28 JAN 44
After another day steaming on a southwesterly course, 2000 hours found Princeton at 10˚35'North Latitude, 174˚18'East Longitude.
Less than 250 nautical miles ahead, bearing 253˚, lay Wotje Atoll, Marshall Islands.
CINCPAC's "Graybook" entry for January 28th, 1944 summarizes the situation in the Marshalls:
"Air strikes by land based aircraft on enemy bases in the MARSHALLS was intensified. ... WOTJE was struck with 6 tons from 9 B-25s. Large fires were started but no interception. One B-25 was brought down with crew in raft 10 miles N of WOTJE. ... MILLE was hit by 23 Army Dauntless, 10 Aircobras with 14 tons on gun positions and radio tower. One Dauntless was lost over target and 6 were damaged. TAROA was again hit by 7 B-25s at 1600 local 28th, with 4 1/2 tons and strafing. One B-25 was lost over target."
U.S. aircraft were hitting Japanese ground forces on multiple atolls throughout the Marshalls, meeting little air-to-air resistance, but stiff opposition from anti-aircraft artillery.
During the day's strikes, the Japanese had downed two Army B-25 Mitchell bombers...
...and one Army A-24 Banshee (known more prominently by its Navy variant, the SBD* Dauntless dive bomber).
A USAAF Douglas A-24B-5-DT (S N 42-54459) Banshee of the 531st Fighter Squadron taxis on 13 December 1943. This was the first A-24B to arrive on Makin in the Gilbert Island Chain.
A consistent theme documented in the brief 23 days since Princeton departed Bremerton to where they now find themselves, has been the constant training that has been taking place for the ship and the Air Group.
When I think about the timeline, I find it almost incomprehensible.
In the mid-80s through the end of The Cold War the US Navy had settled into a deployment routine. When I received my wings in 1987 the United States Navy had 15 aircraft carriers and enough Air Wings to man them on a continuous basis. America's geography has dictated that while we have but one Navy our maritime service is, for all intent and purpose, divided into two fleets: One East and one West. Our East fleet is based on the Atlantic coast and generally speaking cruises waters accessible from that ocean. Think “The Med” and rough port calls like southern France, Italy, Greece, etc. The “WestPac” Navy cruises the Pacific, the “IO” (Indian Ocean), the “GOO” (Gulf of Oman) and the Persian Gulf. A "Westpac" Sailor's ports of call were perhaps not as high brow as the Med boats, but Pearl, the “P.I.” (Philippine Islands, pronounced "pee-eye"), Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai (after Saddam’s Kuwait invasion), and especially Australia, were outstanding. A typical training schedule for a Ship-Air Wing team looked something like this:
Return from cruise meant the almost immediate commencement of preparation for the next deployment, which we called the “work up cycle” or just “workups.”
For the boat this meant maintenance on the incomprehensible amount of machinery that had been ridden hard for the previous couple of years. It also meant the transfer of experienced personnel from sea to shore duty, and vice versa.
A typical career path, Officer or Enlisted, Surface Navy or Naval Aviation, meant rotating from Sea Duty to Shore Duty and back again, a constant cycle that deviated only in rare instances.
For the Air Wing and it’s squadrons, the return from cruise meant back to our respective Naval Air Stations, transfer a portion of our jets to squadrons preparing to deploy, a little bit of leave and rest for our folks, the transfer of personnel, and then back to work in preparation for the next cruise.
A Cold War-era Carrier Battle Group consisted of 7 to 9 ships centered around a single aircraft carrier with an Air Wing that numbered in the neighborhood of 75 aircraft. Its typical workup cycle was 1 1/2 to 2 years.
I say again, 1 1/2 to 2 years.
The entire reason for this digression is to make clear that while Princeton had been operating in the combat zone, she had picked up a significant number of new people, and had joined an entirely new Task Group. That Task Group numbered 17 ships, including 3 aircraft carriers, whose Air Groups comprised a total of 158 aircraft.
It had been 23 days since departing Bremerton on 3 January. 8 of those days had been spent in port at Pearl Harbor. Of the 15 days underway, 3 had been in the Hawaiian OPAREA dedicated solely to training. Which has left Princeton with 12 days at sea, making PIM, while flying required patrols and conducting fleet and Air Group training at every opportunity.
In 2004 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was asked a question about training and equipment and famously remarked that “you go to war with the Army you have.” Objectively, once the decision to go to war has been made, he was not wrong.
60 years before Rumsfeld's observation, Princeton was about to go to war with the training and equipment she had.
And that war would start at dawn.
*Slow, But Deadly
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