The Battle of the Philippine Sea was almost over.
After sunset, June 20, 1944, hundreds of U.S. Navy planes were in the air, searching for
a place to land. These aviators had just completed a successful mission against the Japanese
carrier task force. In the background, one enemy carrier and two oilers were burning
out of control and three other enemy carriers were limping away with battle damage. Only
twenty U.S. planes had been lost to enemy fire.
It had been a good day in terms of the damage inflicted by the U.S. Navy, but it remained
to be seen whether or not the fleet would pay a heavy price. The remaining 206 pilots
and their gunners still had to get back to their ships, and as of 6:30 P.M., that seemed
doubtful. The American pilots had nearly 300 miles of
ocean to travel and not a drop of gasoline to spare. Additionally, with the sun about
to set, they would have to navigate more than half their journey in the dark, with not even
moonlight to assist them. The bulk of the pilots had never attempted a night landing
before. To many, it seemed as if they had been sent on a suicide mission. Their commander,
VADM Marc Mitscher, had wanted to sink the enemy carriers so badly, he hadn’t devised
a safe plan to get his pilots home. As the pilots flew into darkness, radio chatter
increased to abnormal levels. Under normal conditions, most squadrons followed strict
protocols of radio silence, only using the radio when emergencies arose. Now, as fuel
indicators ticked to low levels, a period of crisis arrived. Dozens of panicked aviators
announced that they would never make it back to their carrier. LCDR Ralph Weymouth led
a group of thirteen SBD dive bombers from USS Lexington. He remembered the anxiety of
the return trek: “It was dark. At one time, so many people
were talking on the radio, I finally turned it off. I just couldn’t stand hearing these
guys saying, “How much gas have you got left? I’m going in shortly. I’ve got two
minutes left,” that sort of thing. I just had to turn the radio off. For the most part,
my group was staying together. We were talking to each other, passing information around.
We didn’t talk on the radio. We used the hand signals, using Morse code, and we exchanged
information about how much gas we had left. And we were all drying our tanks out. We had
two tanks in those airplanes. I had dried out one tank, so all my remaining fuel was
in one tank. I knew I had to use it all.” One by one, the American planes began dropping
out of the sky, too low on gas to stay aloft. One fighter pilot, LT Alex Vraciu, joined
up with a pack of TBM Avenger torpedo bombers. Cumbersome gas-guzzlers, the unfortunate TBMs
couldn’t stay in the air for very long. Eventually, they all ditched. Vraciu remembered
the sad moment when they went into the water. “I went to the rendezvous area, and I joined
up on a damaged TBM that had been shot up. I don’t know what carrier he was from. I
know he had a little, small “3” on the tail. His bomb bay doors were dragging, and
I pulled up alongside him. I’m sure he felt better, having at least a fighter with him.
But he gave me the signal for low gas. He didn’t have enough to get back. How badly
else he was hit, I’m not sure, because it was getting dark by that time. The sun had
already started to disappear on the horizon. He stayed right down low and didn’t climb
up for altitude. His wing lights were flickering, so his electrical system must have had troubles.
I kept hearing voices on the radio. It hadn’t gotten real bad yet, but the TBM seemed to
head toward a group of seven planes that were circling low on the water. And I could hear
voices, guys saying, “I’ve got only twenty-five gallons of fuel left! I’ve got to ditch!”
Another one said, “I’ve only got about thirty-five, myself! I might as well go down
with you!” The TBM seemed to join this group. They all just landed in the water. It was
dark by that time, and I gave them all a heart-felt salute. So then I was all alone! I still had
several hundred miles to go.” Meanwhile, the American carrier group—Task
Force 58—made haste, cruising at 20 knots, feverishly trying to close the distance and
reduce the returning planes’ inbound flight. On the bridge of his flagship, USS Lexington,
VADM Marc Mitscher chain-smoked three cigarettes. Hours earlier, he had made the controversial
call to send these planes on their mission, even though he had doubts that they could
conserve enough fuel for the return trip. He believed his carriers had closed sufficient
distance to allow his pilots to reach the fleet, but in the moonless dark, he wondered
if his pilots would be able to see their carriers before their fuel ran out. For a half hour,
he paced the bridge nervously. Then, sometime after 8 P.M., he gave instructions to his
chief of staff, CAPT Arleigh Burke, to send a message to the rest of his task force, saying:
“Bald Eagle, this is Blue Jacket himself. Turn on the lights!”
