an American treasure.<\/p>\n When we were at Coronado, a few of us were intrigued by the rickety charm and Victorian splendor of the old wooden structure.\u00a0 We spent a liberty day exploring the place, riding up and down in its ornate cage elevator, wandering through its great salons and its gardens, running along the surf, and lying around the pool in the late afternoon, drinking Stingers and goofing off with lonely Navy wives.<\/p>\n This was 16 years before Billy Wilder used the same location for his classic movie comedy, Some Like it Hot,<\/em>with Marilyn Monroe.<\/p>\n \u00a0***<\/p>\n A Marine fighter squadron, VMF-122, also was based at El Centro during our six-month bivouac in the desert.\u00a0 In the final weeks of our training, we practiced with VMF-122 on various\u00a0inter-squadron tactics.<\/p>\n We would make diving runs against Salton Sea targets with a few of the fighters acting as cover while others tried to intercept.\u00a0 The fighters also made camera gunnery runs on our TBF formations, which gave our own aircrews good free gunnery practice.<\/p>\n VMF-122 pilots were flying the new F4U Corsair.<\/p>\n \u00a0***<\/p>\n Old-time aviation buffs and legions of young model-makers consider Chance-Vought’s gull-wing F4U Corsair the hottest, most awesome fighter plane of the WW II era.\u00a0 I go along with that.\u00a0 In the air, it was a dream machine.\u00a0 But on the ground\u2014on takeoffs, landings and on taxiways\u2014it was a devil to control.\u00a0 It restricted your visibility from the cockpit because of its long, nose-high, three-point attitude.\u00a0 And the rigid landing gear strut caused a potentially disastrous bounce in anything but a smooth touchdown.<\/p>\n The Navy’s first squadron to get Corsairs suffered a rash of fatal training accidents, followed by serious problems in landing its new fighters on carrier flight decks.\u00a0 As a result, the Navy gave up on the F4U program and turned the flashy Corsair over to the Marine Corps, where it became eventually the\u00a0Marines’ most effective fighter ever, replacing the valiant F4F Wildcat.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0***<\/p>\n “Remembrance of things past.”<\/em>\u00a0 In my mind\u2019s eye, I can see it now: The unmistakable, gull-wing silhouette of a lone Corsair approaching the El Centro runway from the east, a fair distance out.<\/p>\n Jake Nevans and I were on the runway watch that day.\u00a0 In the shimmering heat, the manner in which the pilot maneuvered that F4U grabbed our attention.\u00a0 The entire landing procedure was flawless.\u00a0 Perfectly controlled.\u00a0 He came around in a tight, carrier approach with no wing adjustment at any point along the way, stalled the plane out tail first, inches above the runway, touched down, and turned off at the first taxiway.\u00a0 It was a masterful performance, although a complete departure from standard F4U procedure at that time, which called for landing tail high and touching the front wheels first.\u00a0 The standard TBF and F4F carrier landing procedure of stalling out with tail wheel touching first was considered too dangerous with the F4U.<\/p>\n The word spread quickly.\u00a0 The base was a buzz.\u00a0 The pilot of that solitary Corsair on that blistering afternoon in El Centro was my childhood idol, America’s legendary “Lone Eagle,” Charles A. Lindbergh.<\/p>\n \u00a0***<\/p>\n Before Pearl Harbor, Lindbergh had worried over any American involvement in the European war.\u00a0 He became an outspoken leader in the “America First” movement, advocating steadfast neutrality.\u00a0 That put him in direct opposition to FDR and the\u00a0president’s lend-lease policy.\u00a0 Controversy between the two men deepened.\u00a0 Following a scathing public attack by FDR that questioned Lindy’s loyalty to the United States, Lindbergh resigned his Army Air Corps commission in April 1941. <\/span><\/p>\n Pearl Harbor changed everything.\u00a0 Lindbergh realized that neutrality was no longer possible.\u00a0 The Axis powers had attacked us and declared war.\u00a0 Lindbergh applied immediately for reinstatement in the Army Air Corps.<\/p>\n President Roosevelt (a great man, one of our greatest presidents, but also a wily politician) made it clear there was no place in the Air Corps for Lindbergh.\u00a0 Personal appeals by Lindbergh to Air Force General Hap Arnold and Secretary of War Henry Stimson were\u00a0fruitless.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Anxious to contribute in any way possible to the war effort, Lindbergh sought a position in private industry.