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July 2016
Newsweek: Island Hopping with Hipple
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"Newsweek: Island Hopping with Hipple" (2016). War Information Center Pamphlets. Book 1519.
http://utdr.utoledo.edu/ur-87-68/1519
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S
SIGNIFICANCE
NEWSWEEK BUILDING • 152 WEST 42 STREET • NEW YORK 18 • N. Y.
Army Engineers and Seabees
Reconstruct Pacific Bases
Hipple Lands on War -Torn
Islands of Eniwetok, Tarawa,
Bougainville, and Palau
WILLIAM HIPPLE
Bill Hipple has been continuously in service as a war correspondent since the early spring of 1942. When he joined
Newsweek's Hawaiian staff he was already a veteran of the
Battle of the Pacific.
Born in Minneapolis, Hipple began his newspaper career as a
C?PY boy on the Tacoma (Wash.) Times when he was only 15.
Smee . then he has worked as a reporter for the Seattle PostIntelhgencer, for the Seattle Bureau of the United Press and in
Washington, New York, London, and Paris.
'
May 1941 found Hipple in Honolulu and from there he joined a
navy task force which ranged far to the south of Hawaii and ultimately took him to Australia. He covered General MacArthur's
headquarters and the activities of MacArthur's forces and then
went to Guadalcanal where he spent four months. From then on he
went on a wide variety of missions including naval task forces and
the Battle of the Gilbert Islands.
Landing on Tarawa in the second wave, Hipple was one of the
only four men from a boatload of 33 to reach shore. For his work
on Tarawa, he was given a commendatiob from the Second Marine
~i:ision for "brav~ an? ~fficient service under extraordinary conditions _of combat. This is only one of the many citations proving
that Hipple rates top-notch respect and popularity among the
services in the Pacific.
In this booklet we present reports from four of the most battlescarred islands of the Pacific. Ripple's clear-cut descriptions of
these bloody areas gives a concise picture of the problems our men
face in-this theater of war.
Quack, Quack: We were sitting in the
little wardroom of an LST (Landing
Ship, Tank) c;lis~ussing things in _general
over coffee with the young skipper. The
LST had its bow ramp down onto the
coral sand beac11:
In answer to the question on what he
was unloading, the skipper" said casually
"2,000-pound bombs," and then invited
us to stay the night. We did, and nothing
happened. No bombings, no alarms, and
the unloading went right ahead.
The night before the Navy photographer, a lieutenant, and I sat on tlie deck
of a cruiser a couple of miles off Eniwetok
and watched a movie. It was preceded
by a couple of. "community sirigs" and
short subjec;ts and everybody from- the
admiral down ·to the apprentice seamen
joined in chanting, "Dinah," "Margie,'.'
and 'Tm Stepping Out With a Memory.'...
And when some 500 voices sang out "Old
MacDonald Had a Farm . . . With a
Quack Quack Here and a Quack Quack
There" the roar must have convinced
any remaining J aps in Eniwetok that aside
from their obvious ·fighting ability the
Americans were crazy and not very worried over the final results of the Pacific
war.
Awe and Awe: Eniwetok is our most
westerly base, roughly 650 statute miles
from Truk and 360 miles from Ponape.
To one who had· long thought of Eniwetok as lt mysterious place deep in Japanese territory it seemed unbelievable to
be sitting calmly there in such comparative safety. Yet those two incidents on
the LST ~nd on the cruiser serve to show
how completely we have throttled Jap air
power in the Central Pacific and how
freely and confidently the United States
Fleet and its supply vessels move in these
once-forbidden waters 2,500 miles west
of Pearl Harbor.
There is constant vigilance, of course,
and tjiere may be nuisance raids. But awe
of J aps has passed and now it is more
awe about what our planes and ships and
Ian.cl troops did to tl1ese places.
