W.E.B. Griffin - The Corps 03 - Counterattack

The reason they had to ask permission, rather than just doing what Captain Martin thought was the logical thing to do in the circumstances, was that some moron in CINCPAC (Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Fleet) at Pearl Harbor had issued an order that aviation units that had lost their aircraft would immediately re-form and prepare to fight as infantry.

Captain Martin had no doubt that the order applied to VMF-211. After the Japanese had bombed and strafed Ewa, VMF-211 had zero flyable aircraft. And it was possible, if not very likely, that the Japanese would invade Oahu, in which case every man who could carry a rifle would indeed be needed as an infantryman.

But it was unlikely, in Captain Martin’s judgment, that infantrymen would be needed that afternoon. In the meantime, it just made good sense to salvage anything that could be salvaged. Captain Martin had been a Marine long enough to believe that replacement aircraft and spare parts-or, for that matter, replacement mess-kit spoons-would be issued to VMF-211 only after the Navy was sure that aircraft, spare parts, and mess-kit spoons were not needed anywhere else in the Navy.

It made much more sense to have Galloway and Big Steve try to salvage what they could than to have them forming as infantry. Even if he was absolutely wrong, and Japanese infantry were suddenly to appear, there was nothing Galloway and Oblensky could be taught about infantry in the next couple of days that they already didn’t know. They were technical sergeants, the second-highest enlisted grade in the Corps, and you didn’t get to be a tech sergeant in the Corps unless you knew all about small arms and small-unit infantry tactics.

And there was a question of morale, too. Big Steve, and especially Charley Galloway, felt guilty-more than guilty, ashamed-about what had happened to VMF-211. Their guilt was unreasonable, but Martin understood their feelings. For one thing, they hadn’t been at Ewa when it happened. And by the time they got to Ewa, it was all over. Really all over; even the fires were out and the wounded evacuated.

Captain Martin knew, unofficially, where Big Steve and Galloway were when the Japanese struck. So he didn’t have much trouble reading what was behind their eyes when they finally got back to Ewa, still accompanied by their nurse "friends," and saw the destroyed aircraft and the blanket-wrapped bodies of their buddies on the stretchers.

If we had been here, we could have done something!

Captain Martin agreed with them. And, he further reasoned, they had to do something that had meaning. Practicing to repel boarders as infantrymen would be pure bullshit to good, experienced Marine tech sergeants.

So Captain Martin told them to go ahead, and to take as many men as they could reasonably use. If they ran into any static, they were to shoot the problem up to him.

What Technical Sergeants Galloway and Oblensky had not told Captain Martin was that they had already examined the carnage and decided that they could make at least one flyable F4F-4 by salvaging the necessary parts from partially destroyed aircraft and mating them with other not completely destroyed machines.

It was a practical, professional judgment. T/Sgt. Big Steve Oblensky bid been an aircraft mechanic as far back as Santo Domingo and Nicaragua, and T/Sgt. Charley Galloway had been a mechanic before he’d gone to flight school.

By sunset, Captain Martin saw that they had found tenting somewhere, erected a makeshift, reasonably lightproof work bay, and moved one of the least damaged F4F-4s into it. Over the next week they cannibalized parts from other wrecks. Then there was the sound of air compressors and the bright flame of welding torches; and finally the sound of the twelve hundred horses of a Pratt and Whitney R-1830 Twin Wasp being run up.

But Captain Martin was surprised to discover what Big Steve and Charley had salvaged. By December 15, the engine he had heard run up was attached to a patched-together but complete and flyable F4F-4 Wildcat fuselage.

"That doesn’t exist, you know," Captain Martin said. "All the aircraft on the station have been surveyed and found to be destroyed."

"I want to take it out to the Saratoga, " Charley Galloway said.

"Sara’s in ‘Dago, Galloway," Captain Martin said. "What are you talking about?"

"Sara’s in Pearl. Sometime today, she’s going to put out to reinforce Wake. Sara, and the Astoria and the Minneapolis and the San Francisco. And the 4thDefense Battalion, on board the Tangier. They’re calling it Task Force 14."

Martin hadn’t heard about that, at least in such detail, but there was no doubt that Galloway and Oblensky knew what they were talking about. Old-time sergeants had their own channels of information.

"That airplane can’t be flown until it’s been surveyed again and taken through an inspection."

"Skipper, if we did that, the Navy would take it away from us," Oblensky argued. "The squadron is down to two planes on Wake. They need that airplane."

"If Sara is sailing today, there’s just no time to get permission for something like that."

"So we do it without permission," Galloway said. "What are they going to do if I show up over her? Order me home?"

"And what if you can’t find her?"

"I’ll find her," Galloway said flatly.

"If you can’t?" Martin repeated.

"If I have to sit her down in the ocean, the squadron’s no worse off than it is now," Galloway said, with a quiet passion. "Captain, we’ve got to do something."

"I can’t give you permission to do something like that," Martin said. "Christ, I would wind up in Portsmouth. It’s crazy, and you know it."

"Yes, Sir," Oblensky said, and a moment later Galloway parroted him.

"But, just as a matter of general information," Captain Martin added, "I’ve got business at Pearl in the morning, and I won’t be able to get back here before 0930 or so."

He had seen in their eyes that both had realized further argument was useless. And, more important, that they had just dismissed his objections as irrelevant. Charles Galloway was going to take that F4F-4 Wildcat off from Ewa in the morning, come hell or high water.

"Thank you, Sir."

"Good luck, Galloway," Captain Martin said, and walked away.

(Four)

Above USS Saratoga (CV.3)

Task Force 14

0620 Hours 16 December 1941

A moment after Charley Galloway spotted the Saratoga five thousand feet below him, she began to turn into the wind. They had spotted the Wildcat, and her captain had issued the order, "Prepare to recover aircraft."

By that time Sara knew he was coming. Ten minutes after Galloway took off from Ewa, the Navy was informed he was on the way, and was asked to relay that information to the Saratoga. A Navy captain, reflecting that a week before, such idiocy, such blatant disregard for standing orders and flight safety, would have seen those involved thrown out of the service-most likely via the Navy prison at Portsmouth-decided that this wasn’t a week ago, it was now, after the Pacific Fleet had suffered a disaster, and he ordered a coded message sent to the Saratoga to be on the lookout for a Marine F4F-4 believed attempting a rendezvous.

As the Saratoga turned, so did her screening force, the other ships of Task Force 14. They were the cruisers Minneapolis, Astoria, and San Francisco; nine destroyers; the Neches, a fleet oiler; and the USS Tangier, a seaplane tender pressed into service as a transport. They had put out from Pearl Harbor at 1600 the previous day.

Charley retarded his throttle, banked slightly, and pushed the nose of the Wildcat down.

He thought, That’s a bunch of ships and a lot of people making all that effort to recover just one man and one airplane.

He dropped his eyes to the fuel quantity gauge mounted on the left of the control panel and did the mental arithmetic. He had thirty-five minutes of fuel remaining, give or take a couple of minutes. It was now academic, of course, because he had found Task Force 14 on time and where he believed it would be, but he could not completely dismiss the thought that if he hadn’t found it, thirty minutes from now, give or take a few, he would have been floating around on a rubber raft all alone on the wide Pacific. Presuming he could have set it down on the water without killing himself.