The Last Fighter Pilot

by Don Brown

  Here in the Pacific theater, the Japanese had employed their own version of mass psychological intimidation on a battlefield, and American forces had a name for the Japanese tactic. They called it “Banzai,” and both Japanese fighter pilots and Japanese soldiers embraced the concept. While Banzai did not consist of vocal screaming by Japanese troops, it proved, in some ways, even more fearful and dangerous. It was the idea that killing oneself for the glory of the emperor was more illustrious than surrender. To carry out this ideological conviction, the soldiers would rush in waves at an opposing army, running across a field brandishing bayonets and exposing themselves to enemy fire. One of the largest such attacks had come in the battle of Saipan less than a year before Jerry arrived on Iwo Jima: over forty-three hundred Japanese troops had charged the American lines in a last-ditch suicide charge. These Banzai tactics erupted towards the end of a battle, and only when Japanese forces had clearly lost. To surrender, they felt, was cowardice.

  But for the American pilots on Iwo Jima, it appeared by March 24 that the danger of such an attack was slim to none. The Marines had made excellent progress chasing the Japanese from the island; in fact, on March 15, 1945, the Mustangs had been told to stand down in flying close-air support for the Marines, who were in the last stages of a mop-up operation. The final few skirmishes were so tightly quartered that even the P-51s would pose too much of a friendly-fire hazard to the Marines. By the following day, Iwo Jima was declared “secure” from serious Japanese threat on the island. Iwo Jima, with its precious airfields, was now poised to give the Army Air Force enhanced striking capability against Japan.

  Such victory had come at a high price. Between the beginning of the invasion of Iwo Jima on February 19, 1945, and the time the island was declared secure on March 16, 4,189 Marines had been killed and 19,938 wounded. The U.S. death toll on Iwo Jima eventually climbed to over 6,000 killed—primarily Marines—and nearly 26,000 wounded. Japanese defenders, meanwhile, had originally numbered about 21,000, of which only 1,083 survived.

  The Fifteenth Fighter Group, meanwhile, had been reinforced by the Twenty-First Fighter Group, commanded by Colonel Ken Powell. Ground elements of the Twenty-First had begun arriving by the end of February, but the P-51s from the Twenty-First did not reach Iwo Jima until March 15.

  As additional air units arrived on Iwo Jima in preparation for a great April air raid against Japan, the new groups set up base on airstrips other than the one originally occupied by Jerry and the men of the Fifteenth. Jerry’s field, the one closest to Mount Suribachi, was known as Airfield No. 1, or South Field. The Twenty-First Fighter Group—consisting of the Forty-Sixth, Seventy-Second, and 531st fighter squadrons—began using the airfield in the center of the island, known as Airfield No. 2, or Central Field. Airfield No. 3, or North Field, was the last airfield to be constructed and would not be available until May 11, 1945.

  This map shows the different airfield locations on Iwo Jima.

  Meanwhile, with victory on the ground in sight and more aircraft flying into Iwo Jima each day in preparation for massive air assaults over Japan, American naval forces had begun withdrawing from Iwo Jima, their skills needed elsewhere. The Marines who’d been part of the original invasion force were also moving on; they were being replaced by the 147th Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Army. The change showed the stability the Americans had achieved on the island. The P-51 pilots, for their part, could feel secure knowing Iwo Jima itself was secure. All the Japanese were gone from the island.

  Or so they thought.

  CHAPTER 9

  Prelude to a Massacre

  March 25, 1945

  March 25, 1945, arrived as a peaceful Sunday on Iwo Jima. Jerry and the other Americans there were enjoying a brief—if perhaps eerie—respite from the bloodiness of battle. Back in the United States, millions of Americans prepared to attend worship services to pray for husbands and sons overseas. So far, by the grace of God, the Fifteenth had lost only one flyer since arriving on Iwo Jima: First Lieutenant Beaver Ashley Kinsel of the Forty-Fifth Fighter Squadron. Kinsel, an experienced combat pilot despite his youth, had disappeared in the clouds on routine combat air patrol not far off Iwo Jima earlier that month. Nobody knew what had happened. Fatigue or pilot error were possibilities, but given Kinsel’s reputation as one of the best young pilots in the Forty-Fifth, it was probably a mechanical failure that had cost him his life. His comrades never found his plane. The twenty-three-year-old pilot’s death served up a cold reminder to them: no one could take anything for granted.