We learned about t11e pre-invasion
softening at Tarawa and the cliche "those
men did not die in vain" can be applied
gratefully to those in the gallant Second
Dh~ision of Marines who did die at Tarawa in our first experiment in atoll warfare. Now tlie dead Japs and most of
their smell have been buried, and reconstruction ai 1d llC\V building is goillg
ahead at a fast clip. We watched the
bmial of the last of tl1ousands of dead
J aps on Eniwetok Island, twisted and
torn as they were into grotesque shapes.
Boom Towns: Both Eniwetok and
Kwajalein look like Western gold-rush
boom towns, only worse. Streets of tents
have gone up; concrete foundations are
being laid; and already cooks are putting
out chow from new wooden buildings.
Electric-light circuits have been strung up
and attached to portable power units.
Trucks and jeeps ply back and forth over
the new roads and beaches are heaped
high with crates and boxes.
The bulldozer has replaced the infantry as the queen of the atolls. Wherever
you get out of a plane or come ashore
in a boat you see one sticking its curved,
steel shovel into tl1e erstwhile Japanese
dugouts, into mounds of diit and debris
tossed up by our shelling and bombing,
and against sagging coconut trees. Nearly as numerous are the cranes called
"cherry pickers," tractors, and graders.
In some places, Seabees and A~y
engineers are working twelve-hour ·shifts
-midnight to noon, noon to midni~ht.
Air strips which were a~equate for light
J ap planes are being lengthened and
resurfaced with crnshed coral. New bases
and airfields which cannot yet be announced are being rnshed to completion.
The Efficient Jap: "We've done more
in three days than the Japs did here in
30 years," one Seabee said proudly, and
he was about right from the looks of
things. It is a trnism here th~t the reason the Japs were so mysterious about
their Marshall .Islands goings-on all these
years· was not to hide what they had
done but to hide what they had not done.
Nowhere on Kwajalein or Eniwetok
were there fortifications to cable home
about. The Jap on Tarawa put most of
their faith anci. ,vork in reinforced log
dugouts and concrete blockhouses whereas on Engebi Island in Eniwetok Atoll, tor
instance, their intentions were good but
they had waited too loug. On the beach
lay pile after pile of steel. rods to be used
for reinforcing concrete pillboxes. Ins~ead
·the J aps on this island de!)ended chiefly
on open trenches running between gun
and supply positions.
.
The American forces have had to bmld
new networks of roads or widen the inad..,quate Jap trails. T~e ~ormer Jap fiel?
at Roi is short but with rmprovement is
excellent for our fighters, dive bombers,
and torpedo planes now operating from
it. The strip .on Kwajalein has been
lengthened so transport planes are running regular trips and the heaviest bombers can use it readily.
The smell of Jap bodies has made all
this work disagreeable enough so far but
the flies, the dust, and the heat have been
nearly as bad. It is the dream. of these
hard-driving Seabees and engmeers to
go into a nice unbombed tropical isle an?
start building from scratch and you can t
blame them.
0
Tarawa Revisited
Dedicated to Memory of Gallant Dead,
Island Symbolizes Grim Pacific Wai
Tarawa is already ·a back base. Yet instead of being slowly forgotten, it is
gathering such interest among Pacific
servicemen that it has already become an
American shrine. Soldiers, sailors, and Marines wno come through here on ships or
planes tour the ·little island ?f. Betit>,
shake their heads at the remammg J ap
fortifications, poke through ruins, and
stand reverently before white crosses
marking American graves. From Honolulu to Kwajalein and Eniwetok, on land
bases and ships, they talk about Tarawa
and want to know what it is like.
And when after the war, big commercial plan~s en route to the Orient
pause at Tarawa after a nonstop flight of
2 200 miles from Honolulu, civilians und~ubtedly will make it a mecca-a symbol
of our bitter but victorious war with the
Japanese. No other Pacific battleground,
with the exception of Guadalcanal, has
so caught the imagination as Tarawa,
Lifted Face: Today Tarawa (the name
for the atoll is always loosely applied to
the island of Betio where the fighting
occurred) is like a lady with her face
lifted. It looks pretty good at first glance
but close examination reveals the ravages
of the past.
