I have mentioned previously the the War Diary's generally dry and emotionless recounting of the daily rituals of life at sea. The Action Reports on the other hand were submitted post-combat, allowing the men doing the fighting time to reflect and document what went well and and what did not. Things that worked, the "goods," would be encouraged and repeated. Things that did not, the "others," would be discarded if possible.*
Examining and analyzing facts and then modifying behavior based on an objective analysis of those observations is what makes human progress possible. Learning by looking back, Aristotle called it. In fact, he wrote a whole book about it, to modern eyes the somewhat unfortunately named Posterior Analytics.
During my time in the Navy learning by looking back was a way of life. As I reflect, I realize there is a decent chance that for every hour I was in the air, I spent at least the same amount of time talking about what was supposed to happen, and another hour — quite often more — discussing what actually happened.
Plan-Brief-Execute-Debrief. The world would be a better place if everybody did this.
Like Princeton and Air Group 23, we emphasized putting lessons learned down on paper and these would often make their way into squadron Standard Operation Procedures, or "SOP's." Many of these items were simple efficiencies, some were written in blood, but all were valuable and intended to make the individual pilot, and ultimately the squadron, Air Group, Ship and Navy better.
Dated 6 April 1944, Princeton's Action Report was submitted up the chain of command, some of whose names you may recognize whether you are a history nerd or not, as follows:
Air Group Commander Henry L. Miller:
Princeton Commanding Officer Captain William Houck Buracker:
Commander Task Group 58.3 Rear Admiral Samuel Paul Ginder:
Commander Task Force 58 Vice Admiral Marc Andrew Mitscher
Commander Central Pacific Force Admiral Raymond Ames Spruance:
and ultimately to Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet Admiral Chester William Nimitz:
The Action Report provides welcome context, often refreshingly frank, and occasionally humorous commentary on the human drama involved in men at war.
Captain Buracker's endorsement begins with praise for the Air Group's performance, including, in a subtle attempt to mention-but-not-look-like-he's-mentioning kind of way, the 6 VF and 5 VT FNG's that joined the Air Group at Espritu Santo:
The performance of Air Group 23 throughout this operation has been of an exceptionally high order, both in combat and in routine operations. VF-23 accounted for 17 enemy airborne aircraft definitely destroyed, at least one other probably destroyed and the setting afire of six aircraft on the ground, while suffering the loss of one pilot. As this group, with the exception of the 11 new pilots who joined at Espiritu Santo, is one of the most experienced carrier groups now in action in the Pacific, a high standard was to be expected, a standard to which it has lived up. Except for one minor barrier crash on deck by a plane flown by a new member of the group, there has not been a single incident of damage to aircraft in deck operations which included 301 landings.
Included in the Action Report are personnel casualties. Ways to hurt yourself on the ship lurk behind every bulkhead and through every hatch:
There were no casualties aboard ship caused by enemy action. One man, while going to his battle station at 0545, 5 April, fell from the flight deck to #2 [gun] director platform, suffering a head injury which presents symptoms of a basal skull fracture. His condition is considered serious.
Air Group Commander Miller's input to the report was, understandably, more oriented to operational and tactical considerations.
On the operational side, having been violently hurled into the blackness countless times, and having loathed it every time, I could not love this recommendation more:
I. SCHEDULES.
If possible, schedule of strikes, combat air patrols, and anti-sub patrols should be so arranged that the CVL having the twelve-plane pre-dawn sweep should not have anti-sub patrol and combat air patrol immediately after launching of the VF sweep. This necessitates keeping nearly all planes on the flight deck; hence there is little room for a deck launching. Catapulting on instruments is pretty much to ask of a pilot, and, due to slow catapult interval in the dark, the rendezvous becomes increasingly more difficult. (emphasis mine)
To bolster the case presented above, he continues:
II. PRE-DAWN RENDEZVOUS.
On the morning of 30 March 1944, the first two planes off the deck disappeared into clouds directly in front of the bow. In addition, VF from other carriers were in our rendezvous line. However, the rendezvous was effected in about twenty to twenty-five minutes, even though the ship turned off glow lights before they could be seen by the first plane to come over the ship. This rendezvous was considered little short of a miracle, since it was all done on instruments.
