CLASSIFIED
I shouldn’t be telling this story but I am getting long in the tooth and this tale needs to be told before I’m go to that big airplane hangar in the sky. Too long, this apocryphal tale has been secreted in the secret classified recesses of the Office of Naval Intelligence. I’m going to delete and may even change some of the names, dates and the like, for I might be imprisoned or worse, after I’ve let this story see the light of day. See if you agree whether I should be concerned about my being the whistle blower of this hair raising account of a WW II battle.
WW II was nearing its end. The Japanese in the south Pacific were on the run. We’d won the “turkey shoot” in the Marianas and their carriers were hightailing it for home. Our carrier group shot down more than four hundred of their naval aircraft and we broke the back of the Japanese naval air wing. Our flight, The Red Foxes, caught a Japanese battle group of two carriers and their escorts late on a sunny afternoon as our TBF squadron patrolled the western Pacific. We were a group of eight planes, the Red Fox flight, with torpedoes and bombs at the ready. Unfortunately, our TBF’s (torpedo/bomber/fighters) were slow and cumbersome. We made our bomb and torpedo runs but the Japanese anti aircraft gunners had a field day with us. Seven of our planes went down. My aircraft was badly shot up, though I was still flying. I was the sole survivor of the Red Fox flight, though we did sink one of their carriers.
Out of ammunition with my bombs and torpedoes expended, I headed for home on my carrier as the sun sank slowly into the distant western horizon. My fuel was nearly expended and the needle was bumping on empty. I desperately looked for my “mother” ship, the carrier Enterprise. From ten thousand feet I spied a shimmering wake through a break in the cumulus as the sunlight began to fade.
Landing on a carrier is hazardous at best and downright dangerous at night; especially without landing lights on deck to maintain perspective and guide you in. In war time, lights aboard ship were strictly forbidden on carriers and radio silence was maintained as enemy submarines were in the vicinity.
I banked my TBF to port and descended to five hundred feet, following the now barely perceptible wake of the carrier. Daylight was nearly gone and the needle on the fuel gauge was on empty. I didn’t have enough fuel to go through the standard landing pattern of a downwind leg, turn one hundred eighty degrees and then final upwind leg. I needed to come straight in to the deck and get my damaged aircraft down before the engine quit. As I neared the fantail, I dropped my wheels, then the tail hook and then the flaps as my aircraft slowed to stall speed. On the fantail, the landing officer, with his two paddles, waved me off frantically. I was too high or too fast for him to let me land safely.
OK. You jerk. I see you. Not sure I’ve got enough gas to go round again but I’ll try. I firewalled the throttle, pulled up and banked to port to miss the carrier’s island bridge. I made a tight turn and again got in line with the wake from the carrier and made another approach as the sun disappeared in the west. The engine was beginning to miss and cough. I very much wanted to land on deck, as ditching in the sea at night would mean almost certainly I would die as they would never find me before I drowned.
I broke radio silence. “This is Red Fox leader. I’m desperately low on fuel and don’t have enough for another go round. Please give me only thirty seconds of light so I can see the deck. I need lights to land this crate. I’m going to crash on deck rather than ditch in the sea. Over”. No reply. Nothing but silence from the radio. And no lights on deck. I’m not going to ditch in the ocean. I continued in the “modified” approach pattern; blindly burrowing straight in toward the stern. It was now pitch black. No moon. No visible stars or horizon. Wheels down, hook down, flaps down, throttled down and wavering at near stall speed I floated in over the fantail of the carrier. And there he was, the little jerk of a landing officer with his two paddles, again waving me off. The hell with him. I’m coming in anyway and I’ll crash on deck rather than ditch in the ocean.
I cleared the fantail just as the engine quit. The plane dropped like a rock and hit the deck, bounced twice and caught the third wire, my momentum carrying me down the deck to finally stop only feet from the barrier near the bow. Throwing back the canopy and pulling off my helmet, I stood up in the cockpit still sweating and thanking my lucky stars. I’d made a very difficult and dangerous night landing and without lights, at that, and still had an intact aircraft. I probably would get a reprimand; but maybe, just possibly, I might even get a commendation or a medal for my exceptionally difficult night landing. I crawled out on the wing, as one of the flight deck crew men popped out from beneath the fuselage.
Grinning broadly he said, “Ah so, Melican Pilot. You make very good landing.
Posted in Essays, Short Stories
Pushcart Prize Nominee Reilly Maginn's debut novel, BIO, a medical action thriller is a truly frightening tale of Jihadist bioterrorism. A story of weapons of mass destruction that could happen here in the US. Set in the south Pacific, a volunteer American physician/surgeon faces off against not only a deadly virus, but also the radical Muslim terrorists who developed it. There is a fittingly appropriate conclusion.
