12 MAY 44
"At 2000, in accordance with orders of Commander Aircraft, Pacific Fleet, despatch of 12 May 1944, Air Group TWENTY-THREE, under the command of Lieutenant M.T. HATCHER, USN, and consisting of 38 officers and 51 enlisted personnel, was transferred to the USS ALTAMAHA for transportation to the west coast of the United States to further report to the Commander, Fleet Air Wings, West Coast, for leave, rehabilitation, and reforming. This Air Group has served aboard this vessel since its commissioning on 25 February 1943."
And with that brief entry, Air Group 23's participation in the shooting war was, at least for now, over. Absent a formal ceremony, I am confident there were heartfelt goodbyes, accompanied by pats on the back and firm handshakes shared between individuals. It is a scene that men who have bonded under similar circumstances have experienced for millenia.
13 MAY 44
May 13th was reserved for refueling and transferring ordnance as well as a brief material inspection visit from Rear Admiral Ginder, in his new role as Commander Carrier Division ELEVEN, and his staff.
With the flyoff of Air Group 23 on the 11th, the stage was set for the arrival of Air Group 27, which had been training at Naval Air Station Kahului on Maui.
NAS Kahului, opened in March, 1943. Looking SSW, Sept 1944.
Dozens of times over the last 4 years I have landed on the North/South runway at Kahului Airport, utterly oblivious to both its World War II history or its direct link to Princeton.
Officers and men of Torpedo Squadron VT-27 stand before a squadron TBM-1C Avenger upon the completion of their training at Kahului Naval Air Station, Maui, Hawaii, Apr 1944.
VT-27 Avenger crew “Gink,” “Chick,” and “Corky” at Kahului Naval Air Station, Maui, Hawaii, Apr 1944. A serious looking crew.
14 MAY 44
With the flyoff of Air Group 23 on the 11th, the stage was set for the arrival of Air Group 27.
"Air Group TWENTY-SEVEN, consisting of Fighting Squadron TWENTY-SEVEN and Torpedo Squadron TWENTY-SEVEN reported aboard this date for duty.”
Fighting and Bombing 23 had performed superbly and I'm sure that officer leadership and Ship's company personnel were curious, and perhaps apprehensive, about the new fliers and how they would perform. And while nobody knew it at the time, circumstances would soon conspire to give Air Group 27 — and particularly Fighting 27 — the opportunity of a lifetime to prove themselves in combat.
In an earlier post I mentioned a somewhat tongue-in-cheek expression we'd use on occasion: I'd rather die than look bad around the boat.
There is a corollary to the above that went something like: It's not whether you win or lose, but how good you look.
Based solely on the corollary, Fighting 27 was about to make a solid first impression, and if they could fly even half as formidably as their badass F6-Fs looked, Princeton's new Ship/Air Group team would be in good shape:
It should be noted here that, despite the Navy's — and especially Naval Aviation's — well-deserved reputation of being the service that allows its people to push boundaries, there are some things that the bureaucratic despots* simply would not tolerate. Painting airplanes in ways contrary to the dictates of grim, office-dwelling scolds was one of those things.
That said, the "Cat's Mouth" nose art — inspired perhaps by the pre-war American Volunteer Group's "Flying Tigers" — that Fighting 27 took it upon themselves to create is one of the all time greats. In the book "Carrier Down," authors Marsha Clark and Thomas Bradshaw explain how it came to be:
Fighting 27’s venture into the world of aviation art came while the squadron was training at Kahului.
“When we were at Maui, prior to the Mariana Islands invasion, we arrived at this ugly face design on our Hellcats,” said pilot [Lt.Carl] Brown. “It came about like this. When I was flying the F3F-3’s in training at Corpus Christi, one of the planes had two big eyes painted on the cowl. I remembered that, and took a piece of chalk to draw a pair of eyes on my Hellcat at Kahului. I tried to arrive at a face, utilizing the braces on the air intake as teeth. I couldn't get anything worth a darn.
“The air station had an ACI [Air Combat Intelligence] officer, Germain Glidden, who was a portrait painter as well as being a topnotch tennis player,” Brown said. “A couple of my fellow pilots—Hugh Lillie, Bob Burnell, and one other whose name I can’t be sure of—carved a wooden model of that part of the Hellcat forward of the cockpit. They took the model to Glidden, who designed a face and painted it on the carving. Then we painted one plane and our C.O., Lieutenant Wood, said to go ahead and paint the rest of the Hellcats. Ours was the only navy squadron with anything like that on its planes.”
