WINKLE'S WAY

Last year was the 100th anniversary of U.S. naval aviation, and I believe the Royal Navy had observed its aeronautical centennial in 2009. But it occurred to me that nobody had asked the world champion carrier aviator about his technique. Captain Eric M. Brown, RN (Ret) is bound to retain the title approximately forever, based upon his 2,400 arrested landings during an exceptional career. He flew Grumman Martlets (aka Wildcats) from an escort carrier in 1941, shot down two Focke-Wulf 200s (another world record), got sunk, and became a world-renowned test pilot. His literary output is not only impressive but invaluable, considering the immense variety of aircraft he's flown.


So, having been acquainted with "Winkle" since the 1980s, I wrote him in May 2011 asking about his method of landing aboard aircraft carriers in the 1940s. He replied with a beautifully hand-written letter in response to my inquiry as to his method in trapping on a specific wire on all those CVEs. I also asked him about the RN's master baggers, and he confirmed that the Double Grand Club is limited to two members. He's "president" with 2,400 traps. This year he's 93 and, as you'll see, remains active.


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As to the subject of deck landings (DLs). I have records of the top “scorers” in the Fleet Air Arm, and besides myself we had one other, Lt. Cdr. Bill bailey, who just exceeded 2,000 DLs which he acquired during 3 years as a “clockwork mouse” (demonstrating landings to endless courses of wartime recruited naval pilots.) However, after this there is a big gap down to 600 with very few in that bracket. I’m afraid Mike Lithgow was not a high scorer—about 200.


I started my score in 1941 and really piled them up in 1942 and ’43 when I was graded as an escort carrier specialist and proofed all the new “Woolworth carriers” coming over brand new from American shipyards, and some also from UK shipyards. I proofed 20 carriers in all, and this involved flying 4 types of aircraft (two torpedo bombers and two fighters) into each of normally 8 arrester wires twice each with each type of aircraft, followed by an accelerated takeoff.


At first I had 3 pilots to assist me, but they were soon withdrawn because their trap rate on a selected wire was too low and the process took far too long. When on my own my trap rate on a selected wire averaged about 80% without a LSO, which I dispensed with largely because he was replaced too frequently or none was readily available in wartime.


I employed a standard DL technique of never letting my approved speed creep above 1.1 VS, then aiming for the wire beyond the one that was my target, and cutting the throttle as it disappeared from my forward view.


In 1943 I was mainly engaged in deck landing various models of Seafire while in the Navy’s Service Trials Unit, and logged over 500 traps in that somewhat tricky aircraft.


Thereafter in the six years as Chief Naval test Pilot at RAE Farnborough I was responsible for making the initial deck landings on virtually every new type of naval aircraft that came into service, including our first twin-engined aircraft.


After 1941 I also became heavily involved in catapulting trials, particularly at Farnborough where we had every type of new catapult installed. In fact, my total catapult launches (2,721) exceeds my total traps (2,407) because so many were made ashore. There is a wonderful book recording all the work at RAE entitled Farnborough and the Fleet Air Arm by Geoffrey Cooper, published by Midland Publishing in 2008.


I am still active in the lecturing circuit and tour around Europe quite a lot.  I see a bit of my astronaut friend Neil Armstrong—we were both given honorary doctorates by Edinburgh University at the same time.

THE FORGOTTEN FIFTEENTH

My next book has just been contracted with Regnery in Washington, D.C. To my knowledge it’s the first full-length account of the 15th U.S. Army Air Force in World War II: “The Forgotten Fifteenth.”

Absolutely everybody who knows anything about WW II aviation knows of “The Mighty Eighth” that flew from England from 1942 to 1945. But other than the Red Tails of the 332nd Fighter Group, hardly anyone walking down the street can name any of the other 28 bomber, fighter, or recon groups of the 15th, which conducted the southern half of the Allied Combined Bomber Offensive. Between November 1943 and May 1945 the 15th flew from bases around Foggia, Italy, with a lasting effect on the course of the war. That reason was summarized in one word: oil.

Hitler’s Balkan petroleum sources lay in Romania, far beyond the reach of UK-based bombers. Therefore, the 15th was handed the major task of turning off the oil flow that fueled about one-third of the Wehrmacht. The importance of the mission—and the cost—already had been demonstrated in a spectacular low-level attack against Ploesti in August 1943, two months before the 15th stood up. Of 177 B-24s on the mission, 54 were lost or interned when they landed with battle damage in Turkey.

However, because the 15th operated in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations, it was largely overlooked in favor of the 8th. The reasons were varied: geographical, institutional, and promotional. Veterans of “the forgotten air force” will tell you that war correspondents much preferred sipping single-malt scotch in London hotels to chugging vino under canvas in not-so-sunny Italy, where (contrary to expectations) the weather was worse than in Britain.

