The Last Fighter Pilot

by Don Brown

  As the ships approached Pearl Harbor, back at Schofield Barracks—the headquarters for the United States Army in Hawaii—Lieutenant General Robert C. Richardson Jr., commanding general of all U.S. Army Forces in the Pacific, was alerted about the approaching vessels.

  Richardson wanted U.S. Army aviation to show off its capabilities to the visitors and put in a call to Brigadier General Mickey Moore, commander of the old Seventh Fighter Wing (later consolidated to the Seventh Fighter Command) over at Wheeler Airfield.

  Whenever a special order came down from the high brass, Moore always called on the Seventy-Eighth Squadron to get the job done; already, it had developed a reputation as the “goto” squadron of the Seventh Fighter Command. On this occasion, Moore reached out to the squadron’s commander, Major Jim Vande Hey, one of the few pilots of the Seventy-Eighth who’d been present during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Vande Hey, in turn, awarded the assignment to Major Jim Tapp, already considered by many as the best pilot in the Army.

  For this task, however, Tapp could not maximize his impressiveness as an air showman without a wingman. Tapp had his pick of anyone in the squadron to fill the role. But the symbiotic relationship between a pilot and his wingman in combat or situations involving high-risk aerobatics—where a millisecond of indecision could bring about catastrophe—meant that the trust factor between the two pilots had to be unshakable. All too often, pilots got killed in air shows because of that millisecond of indecision. Knowing the importance of precision in his assignment, that life or death could hang in the balance, and that top military brass in the Pacific would be watching, Tapp settled on the skinny kid from New Jersey for the assignment.

  “Yellin, suit up. We’re going up,” Tapp had ordered. “Get on my wing, and don’t get off. If you get off, you’ll be sorry you ever flew.”

  That’s all Jerry was told. But he knew the best pilot in the Army had selected him to be his wingman, and he also realized that, whatever they were doing when they got in the air, it was going to be high pressure.

  The two pilots fired up their engines and lifted off into the blue Hawaiian skies. Cutting northeast, they were over the Pacific within a matter of seconds. The flight out to the USS Baltimore’s location lasted about fifteen minutes, and when they arrived, with Jerry tight on Tapp’s left wing, they buzzed in close over the top of the ship, looped up into the sky, turned, and proceeded to fly a number of tight aerobatic maneuvers.

  They were dangerous, impressive stunts. The pilots executed “lazy eights,” whereby the aircraft, flying in tight formation, cut two large, swooping, 180-degree turns in the sky—the first of many “figure eights” they drew just off the starboard side of the ship. The duo performed an assortment of loops and rolls in perfect symmetry, with Jerry flying off Tapp’s wing the whole time. After finishing the acrobatics, the pilots turned a wide circle in the air, and again, with Jerry on Tapp’s wing, flew a tandem salute across the ship before heading back for Schofield.

  At 2:25 p.m., meanwhile, the Baltimore arrived at the entrance of Pearl Harbor, where she stopped to receive a boarding party of high-level military officers, including Admiral Chester Nimitz, the commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. If the high-ranking officers boarding the ship didn’t suggest that something unusual was occurring, the sight of sailors donned in summer white uniforms and manning the rails on every U.S. warship should have been a clue. As the Baltimore entered the protected waters of Pearl Harbor, she hoisted the blue flag of the president of the United States up onto her main.

  The news traveled faster than the wind: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the commander-in-chief, had made a surprise visit, courtesy of the U.S. Navy.

  The telephone lines and the gossip circuits on Oahu Island ignited. When the news reached Schofield, Jerry finally realized he had flown a demonstration for the president of the United States (Tapp had been informed of Roosevelt’s presence when assigned the mission). It was a proud, defining moment for the young pilot.

  Now, nine months later, he was flying toward what would become his corner of this great war. Despite the risk, he had confidence in his abilities—an attitude that served fighter pilots well when they engaged in combat. Aside from skill, no trait was more valuable than the mindset they carried into battle, which gave them a certain swagger. The great fighter pilots possessed a killer instinct, a certain thirst for aggression, to get the job done. Fearlessness in facing death was a must. Jerry, for his part, had both the talent and the motivation. He’d become a fighter pilot to kill Japanese soldiers, to exact vengeance on them for attacking his country and killing his countrymen, and to defend freedom. And that’s exactly what he was going to do.

