The Ragged, Rugged Warriors

by Martin Caidin

  Even as Gogoj fought to regain control of Ms senses and his body, the Zeros increased the fury of their attack. The formation was now hopelessly scattered as the four bombers hugged the waves, jinking desperately, gunners snapping out bursts as they tried to stave off the Zeros.

  Suddenly, a tongue of flame leaped into existence behind one Marauder. Brilliant scarlet flashed from a wing tank that sprayed a thin streamer of gasoline, issuing from a self-sealing tank that had been chewed into ragged rubber. The Zeros rushed after the stricken plane like wolves incensed by blood.

  And then the tongue of flame was a bright, glaring sheet. The roaring flames spread steadily, blazing into the cockpit to the left and mushrooming through the wing tank and the engine on the right For one terrible, timeless second, a huge crimson eye writhed in the air as the Marauder’s tanks exploded. Pieces of wreckage whirled insanely through the air and smacked, steaming, into the water.

  The three remaining Marauders pressed on, the crews unaware that almost at the same instant that the Marauder exploded, the fifth Avenger also was cut down from the sky and pounded into the ocean.

  In Muri’s plane the carnage continued unabated. In the rear of the fuselage, the stunned and cursing Gogoj, blood streaming onto Ms clothes, shouted imprecations at the Japanese and forced his way painfully back into his turret seat. He pushed his head and shoulders into firing position and grasped the triggers. A faint strawberry-pink spray leaped into being about his face. Without the Plexiglas shroud around the turret the wind was steadily plucking with steel fingers pieces of skin and more blood from his gashed and mangled face.

  Gogoj ignored the wind as much as it was humanly possible to do so; tramping on the power controls and swinging the twin .50-caliber guns around, he tried to draw a bead on an incoming Zero. He never had the chance to fire. Other Zeros clawed in from left to right in beautifully concerted attacks, and once again the turret caught a terrible blow of enemy fire.

  A cannon shell exploded almost in his face; his ears rang shrilly from the blast, and the world seemed to go crazy with buzzing hornets all about him as a burst from a Zero at close range shot the charging handle clear off his left machine gun, right out from under his closed hand. The Japanese fighter held the range and fired another long burst; in the wild fury of the spray of bullets Gogoj watched the turret control handle and triggers shatter before his blood-stained eyes. At the same time the firing attack smashed the turret wiring to a pulp and ripped the power units to shreds, burning them out instantly. The turret was without power, useless. .

  Still the indomitable Sergeant Gogoj refused to leave his post! Bleeding profusely from a dozen or more serious wounds, he waved off help from his fellow crewmen and “stayed put.” If nothing else, he could at least bluff the Zeros that his guns were still hot and that his turret was dangerous.

  But the Japanese pilots weren’t buying it. They weren’t being bluffed and they didn’t seem to care if the turret was operating or not. Another fighter group howled in, engines screaming, and once again the Marauder rocked wildly beneath the onslaught of heavy firepower.

  A machine-gun bullet sliced through metal, ricocheted with a shrill whine through the airplane, and smashed into Gogoj’s face. The slug pierced the skin over the sergeant’s left eye and lodged there like a white-hot poker; it struck with all the force of a hammer blow against his forehead.

  There was a sudden inarticulate cry; a mass of roaring black and red pummeled Gogoj and he tumbled in redoubled pain to the floor of the airplane as bullets whined and shrieked through the metal all about him. ^

  And still this incredible man refused , to quit. On his knees in the rocking, violently maneuvering bomber, covered with blood and wracked with pain, Gogoj reached up and with his hooked fingers he clawed the slug out of his face. More blood spurted from the wound.

  Trying to keep Ms balance in the berserk Marauder, ignoring constant death in the air about him, he ripped free the first-aid kit from Ms gunbelt. As Ms body slammed back and forth against the gun mount he matted sulfa powder into the gaping wound, and then jammed on a patch to stem the spurting blood.