The interior of the 2~-mile-long island,
the working area around Hawkins Field,
has been swept clean as your mother's
kitchen floor. The shell and bomb holes
have been smoothed over and the ground
combed of all debris. The coral surface is
hard and smooth as cement among·the
tents, wooden buildin.gs, and Quonset
huts which serve as living, eating, and
working quarters.
Many undamaged J ap dugouts and
shelters still clutter this area. They are
being used for telephone exchanges, operations offices, and storage spots. They
are also ideal for air-raid shelters, but
Tarawa hasn't had a raid since just before the invasion of the Marshalls and
isn't likely to have many more.
u. s.
Signal Corps photo from Associated Press
MacArthur surveys a dead Jap on the road back to the Philippinesin this case the Admiralty Islands
Hawkins Field, lengthened and resurfaced with crushed coral, is as busy as
l.a Guardia Field in New York, with
bombers taking off on regular milk runs
to Jap-held Eastern Marshall Islands
bases and transport planes coming in and
out from Pearl Harbor and Kwajalein.
Several open-air movies are shown every
night, divine services are held regularly,
and there are baseball and softball league competitions between different units.
This is only the face-lifted side of the
picture, however. You can still see in
places why Tarawa was terrible. Most
coconut trees are thin high stumps. All
around the coastline except for boat entrances, concrete anti-boat blocks, interlaced with barbed wire still protrude
ominously.
On the northern lagoon side, where
the first landings were made, the r<;ief
holds rusting hulks of amphibious tractors and other landin~ craft which
either didn't make the beach or were
knocked out just as they made the goal.
For great distances along the beach, demolished Jap trucks, broken tanks, fieldpieces, boilers, pipes, steel rods, concrete,
and coconut logs are all mixed up into
the wildest sort of rubbish dump.
In the thin, tapering eastern end and
the blunt western side, men are living in
tents amidst the ruins of Jap positions.
It is clean now and there is no smell, but
it is not exactly pleasant. Many dead
Japs probably are still sealed in the dugouts.
The men say they are proud to care
for the American cemeteries. And the
work shows it. The cemeteries are
rimmed with coconut-log fences and the
grounds are kept scrupulously clean. The
grave of each hero who went forward
unfalteringly and made victory possible
is marked by a shining white mar.ker. At
one cemetery I saw the grave of Lt. Col.
Herbert R. Amey Jr. of San Diego, Calif.,
who was shot down a few yards ahead
of me as we waded across the reef on the
first morning of the invasion. At a coconut-log gate there is. a sign which reads:
tant in the progress of the whole Paci.Sc
war, this Bougainville battle is nevertheless a grim, disagreeable, and dangerous
business for the men concerned.
HERE LIE OFFICERS AND MEN OF THE
SECOND UNITED STATES MARINE Drv1SION WHO FELL IN ACTION ON THIS ATOLL,
Nov. 20, 1943-so THERE LET THEM REST
ON THEIR SUN-SCORCHED ATOLL.
Precious Perimeter: Two Army divi·
sions-the 37th and the Americal-guard
a sector off Empress Augusta Bay in West
Central Bougainville roughly like our
Rome beachhead in position and size.
This perimeter is 13 miles around, 6~
miles through at its thickest, and about
6Jf miles at its beach base. This is otir
hold on an island llO miles long and 20
to 35 miles wide.
Yet this is apparently all the high command wants. It gives us three airfields,
constructed since the landings on Nov. 1.
They are Torokina on the coast, used for
fighters, dive bombers, and transports,
and two strips at a place called Piva:
These fields are playing a major role in
the knockout of Rabaul, only 240 miles
away. Their work is nearly done. But
there are still upward of 20,000 Japanese on the island, and they are being
traditionally persistent.