  Today, however, offered a semblance of normalcy. Conditions had improved marginally for Jerry since his arrival. The fighter pilots were now living in tents; there was no longer a need to sleep in smelly foxholes, worry about mortars flying into the camp, or fear the Japanese materializing from nowhere. The nights themselves were quieter now, for the constant sounds of war had subsided. Except for the sound of a P-61 taking off or landing on night patrol, there was actually a chance for sweet sleep.

  The newly arrived men of the Twenty-First, however, had not seen the combat the men of the Fifteenth had. While members of the Fifteenth considered this a relative lull, the new pilots on the island, shocked by what they saw, were still trying to adjust. Captain Howard Russell of the Seventy-Second Fighter Squadron wrote in his ongoing diary,

  The destruction, filth, and total lack of vegetation were unbelievable. Our camp was set up just west and downhill from the middle airstrip and consisted of pyramidal tents, row on row, which were to be considered luxurious compared to our later combat quarters. Our operations tent on the airfield was next to the remains of a concrete structure which was the surface building of a three to four level cave dwelling reportedly used by the Japanese as a hospital. The Marines had done a nice job of sealing it and we felt confident that any Japs inside were there to stay.…

  Sleep was hard coming and each night skirmishes with the enemy not far north of our camp made us keep one eye and both ears open. Food was “C” ration heated in a trash can of water, and sometimes “K” ration was issued. The Marines had better food and we often bartered for their one gallon cans of good stuff.

  Russell’s commander, Colonel Ken Powell, also wrote about his first night on the island:

  A young Navy officer approached me. He was one of my YMCA camp boys from Washington State and had heard I was on Iwo. He invited me to join him for dinner and I didn’t waste any time dropping my mess kit. He took me to his screened mess tent, with mess attendants, where I was served steak and all the trimmings. He was a lieutenant in charge of a couple of PBYs and I was a colonel with 100 fighter planes eating from a mess kit while sitting on a crate. The Navy really lived right.

  Despite the shuttling of troops and the appearance of serenity, Paul Schurr and his 531st Squadron tent mates had an uneasy feeling and spent the day digging a foxhole, using the material to fill sandbags which were placed around their tent and the top of the hole.

  Schurr and John Galbraith bartered with departing Marines for a Garand rifle, a Carbine and several belts of ammo. The pilots had arrived on Iwo armed only with .45 caliber pistols. They spent the evening cleaning their new arsenal by lantern light.

  Perhaps Schurr and Galbraith knew something in their guts nobody else did.

  On the evening of March 25, one of their peers in the Twenty-First Fighter Group, Captain Harry Crim, entered his tent and decided to turn in early. The next day, the 531st would be in the skies, ready to strike Japanese targets and provide a supplemental boost to the men of the Fifteenth Fighter Group. Like Jim Tapp, Crim was one of the Army’s top aces. In a nearby tent, under a three-quarters moon that brought a faint glow to the war-torn island, Powell had also gone to bed ahead of the big day for the Twenty-First. As the moon climbed higher in the sky, the pilots of two fighter groups started to fall asleep.

  Meanwhile, all through the day and night, men from both fighter groups flew round-the-clock air patrols around the island. The patrols involved at least ei
ght planes airborne at any given time, watching for Japanese aircraft or ships. They generally took off just before sundown in two-hour increments and flew patrols in four-hour shifts throughout the night. In the evenings, many of the patrols were flown by squadrons of P-61 “Night Fighters”: twin-engine, twin-tailed Black Widow aircraft. Unlike the faster, more maneuverable P-51s, the P-61s, because of their design, rarely engaged in dogfights but proved best at flying long-range reconnaissance missions and intercepting the Japanese Mitsubishi G4M bombers, or the “Betty,” as the American pilots called the principal land-based bomber used by the Japanese Navy in World War II. The Betty possessed great range for a bomber because its lighter weight allowed it to fly farther to strike its targets, and it could also carry more bombs. If the Betty was able to slip through fighter coverage, especially at night, and deliver its payload, it could be devastating.