  And once again he hauled his battered and bloody body, inch by inch, back into the turret to bluff the Zeros—and stayed there

  While Gogoj went through Ms own terrifying ordeal, Ms fellow crewmen were going through their own hells under the Japanese onslaught Almost at the same moment that the shattering Plexiglas slashed Gogoj’s face into bloody shreds, PFC AsMey, in the tail turret, was slammed violently against the side of Ms turret position. The Marauder was jinking its way, with violent side-to-side movements, through a continuing swarm of Japanese bullets and shells, and in a single, long burst kept up by a determined Zero pilot, AsMey took a terrible beating. Almost simultaneously, five bullets crashed into his Mp and knee.

  The blood gushed out wildly. Crying out in agony and clutching Ms leg, AsMey managed deliberately to throw Ms body backward, far enough so that he might be able to lunge and fall free of the turret position. Despite his severe and badly bleeding wounds, Ashley’s immediate thought was to get Ms body out of the tail position so that another man could grab the single .50-caliber gun and defend the airplane in its vulnerable area from rear attacks.

  Immediately behind AsMey, Sergeant F. Melo was swinging back and forth in the narrow fuselage bottom to fire the tunnel guns. On each lower side of the fuselage the Marauder had a small hatch with a single .30-caliber gun; Melo would snap out a burst with one weapon, then fling himself across the short space to grasp and fire the other gun when the Zeros came in from that side.

  Melo saw Ashley come tumbling out of the tail, his fingers crimson and blood spurting in founts from between his fingers where he clutched his shattered leg. Ashley tumbled to the floor of the bomber; his body jerked several times and then he collapsed. Melo leaped across the open hatch to grasp Ashley and prop up his body against a structural beam.

  It was at this instant that yet another torrent of bullets and cannon shells came tearing into the staggering bomber. One slug ripped through the Marauder’s skin and grazed Melo’s forehead just above his left eye, slashing open a long and deep wound from which the blood sprayed. The bullet had cracked with terrible force against the bone beneath the skin; Melo lurched helplessly from the terrific impact. He sucked in air deeply to regain his senses; grimly he clenched his teeth and started again for that critical tail-gun position. Without that gun firing the whole thing could be over in seconds.

  Melo hadn’t yet completed his first step when the Zeros struck again. Another bullet slammed into Melo’s right arm near the shoulder. The impact of the bullet stopped Melo where he stood. There was a moment of blinding red in his eyes; the world roared in his ears. He shook his head; blood whipped out from his head wound. And then Melo started again for the tail gun....

  A huge sledgehammer pounded into his side. He gasped soundlessly with the pain as two more bullets ripped into his body. And still he was on his feet. And once again he started for that gun____

  Again he was stopped where he was. A white-hot claw with flaming talons raked all the way down his left leg as pieces of smoking steel from an exploding cannon shell slashed the whole of the leg.

  By all the laws of medical science, Melo should have been a crumpled, bleeding heap on the floor of the airplane. He was covered from head to foot with blood, and still the scarlet flow spread down his body.

  Melo kept moving. He made it to the tail, and staggered painfully to his knees in the turret position to grasp the heavy machine gun. Gritting his teeth and aiming through one eye—blood had poured into the other—he led an oncoming Zero fighter in the sights, and squeezed the trigger. There was a single shot—and the gun jammed. Cursing, Melo tore at the stoppage and cleared the jam. Again he took aim and began snapping out short bursts at the oncoming fighters. He watched his tracers arcing their way toward the Mitsubishis, watched several Zeros skid from the unexpected fire, noted that he had thrown off their aim.

>   Shot to ribbons, gashed and cut from Zeros and antiaircraft fire ... Marauder with torpedo slung beneath its belly pounds in toward its target in the Battle of Midway. Four Maurauders went out... two returned from the mission.

  Without warning, his body bent violently as a savage flame creased his back. Japanese tracer bullets had tom into the gun position even as he was firing and set aflame the seat cushions about him.

  Melo grasped a blazing cushion in his bare hands and flung it wildly out of the open space of the tail-gun position. He was dismayed to see the flaming pad caught by the wind—and hurled swiftly back into the airplane. The returning pad caught him completely unawares, and he was unable to stop it from slapping hard against his body. Once again he hurled the flaming mass away from the airplane, and now, with his bare hands, beat out the flames on his clothes and another cushion.