  There! Off in the distance!

  Rising from the watery horizon surfaced Jerry’s first visual of Iwo Jima: the distinct, jagged, dark outline of Mount Suribachi, towering 555 feet up above the water. Sixteen days had passed since U.S. Marines landed on its beaches; even now, however, as Jerry piloted his Mustang toward the island, it remained infested with the enemy. Although the Marines had secured a beachhead, the Japanese controlled two-thirds of the eight-mile island, which meant that Jerry’s squadron could very well take ground fire while landing.

  Ten minutes later, the island had morphed from a single peak into a panoramic view. Some Marines who fought there described the island’s shape as a “large, gray pork chop.” In times of peace, it would be covered with green vegetation. But the U.S. Navy—with some assistance from the U.S. Army Air Force—had bombed and shelled the hell out of the island for eight months before the Marines landed on February 19, 1945. Their invasion had been a long time coming—it existed in planning and operational stages for well over a year, starting in February of 1944 when American B-24 and B-25 bombers had blasted the islands for seventy-four consecutive days. In the ten days prior to the Marines hitting the beaches, the naval bombardment intensified. As a result, the island out in front of the Dorrie R now appeared gray, its vegetation burned off by naval gunfire. Indeed, it looked as it was for many: an island of death, not of life.

  As the pilots of the Seventy-Eighth approached Iwo Jima from the south, maintaining their cruising speed of 360 miles per hour, their vision of the enemy-controlled areas to the north was blocked by Mount Suribachi, which rested on the island’s southern tip. In February of 1945, after the Marines had established their beachhead on the southern third of the island, the Associated Press released a drawing to illustrate what the Marines had captured and what the Japanese still held.

  Jerry and his peers had studied navigation charts similar to the AP map. They knew that, once they cleared Mount Suribachi, they would descend quickly and try a bull’s-eye landing onto the dirt airfield at the base of the mountain. The descent had to be quick to avoid enemy fire.

  As they drew nearer the island, Major Jim Vande Hey, the squadron commander, broke out into landing formation, leading the Red Flight ahead of the other groups. Next came the Blue foursome; Jerry, as element leader, fell in line as the third plane in the landing pattern. Behind them, the Green and the Yellow Flights followed suit.

  Inside the Dorrie R’s cockpit, Jerry began his pre-landing procedure.

  Increase prop speed to twenty-six hundred RPM: check.

  Retard throttle to check landing gear: check.

  Airspeed 250 miles per hour.

  This Associated Press drawing, released in February of 1945, illustrates what the Marines had captured and what the Japanese still held in the initial stages of battle.

  Airspeed 200 miles per hour.

  As it dropped to 170 miles per hour, Jerry pushed the landing gear handle into the DOWN position. He waited a few seconds, then retarded the throttle to check his warning lights. Excellent. He lowered first his landing gear, then the plane’s flaps, and dropped airspeed to just below 165 miles per hour.

  The plan was to buzz the field in groups of four abreast to get a visual feel for the landing area, then pull up for a quick half-loop, line up with the
airfield, and land the plane.

  The Red Flight went first. Jerry watched from above, in a holding pattern, as the first wave of P-51s lined up abreast and swooped down over the field. They pulled up, conducted a quick half-loop, and Tapp then brought his plane onto final approach for landing.

  Touchdown.

  The second aircraft followed. So did the third, while the Blue Flight lined up for its pre-landing buzz of the airfield. Jerry pushed forward on the stick, and the Mustang nosed down. Flying over the airfield, Jerry observed the planes that comprised the Red Flight being moved out of the way. He could also see other P-51s that had landed yesterday in the first wave of fighters to arrive on the island. As he swung around in a half-loop and lined up for final approach, he didn’t have time to think he’d also just gotten his first glimpse of the place where he might die.