  But there was a drawback as well. By sacrificing the weight of the aircraft to achieve greater speed and distance, the Betty was very thin on protective armament. In contrast to the more heavily armored American bombers, which often could take enemy machine-gun fire and limp back to base, the Bettys did not enjoy that luxury. They also did not have self-sealing fuel tanks, a newer technology with multiple layers of rubber designed to prevent fuel leaks. With the slightest machine-gun fire, the Bettys often burst into flames. To be effective, the Betty had to sneak in and launch its bombs high above its target. It needed fighter protection, which often took the form of the much-heralded Mitsubishi AM-6 fighter aircraft, colloquially known as the Japanese “Zero.” The Japanese often flew the Bettys on night missions, theorizing that the darkness made them harder for American fighters to spot. To combat the Bettys’ night missions, the Army countered with the American P-61 “Black Widows,” the first combat aircraft in the world designed to use radar, thereby allowing them to “see” enemy aircraft, even at night. In fact, the P-61s often proved an effective deterrent to the Betty—though the P-61s rarely engaged them, the Betty would often turn tail and run if it spotted one. Multiple instances were recorded in which the Betty, after seeing a Black Widow, dropped all its bombs in the ocean to lighten its load and increase speed before zooming as fast as it could out of the area. Even so, the men flying air patrol exercised a healthy concern about the threat the Betty posed.

  Under the command of Captain Ernest Thomas, the first Black Widow had taken off from Iwo Jima’s Central Field at dusk on March 25. Although Iwo Jima was located just south of the twenty-fifth parallel, putting it on a latitudinal line almost equal with Key Largo, Florida, and the Gulf of Mexico, the night was chilly for the tropics. Inside the cockpit, it felt even colder. “We had not brought the proper clothing,” Thomas noted in his log. “When flying, it was worse. The aircraft heaters didn’t work and there were no parts available. We had no warm flight clothing and no gloves. It was often below freezing when flying at high altitudes. We usually patrolled at 15,000 to 18,000 feet.”

  At 10:15 p.m., the round, green radar screen at ground control on Iwo Jima swept the skies around the island and noted no activity except the eight P-61s on combat air patrol.

  Within fifteen minutes, the status changed. Ground radar on Iwo Jima detected invaders from the north. In seconds, air raid sirens blared across the island. Searchlights crisscrossed the skies. Antiaircraft gunners rushed to theirs stations. The Americans on Iwo Jima hunkered down for a potential onslaught of bombs.

  Thomas, patrolling over three miles above the ocean, had been in the air for more than four hours and was about to bring his plane back into Central Field. His radar officer, however, had already spotted the inbound enemy aircraft. That was quickly followed by a radio call from ground control confirming the news.

  Thomas turned the Black Widow and set it on an intercept course, but, since he was at the end of his scheduled patrol, the plane’s fuel was perilously low. Ground control at Airfield No. 1 was about to order him back to base, but before they issued the command, another enemy entity appeared on the ground radar. A Betty bomber had swung wide around the island—at first outside of radar range—and was now headed north, on course for a bombing run over Iwo Jima. The command at ground control now faced a dilemma: they could either bring Thomas back in because of low fuel and scramble additional Black Widows to go out and challenge the newly discovered bomber, or they could send Thomas after the Betty and gamble that his fuel wouldn’t run out. If they opted for the first method, the Betty could deliver its massive bombing load before more Black Widows managed to get airborne.

  The call fell to Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Alford, group commander of the Black Widows. He knew the crew onboard Thomas’s aircraft was one of his most experienced; it included, along with Thomas, radar officer John Acre and gunner Corporal Jesse Tew. Alford wanted those guys in the fight. He decided to push the plane a little harder.

  “Abort landing,” Alford ordered. “Vector to incoming bogey. Take him out.”

  On board the Black Widow, a surge of adrenaline rushed through the cold cockpit. Thomas set his Black Widow on an intercept vector with the approaching Betty. The next few minutes would determine whether he and his crew lived or died.

  Tension mounted in the plane as Thomas kept his bird flying in an intercept vector. Staring into the black skies, Thomas strained to find the enemy plane silhouetted somewhere in the moonlight.