  Melo shouted into the bomber’s intercom, trying to tell Muri what was happening in the tail. The phones were useless; Japanese bullets had tom and shredded the wiring.

  Suddenly more flames leaped up around Melo.

  Ignoring the pain of his multiple wounds, Melo worked his way forward through the bucking, rolling, slewing Marauder; somehow he managed to fight his way along the fuselage, along the catwalk of the bomb bay, through a small circular hatch, down into the radio compartment and then up two steps to the cockpit. His bloody hand grasped Muri’s shoulder, and he shouted to his pilot that everyone in the rear of the airplane was badly wounded and that they were on fire.

  That was all that Melo had left in him; he had exhausted his strength. Overcome with shock and the constant flow of blood, Melo collapsed even as he shouted his report to the pilot The co-pilot, Lieutenant P. L. Moore, shoved back his seat and released his belt Moving as quickly as possible, he clambered over Melo’s body and worked his way to the tail where the fire leaped higher. He rushed to the turret and flung the blazing cushions out a hatch, and squeezed his body into the turret position to man the gun. He had no sooner fired than his eyes went wide. Directly before his gaze, a Marauder took a devastating barrage of cannon shells, exploded violently into flames, and hurtled with terrible impact into the ocean.

  In the violence of the battle, spurred on by his determination to reach the target no matter what the opposition, Jim Muri ignored the already severe and still mounting damage to his airplane; he ignored the flames; he kept the throttles jammed forward for maximum power and he worked the control yoke and stamped on the rudder pedals as if the Marauder were a thing alive.

  And still they hadn't reached their target....

  But they were through the several defending rings of the enemy fighter planes. With a swift rush a Japanese carrier loomed up before the bomber. The entire side of the huge warship and the sides of the escorting vessels blazed with the concentrated fire of hundreds of antiaircraft guns. Because the range was so close the smaller cannon and the machine guns also were firing, and the air literally seethed with the sparkling, glowing blobs of tracers that snaked and spun toward, over, under, about, and into the Marauder.

  The first Rising Sun flag they had ever seen appeared before them, fluttering stiffly from the carrier’s mast. Muri leveled the battered bomber and set up his run—flying straight and level in the face of violent fire—to release the torpedo. Countless guns blazed terrifyingly in their faces.

  The great bulk of the carrier was already heeling over as her bridge ordered a turn into the path of the American bomber. Muri held the Marauder straight and true; the bombardier—Lieutenant R. H. Johnson—yanked the release to spring the torpedo free. The deadly fish dropped away, splashed into the foaming water, and began its run toward the starboard bow of the carrier.

  Almost as quickly as the long torpedo fell away, the Marauder rushed headlong at the warship in front of them. Jim Muri hauled desperately on the yoke—they were so low he had to climb to get over the flat carrier deck. As the Marauder skimmed with a howl across the carrier, Johnson grabbed the single .50-caliber gun in the nose. It was a unique opportunity and he took advantage of it, spraying a long burst directly into the island of the carrier. Dozens of Japanese stared open-mouthed at the sight of the American bomber only scant feet away, mushrooming in size. Johnson watched his tracers pouring into their bodies and ricocheting wildly about the island.

  There had been a blessed, brief respite from the fighters. But with the carrier now falling astern the Japanese pilots swarmed back in fury. The Marauder was picking up speed; without the drag and weight of the torpedo, with much of their fuel gone, the bomber was light. Muri was beating the engines of the plane, banging on the throttles and propeller controls to squeeze all the power he could from the thundering engines, and the battered airplane responded with even more speed. Muri stayed low on the water, hugging the waves to protect the vulnerable belly position, restricting the diving attacks of the Zeros, and gaining the maximum possible speed from the airplane. At more than 300 miles per hour the now-lightened Marauder actually began to pull away from her pursuers. The speed of the bomber could save their lives.