  No, there was no time to ponder any of that. Right now, he needed to get the Dorrie R on the ground—and fast.

  The Blue Flight descended in a straight line for landing and spaced fifteen to twenty seconds apart, a margin that left no room for error. Jerry nosed the Mustang down, keeping his eyes on the airfield and the tail of the plane in front of him.

  Eight hundred feet…

  Six hundred feet…

  Four hundred feet…

  Two hundred feet…

  The Mustang in front of him touched down.

  Ten seconds to landing.

  Five seconds.

  As he flew across the end of the dirt runway, slowing the plane’s air speed to one hundred miles per hour and just ten feet off the ground, Jerry pulled back on the stick, feathering the nose up as the plane dropped. A second later, he touched down. It was a good landing—no bounce on contact—and the plane raced forward on the runway.

  Thank God, he thought.

  Jerry raised his flaps and cut the booster pumps, then opened the oil and coolant shutters. At the end of the airstrip, he waited until the Mustang’s propeller stopped spinning and then turned the ignition switch off.

  When he opened the glass-bubble canopy over the cockpit, it hit him: the most putrid, nauseating stench he’d ever inhaled. Battling a powerful instinct to vomit all over himself, Jerry looked over and saw the source of the odor: dead Japanese, piled up six to eight feet along the side of the runway. Many were mutilated from battle. Some, who had been killed more recently, still oozed with blood. Others rotted in the warm mid-afternoon sun, swarmed by thousands of flies and maggots. The bodies would be pushed into mass graves when the Marines got around to it.

  Meanwhile, if the overpowering stench of death wasn’t baptism enough into the horrors of a war zone, the immediate orders being snapped at the pilots drove home the reality.

  “Secure your planes!”

  “Stow your gear!”

  “Stay low!”

  “Grab a shovel and dig a foxhole. Keep your heads down, men!”

  Nothing had prepared Jerry for this. The graphic nightmare flooded his lungs, his stomach, and his conciousness.

  “Lieutenant, get out of the plane!” a voice called through the chaos. “We’re in a war zone. We’ve gotta get you to a foxhole!”

  CHAPTER 2

  The First Night in Hell

  Iwo Jima

  March 8, 1945

  That night, Jerry tried to fall asleep as the odor of rotting dead bodies filled his nostrils. He was lying in a foxhole he’d dug for himself using tools the Marines had supplied. His orders now were to get some shuteye. As a pilot, he needed to stay razor sharp; the Seventy-Eighth and their sister squadrons in the Fifteenth Fighter Group had been told that, at sunrise, they would be back in the air, providing support to the bombarded Marines. Sleep was imperative.

  But it wasn’t just the overwhelming stench of death that tormented Jerry as he lay flat on his back in the dirt. Thousands of flies swarmed above his head, buzzing like miniature fighter planes as they flew among the dead bodies on which they feasted. Jerry tried swatting away the insects with his hand, but to no avail. There were too many.

  There was also the gunfire. It came from everywhere—rifle fire, pistol fire, the discharge of machine guns, exploding grenades, and the whiney pitch of mortars launching, flying through the air, and exploding on contact. Jerry could hear the warning call of Marines—“Incoming!”—when mortar fire from the Japanese entered the area. The earth around him shook from the fire, while the noise filled his ears.

  But perhaps worst of all was the sound of men screaming, as dying moans escaped their bodies. With their last breath, they cried to God or begged for their mothers.

  The constant uncertainty of Jerry’s own fate pressed on him. At any moment, a mortar round could land in his foxhole, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. His life through the night depended on factors he could not control.

  Like hell he’d be able to sleep.

  The Marines had been living through this nightmare for two weeks already. Americans back home had seen the iconic black-and-white image of their countrymen raising the flag on Iwo Jima. The picture had been snapped by photographer Joe Rosenthal on February 23, 1945. But by the time Jerry landed on the island just twelve days later, two of the six men who pushed the flag into the sky were already dead. Even now, a final victory on Iwo Jima was still weeks away, and before it came, a third soldier depicted in that memorable photograph would pay the ultimate price.