The wind for their watcher, the
waves for the-ir shroud
Where palm and pandanus shall
whispe'I' forever
A requiem fitting for heroes so
pro11cl.
Bougainville Scene
The Artillery Is Intermittent,
but the Four Frogs Never Stop
Nights on Bougainville are dark, long,
and full of noise as you lie on a cot in a
jungle clearing. There are four species of
frogs emitting weird sounds. One laughs,
one cries and a third trills in song. An
indefinite fourth variety does his best to
convince you he's moaning. Crickets snap
all night. Clumsy hornbills fly around
trees with wings whirring. There is an
opossum with a ratlike tail. It squeaks.
Occasionally, until 9:45 p.m., you hear
the mofe familiar moan of Bing Crosby
or Dinah Shore recordings as soldiers
lucky enough to have radios tune in on
the one-lung local station WSSO "Voice
of Bougainville."
Then there is artillery. It pounds intermittently most of the day, but at night, at
about 8, the Japs begin throwing them in
faster. Our artillery answers and the
whistle overhead reassures you that it is
ours. The duel hesitates a moment and
then you hear those frogs again, laughing, crying, trilling, moaning.
Arti)lery is heavy for a couple of hours,
then intermittent until shortly before sun·
rise when it resumes thick and heavy.
The jungle noises are as old as nature, but
the artillery duel has been going on only
since March 8. Comparatively unimpor-
Invincible Mortification: They are
comprised chiefly of a Sixth Army division which is said to have participated in
the rape Qf Nanking, commanded by· Lt.
Gen. Masatame Kande. Recently he issued this lyric order of the day to his
troops:
To avenge our mortification since
Guadalcanal
Will be our duty tme and supreme.
Strike, strike, and strike again,
Until our enemy is humbled forevermore.
Brighten with the blood of American
devils
The color of the renowned insignia
on our arms.
The cry of our victory at Torokina
Bay
Shall resound to the shores of our
beloved Nippon.
We are invincible.
No foe can equal our might.
To attain our aims we must always
attack
And our enemies _we must smite.
Danger comes soonest whe11 it is
despised.
Caution and prudence will bring no
grief.
Serve in silence and bear all pain.
The shame of our souls will give us
strength
To pre.serve our nation and our
glory.
Battle Story: The First Marine Amphibious Corps, under Maj. Gen. Roy S.
Geiger, gradually extended · the beachhead and most of the present perimeter
until relieved on Dec. 15 by the Army
under Fourteenth Corps Commander,
Maj. Gen. Oscar W. Griswold. Then followed extensive patrol actions deep into
enemy lines. A battalion of Fiji scouts
under New Zealand officers has made the
most spectacular patrols, sometimes staying out months at a time behind the lines.
The Japs, meanwhile, began massing
men and bringing up artillery through
their -roads to the south despite plane and
patrol opposition. Then they packed their
artillery and ammunition through the
jungle and set it up opposite our perimeter. Things began to happen March 8.
Jap artillery on the north and east
consisted of many 15-centimeter pieces,
corresponding to our 155s. On the west
they had mainly 75-millimeter mountain
guns. Our forces moved 90-millimeter
and 40-millimeter dual-purpose guns to
the front and socked back whenever a
Jap flash was seen. Farther back our
155s r..id 105s joined the dueling.
The chief Jap artillery target has been
Piv{l (named after the Piva trail). They
have damaged a few of our planes and
blasted craters which were quickly refilled. The Reid never has been entirely
unserviceable however, and the only
rel).son some air groups were temporarily
moved out was because there was no
use in taking the risk of losing planes
when massed air power here is no longer
vitally necessary.
Since March 8 the J ap infantry has
made several. attempts to cut into our
perimeter defense. They have stormed up
steep hills or across clearings, occupying
a few of our pillboxes, but counterattacks
have always pushed them back where
they belong in a day or so. Some 2,400
dead J aps have been counted since March
8, on or over our double line of barbed
wire . skirting the perimeter. These are
just the definite dead, not counting many
killed by artillery and planes. The total Jap
casualties are estimated to run as high
as 5,000. Ours are less than 200 dead.
