bobbrunn wrote:
Do you know any of the guys from that squadron ? Always wished there was a book on VF-1 and VF-5 right before them on the Yorktown.
My father, ENS Larry Cauble, was sent out to Espiritu Santos as a replacement pilot in late 1943. All his VF flight time and his carrier quals were in F4Fs. When he got to COMFAIRSOWESTPAC, he quickly checked out in the F6F (Jan 1944) and he was assigned to VF-5 on the Yorktown as a replacement pilot. Here's a bit of what he had to say:
"After a short familiarization with the squadron my first combat flight was attacking airfields on the island of Peleleiu on the 30th of March 1944 and on the airfeld at Palau the next day. On my first combat flight, I was so nervous and keyed up that I didn't see a lot of what was going on including where my own .50 cal guns were hitting. The thing to note is that I'm writing this in the year 2000, 56 years later, and although there are some events that are very clear, many have faded with time.
"One of those events that is as clear today as years ago was the strafing and sinking of a small freighter five miles off the coast. As we circled back around after the sinking, we saw there were life boats in the water with soldiers in uniform. We knew they were shipping replacement ground troops down from Japan, so we attacked the life boats. Fifty caliber machine guns really tear up wood life boats and human bodies. With my section leader and me, we were firing twelve .50 cal guns. Pieces of life boat and bodies were flying everywhere. What we didn't know until we started firing was that not only were there soldiers in combat uniforms but there were also women in the life boats and the strafing didn't discriminate by gender. Although it was an unpleasant and graphic sight, I would not do the mission differently either then or now. I still to this day wonder why there were women in a active combat area. Perhaps the Japanese weren't facing the prospect that the US forces could get that close to the home islands."
He went on to participate in the strikes on Hollandia and Truk and then Air Group Five was pulled off the line to be replaced by Air Group One. Since he had only had a limited time in combat, he persuaded the skipper to let him transfer to the RAG in Hawaii (VF-100 at Barbers Pt) with the hope of going back out again as a replacement pilot. He ended up going back to the Yorktown as a replacement pilot in VF-1 on 23 June 1944. But he reported just as VF-1 in turn was pulled off the line -- in fact from his log books, he never flew a single flight as a VF-1 pilot -- so finagled his way back once again to the RAG in Hawaii. he was assigned as a replacement pilot -- this time to VF-19 where he saw a bit more action.
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