Getting Launched

On the 28^th of September COPAHEE sailed into the harbor at Noumea, New Caledonia.  Just off the entrance we passed the out-bound USS WASP, our newest carrier.  We would not see WASP again because the big aircraft carrier was sunk a few days later.

We lay at anchor that afternoon while a contingent of four dozen Marine pilots came aboard to fly off the airplanes we had brought.  They would fly off the little carrier to a field on New Caledonia for final fueling and arming and would then head for the battle on Guadalcanal.

The pilot assigned to my F4F came to the airplane in the evening for his cockpit checkout.  He was a young lieutenant probably no more than a couple of years older than my twenty.  He was a bit nervous because he had made but one catapult takeoff during flight training and it would be a catapult takeoff the next morning.

I gave the young lieutenant a thorough cockpit checkout.  He had a chart of New Caledonia with him so I showed him the map case and the plotting board that pulls out from beneath the instrument panel.  He remained in the cockpit going over everything after I climbed down off the wing and I did not see what he did with the long blueprint strip chart of New Caledonia.

The next morning, we weighed anchor and moved outside the Noumea Harbor to launch the airplanes.  It would be the first flight operations from the 440-foot long COPAHEE deck.  We warmed up the engines, the pilots manned their planes, the steam catapult was made ready, and the ship was brought around into the wind to get the maximum wind speed across the deck.

The first three F4Fs went off without incident, then my airplane was rolled onto the catapult.  We connected the hydraulic tail hook, connected the belly cable from the catapult, and I check the wing downlocks to make sure they were engaged.  The young marine  nervously checked that his canopy was locked open, and ran the engine up to maximum RPM.  It sounded good.  I slid off the flight deck onto the catwalk.

When the launching officer, kneeling out ahead of the starboard wing, was satisfied with the sound of the engine he brought his upraised hand down, pointing down the deck and the catapult fired.  As the little airplane sped down the sixty-foot length of the catapult I almost had a cardiac arrest—chunks of something came swirling aft in the slipstream.  Migawd, I thought, the flaps let go!  I dived onto the flight deck for a piece of the flying material.

Meanwhile, the F4F went off the end of the deck and dropped sickeningly out of sight toward the water.  I cringed, waiting for the geyser that would erupt when he hit the water.

It did not happen.  Just as I snatched a piece of the loose material and discovered to my relief that it was part of the New Caledonia strip map, the airplane came up into view.  It was weaving erratically for a minute, then it steadied down and climbed away after the others.

(I saw that pilot six weeks later when he passed through Noumea on his way for some R&R in Australia and asked him about that takeoff.  It seems that he had not put the strip map in the map pocket alongside that seat but had slipped it into the slot above the plotting board under the instrument panel.  The jar of the catapult shot had fired it back into his lap.  There the slipstream from the open canopy had caught it, unfolded it, and some of it wrapped around his head.  He had been fliying blind when he left the flight deck and had ripped the paper away just in time to pull up the nose and stagger into the air.

I also asked the young marine how he did with the F4F on Guadalcanal.  With a big grin he told me that he had shot down four Japanese planes, two Zeros and two of the Nakajima bombers, before he had been hit and bailed out of the burning F4F.  He was not quite an ace (five victories) but we figured that four for one was a pretty good trade seeing as how he had parachuted and survived.)

The rest of the launches went relatively well until we got to the last F4F in front of the dozen SBDs at the stern.  Something caused the hydraulic tail hook to release prematurely when the F4F pilot, a tall lanky marine, released his brakes just as the launching officer dropped his arm.  The belly cable from the catapult head dropped free and the airplane, engine at full power, simply lurched forward and taxied off the flight deck without flying speed and went nose down into the water.  Meanwhile, without the drag of the airplane, the catapult head slammed forward and the hook buried itself eighteen inches into the half-inch steel stopper plate.  The catapult was out of commission.

We paid no attention to the catapult but scrambled forward along the catwalk to see what happened to the pilot.  He was one lucky man.  The impact did not knock him unconscious  and the airplane was floating for a few seconds held up by the buoyancy of the wing and fuselage that slowly filled with water.