Mugwump Eaters: The Japs are entirely blocked from the outside world,
but they manage to sl!lbsist quite well.
The dead, as well as prisoners taken, look
husky and well-fed. They have reverted
to type in many sectors and become truck
gardeners, raising potatoes, sweet potatoes, radishes, and stringbeans. For meat
-like the natives-they probably eat
opossum, which our Cl's call "mugwump," but don't eat.
More flare-ups are expected; and
American soldiers are dug in and waiting.
All day they play cards, argue, talk about
home, read detective stories, and write
letters in foxholes while buddies stand
watch.
Every day Seabees and Army engineers
keep building roads along the sides of
Cliffs and through jungles-wide highways
which allow quick movement to any possible punctured point of our perimeter.
Then night comes on. Both artilleries
step it up. Doughboys at the front crouch
in holes. They take turns trying to sleep
while our artillery bursts just ahead of
them onto the Japs and Jap artillery sails
over. Mosquitoes and bugs start biting
and stinging. J aps start probing our lines.
And thP-re go those damn frogs again.
over the water. I couldfl't see the plane
smashed into the water, smearing Hames
over a large patch.
"Yoweeel" bellowed a bluejacket. "One
down and more to come. That's only the
beginning folks, only the beginning."
We heard new firing and ·rl\,Il to the
opposite rail. A repeat performance was
going on even closer than the other. A
Jap plane, a dim blurred object despite
the moonlight, was coming in low and
fast. He passed our stern and then apparently headed -for another carrier to
our left, .chased by similar necklaces of
tracers. This one, too, blew up and ricoQheted along the water, leaving a trail
of ugly Hames.
We thought it was the beginning of an
all-night session but the unpredictable
Japs made no further attempts to sink
us that night.
0
c
Ottlcial U. S Navy photo
Associated Preu
Palau raiders: Admirals Spruance (left) and Mitscher
Men in Battle
"They know we are coming," said Rear
Admiral Samuel P. Ginder on his bridge
that afternoon. "Now we'll see what they
do about it."
It was the day before the Palau attack
and ~e moved steadily westward through
placid blue waters. never before in wartime visited by a United States carrier
force. On a carrier you always feel like
a bull's-eye in a· shooting gallery. Carriers
are a prime target and the enemy will
pass up run-of-the-mill ships anytime to
get you. But now we felt reasonably secure even though discovered. This ship
and many sister carriers were Banked by
battleships, including some of the largest
ones, cruisers, and destroyers, which
made up one of the greatest collections
of firepower ever unleashed in the Pacific.
There was only a quarter moon but it
brightened the whole area, much to the
disgust of some nearby gunners who
cracked: "That moon's good for love tonight but lousy for sl}ip defense." We
waited. The Japs like night for attacks
both on land and sea.
'
They Attack: "Here they come,"
shouted a dozen voices almost in unison.
S~?denly the sky to our right blossomed
with the red and white tracers of 20and 40-millimeter and yellow tracers of
five-inch anti-aircraft guns of our force.
Flowing out in steady streams, they made
dozens of beautiful necklaces that slowly
spent themselves and fell downward and
disappeared.
An enemy plane came closer toward
us, and fire from many ships converged
on it. It was trying a torpedo run low
over the water. I couldn't see the plane
in the darkness but from the firing you
could tell just about where it was. Still
it moved nearer through that hail of fire.
Then there was a Hash of brilliant white,
Our Reply: Long before dawn on
March 30 (March 29 in the United
States) pilots, gunners, and radiomen
gathered in the ready rooms. The teletype, with words illuminated and enlarged on a screen at the front of the
room, was batting out information on
wea~her, navigation, call signals, and
other pertineI)t dope. The Biers made
careful notations on their chart boards.
