By mid-morning on October 26, 1942, the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands was going badly
for the US fleet.
The Americans had crippled two Japanese carriers—the Shokaku and Zuiho—however, one of their
own carriers—USS Hornet—was dead in the water.
For a harrowing twenty minutes, Hornet endured a murderous attack from a Japanese airstrike
that killed 118 men.
The Japanese had riddled Hornet with four bombs, two torpedoes, and two crash-dives.
On the other US carrier, USS Enterprise, it became clear to the senior admiral, RADM Thomas
Kinkaid, that the situation was dire.
He sent a terse communication to VADM William Halsey, which read: “Hornet hurt.”
Unwilling to give up on the Marines on Guadalcanal, Halsey replied that retreat was not an option.
He said, “We must use everything we have to the limit!”
Despite the hyperbole, Halsey realized that the Battle of Santa Cruz had risked more than
he was willing to lose.
He needed to get USS Enterprise out of harm’s way as soon as possible.
If Enterprise sank, the US fleet would be unable to rescue the Marines trapped on Guadalcanal.
The fate of the South Pacific Campaign swung in the balance.
However, Enterprise could not evacuate just yet.
With Hornet badly damaged, Enterprise had to assume the duty of recovering all returning
strike aircraft.
Not only did Enterprise have to recover 11 of its own planes, but it also had to accommodate
more than 40 aircraft from USS Hornet who now had no place to land.
At 9:41, radar picked up Hornet’s planes, which were coming inbound toward Enterprise
in small groups.
But then, a few minutes later, the radar also picked up 24 Japanese planes—19 dive bombers
and 5 fighters from Shokaku—which were trying to find and sink America’s last operational
carrier in the Pacific.
Everyone on Enterprise knew this was it, the fight to the death.
On the bridge, Kinkaid turned to a war correspondent, Eugene Burns, and said, “Burns, you’re
the most favored civilian alive.
You’re seeing the greatest carrier duel in history.
Perhaps it will never happen again.”
All eyes turned toward the skies.
The next few minutes rested on the capabilities of the 21 American fighter pilots who protected
USS Enterprise’s Task Force 16, the men of VF-10 and VF-72.
The American fighter pilots started out this dogfight at a disadvantage.
At Santa Cruz, the American fighter direction was shockingly poor.
Although Enterprise’s radar had picked up the incoming Japanese airstrike at 40 miles’
distant, the fighter director officer who sat inside the control room unwisely split
the fighters into separate groups, sending one group in the wrong direction to intercept
the orphaned planes from USS Hornet.
Initially, only eight F4F Wildcats were able to catch the enemy dive bombers en route to
the target.
LT Stanley “Swede” Vejtasa was one of these.
About nine miles from the task force, he and his wingmen came into contact with the Japanese
dive bombers.
In later years, he remembered the moment well: "The enemy dive bombers were coming in, and
they were about 2,000 feet above us.
My division had to climb and try to overtake them.
We climbed and climbed, flying on instruments, and at 12,000 feet, I broke out of the fog,
wing to wing with an enemy dive bomber.
I was able to get behind them and blast two of them to bits before they pushed over in
a steep dive.
That was all it took, and they were gone.
That was just bad maneuvering on their part.
Then, a pilot in my second division sighted a block of torpedo planes coming in.
There must have been 8 or 10 of them."
Actually, there were 16 torpedo bombers—nicknamed Kates by the Americans—heading toward Enterprise.
They were flying in two groups, eight on the east side of the fog bank and another eight
on the west side.
His wingman saw just one of these groups.
Wasting little time, Vejtasa attacked: "We practiced for months just how to manage
a situation like this one.
We had to control our dive speed, join their formation at close range, and shoot them down.
There was no room to maneuver.
I was scared as hell at times.
But we got right under them—what we had learned to do.
By putting the pipper on the tail or wing stub, one short blast—we were using armor-piercing,
tracers, and incendiary shells—the plane would burn right away.