  “Radar contact, captain!” Acre announced as he spotted the enemy plane’s blip on the Black Widow’s radar.

  Fifteen thousand feet above the dark waters of the Pacific, the men kept scouring the heavens.

  “There!” Tew observed the Betty’s outline in the moonlight. “Down below.”

  Thomas looked down and put the plane into a dive. But because they had spotted the enemy almost directly below them, the Black Widow overshot its position as the Japanese craft initiated an evasive maneuver and climbed steeply up to nineteen thousand feet. The planes had effectively switched positions, with Thomas and his crew losing the enemy in the stars overhead.

  Thomas pulled back on the yoke, putting the P-61 into a climb. He would find the Betty or run out of fuel trying.

  Twice more, the P-61 located and lost the Japanese bomber as the deadly game of cat-and-mouse continued. Finding the enemy on radar was one thing, but getting a visual sighting in the inky black skies, and then pulling close enough for a decent shot, was quite another.

  Meanwhile, the Betty closed in on Iwo Jima, now flying above the range of the Americans’ antiaircraft batteries on the island. At this rate, it would cross the island, drop its bombs, and disappear into the night.

  The P-61 was running out of time—and fuel. One certainty dominated each passing moment: the imminence of death, whether it be for the crew of the P-61, those onboard the Betty, or American pilots on the ground on Iwo Jima, defenseless against the Betty’s powerful bombs.

  “Look! Up there!” Thomas called. “There he is again.”

  The Betty had once more appeared in the moonlight. The Black Widow climbed up and moved in behind the bomber at an even altitude. The Betty was cruising towards Iwo Jima at 155 miles per hour.

  Thomas pushed the throttle forward to increase air speed. It wasn’t clear yet if the Americans had been spotted by the Betty. So far, the Japanese craft had not taken evasive action.

  “One thousand feet downrange.”

  “Eight hundred feet.”

  Thomas wrapped his finger around the trigger of the .50-caliber machine gun and took aim at the Betty’s left engine, mounted under the wing.

  “Seven hundred feet.”

  “Six hundred feet.”

  Thomas squeezed the trigger, firing a short, quick burst from the plane’s machine gun.

  The Black Widow jumped, and a second later, the Betty’s left engine burst into flames, illuminating the night sky.

  Thomas pushed down on the yoke, diving just under the fuselage of the burning bomber to avoid a collision. The top of the Black Widow passed within feet of the enemy craft’s
underside. Thomas pulled his plane hard right, and, a second later, the P-61 reached clear airspace. Its crew watched the Betty transform into a falling comet, streaking through the black night to its watery grave in the Pacific.

  One threat was gone.

  But the Americans were still ninety-five miles from Iwo Jima, haunted by another unanswered question: would they be flying or swimming home?

  A little over thirty minutes later, with its fuel gauges showing “empty” but the engines continuing to run, Thomas’s P-61 touched down on Central Field. Bringing the plane to its station position at the end of the runway, Thomas received the good news: thanks to his crew’s heroic work chasing down the Betty, and the work of his fellow pilot, Lieutenant Myrle McCumber of the 548th Night Fighter Squadron, the rest of the Japanese bombers had turned and fled. McCumber and his crew hit two Bettys and shot down a third that had closed within fifty miles of Iwo Jima, or just minutes away from the island. Because of the Night Fighters’ efforts, Iwo Jima would be secure for the rest of the evening.

  Or would it?

  It was one thing to battle Japanese aircraft. At least they were visible on radar, even at night.

  It was quite another to go to war against ghosts.

  CHAPTER 10

  Massacre of the Night Fighters

  Field Headquarters—Twenty-First Fighter Group Iwo Jima

  March 26, 1945

  Other than the near-miss with the Japanese Bettys, the night on the island had so far proved uneventful for the men of the Twenty-First Fighter Group. Newcomers Gailbraith and Schurr, however, were taking no chances—they made sure to keep their newly acquired rifles, courtesy of the U.S. Marine Corps, close at hand.

  After the air raid sirens had subsided and the Night Fighters successfully hunted their men, silence again blanketed the dark night on the island. The first P-51s were scheduled to be in the air just twenty-two minutes after sunrise, slated for 5:32 that morning.