  Johnson clambered out of the nose position and moved into the co-pilot’s seat to help Muri with the controls of the airplane. It shook and vibrated badly and Muri’s arms were almost numb from the pummeling they had been taking. Sergeant Melo regained consciousness; he stumbled back to the radio compartment and attempted to pick up a homing signal from Midway. But the radio had taken several direct hits and the vital antenna had been blown clear off the airplane. They were lost.

  Yet, at that moment, the men in the Marauder couldn’t have cared less. There were other American planes racing in toward the enemy fleet, and the Zeros suddenly weren’t interested in chasing a crippled bomber.

  There was still a long way to go for this crew, still a long pull to survive this mission. Muri eased back on the yoke and gained some altitude; he eased off on the power to lessen the wild vibrations and severe buffeting of the bomber. Lieutenant W. W. Moore, the navigator, clambered onto a stool and shoved his head into the small Plexiglas dome atop the fuselage, “shooting the sun” to get their bearings and head them back toward Midway.

  Despite the relief from fighter attacks, every man knew the Marauder was a potential bomb that could detonate at any second. Fuel sprayed from the ripped and tom fuel tanks; a spark could turn them into a blazing torch. Gogoj came up front—“looking like a blood-soaked rag,” Muri said—and began transferring fuel into two tanks that were yet whole and sealed.

  With infinite care Muri nursed the battered airplane carefully toward the short airstrip at Midway Island. The airplane was literally a flying wreck, and the men on the return flight kept finding more damage than they had noticed during the battle or in the relief of watching the Zeros turning away from them.

  Muri came in to Midway as though he were flying on a razor's edge of survival (which he was). He came in holding right aileron and left rudder, sliding down from the sky at a drunken angle. The maneuver was deliberate, for he knew he would have to ease down the weight of the bomber on the right wheel. As it turned out, he was right. The left tire was a mass of chewed and mangled rubber, and any sudden impact on that wheel would have snapped the gear and sent the airplane cartwheeling down the strip.

  The Marauder touched on her right gear, still heeled over sharply. Muri played her like a master; as long as he could do so with the controls he kept her cocked over. As the speed fell the bomber lurched over onto the left gear. Swiftly Muri and Johnson together stamped on the brakes. The effort was wasted—they had been shot away.

  The impact of hitting the shattered left gear, and rumbling on the wreckage at nearly 100 miles per hour, was “unbelievably violent.” There was a terrific, rattling roar; the Marauder buffeted so wildly that the entire instrument panel in the cockpit ripped completely out of its fastenings and collapsed onto the startled pilots. In the back of -the airplane the men were flung about and battered severely.

  At long, weary last, Old 1391 clumped and groaned her way
to a stop. Men came running to the scene, and stopped to stare in disbelief first at the tom and riddled airplane, and then at the bloody men who climbed painfully down through her hatches.

  Before they left to receive the medical attention they needed so urgently, the crew of the Marauder walked around their airplane. It was hard to believe what they saw.

  The left gear was a mangled ruin. Fuel dripped from the tanks; hydraulic fluid and oil spattered steadily onto the ground. Every propeller blade was riddled and chewed. The entire top edge of one wing had been blown off. The radio antenna was shot away. The engines were filled with holes. The rear turret was a blood-sprayed shambles. Blood had sprayed the entire interior of the airplane. The navigator’s compartment showed daylight brightly through what had become a sieve.

  They counted more than 500 holes, tears, rips, gashes, and other damage to the Marauder. Then they quit counting, because they still had more than half the airplane to cover. They called it a day and clambered into jeeps for the ride to the hospital.

  It wasn’t until the shooting was all over and a careful survey was taken that we realized the terrible sacrifice of the initial attacks against the mighty Japanese fleet at Midway.

  The toll was grisly.

  Out of the six Avengers, five were shot down.

  Two out of four Marauders were lost

  Twenty-eight Marine Vindicators and Dauntlesses attacked; 12 went down in flames.

  Fourteen out of 24 Marine fighters had been smashed from the sky by the Zero fighters.