\u00a0 Soon, he was helping Henry Ford solve B-24 production problems at Ford’s Willow Run plant.<\/p>\n By 1943, he was testing high-altitude pressure chambers at the Mayo Clinic and test flying the new F4U Corsair for Chance Vought in Connecticut.\u00a0 One of his goals was to help get the landing bugs out of the F4U Corsair.\u00a0 He did that eventually by recommending that Chance Vought raise the plane’s tail wheel and place a small air-spoiler on the right wing, changing the plane’s center of gravity.<\/p>\n When he stopped over at our El Centro base in l943, he was on his way to San Diego, where he quietly persuaded Marine Corps General Louis Wood to let him study USMC Corsair operations in the South Pacific.\u00a0 A few months later, as a 42-year-old civilian, Lindbergh was flying F4Us on combat missions with a Marine fighter squadron\u2014covering TBF raids on Rabaul.<\/p>\n FDR and the American public knew nothing about it.<\/p>\n \u00a0***<\/p>\n The 4th Marine Division had fought at Guadalcanal.\u00a0 The division was now in training on the central California coast for what would eventually be the invasion of Tinian and Saipan in the Marianas.\u00a0 Unknown at the time, the 4th Marine Division would also be a part of the amphibious force destined to lead the assault on Iwo Jima a year later.<\/p>\n The men of the 4th Marine Division were among the finest fighting men in the world.<\/p>\n At El Centro in mid-December 1943, twelve of us were selected to participate in a major close air-ground support exercise with the 4th Marine Division.\u00a0 We flew across the mountains to the El Toro Marine Air Station in Orange County and operated out of that base during the maneuvers.\u00a0 In the exercise plan, the 4th<\/sup> Division Marines had established a beachhead on a rugged section of the coast near Oceanside.\u00a0 And they were driving inland.<\/p>\n We were in the air as they moved forward.\u00a0 When ordered by radio controlunits “trapped” on the front line, we would make low-level bombing runs on “enemy” positions, knocking out pillboxes and attacking gun positions just ahead of the Marine infantrymen.\u00a0 No live ammunition or bombs were used.\u00a0 But during the exercise, we gained a valuable feel for the close coordination, control and\u00a0tactics required during an actual landing.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n I sometimes think that my mother had a penchant for alcoholics.<\/p>\n Vince Benoit was a French-Canadian gambler\u2014an alcoholic\u2014a man who smoked furiously.\u00a0 And he was the latest in my mother’s legion of lovers.\u00a0 He was floor manager at a new, illegal gambling club in Portland.\u00a0 In today’s big casinos, he’d be called a pit boss.<\/p>\n On the phone from home, my mother told me about her new love and his job.\u00a0 She assured me that the new gambling club was better connected, larger, and more inviting than the Chinese gambling joint we knew when I was a kid.\u00a0 She also maintained that Vince hadn’t taken a drink in almost three years.<\/p>\n My mother and Vince drove down to El Centro for an enjoyable visit shortly before our squadron shoved off.\u00a0 We had a sentimental two days together.<\/p>\n I dearly loved my unconventional mother.\u00a0 During their visit to the base on a pass that I wangled through Barney McShane, they met several of my cohorts and they got a close look at a TBF Avenger and an F4U Corsair.<\/p>\n Vince Benoit was not a tall man, perhaps only a half a head taller than my mother.\u00a0 Dressed in dark jacket and tie, even in the heat, he presented a trim and sinewy figure.\u00a0 He had a thick, black thatch of wavy hair sprinkled with specks of gray.\u00a0 His face was angular. Heavy, razor-straight eyebrows crossed his brow. And his penetrating, blue eyes seemed ever watchful.<\/p>\n I was prepared to dislike the man.<\/p>\n Yet during his two-day visit to El Centro with my mother, I found him to be gracious, warm and personable\u2014a quiet man of sharp insight and a wry sense of humor.\u00a0 With my mother, he seemed affectionate and always attentive.<\/p>\n I liked him.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n During those final days in the desert, for reasons I can’t even remember any more, I had access to one of the squadron SNJs.\u00a0 And for the sheer hell of it, I took my gunner, Ernie Linsmaier, up on an aerobatics flight.\u00a0 He was eager.<\/p>\n I climbed high, perhaps 10,000 feet, where it was safe and where nobody on the ground could see us.