One Damned Island After Another: The Saga of the Seventh by Whitley Joe & Howard Clive

Author:Whitley, Joe & Howard, Clive [Whitley, Joe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Brigadier Books
Published: 2018-09-22T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XVII: THE SEVEN-LEAGUE SEVENTH

WITH THE CLOSE OF THE CATCHPOLE OPERATION, THE SEVENTH went into an all-out “neutralization by bombs” schedule. Endlessly, they pounded the Jap strongholds by-passed in the Gilberts and Marshalls.

Navy and Army bombers reached out farther and farther into the Carolines. The Japs expected we would be preparing an invasion of that group, whose mighty bastions lay across more than 2,000 miles of the Central Pacific. But there again, as so many times before and since, our strategists fooled them. CINCPAC elected merely to keep these intermediate bases neutralized, while we prepared for a tremendous 1,200-mile leap into the Marianas. Such a seven-league undertaking took time.

The Navy began the softening of Saipan, Tinian and Guam on February 22, before CATCHPOLE Operation was formally closed, but it was four months before the landing barges grated on the sandy beaches of the Marianas.

The Seventh Air Force, after the taking of Eniwetok, kept up its steady punishment of Ponape and Kusaie, which the Japs perennially sought to rebuild. Closely coordinating with the Navy, the Seventh renewed its attacks on Wake.

By early March, Air Force bombers were based on Kwajalein, and from that new springboard, our long-ranging bombers joined in the assault on Truk, flying many harrowing missions over the “Gibraltar of the Pacific” during the months which followed.

The first mission from this base was mounted March 15, when 22 B-24s of the 30th Bomber Group took off on a night attack. Storms and engine trouble reduced the size of the final flight, but these were virtually unopposed. Apparently the surprise element was complete, for the huge base was brilliantly lighted and swarming with workers, when our bombers droned into sight.

Searchlights frantically began to probe the skies, and the red ack-ack tracers rose like showers of sparks into the sky, but both were confused and uncoordinated .

Both elements of planes had been assigned specific targets on Dublon and Eton Islands. Our planes scored 100 per cent hits on fuel tanks, and an ammunition dump blew up in a spectacular shower of flames. Only two enemy fighters were seen, and every Liberator returned home safely.

The run to Truk became familiar, but never routine, during the weeks which followed. Alerted enemy fighters and A/A gunners made every strike a hazardous adventure.

No set of missions in the Central Pacific war has produced more stories than those against Truk. One of the most inspiring is the survival of four members of the ten-man crew on one Seventh Air Force Liberator, forced down on their way home due to lack of gasoline. It is a story which illustrates what unbelievable things a man can do when the stakes are life and death.

The Heavy Date was on its way back from a successful bombing mission over Truk. She had dropped her bombs on target after a 6,000-foot dive to avoid enemy searchlights and night fighters, and had emerged unscathed.

“It was after we were well on our way home,” later related Lieutenant Elmer T. Pahl, of Lodi, California,

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