RETURN TO YORKTOWN
A few minutes later my right arm suddenly went numb. The hand loosed its grip on the control stick, the limp limb dropped down and the forearm came to rest on my lap. In a momentary state of panic, I gripped the stick with my left hand while my mind whirled sorting the facts of this new situation. From the shoulder down the limb was without feeling and without pain. As time slowly ticked by, feeling and motion began to return, and within ten minutes I again had full usage of the limb. Though still shocked and puzzled by what had happened, the concern of coping one-armed with what might lie ahead dropped from mind. Finding a U. S. ship, preferably a carrier, before I ran out of fuel became my main concern.
"HARD LANDING"
Tom Cheek's
F4F Wildcat rests on the hangar deck of USS Yorktown after his
battle-damaged plane crashed into a barrier and flipped upside down during landing.
Dan Sheedy
Cruising at fifteen hundred feet, just below the base of the scattered clouds, the droning beat of the engine lent a bit of reassurance. Still, time passed slowly and the horizon ahead remained free of any sign of friendly forces. My mind refused to remain idle. The blast of red tracer that had zinged over my head puzzled me. I wondered, did the Japanese have Zeros equipped with .50 Caliber guns? The answer to that would come days later when Dan Sheedy and I met again in a hanger on Ford Island. Dan related he had called on the radio hoping I would turn sharply right or left and give him a shot at the Zero on my tail. As I had rolled into my turn, thinking that I had heard his warning, he had fired. Though he missed the Zero, and me, it was enough to make the Zero pilot look for safer air space.
I would also learn that Dan had then come under attack from a diving Zero that sprayed his cockpit with 7.7s, wounding him in his right leg and shoulder. Stunned, he doggedly followed me through the first cloud, emerging just as the Zero I had fired on in the head-on pass exploded as it passed beneath me. Turning to the right to avoid the debris from the disintegrating plane, he was immediately jumped by the group from above. Taking hits in and around the cockpit, he dove away from his attackers, leveling the fighter off just above the ruffled sea. Only one of the attackers followed, and within seconds Dan faced this last opponent. From directly ahead, skimming the water, the Zero came at him in a head-on pass. Both pilots opened fire then rolled into opposite turns to avoid the others approaching plane. The Zero pilot, eager to bring the F4F under fire again, pulled the Zero into a vertical turn. As Dan watched, the silver-gray fighter dipped its wing tip into the top of a low swell. Like a toy the Zero cartwheeled across the surface and disappeared in a shower of spray.
Scanning the sky around, Dan found himself alone. The fighter's cockpit was a shambles of destroyed instruments, including the compass, and one wheel of the landing gear dangled from its wheel well. With no compass to guide him, Dan remembered that the sun had been at his back on the way out from the Yorktown. Hoping for the best, he swung the nose of his battered plane into the sun. His sun-line course led him to the Hornet, but not to a safe landing
aboard. On landing, his tailhook engaged an arresting cable just as the damaged right landing gear collapsed. As the plane slued to the right in a jarring stop, the right wing crashed down on the deck and a burst of fire erupted from the .50 caliber wing guns. A two-second burst of fire sprayed into the after superstructure of the ship, killing five and wounding twenty of Hornet's crew.
The fate of the man swinging from the parachute was another thought to wonder about. Fifty years would go by before I would learn that 23 year old Ensign Wesley F. Osmus had been picked up by the Japanese destroyer Arashi. Interrogated and forced to divulge information as to the composition of the U. S. forces, Osmus had been executed that night and his body thrown into the sea.
Hard Landing
As I flew on, the only sound was the drumming of the engine. My headphones remained silent; not even the occasional crackle of static that I had heard before. An attempt to tune in the Yorktown's YE homer brought only continued silence. With all senses on full alert, I continued visually sweeping the sea and sky ahead. Finally, just forward of my right wing tip, barely visible in the distance, a faint streak of white on the blue-gray water caught my eye. Looking closer, I found it trailed behind a genuine "Made in the USA" destroyer, on a course parallel to mine, but speeding in the opposite direction.
Without hesitation I turned toward the ship, throttled back, and dropped down to five-hundred feet. As I neared the destroyer, to the left and near the horizon I caught sight of other ships, one of them a carrier, reversing course to port. I held my course for the destroyer, and two miles from its starboard beam, I began a precisely banked and level turn to the left. Having very exactly completed the two identification turns required, I headed for the carrier, unchallenged by the destroyer. Approaching on the carrier's starboard quarter, I recognized it as the one I had hoped for, the Yorktown.
From the signal bridge a light began blinking a blur of dots and dashes in my direction, at a speed far too fast for me to read. Circling the ship to the left, I reached for my Aldis lamp and tried to send the message, "three CV burning!" I was too close to the ship. In the time it took to flash a few letters of the message, I was already passing from the view of one wing of the bridge, only to be greeted on the opposite side by the blinking code, "repeat, repeat."