  “Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima”—This iconic, Pulitzer-winning image was captured by Joe Rosenthal on February 23, 1945, the fifth day of the battle. AP Images

  And yet, despite its shocking depiction in the mountains of dead Japanese and the cries of the Marines that pierced the air around him, the devastation of war was not wholly new to Jerry. Already, before arriving at Iwo Jima, he’d witnessed the death of fellow pilots. In December of 1943, his former commanding officer, Major Bill Southerland, was killed in a mid-air collision over Haleiwa after his plane collided with another plane piloted by Jerry’s squadron mate, Howard Edmonson. Though Edmonson was at fault, he bailed out and survived. Six months later, after Edmonson received what appeared to be shocking news from home, he flew his P-47 into the ocean off the coast of Hawaii. To this day, it is not clear whether the crash was accidental or on purpose. More likely, it was accidental, since Edmonson had been drinking the previous night, which may have affected his coordination. Either way, his death shocked the squadron, and was especially hard to swallow, as he left a wife and a family to mourn him. Edmonson was the first of his fellow pilots that Jerry lost in the war.

  The nightmare reality was that he likely wouldn’t be the last. Here, on this island, death seemed the norm, not the exception. Jerry’s first night in the foxhole may as well have been a first night in hell. The ground itself, because of volcanic activity deep beneath the surface, emitted heat into the foxholes, which could make them uncomfortable to lie in for long periods of time. The very name Iwo Jima meant “Sulfur Island” in Japanese, and with good reason—volcanic sulfur covered the island, and the hot sulfur springs ran all under the surface. The underground volcanic activity made Iwo Jima hotter than most tropical islands, and at night, the heat from the open foxholes, as it rose into the cooling evening air, produced at times a ghost-like mist.

  And that eerie mist carried another drawback: it gave cover to Japanese infiltrators seeking to slip into the Americans’ camp and slit their throats while they slept. Jerry and the rest of the Seventy-Eighth had already been warned by the Marines about the Japanese: “They’re not on the island. They’re in the island.” The Japanese had spent months burrowing an interior network of secret tunnels throughout this eight-square-mile lava lump in the Pacific. In fact, more than twenty-five thousand Japanese soldiers crammed under the surface and caves of an island that was only two miles at its widest point. They had been abandoned by the Imperial government and ordered to fight to the death. Even in the small space controlled by the Marines, such secret tunnels threatened the safety of the Americans. The Japanese were
fond of popping up out of the ground unannounced, under cover of darkness inside the American lines, and committing mass murder before slipping back under the earth. They’d jump into American foxholes, cut American throats, then disappear without ever having been seen. The Marines had already flushed out many of the tunnels around the airfield where Jerry’s foxhole was located, but there were no guarantees.

  At this moment, Jerry felt defenseless. Put him in the cockpit of a fighter—where he controlled the most lethal killing instrument in the war—and he could soar into the heavens and do some good. Here, in a foxhole, he was powerless. Sure, he had his sidearm with him—the pilots had undergone small weapons training and were prepared to fire on the enemy in the event of a shoot-down. But a pilot also needed to be in control of his situation. Of all things Jerry hated in his current position, he hated the lack of control most of all. In the cockpit, he had control of his aircraft, control of his guns and bombs, and, most importantly, control over the enemy.

  How he wished he could go jump in the cockpit of the Dorrie R right now, crank the engine, and bring hell to the Japanese.

  Jerry’s mind drifted to his aircraft’s namesake. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to think of Doris Rosen. Even here, he could see her long, flowing hair bouncing off her shoulders, and that irresistible, starry gaze as she looked into his face. A soldier needed hope—hope for something, or someone, to come home to. At this moment, she gave him hope. The thought of her allowed him a brief smile, even in the midst of a smoldering hellhole.

  More explosions and gunfire brought Jerry’s eyes wide open again. He grasped his pistol grip, if for nothing more than a small semblance of comfort.

  Slowly, the truth dawned: there would be no sleep tonight.

  Hopefully, he’d be sharp enough to fly in the morning.

  CHAPTER 3

  A Graveyard for Bombers and the Need for Iwo Jima

  The Mariana Islands