From The Mighty Moo: The USS Cowpens and Her Epic World War II Journey from Jinx Ship to the Navy's First Carrier into Tokyo Bay, by Nathan Canestaro (Grand Central, 2024), Kindle p. 132:
Despite the absence of the enemy fleet, land-based planes from Palau and nearby islands remained to menace the US carrier task force. By 8 p.m. on March 29 Japanese torpedo bombers were massing at the edges of the Moo’s radar screens. Two divisions of Hellcats led by Al Morton were flying the last CAP [= Combat Air Patrol] of the day; faced with encroaching darkness and imminent enemy attack, Captain McConnell ordered Morton to bring his planes home. Seven of the eight got aboard, but the last man in the formation, Ens. Anderson Bowers, ran into trouble when the plane in front of him went into the crash barrier. By the time the plane handlers cleared the wreck out, McConnell had put the Moo into its evasive maneuvers to throw off enemy attacks, which put her out of the wind and unable to land planes.
Admiral Reeves ordered Bowers to ditch his plane alongside a destroyer, and Bowers, who had little experience in night operations, took the order literally. He made a perfect water landing near one of Cowpens’ escorts, but did not remember that standard procedure was to land one thousand yards ahead of a rescue ship—and the destroyer steamed off ahead looking for him. Bowers floated in his Mae West life vest for fifty-five minutes in the bath-warm Palauan waters before finally attracting the attention of another ship with gunfire from his pistol. Bowers did not keep his gun for long, however; the destroyermen extracted a ransom for every carrier pilot they recovered. Usually they stripped the pilot of every possible souvenir—flight jackets, silk survival maps, knives, and pistol—and then demanded in trade from his home ship a GI can full of ice cream, perhaps thirty-five to forty gallons in all. While grateful for the rescue, one pilot observed that “you don’t come out with a thing except your life.”
No comments:
Post a Comment