As I rounded to starboard of Yorktown for the second time, three F4Fs dove past me on the right. It was the skipper. One plane was missing from the division. I joined up in the missing plane’s spot just as the leader's landing gear began extending. Tripping the tail hook extension handle with my left elbow, I began cranking down my own landing gear. With the wheels down, I reached to lock the tail hook lever in the extended slot. The lever was still in the retracted position; the hook had not as usual extended of its own weight.
With considerable effort, I forced the lever forward and into the locked down slot. I gave it little thought. As the pilot in the plane ahead, looking back, gave me the thumbs up signal meaning, "your gear down, hook extended," I returned the sign. His was also in the required position. Following in turn, I entered the approach pattern, flew up the groove and as the signal officer swept a flag across his throat in the sign to cut my power, snapped the throttle back and dropped the Wildcat onto the deck. Immediately I sensed something had gone haywire. As the fighter slammed to the deck, there was no tap of the tail hook or the surging forward of my body as an arresting cable snubbed the plane to a halt. Instead there was the sensation of uncontrolled motion that follows when one unexpectedly steps on a very slippery surface. No hook, or a bouncing hook?
Having a hook that bounced along the deck and over, instead of catching an arresting cable was not a new sensation. There had been a siege of them when we flew the Brewster F2A-3 Buffalos from Lexington. Thankfully there was only one barrier crash as a result. In times past, I had witnessed more than a few barrier crashes, some with fatal results. Luckily my hooks had always caught a wire before, but this one failed to catch!
In the mere seconds that followed, my mind raced as the plane rolled forward. Halfway up the deck my plan of action was clear. I reacted as the crash barrier loomed ahead. Jamming the control stick full forward, I followed it with my body. Bending forward, tucking myself into a ball, I tried to get my head as close to the cockpit deck as possible. A propeller blade grabbed one of the barrier's snaring cables, bringing the engine to a sudden stop. The F4F cartwheeled forward, crashing to the deck on its back. With the windshield crushed flat, the cockpit was held just above the deck by the turtleback and protective armor plate behind the seat.
Hanging upside down by the seat belt, I was momentarily dazed and disoriented. The thought of fire flashed to mind. I reached to cut the ignition switch--with the wrong hand, and to the wrong side of the instrument panel. Voices and the sound of trampling feet turned my attention to the shaft of light on my left at deck level. All I could see of a face that was trying to peer into the cockpit was its nose. I yelled, "Get this SOB off of me!" The nose disappeared and I heard a voice sing out, "He's OK!" In response to the voice, the tail of the plane began to rise. I tripped my seat belt, and sliding down past a barrier cable scrambled clear of the wrecked fighter.
As I gained my feet and stood erect, my eyes settled on a barn-sized camera that was focused on me. Indignant rage seized me and I started a haymaker in the photographer's direction. Someone gripping my right arm held it in check. It was a flight surgeon. "Let's get down to the sick bay," he ordered. Unaware there was a trickle of blood down the right side of my face, I jerked my arm from his gripping hand, turned and started for the ready room.
Wounded
Halfway there I met Thach. "Are you OK?", he asked, and without waiting for an answer, continued, "what happened?"
"I got one Zero for sure," I said, and as I started to continue, Thach broke in, "No, no! What did you see...the ships," he demanded.
"There were three carriers", I replied. "I saw bomb hits on all of them, and I think one torpedo hit on one--they were all burning like hell when I left." Thach turned and ran through the hatch into the island and up the ladder to the bridge. I followed him through the hatch and turned left into the crowded ready room where I found Dibb and Macomber. Bassett was missing, so was Sheedy. Questions came at us from all directions. I repeated what I had told Thach, adding that I had seen the one F4F go in, and that I had not seen Sheedy after I turned to meet the first Zero. I soon learned that the high cover I had counted on had been corralled by a swarm of Zeros and had to fight their way out. "So many Zeros that they lined up to make runs on us!"
Thach entered the room a short time later. Handing a sheet of blank paper to each of the returning escort pilots, he ordered us to write out our combat reports. As I sat staring at the sheet of paper, trying to arrange my whirling thoughts, a dull, stinging sensation drew my eyes to the arch of my left foot. A piece of the shoe leather the size of a half-dollar was missing, exposing a pink spot of raw flesh. When did that happen? Gazing down at the wound, it was there, it was a fact, but my mind refused to bring it into reality. The combat report forgotten, I was still wondering at the wound when the PA system jarred my mind back to the present with, "All hands to battle stations! Enemy aircraft, port quarter, distance thirty-five miles!"
There was an immediate rush by all hands out of the ready room onto the flight deck. There all eyes were focused to the north-west where spiraling streaks of black smoke across the sky marked falling aircraft. Our Combat Air Patrol had evidently intercepted the intruders. As we watched, we wondered--were the falling streaks of black enemy aircraft, or ours?