The F4Fs life raft had popped out of the camelback behind the cockpit.  The marine pilot flipped his seat belt loose, stood up in the seat, and stepped out into the little rubber raft without even getting his feet wet.  The DE, acting as plane guard for the launches, took him aboard.  He later re-boarded COPAHEE and flew another airplane off successfully.

With the catapult out of commission, we had to fy the rest of the airplanes, a dozen SBDs and the rest of the F4Fs, from the angar deck, off the short flight deck with running takeoffs.  It had never been done before but the senior marine officer present said they would do it and that he would fly the first SBD off.

We started the colonel from as far aft as the other airplanes would permit.  He had something less than four hundred feet of flight deck in front of him.  To run the Wright engine up to full power, we tied down the tail with white line to help the brakes hold the airplane.  When the launching officer gave the ‘go” signal, a sailor cut the line and the colonel released the brakes.  The SBD seemed to start very slowly and we all held our breath when he went off the deck.

The SBD, like my F4F, dropped out of sight toward the water and we waited for the splash.  Again, it did not happen.  After several seconds, the SBD climbed into sight.  There was water trailing from the tail wheel—he had come that close to going into the drink and had bounced the tail off the top of a wave!

With the precedent set, we got the other airplanes off with only one more casualty.  It was an SBD and was carrying a gunner in the rear seat.  It went fine down the deck but just as the airplane got airborne the engine torched, sputtered, and the SBC nosed into the water out ahead of the ship.

The tail of the airplane was sticking out of the water as the momentum of COPAHEE carried the ship past and we could see the gunner out of his seat on the wing trying desperately to get the pilot’s cockpit canopy open.  The force of the impact had slammed it shut and the pilot had hit his head on the gunsight and was unconscious.  The gunner went under water still tyring to get the canopy open.  He did not make it but came to the surface alone after a couple of minutes.  The pilot went to the bottom still strapped into the SBD.

(Something useful often stems from tragedy.  As a result of that incident, and others during the battle of Midway that were similar when pilots of SBDs were knocked unconscious during ditching by hitting their heads on that optical gunsight located atop the instrument pane., shoulder harnesses soon became standard in all airplanes.  Up until then, we had only a seat belt in the cockpits.)

When the COPAHEE again dropped anchor in Noumea Harbor, it was time for we passengers to be transferred to our assignments.  Mine was to be with the engine change shop of Patrol Wing One Headquarters Squadron based there at Noumea.

We found that our headquarters PBY repair base would be on a small island that forms part of the northeast side of Noumea Harbor.  It is called “Ile Hou” and is a narrow island about a mile long.  There were two hills on the island separating it roughly into thirds.  On the end nearest the city of Noumea there was an old French prison that we learned was known as “the Devil’s Island of the Pacific”.  On the far end was a leper colony.  The little island was almost barren and covered with brown grasses, boulders, and some scrub brush.

Our base was located in the valley in the center of the island half way between the prison and the leper colony farm.  From the COPAHEE we could see that a concrete launching ramp and paved parking area were in place, however, buildings for the little base were still under construction.  They were not yet ready for us so we remained aboard COPAHEE for a few days.

That gave us an opportunity for our first liberty in a foreign port (New Caledonia was a French possession).  Troy Anderson and I got liberty one day and went ashore.  Wartime Noumea had very little to offer.  The “city” was a conglomeration of low tropical buildings with little in the way of amusements other than a few small bars that had little to offer besides wine or absinthe.  It was not the South Pacific that we had seen in the Sidney Greenstreet/Peter Lorre or Bing Crosby/Bob Hope/Dorothy Lamour movies.

We did find the most notorious cathouse in the South Pacific, “The Pink House”.  It was a large rambling house with peeling pink paint on the outskirts of Noumea.  It was not an inviting prospect and the women we saw on the wide verandas that circled the building were not our idea of appealing womanhood.  We did not go inside but surveyed it form a distance then gave up and went back to the ship.  Liberty cold wait.