\u00a0 Once we reached altitude, I picked up speed, kicked the SNJ into a snap roll followed by a loop, a split-S, a barrel roll, a couple of easy wingovers and I think I may have even done a full Immelman.\u00a0 Ernie’s head was reeling.\u00a0 But he handled it well.\u00a0 Novomiting.\u00a0 No obvious fear.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n At that point, I gave him another shock by allowing him to take over the stick for the nextmaneuver.<\/p>\n He was in the front cockpit.\u00a0 In the rear cockpit, I softly maintained control.\u00a0 I kept my feet lightly on the rudders, while I coached him through a simple, straight-ahead loop.\u00a0 With instructions, he followed the artificial horizon line, pulling gradually back on the stick.\u00a0 And away we went, up and over.\u00a0 He successfully completed the loop without knowing it.\u00a0 He said he was either too dumb or too scared to realize he was all the way around.\u00a0 Unknowingly, he had started into a second loop when I took over the controls.<\/p>\n Finishing with a flourish, I decided to test Ernie with a sudden taste of danger, the feeling of peril.\u00a0 I gunned the plane up into a vertical stall, letting the SNJ suddenly fall off into a spin, a fast tailspin headed straight down toward the ground.\u00a0 Seemingly out of control.\u00a0 I recovered, of course, and easily pulled it out at about 5,000 feet.\u00a0 The SNJ was a good plane for aerobatics.<\/p>\n It was time to go home.<\/p>\n Today in Alliance, Ohio, Ernie Linsmaier still talks of that flight as the most exhilarating experience he encountered in all of his six months at El Centro.<\/p>\n \u00a0***<\/p>\n During the first week of my 22nd year, orders came through for VMTB-242 to prepare for immanent departure.<\/p>\n All TBF flights were secured.\u00a0 Our well-used planes, with Bugs Bunny insignia still attached, were transferred to the training unit at Santa Barbara.\u00a0 Mountains of other squadron equipment, aircraft parts and materials were loaded on a lineup of trucks.\u00a0 Our personal foot lockers and flight gear were packed and ready to go.\u00a0 Throughout the squadron, letters were written.\u00a0 Farewell calls were made to loved ones.<\/p>\n \u00a0***<\/p>\n A night or two before departure, we held a final squadron dinner party at the Officers’ Club.<\/p>\n White clothed tables were set end to end, forming a long banquet table, with all officers present along each side.\u00a0 Full bottles of cheap bourbon, coaxed from the Club’s liquor locker, served as centerpieces.\u00a0 The simple menu was sizzling grilled steaks.\u00a0 What else?\u00a0 I don’t remember.\u00a0 I do know, however, that near the end of dinner, the whiskey began\u00a0flowing, along with toasts and tributes and bawdy songs from the combat zone.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Like him or not, Maj. Bill Dean had successfully put together one helluva TBF attack and patrol squadron during six grueling months in the desert.\u00a0 Most pilots recognized that.\u00a0 More than once that night, we held our glasses high and toasted our humorless skipper.<\/p>\n At one point, I recall also that we gave a standing ovation to Warrant Officer Fred Minden, the hard-muscled, pre-war regular Marine who commanded the squadron’s engineering unit.\u00a0 He and his men had kept our planesflying in the heat and sands of the desert.\u00a0 And he had the profound respect of every man at the table.<\/p>\n You could feel it.\u00a0 A powerful esprit de corps<\/em>permeated the room that night.<\/p>\n \u00a0***<\/p>\n When the time came, we left for North Island, San Diego, in a truck convoy\u2014the 450 officers and men of VMTB-242.\u00a0 We crossed the desert and climbed up through the coastal mountains, white from the late January snows.\u00a0 It was our last view of snow for a long time to come.<\/p>\n When the convoy reached North Island, the trucks headed directly to the loading docks where the flight deck of a CVE carrier, the Kitkun Bay<\/em>, loomed ahead.<\/p>\n We boarded the Kitkun Bay<\/em>that night.\u00a0 The next afternoon, January 28, l944, the carrier eased its way out of San Diego Bay and into the open sea, headed for an undisclosed destination in the South Pacific.<\/p>\n \u00a0***<\/p>\n I was young.\u00a0 I loved my country.\u00a0\u00a0 And I was determined, as a pilot in the Marine Corps, to help my country win the war against Japan.<\/p>\n After 18 months of Navy and Marine Corps flight training and 600 hours of logged flight time, I was ready.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n