After the first two divisions were rendezvoused a let-down through the clouds had to be made from 1500 to 1000 feet. All lights of our Task Force were turned off; hence reference points were lost when another VF squadron tried to effect a rendezvous with our squadron. Reference lights should be left on.
Considering WWII Naval Aviation's lack emphasis on instrument flying training, along with Air Group 23's virtually complete lack of night flying, this description makes me suddenly not feel so well.
Discussing fighter sweep tactics, CAG Miller offered a few observations which needed to be communicated not just to his pilots, but to the other Air Groups and up the chain to the staffs and particularly to the strike planners:
- Planes should stay around target area till the very end of their time limit, because there are always a few of the enemy hiding in the clouds, waiting for the sweep to leave.
- On encountering enemy air opposition, pilots should call out base name and altitude of bogey so that the rest of the VF sweep will know where they are. Example: This is One Flapjack, Ten Bogies, Ten Thousand Feet, Twelve o'clock below "X" island.
- Nicknames of VF pilots should never be used. It leads to utter confusion when severals Bills, Bobs, and Hanks are in the air on the same mission.
- Name assignments to bases should be carefully analyzed as to similarity in phonetics. Many times Bobcat was taken for Flapjack; this in turn threw a part of a VF sweep off the target. Coke (pronounced Cokey) sounded like Bogey to many pilots.
We have learned from our predecessors and, while radio communications can still be misunderstood, I can tell you that today we have an entire dictionary of "comm brevity" terms that have very specific meanings and are trained to consistently. Today, almost every training mission is recorded and analyzed during the debrief. Believe me, you do not want to be the one who stutters or hesitates, even for a second, and you definitely don't want to use a word that causes any confusion. Unless you want to buy the first round at the club.
CAG Miller echoed Captain Buracker's slight praise of the new pilots, with a note of caution for his superiors:
VI. PILOT TRAINING.
Six new pilots were used during subject operations on Combat Air Patrol. ... Three of the new pilots had never landed aboard a carrier before. ...aside from two barrier crashes at Espiritu, and one during subject operations, they did very well. Nevertheless, a pilot should never be sent to the combat zone without previous carrier landing experience. (my emphasis)
I am never not amazed when I read things like this. Astounding.
NNNN
*Sometimes, in war, men have to do things even though they know the odds are not in their favor. Prior to the advent of GPS-guided weapons, for instance, delivering a bomb accurately required a precise combination of dive angle, airspeed, wind correction, and balanced flight along with a host of other variables. Which is a long way of saying that a dedicated attack pilot delivering a "dumb," or unguided, bomb quite often had to ignore the enemy anti-aircraft fire that was rising to meet him. The intense focus and concentration required to constantly refine every parameter, while simultaneously hurtling toward the ground and being shot at, enables a pilot to temporarily disregard the normal human instinct for survival. Once the bomb is away however, all bets are off, "I don't want to die!" mode is engaged and the pilot is free to maneuver as required. The actual time spent in the delivery run can vary, but a typical dumb bomb delivery in my day involved roll-in at 10,000 feet, pickle the bomb at 4,000 and required about 8-10 seconds of non-maneuvering time in the actual dive. We had a term for that 8-10 seconds of vulnerability that I suppose was a stoic way of accepting a somewhat unpleasant, but inevitable, reality. We called it "government time."
I have a good friend who saw combat in Desert Storm back in 1991. He wrote about his experiences in a terrific book, and in a brief story. He uses the term in its proper context:
Mostly above the fog in the target area, we accelerated for the final minute of the attack run at 450 knots. As we raced toward the red ropes and flickering barrage fire of heavy triple-A, I remember wondering, “how the hell are we going to get through this wall of shit?” I pushed the stick forward and descended to 300 feet AGL. As we got closer, I could start to pick out and avoid the individual triple-A sites. There was a depth to the barrage fire, and we weaved a 3-4 G path around the thickest of the hail until 3 miles from release when we climbed to 400 feet and steadied up for the straight and level of "government time." Augmenting the light show were multiple unguided SAMS and corkscrewing shoulder fired IR missiles, all launched to distract us. The IP inbound to the target was the longest minute of my life.
Here is an excellent video representation of the things we discussed above:
And, to conclude the longest asterisk note in literary history, here is an example of the tactics used by Princeton's bomber and fighter pilots. I will leave it to you and Pythagorus to determine how long "government time" was for each tactic described:
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