Then the teletype read: "Fighter pilots
man your planes," and this group, laughing and shoving, piled out of the room
onto the Hight deck for the initial fighter
sweep preceding the main attack.
It was still dark and the moon had set.
A row of lights like the footlights in a
theater went on along the sides of the
deck to mark its boundaries. The first
Hellcat stepped to the footlights and
revved up its engine. A deck officer,
waving red and gr<;)en wands, finally
brought down his arms and th~ fighter
sped up the deck and into the air, followed by others in rapid order. Just as
dawn was breaking, torpedo planes and
dive bombers and more fighters to escort
them took off.
The first radio report from an observer
over the target brought disappointed
groans. The Jap Fleet had 'Bed. It still
wouldn't stand up and fight as this fore~
had hoped. Still, the observ~r said there
were remaining many cargo ships, a
possible light cruiser or destroyer, and
lots of smaller craft, all scurrying like
beetles to get out of Palau Harbor through
the narrow channels into the open sea.
And at least 25 enemy planes were reported on the ground at Peleliu Field in
the southern part of the island group
and ten were already burning.
Poshnortems: At 10 a.m. buns stuHed
with thick slices of ham and gallon jugs
of coffee were brought to men on stations and they munched and drank as
they watched the first fighters returning
from the sweep. The fighter ready room
immediately was jammed with sweating,
laughing, gesticulating pilots.
Lt. Hugh Kelley of Hastings, Mich.,
said the Zeros at first tried to get our
planes to chase them over Peleliu Field so
their anti-aircraft could · work on our
fighters but it didn't work. Kelley chased
one Zero only 100 feet ahead into a
cloud, killed the pilot, and the plane
.spun crazily to earth.
Lt. (j.g.) Jimmy Pickard of Randleman, N. C., went down and knocked off
a Betty (two-engined Mitsubishi) which
was trying to land. Then he saw a Zeke
with its wheels down, also about to land.
"I made a run on him and then all my
ammunition was gone," said Pickard. "He
pulled up his wheels and whipped around
on my tail. I tried to evade him by
twisting and turning. I didn't dare head
out and run straight away because I
thought sure he'd_get me on a level shot.
He was so close I could look over my
shoulder and see the guns in his wings
staring at me. We hedgehopped over the
trees and I screamed fbr somebody . to
please get him off my tail but nobody
was around. I couldn't understand for a
long time why he · didn't fire; then I
realized he was out of ammunition and
didn't know I was, too. So I quit wiggling
around, gav.e my plane the gun, and rap
away from him. Bgy, was I scared!"
Ensign Bob Black of Brigham, Utah,
set afire two Betties on a Jap field during
a strafing run, then caught a large AA
shell which made it impossible to get his
Haps down . . Our ship prepared for an
emergency landing when Black's plight
was siglia}ed. His plane came in too fast
without flaps, whipped its tail against
the side of the superstructure, and broke
squarely in two. Black, sitting on deck in
half a plane, was dazed but he climbed
slowly out with only a cut on the back of
his neck. He got patched up and went
out on another.
Lt. Comdr. Dick Upson, a torpedo
squadron commander, said his boys got
six hits out of eight torpedo runs on a
warship about 20 miles west outside the
lagoon. The planes made runs from both
sides, with four torpedoes hitting almost
simultaneously, then two more finishing
the wreckage. It went down in less than
a minute. The conservative Navy called
this sunken job a destroyer, but the veteran Upson and his squadron still say it
sure looked like a cruiser to them.
Upson's group also sank an 8,000-ton
cargo ship, which blew up and sank stern
first, and scored other ship hits. Dive
bombers under command of Lt. D. J.
Harrington of Milford, Conn., also
bombed a number of cargo ships and
installations.
New strikes of fighters, dive bombers,
and torpedo bombers headed back for the
target area. It was like a departmentstore parcel delivery service the way
those planes came in, loaded, and went
back for more. This sort of thing went
on until late in the afternoon.