Before sending his planes on their mission, Mitscher had considered that he might have
to ask all his surface ships to illuminate. This did not follow any standard recovery
procedure. Under combat conditions, U.S. ships had to remain dark to avoid detection from
enemy submarines. To turn the fleet into a bright beacon defied all logical convention.
However, Mitscher had always demonstrated compassion for aviators. He knew that they
had taken off on this mission without complaint, risking their lives for his victory. Now,
Mitscher decided to risk his victory to save their lives.
Under Mitscher’s directive, every ship in the fleet lit up. The destroyers and cruisers
turned on their searchlights, pointing them into the sky, and they began firing star shells—great
pyrotechnic flares—that brightened the area for miles. All other ships turned on their
running lights and truck lights. The carriers turned on their hooded deck lights and they
pointed their searchlights at their islands so the pilots could identify their carriers.
Mitscher ordered his staff to send a radio message to the incoming planes. He said, “Tell
them to land on any available carrier.” The first returning aircraft reached Task
Force 58 at 8:45 P.M. and they marveled at the scene. With so many searchlights pointing
into the heavens and star shells exploding like so many fireworks, the scene looked like—as
one torpedo squadron pilot remembered it, “A Mardis Gras setting fantastically out
of place.” One by one, the aircraft broke into their
landing patterns. For the next two hours, chaos reigned, as the pilots tried to find
their way back to the carrier decks. Although the searchlights and star shells helped guide
the pilots to the fleet, once the planes arrived, they had a disorienting effect, making it
impossible for the Landing Signals Officers to see the incoming aircraft and for the individual
pilots to know when or if they had been approved to land. In just a few minutes, several planes
had crashed, either by hitting the flight decks at too high a speed or by running out
of fuel while circling in the landing pattern. Everywhere, accidents abounded, many of them
fatal. LT Harold Buell—who was bleeding from two wounds suffered during his dive-bombing
attack on Zuikaku—tried to keep his damaged SB2C Helldiver aloft, despite the fact that
an AA shell had bored a giant hole through his right wing. With his engine losing power
and utterly unable to tell one carrier from another, Buell turned in the direction of
USS Lexington—which was not his ship. Buell told his gunner, W. D. Lakey, that he might
expect a water landing, but Lakey pleaded with Buell to land on Lexington’s deck,
admitting that he was a poor swimmer. Buell agreed. With his wounds, he, also, was not
entirely sure he’d be able to swim clear of a sinking plane. Buell pulled into the
landing pattern, lowered his landing gear and tail hook, and resolutely flew his way
toward Lexington’s ramp. He recalled what happened next:
“As the landing flaps started down, the Beast shuddered and I almost spun in. I stopped
the flaps at the halfway point and went to full power. I was in a precarious situation—I
was at full power just to keep from stalling. Broadcasting my condition, I emphasized that
I could not take a late wave off. Due to the cluttered radio traffic, the call was probably
not heard, and no signal to stop my landing attempt came. I was at the ramp in “cut”
position, when suddenly, without warning, the LSO gave me a last-second wave off. In
my wounded condition at the ramp, a late wave off was an order telling me to commit suicide.
With no power reserve and staggering just above a stall, to lower either wing to turn
away would put me into the ramp, the spud locker, or an uncontrolled spiral dive into
the ocean. I did the only thing that would give Lakey and myself a chance to survive—I
closed the throttle and landed straight ahead on the open deck.”
In its dilapidated condition, Buell’s aircraft landed atop Lexington’s arrestor cables,
but instead of catching hold of one of them, his plane took a bad bounce, and it soared
high over the crash barriers stretched across the center of the flight deck. Unluckily,
his Helldiver came down, nose-first, into a parked plane. His plane did not explode,
but the collision killed two sailors, a deck handler and a rear gunner who happened to
belong to Buell’s squadron. After pulling Buell out of the wreckage, the men of USS
Lexington began chastising him for ignoring the LSO’s wave off signal.