Their tanks were not protected, so they would catch on fire, and once on fire, I went on
to the next plane.
I was fifty feet behind four of them in heavy fog.
I got under their tails to avoid the rear-seat gunners.
First, I went after the single Kate on the left.
I blew him apart and he pitched forward.
I expected the V to break but it didn’t.
Then, I went after the number two man; he pitched forward and blew up.
I shifted to the leader, again careful to keep below him in order to stay out of the
gunner’s field of fire.
When I hit him, he pitched up and back, and for a second, I thought his wing was going
to hit me, but it didn’t.
The last plane slowed down, and I flamed him as well.
My reactions were automatic.
The whole thing was over in ten seconds."
In two encounters, LT Vejtasa had shot down six aircraft, making him an “ace” in a
single day, but he wasn’t done yet.
As he headed back to Enterprise, low on fuel and ammunition, he encountered the other group
of 8 torpedo bombers.
One of them emerged suddenly from a cloud and nearly collided with him.
"His wing was practically in my prop.
I could see the pilot and his two crewmen.
I followed him toward Enterprise and turned in behind him, again under the tail.
I fired a burst and it set him on fire.
I had my pipper on his wing root where the fuel tank sits, but he didn’t blow up and
continued heading for Enterprise.
I considered cutting off his tail with my prop if he got in position to drop his torpedo,
but he never did.
Finally, he caught a wingtip in the water and cartwheeled.
That’s when another Kate flew over the top of me real close.
Why hadn’t I been looking?
I almost had a heart failure.
All he had to do was drop down and fire his forward machine guns and I was a goner.
Instead, I’m on his tail, and he’s climbing.
Then I saw that the battleship South Dakota was going to open fire.
I said to myself, “I’ll see if I have anything left to get this guy.”
I switched on all my guns, and I had a few rounds left.
Using them, I set him on fire.
I was sure he was going to dive onto the South Dakota, but she and the anti-aircraft cruiser
San Juan began firing, putting up a withering fire.
You could practically walk on the smoke from the AA.
I tore some more pieces off the Kate, and he caught fire but didn’t explode.
He never faltered; he didn’t go down.
He was losing altitude, but the pilot had to be alive at the controls because he corrected
his dive very noticeably.
At this point, with my ammo gone, I meant to cut off his tail with my prop.
As I closed, I flew into the fire stream.
My plane was full of smoke.
Jesus, you talk about a blast, a plane like that with a whole stream of fire blowing back!
I was within fifty feet and I got knocked to the right.
I figured, “Swede, that was a foolish move.”
This last Japanese torpedo bomber never released his weapon.
From his flaming cockpit, Seaman first class Kiyomi Takei made a crash-dive into the foc’sle
of a Mahan-class destroyer, USS Smith, killing 57 men.
Swede Vejtasa received partial credit for this kill, as well as seven confirmed kills
for the other planes he shot down.
Unfortunately, Task Force 16—Enterprise’s half of Task Force 61—did not escape the
three Japanese airstrikes unscathed.
In addition to the damage suffered by USS Smith, Enterprise endured two bomb strikes,
killing 44 men.
Despite the damage, the US Navy fighter pilots had made the Japanese pay for their attacks
against Enterprise.
Altogether, the aircraft carriers Shokaku, Zuikaku, and Junyo had sent 74 aircraft against
Task Force 16.
American fighter pilots and AA gunners brought down 28 of them, or 38% of the whole.
Swede Vejtasa landed on Enterprise at about 11am.
At the time, he didn’t realize what an incredible achievement he and his fellow fighter pilots
had accomplished.
They had defended the last carrier in the Pacific from an air assault that, by all rights,
should have sunk it.
As he went in search of water, surveying the damage, Vejtasa remembered stepping through
the hangar deck, which was covered in water, oil, bodies, and blood.
At one point, a wounded shipmate grabbed his arm, hoping to talk, but Vejtasa had to shrug
him off.
He recalled, “I had to get back up in the air.”
It was that kind of dedication that saved Enterprise from certain doom.