They Return: The Japs made another
attempt to scare us off that night. We
still were cruising within striking distance, waiting to put the polish on the
Palau job next day. In the early evening
three groups of planes came over at
more than 5,000 feet. They drew a skyful of anti-aircraft puffs from our force.
It was announced shortly afterward that
a fighter patrol from another carrier had
shot down seven of eleven J ap search
planes.
At 8:15 p.m. the talker on the phone
said: "Bogies coming back." Then the
tracers and the noise started again. We
saw flames in the distance. One down.
At 9:55 the talker said: "Planes coming in again."
The J aps dropped some flares off our
port quarter. There was sporadic AA firing
but the enemy appeared reluctant to press
the attack. It got calm and peaceful in
th e moonlight again and some of us went
bt-low at 11 p.m. for tomato juice, coffee,
and talk.
'Tlw gravy train," as fighter pilots
c.ill tht> early morning sweep, had a fine
lime that sec9nd day of the P.1lau attack.
Overnight from New Guine;1, Yap or the
Philippines, the Japs had flu 1·n in a new
batch of fighters-Zekes (curved - wing
tips) Haps (square wing tips), and
Tonys (a new fighter with an in-line engine).
When they got over the target, our
Hellcats were happily surprised-or so
they said-to find that the air was filled
with enemy planes. The pilots from our
ship alone shot down 18)~ enemy aircraft
on this one flight and they brought back
stories of wild fights and exploding J ap
planes.
There was worrying in one ready room
despite the jubilance over so many victories. A young new pilot; out on his first
mission, hadn't returned. Then finally the
squawkbox announced the kid was circling the ship and everybody was happy
again. It meant the squadron had no
personnel losses. In fact tl1is ship didn't
lose a pilot in all these operations. A few
aircraft went down but all pilots and
crewmen were rescued.
How do they do it? "Simple," they
say. Hellcats have greater speed than the
Jap fighters, more armor protection and
studding, so they don't burn easily
and therefore are able to get home
despite bullet holes; our tactics are better;
our pilots trained better and they are
much hotter individually.
"Those J ap fighters are more maneuverable at low speed all right but at high
speed their controls tend to freeze and
those little Japs can't seem to move the
stick," one pilot observed. ~'Look how
our guys are sweating. Yeah, some of
that's from excitement and heat but I'll
bet most of it's from pulling on that stick
and pushing on those rudder pedals while
diving, climbing, rolling, and turning. I
can feel my legs are gonna be stiff tomorrow after all that pedal poshing in
today's fights."
Several pilots reported J ap fighter pilots for· the first time using a four-man
attack formation sinillar to ours.
Our bombers and fighters spent the
rest of the day working on shore installations on Koror, Malakai, and Peleliu Islands and finishing off beached ships or
any others still afloat or moving, and that
night we left the area and headed east.
Our pilots throughout two days of
strafing, bombing, and torpedoing had
carefully avoided hitting a Jap hospital
ship which, painted white with a Red
Cross on top, lay in the west lagoon. We
had also attacked Yap today. The ship's
plan of the day for Saturday, April 1,
said: "Th~ target for today is Woleai, the
staging base, between what was Palau
and Truk."
planes destroyed fuel dumps, burned two
Betties on the ground and damaged nine
fighters on the ground which apparently
weren't gassed because they couldn't be
set afire.
The second strike was called off when
so little was found there. There were not
even any buildings to burn: The fliers and
their crews began to look tired out and
peaked after three consecutive days of
strikes. From our carrier alone they made
656 sorties in those three days, dropping 223 tons of bombs and thousands
of rounds of machine-gun bullets. They
ha.d a right to be tired for a day or so,
Mopping Up: Woleai was a cinch and
a disappointment. The field was small
and appeared to be little used. Our
In fact, I am tuckered out just from
thinking about it, watching them do it,
and climbing all these ship's ladders.
M!t
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