A Close Call for the COPAHEE

Our almost getting sunk occurred a couple of nights after the shellback initiation.  General quarters sounded in the middle of the night.  The chilling klaxon howled and I could hear the voice of the boson on the speaker throughout the ship saying, “GENERAL QUARTERS—MAN YOUR BATTLE STATIONS!  THIS IS NO DRILL!” as, life jacket and steel helmet in hand, I shot up the long ladder from the hangar deck to the flight deck where my battle station was at the Number Four F4F.

I yanked the canvas engine cover off, pulled the propeller through, loaded the shotgun starter, and then scrambled into the cockpit ready to start the engine if the order came.  While I waited tensely in the cockpit of the F4F, I could clearly hear the voices from the low bridge on the superstructure.  Our radar had picked up a bogey ten thousand yards out off our port bow.  It was apparently a large surface ship.

Sweat trickled down my face even in the cool of the night as I listened to the captain’s talker repeating the ranges and bearings of the unknown ship.  It closed to within eight thousand yards (five miles) then the range opened while it moved around to our starboard beam where it once more started to close, apparently looking us over in the moonlight.

If the bogey was a heavy enemy warship, our little destroyer/escort would be badly out-gunned but COPAHEE was in his charge.  When the unseen ship was again at eight thousand yards and still closing, the DE went to flank speed and took fof for the larger ship.  The bogey continued to close as the talker read off the ranges—“seven thousand—six thousand—five thousand.”

At four thousand five hundred yards (less than three miles) the radar blip of our escort neared the bogey and the range and bearing became constant for a while.  We still waited tensely.  One hand was on the engine primer pump and the other poised to fire the starter cartridge.

It seemed like an hour but was probably not more than five minutes when a blinker light showed from the DC.  The signalman was too fast for me to read the message but in a few minutes the ship’s speakers came alive, “SECURE GENERAL QUARTERS.”

After re-installing the engine cover on my airplane, I went to the mess compartment for a cup of coffee where I got the full story.  The bogey was an American heavy cruiser on patrol alone that our schedule did not show, nor did the cruiser’s schedule show us in the area.  When he had closed on the boy our silhouette appeared to be that of a RYUKO-class Japanese carrier.

The cruiser had opened the range then and moved around to our beam where he began closing with his guns manned and ready.  He had intended to turn at the four thousand yards and fire a broadside at the carrier.   Fortunately, at four thousand five hundred yards, less than a minute before opening fire, a telescoped picked up the white stars on the airplanes on our flight deck and that delayed him until the DE got there and confirmed our identity with the proper recognition signal for that date.  I sat there and thanked The Man Upstairs that we had scrubbed the lampblack off those white stars.

USS COPAHEE and Crossing the Line

USS COPAHEE

On September 15^th the entire engine assembly crew, on which I had become the leading petty officer of the port section, received orders transferring us to the Headquarters Squadron, Patrol Wing One, and I was no longer a part of VP-11.  We were instructed to pack our full bags and report to the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard the next day for transportation.  There was no indication of where we would be sent, but we knew that it would be south and west toward the Solomon Islands where the Marines were fighting on Guadalcanal.

I have no record or recollection of all the names of the other men transferred with me but I do remember one blond, an affable young fellow, Troy Anderson, who would become a good friend as well as shipmate.  My crew also included a squat, dark-haired older man named Berridge (he was probably twenty-three or twenty-four so we called him “Pappy” Berridge since he was oldest on the crew) and a happy-go-lucky Italian from New York, Amuschustagi.  We were only a part of a large contingent of men being moved south for the Solomon Islands campaign.

At the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard, the truck deposited us on a dock and we were informed we would board the aircraft carrier USS COPAHEE as passengers.  We had never heard of the COPAHEE but were at first elated that we would be on a large ship that would have full facilities.  Our elation, however, did not last long when we saw the ship tied up at the dock and literally packed with airplanes.

COPAHEE was the first of the small escort carriers.  It was a large freighter hull of four hundred sixty feet (less than half the size of the regular carriers and about one-fourth the size of the NIMITZ and other modern aircraft carriers of today) onto which had been added a hangar deck, a flight deck, and a small superstructure on the starboard side.  Total length of the flight deck was four hundred forty feet.

