1 JUN 44
Routine flight operations and gunnery training continued as June began. This routine included the War Diary remarking that "at 1119 on VT from USS MONTEREY crashed into the water during launching; pilot and crew were recovered by USS GRIDLEY at 1130."
2 JUN 44
On the morning of June 2nd, a single Avenger crewed by Lieutenant Commander Ernest Wetherill Wood, Jr. and Lieutenant Commander S.M. Hadley launched from Princeton's deck. Wood and Hadley, the Commanding Officers or VF-27 and VT-27 respectively, would fly to USS Yorktown where they would confer with Task Group leadership and peers to prepare for upcoming operations.
22 year old U.S. Naval Academy Midshipman Ernest "Woodie" Wood. Photo: The 1938 Lucky Bag
3 & 4 JUN 44
With the crossing of the international date line, June 3rd became the 4th as the Task Group approached Majuro Atoll. The decreasing distance to the war zone came with a proportional increase in potential threats, so it is no surprise that in the early hours before sunrise, 0508 to be exact, the destroyer screen reported a possible sound contact that resulted in the entire Task Group executing an emergency turn to the northwest. Nine minutes later the contact was lost and presumed false and fleet course to Majuro resumed.
Routine patrols were launched near sunrise and by 1003 all carriers had formed in a column behind Yorktown for gunnery practice on target sleeves towed by support aircraft from the atoll.
At 1229, Princeton passed through Calalin Pass on the northern side of Majuro Atoll enroute to Berth 222, where her anchor would drop at 1310. The day's War Diary concludes: "Reported by despatch to ComTaskForce 58 in USS LEXINGTON for duty. Task Group 12.5 dissolved."
ADDENDUM: Lieutenant Commander Wood, who had joined VF-27 the previous winter prior to the squadron being assigned to Princeton, was by all accounts a well-respected and interesting individual. Aggressive in the air, on the ground his interests turned toward the artistic. A fairly accomplished musician, he also dabbled in painting as his biography in The Lucky Bag suggests.
The namesake of an Army Colonel chaplain, Wood's principles were on display as a 19 year old while a midshipman on duty in Germany in 1935:
New York Daily News, July 17, 1935:
"MIDDIE SOCKS NAZI SLUGGER OF 2 JEWESSES
The midshipman, E. W. Wood of New York, son of Lieut. Col. Ernest W. Wood, Protestant chaplain at Mitchel Field, L. I., returned to his hotel after spending the night in jail and paying 50 marks (about $20) fine for fist fighting, to describe vividly the disorders raging in Berlin. A woman was knocked down before his eyes, Wood said, and another woman who protested also was felled. The man who hit her, the midshipman said, asked him: “What do you think of that?” After expressed disapproval, the man asked him: “What are you going to do about it?” That started the fight which police stopped, arresting Wood. Several hundred other American middies along the Kurfurstendamm, Berlin’s Great White Way, watched last evening’s anti-Jewish demonstration which lasted until early morning. One Jew was knocked unconscious, others beaten and several show windows broken."
NNNN
Comments