The Hostile Sky: A Hellcat Flier in World War II
by James W. Vernon
Naval Institute Press, 2003, 208 pages
This WWII memoir, filled with detailed personal stories, provides a realistic
and riveting account of one naval aviator's experiences from his first days of
training in the summer of 1942 through the end of the Pacific War. Unlike most
wartime memoirs, the book does not focus on James Vernon's time in the war zone,
near Okinawa and mainland Japan, from the end of May 1945. Only 5 of the 21 chapters
cover this phase of his career, and he instead provides many interesting
episodes from his extremely thorough training period. In contrast to the
majority of Japanese kamikaze pilots near the end of the war who he
describes as having received "minimal training in navigation or anything else,"
he spent almost three years in learning to be a highly proficient pilot.
Even though the subtitle indicates Vernon was a Grumman F6F Hellcat flier in
WWII, the cover jacket has a misleading photo of Vernon's dive-bombing training
group in front of a Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bomber. Actually, in August 1944,
Air Group 87 had a significant reorganization that cut the number of bomber and
torpedo aircraft and increased the number of fighters, so at that time Vernon
began training on the Hellcat. Although the Hellcat was designed as a fighter,
Air Group 87 tested to what extent this fighter could be used as a dive bomber.
The chapters are organized chronologically, and the author keeps focused
throughout the book on his personal story rather than drifting into extended
general historical background. Even though the book was published about 60 years
after the events, Vernon provides many details and writes as if he were a young
man at the time. He has changed the names of a few men mentioned in order to
protect their privacy. Several passages openly describe his relationship, at
times strained, with his broken family in which his father worked in Montana and
his mother in San Francisco. In addition to several personal photos in the book, the U.S.
Naval Institute has provided helpful photos of different types of aircraft in
which he trained and fought.
A few recurring themes permeate this memoir. As indicated by the title The
Hostile Sky, flights even in training could be quite dangerous, and Vernon
lost several comrades even before he reached Okinawa. For example, one pilot
lost his life in training while trying to dive bomb a Hellcat as it went into a steep dive,
then a spin, and crashed into the sea after a piece of the left wingtip ripped
off and hit the tail assembly. The first half of the book describes in several
places the concern that many Navy airmen had of washing out of flight training and
then having to become an ordinary seaman. Vernon's life in the Navy had constant
changes as he went to several U.S. locations for training and served aboard two
different aircraft carriers, so his relationships with others were also
constantly altered.
The book has a few references to Japan's kamikaze operations, but Vernon did
not encounter any kamikaze aircraft as his assignments generally were to strafe
and dive bomb enemy airfields. He did serve aboard the aircraft carriers
Randolph (CV-15) until late December 1944 and Ticonderoga (CV-14)
from early May 1945. However, he missed
the kamikaze attacks that seriously damaged both carriers: Randolph with
28 dead and 106 wounded after a Ginga bomber hit the flight deck at Ulithi (March 11,
1945) and Ticonderoga with 143 dead and 202 wounded after two kamikaze
aircraft hit the ship off Formosa (January 21, 1945). On May 28, 1945, the same day that two
kamikaze aircraft crashed into and sank the destroyer Drexler (DD-741),
he took off on his first combat air patrol 40 miles north of Okinawa, but he
sighted no enemy aircraft. Soon after, he went in a group of 16 fighters to
strafe Ronchi Airfield (referred to in Japan as Kokubu No. 2 Airfield), a known
launching point for kamikaze aircraft, but he describes the negligible effects
of such a raid in which they flew a total of five and a half hours with danger
of getting hit by flak from enemy guns near the airfield or encountering enemy
fighters along the way. Vernon writes that at the end of July 1945 he "had now
logged dozens of hours on stupefying combat air patrols with never a sniff of an
enemy aircraft" (p. 171). In contrast, near the end of the war a lucky replacement
pilot aboard Ticonderoga on his first combat air patrol shot down a
kamikaze pilot in a Judy dive bomber. On August 15, 1945, Vernon got word of the
war's end while in the air on a defensive combat air patrol searching for a
possible enemy plane that had been sighted on the radar scope of their fighter
direction center.
Vernon writes in the Preface that he could never have completed The
Hostile Sky without assistance and criticisms of members of the Ventura
County Writers Club and his creative writing teacher. This personal wartime history is a
fine example of how good a narrative can be by a beginning author who has an
interesting story to tell.
|