We were to find that the ship had barely been completed at the Bremerton Navy Yard in Seattle and that its shakedown cruise had been the trip to Hawaii with contractor personnel still aboard.  The little carrier, forerunner of the many CVEs that Henry Kaiser would turn out during the war, was urgently needed to transport a load of Grumman F4F fighters and a few Douglas SBD dive bombers to the Marines at Henderson Field on Guadalcanal.

To our dismay when we reported aboard we found that all bunk compartments on COPAHEE were jammed to capacity with ship’s company and passengers that had boarded ahead of us.  We were instructed to stow our seabags and hammocks in storage compartments on the hangar deck.  We had the option of swinging our old fashioned hammocks from hooks in the mess compartments, but that would have meant being rousted out at 0300 when the mess halls would be set up for early breakfast shift.  We preferred instead to simply roll out our hammocks with the thin horsehair mattresses beneath the wing of an airplane on the steel hangar deck at night.

Dick & Diane’s wedding was to be the next afternoon.  I found the division officer to whom we were assigned and requested special liberty for the next day.  He shook his head and stated the COPAHEE would sail early in the morning.  I found a phone booth on the dock and finally got through to Dick at Kaneohe, telling him that Glover or someone would have to stand up with him.  I had no idea when I hung up that it would be several years before we heard each other’s voices again.

Tiny little COPAHEE was filled to overflowing with airplanes.  The hangar deck was full of F4F Wildcat fighters with wings folded.  The flight deck was solidly packed with a dozen SBD dive bombers at the stern and more F4Fs so that no flight operations would be possible.

The only clear space on the flight deck was at the catapult on the port side forward.  The four F4Fs lined up behind the catapult would be our ready airplanes in the event that we encountered enemy ships enroute.  Their guns were loaded and there were pilots aboard.  In case we encountered the enemy, they would take off on a one-way trip.  Since they could not land back aboard, they would ditch in the water so the pilots could be picked up by a destroyer/escort that would accompany COPAHEE.  We hoped that would not be necessary.

Our mission was to deliver the airplanes to the Marines on Guadalcanal.  The Second Marine Raiders had invaded Guadalcanal and had captured the airfield that had been built by the Japanese but they were in desperate need of airplanes for air support to defend against frequent air attacks and to provide air cover while the Japanese were being driven from the rest of the island.  The carrier HORNET and the new WASP were in the Solomons but the marines needed their own close support.  We were carrying, I believe, twelve SBDs and about three dozen F4Fs.

We sailed form Pearl Harbor early in the morning on September 17^th.  When we had cleared the torpedo net and set course to the southwest, we discovered that our entire escort consisted of one small destroyer-escort.  It was obvious that if we were spotted by the enemy, we would be a sitting duck.

Anti-aircraft defenses on COPAHEE consisted of four quadruple-mount 40-millimeter “pom-poms”, a few small 20 millimeter cannons, and some 50-caliber machine guns scattered along the fight deck catwalks down each side of the ship.  We had heard scuttlebutt that there was literally a Japanese “torpedo junction” down off the Fiji Islands, but we grimly joked that we did not worry about sub—we said that torpedoes would go through the thin plates of the freighter hull of COPAHEE and out the other side without exploding!  It was wishful thinking.  The calm sunlit horizon was ever ominous and we kept our life jackets near at hand.

Other than the constant threat of enemy submarines I enjoyed my temporary sea duty.  I had never been prone to seasickness.  Brother Richard was not so fortunate.  It was sell that he was in shore-based aviation because he was one of the unfortunate that suffered from chronic seasickness.  It was said that Dick got sick when the last line left the dock and stayed green at the gills until he was back on solid land!

(I later learned that when Richard came south with another part of the VP-11 ground support, he had the misfortune to be assigned for transportation to a destroyer—and destroyers are notorious for rolling and pitching even in a moderate sea.

The story I got was that somewhere down off the Solomons, a four-engine Japanese patrol flying boat saw the destroyer Dick was riding and started what appeared to be a bomb run.  When general quarters sounded the passengers were supposed to go below out of the way.