The faces remained intact through the squadron’s tour of duty on the Princeton, with two notable incidents. Once, while the air group was still training at Maui, an Admiral from Pearl Harbor came to Kahului for inspection. VF-27 personnel scrambled to get canvas covers on the painted faces before his arrival. He was told the covers were needed because of a dust problem.
Then, on Princeton’s final day, Frank “Smoke” Kleffner and several other VF-27 pilots were forced to land on the Essex because their own carrier was in trouble. The Admiral aboard the Essex ordered the Princeton fighter planes taken to the hangar deck, fast, and the faces painted out.
VF-27 pilot Frank "Smoke" Kleffner clears the wires after landing on USS ESSEX during the Battle of Leyte Gulf as his carrier burns in the distance on October 24, 1944.
It seems that not all scolds are office-dwelling paper pushers. Some are just dour by nature. Imagine being involved in arguably the largest naval battle in modern history and taking several unexpected, but useful, combat assets out of the action because their paint jobs skirted regulations. Others' mileage may vary but to me that seems an exceptional level of aloof humorlessness.
Anyhoo, because my inquiring mind wanted to know...I’ve spent far too many hours over the last several days going down an internet rabbit hole to try and find out just who that Admiral was and, from the USS Essex (CV-9) wartime cruise book, I’d like to introduce you to Rear Admiral Frederick C. Sherman…**
…who went on to have a very distinguished career.
You're welcome. :-)
During the decades after WWII, the Navy relaxed it’s stodgy attitude with regard to painting it's jets, demonstrated most famously by the glorious "Black Bunny" F-4 Phantom flown by the Navy’s Air Test and Evaluation Squadron (VX-4). Behold:
During my time in the Navy, squadrons were allowed to paint the tail of one squadron aircraft and by tradition, the tail painted was always the aircraft whose nose number, known as its "modex", ended with 00. The modex is a three digit number and each squadron is assigned numbers in series. For instance: a typical F-14 squadron consisting of 12 jets would use 100 through 111, subsequent squadrons would be assigned 200's, 300's, etc. The "CAG bird," or "Double Nuts" was the first jet in the sequence and was the one whose tail could be painted and which carried the Air Group Commander's, "CAG", name on the canopy rail below the cockpit.
NK 500, Attack Squadron 196 (VA-196) CAG bird parked at the “boneyard” in Tucson, October 2006.
NK 500, Attack Squadron 196 (VA-196) CAG bird over Oman, in September 1990.
Double nuts was often the backdrop for squadron photos:
Flying low level night missions off the boat on a regular basis was male-bonding at its extreme and allowed the Pilot and Bombardier-Navigator to become true steely-eyed killers.
Occasionally the CAG birds' beauty took a back seat to mother nature’s glory:
I flew “Chippy Ho” (NF 400), CAG bird of the VFA-195 Dambusters, several times during my tour in Japan.
It was the closest I’ve ever come to fulfilling my dream of cruising the low riding streets of LA.
Back at Pearl Harbor, The P had been scheduled for yard availability for major maintenance to commence on the 19th, but the War Diary noted "it being determined that the Navy Yard could not handle any of the three carriers effectively before that time...This vessel together with USS YORKTOWN and USS MONTEREY accordingly are to proceed to sea for a training period with the respective new air groups."
It is said that you only get one chance to make a first impression and it was time for Air Group 27 to either die, or look good around the boat.
NNNN
* I try never to miss an opportunity to vent about mindless and obstructive bureacracies. Which leads me to rarely forsake an opportunity to share what Alexis de Tocqueville identified as the problem with uninspired and soulless entities run by seemingly infinite numbers of petty bureaucrats. From his classic Democracy in America:
The nature of despotic power in democratic ages is not to be fierce or cruel, but minute and meddling. ... It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd.
Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness, it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances, what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?
** In the early 1950's Admiral Sherman had an entire class of destroyers named after him. As of 2013 the lead ship of that class, USS Forrest Sherman (DDG-931), was in mothballs at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.
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