Bill Yenne - Americas Few: Marine Aces of the South Pacific

Contents

Plate Section Images

John L. Smith, Marion Carl, and Richard Dick Mangrum at NAS Anacostia. (USN)

The aviators of VMF-214 pose with a Corsair on Espiritu Santo. (USN)

A prisoner of the Japanese since January 1944, Greg Boyington was freed from prison in August 1945. (USN)

Maps

They were Americas Few, a handful of Marine aviators who were in the right place at the right time.

The right place was a small, obscure South Pacific island called Guadalcanal, familiar to almost no one in the outside world, and which no one could have predicted would be the venue of a turning point in world history.

The right time was the darkest hours of 1942 when the armies of Imperial Japan raged unchecked across the Far East and the Western Pacific.

The term Few is, of course, borrowed from Winston Churchills iconic characterization of the outnumbered fighter pilots of the Royal Air Force who saved Britain from Hitlers war machine in 1940.

There were differences between Churchills Few and those whom we describe with that name. The Few of the RAF fought to save their own land from a rumbling Blitzkrieg that was literally within sight of their doorstep. The Marine Few fought a rampaging monster thousands of miles from their own doorstep.

On the other hand, these American Few were much fewer than the RAF Few. There were days when their total number of available aircraft could be counted on the fingers of one handwhile they faced enemy aircraft that numbered in the dozens. Meanwhile, they operated in the most primitive of conditions at the end of a long and unimaginably fragile supply line.

Strategically, the stakes were high. For Churchills Few, it was Britains survival offshore from a continent under the shadow of the swastika. For Americas Few it was stopping the advance of an Axis enemy that already controlled the lives of around 500 million peopleby virtue of Japans occupation of much of China, virtually all of Southeast Asia and the East Indies. A failure to stop Japans advances in 1942 would have meant the virtual isolation of Australia and a status quo of brutal Japanese imperial rule across Asia that might well have prevailed unchallenged for decades.

Who were Americas Few?

They were a generation of young men who had grown up never having heard of Guadalcanal. Most of them had heard, because these men had a predisposition to an interest in aviation, of the term ace, as it relates to pilots who do battle with one another and score five or more aerial victories.

They each may well have heard of Roland Garros, the great French aviator who is often identified, albeit erroneously, as the worlds first ace. They may have known of Adolphe Pgoud, who actually was the worlds first ace. However, it is safe to say that they all knew the name of Eddie Rickenbacker, Americas Ace of Aces in World War I.

Neither Garros nor Pgoud survived World War I, but Rickenbacker was around to inspire a new generation of American fighter pilots, and to send congratulatory messages to many of them as they matched his accomplishments during the early 1940s.

Aces present an image of the lone warrior that is unique to the twentieth century. It is an image that arouses the imagination and paints warfare not as hell but as glorious. The ace, like the knights of European legend or the gunfighters of American legend, is not lost among the anonymous dead, but preserved as an individual for posterity.

While the US Army Air Forces had aces that did battle in theaters of operation throughout the world during World War II, the aces of the US Marine Corps flew only in Pacific skies. The highest-scoring among them saw action mainly in the intense battles of 1942 and 1943 high above the myriad islands that lie between Guadalcanal and New Britain, though a second generation of Marine aviators achieved ace status against the dreaded kamikaze threat in 1944 and 1945.

The American Fighter Aces Association notes that the USAAF boasted 735 aces in World War II, the US Navy 381, and the Marine Corps 122. Of these, five men achieved 20 or more aerial victories, and just over a dozen scored between 10 and 19. Considering the relatively small overall pool of Marine aviators from which these aces were derived, and the relatively narrow geographic area in which they operated, their record is extraordinary.

Having written a dual biography of the top USAAF aces of the warDick Bong and Tommy McGuireand another biography of the top female ace of all timeLidiya Litvyak of the Red Air Forcethis author turned to the Marines.

I have always been intrigued by the comparisons and contrasts between the three men often recognized as the Marines with the highest tally of aerial victories.