As the anti-aircraft guns of the destroyer opened up, Dick raised his head up for a look and muttered, “Let the sonabitch come!”  He then laid back down.  It was fortunate that the anti-aircraft discouraged the big Kawanishi.  It turned away without completing the attack.)

The first day out of Pearl all we passengers were organized into watch divisions and were assigned duties to work our way.  Being an “experienced” second class aviation machinist mate, I was assigned as plane captain on the Number Four read F4F behind the catapult.  It was my job to keep the fighter ready to go at any time.  I was delighted because the F4F had a version of the same Pratt and Whitney fourteen-cylinder R-1830 that we had on the PBY-5s.

One precaution that had been taken caused us some extra work on the airplanes.  Prior to sailing, all of the white star insignias on the airplanes on the flight deck had been painted out temporarily with lampblack as “camouflage” so the COPAHEE would not be so visible at night.

During the first night at sea, our escorting destroyer radioed bad news.  We might be in danger from our own forces because in the moonlight red looks black.  With those big black circles on the airplanes, our silhouette with the tiny superstructure well forward and open areas beneath the flight deck fore and aft, we had the perfect silhouette of a small Japanese carrier!  We could be in more danger from friendly subs than from the enemy.  We were promptly put to work scrubbing the lampblack off the airplanes!

Our voyage south was, for the most part, a peaceful cruise.  One memorable event was becoming “shellbacks” when we crossed the equator on the 22^nd of September.  It has always been a tradition that the “polliwogs” to be initiated attempt to revolt and get control of the ship before “Davey Jones” comes aboard for the initiation.

On this trip, polliwogs outnumbered shellbacks on the COPAHEE.  We revolted the morning of the equator crossing and, for a time, were quite successful.  Before long we polliwogs were in control of most of the main deck spaces except for the hangar deck area at the stern which was a shellback strong hold.

During the shellback initiation, officers and men alike are fair prey.  We polliwogs had set up a “barber shop” in the forward well deck area at the bow.  When we captured a shellback (black eyes and bloody noses were common) he was escorted forward, his hair summarily cut off, and his face lathered with a foul saltwater paste.

One victim was the ship’s executive officer who had ventured into polliwog space in an endeavor to help quell the rebellion.  The exec promptly stormed up to the bridge where he insisted that the captain do something to get the polliwogs under control.

Since it was all in the spirit of good fun and we had little enough diversion during those black days in the Pacific, the captain simply laughed at the exec.  He said, “Hell, man—I’m a shellback!  I’m not going down there—they will get me, too!”

With the assistance of the escorting destroyer, the COPAHEE captain did put down the rebellion.  The destroyer/escort was faster than the COPAHEE rigging cargo nets over the side and a boarding at sea took place.

A hundred or more new shellbacks from the destroyer swarmed aboard at the stern and, after quite a few more bloody noses and black eyes, the shellback “cops” got the situation under control.  I suffered one of the injuries.  I was below deck running from two shellbacks.  As I leaped through a watertight door I failed to duck my head enough and hit the top of the steel frame.  It knocked me galley west and I was captured.

As the shellbacks dragged me up to the flight deck where the subdued polliwogs were kneeling in rows, I felt something warm running down my face. It was blood from where my scalp had been split open.  A nearby CPO had me escorted to the sick bay where the doctor ensured that I did not have a concussion.  A corpsman shaved a patch of my hair and the doctor put in two or three stitches—allowing as he did that it was a good thing I was a hard headed Ozark boy or I might have hurt myself.

Davey Jones and his mermaids (sailors attired in wigs made of swabs and balloons for boobs) then appeared and we polliwogs were put through the traditional indignities of shellback initiation.  The CPO playing Davey Jones read the indictment for our having invaded the realm of King Neptune and an assembly line was set up that included shaving of heads (they skipped mine because of my bandage), marking with dye, lathering with a fiendish mixture of black grease, and “shaving” with a wooden razor.  We new shellbacks were still showing traces of the stuff when we arrived in New Caledonia five days later.