“I saw two stretchers containing covered bodies near the carrier’s island. I asked
someone nearby about them. He replied in an unfeeling way: “Those are the two men you
killed with your airplane!” A feeling of anguish swept over me as I realized that the
crash had been the unwilling cause of the loss of two lives, one a squadron shipmate.
At that moment a Marine orderly came up and said that the admiral wanted to see me at
once. I followed him into the island and up several ladders, groping in the darkness until
we emerged into a night-lighted space. I did not have any idea what carrier this was but
knew it wasn’t Hornet because there was not a single familiar face around me. As it
turned out, I was in Vice Admiral Mitscher’s flag operations in Lexington. I must have
been a pathetic figure standing there in my tattered flight suit, covered with gore and
grime from the crash, trying to answer his staff’s agitated questions. I was near exhaustion
but still on my feet, probably because of the adrenalin still flowing as a result of
the situation that led to the crash.” Mitscher’s staff officers peppered Buell
with questions about the strike against the Japanese fleet and asked him repeatedly how
many carriers the American pilots had sunk or damaged. After it looked as if Buell could
say no more, Mitscher emerged from the darkness and excused him, telling him to report to
sick bay and take several doses of medicinal cognac. Sympathetically, Mitscher said, “Well
done in your efforts to sink the enemy’s carriers on a tough mission.”
The next day, Buell received an expletive-filled chewing out from Lexington’s air officer
and also from one of Lexington’s squadron commanders, again complaining about his decision
to ignore the wave off. Buell tried to explain his actions, telling the officers that the
accident had not been of his own making. But they refused to hear him out, threatening
to court-martial him as soon as they had the opportunity. Before leaving Lexington—where
he had become persona non grata—Buell acted as pallbearer for the two men who had been
killed in the crash. In traditional fashion, the ship’s company buried them at sea. Buell
remembered: “The flag-draped bodies were placed on low
platforms on the portside deck-edge elevator at the hangar deck level. The elevator was
then raised to the flight deck, where the ship’s company and air group personnel stood
at attention, while burial rites, including rifle volleys and taps, were conducted. On
signal, we lifted the inboard end of the platform board, tilting it so the wrapped, weighted
remains slid from under the flag cover and dropped over the side into the ocean. Although
trying desperately to keep my emotions under control while serving as burial escort leader
for a fallen comrade, tears ran down my face as the bodies disappeared into the blue Pacific."
The losses of the two men on USS Lexington were not the only casualties suffered during the June 20 recovery operation that historians
have since called the “Flight Beyond Darkness.” Altogether, 82 U.S. Navy aircraft ditched
at sea or crashed on the decks of their illuminated carriers. Throughout the night, Mitscher’s
destroyers worked tirelessly to locate and recover any downed crewmen. By morning, 90
water-logged aviators had been rescued. By the end of the week, 70 others had been found
and recovered. In total, the June 20, 1944, air mission had cost the task force forty-nine
aviators. Mitscher’s decision to recover his aviators
after dark—and putting his ships at risk to do so—may have been a matter of necessity,
for Mitscher knew, as well as anybody else, that the future of the Pacific War rested
on the shoulders of the valiant men who climbed into their cockpits each and every day. But
the decision to “Turn on the Lights!” represented something more than mere obligation.
It symbolized the deep respect that Mitscher had for his pilots and the sense of responsibility
he had in himself by doing his utmost to ensure that they did not suffer a lonely death at
sea. Forever after, the veterans of the Battle of the Philippine Sea remembered Mitscher
as the true exemplar of a compassionate commander. One of the survivors, LCDR Ralph Weymouth,
recollected: “Mitscher was adored by all the aviators
for what he did. He made every effort to be able to untangle them and get them back aboard
properly. And he did the great no-no of turning on lights, firing star shells, and everything
else to get all the aircraft back aboard their carriers. I think there were some 98 aircraft
lost that night, most of them by ditching. But there would have been a lot more if Mitscher
hadn’t taken the steps he took.” If they did not know it before, after the
Battle of the Philippine Sea, every sailor in Task Force 58 knew what it meant to be
a good shipmate.