Despite the dearth of PR, the 15th produced many outstanding airmen. The first commanding general was Jimmy Doolittle, who learned the trade of a strategic air commander in Italy before being called to England in January 1944. He was succeeded by Nathan Twining, later chief of staff of the independent U.S. Air Force from 1953 to 1957.

At the cockpit level, the 15th had two posthumous Medal of Honor recipients: B-17 bombardier David Kingsley who gave his parachute harness to a wounded gunner, and B-24 pilot Donald Puckett who remained with his doomed plane rather than abandon some crew members. Both died on missions against Romania in 1944.

Fighter pilots included top guns Captain John Voll (21 victories) and Major Herschel Green (18) as well as 21-year-old Mustang pilot Bob Goebel who almost certainly defeated the world’s top ace, Major Erich Hartmann. Then there was Colonel “Curly” Edwinson whose P-38 group tangled with some unidentified fighters over Yugoslavia with losses on both sides. The strangers were Yaks, and the Soviets were cranky about losing a general in the Lightnings’ strafing attack.

Two special-operations squadrons flew clandestine missions in and out of Occupied Europe, sometimes from bases carved from the land behind enemy lines. Those operations remain almost unknown to the public, even to many students of aviation history.

An unappreciated aspect of 15th Air Force operations is the variety of opponents it faced. Apart from the Luftwaffe, Twining’s enemies included air arms of Fascist Italy, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia. In fact, due to MTO geography, the 15th not only fought more Axis nations than the 8th and 9th, but crossed more borders as well. In addition to the nations noted above, the 15th also flew in France, Austria, Albania, Greece, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Russia.

In contrast to the 8th, the 15th only attacked Berlin once—the longest mission Twining ever launched, in late March 1945. But the 15th lost 311 aircraft flying against Vienna--more than anywhere else, including the notorious Ploesti oil complex in Romania, with about 235. Munich ranked third with 101 losses, followed by the Weiner-Neustadt complex near Vienna. Another dreaded target was Blechhammer, the synthetic fuel center in present-day Poland. Bomber crews knew the place as “Black Hammer,” with good reason. It tied with Regensburg as the fifth most dangerous name on the 15th’s target list.

When Romania capitulated in August 1944, Ploesti was producing a fraction of the fuel it had previously delivered to the Wehrmacht. The 15th’s persistent oil campaign, conducted between April and August, made a significant contribution to the Allied war effort. At year end, when Hitler’s panzers ran out of fuel during the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium, the fliers who turned off the Balkan spigot were partly responsible.

By V-E Day the 15th had lost some 2,500 aircraft including more than 1,800 bombers. Its seven fighter groups claimed nearly 1,800 enemy aircraft shot down while producing 75 aces. The 15th’s mastery of southern European skies was such that it only lost 26 bombers to enemy aircraft in the last seven months of hostilities.

Even less known than the 15th is the MTO’s tactical air force, the 12th—counterpart to the 9th Air Force in Britain. The 12th flew fighters and medium bombers, mainly P-47s, B-25s and B-26s, supporting U.S. ground forces in Italy and Southern France, and also provided troop carrier groups for airborne operations. The 12th deserves a book of its own, and I hope that a qualified author will take a long look at that subject.

Meanwhile, I’d welcome contact with any veterans of the 15th Air Force—which should not be forgotten.

ENTERPRISE: THE FIGHTINGEST SHIP

On Valentine’s Day, Simon & Schuster will release my next book: Enterprise: America’s Fightingest Ship and the Men Who Helped Win World War II. So you lovers out there (and you know who you are!) can add a rip-roaring sea tale to the usual bouquets and heart-shaped candy boxes.

“The Big E” was “the fightingest ship” because she was engaged in more battles and campaigns than any other U.S. Navy vessel. Her twenty battle stars represented a map of the Pacific War: from Pearl Harbor through Midway, the Guadalcanal campaign, the Central and Western Pacific offensives, to the shores of Japan. Only one cruiser even came close. Of the six Pacific Fleet carriers that fought during 1942, only Enterprise and the much-battered Saratoga survived the war.

As a high school freshman I read the first Enterprise “biography,” Edward P. Stafford’s classic The Big E. In elegant prose it described the ship’s wartime career from 1941 through decommissioning. Ed’s marvelous book—and his email support in retirement—inspired me to tell the full story from design to demolition.

Depending upon how you count such things (excluding forewords and excerpts in anthologies), Enterprise is my 45th book, 35th nonfiction. It may be the most satisfying I’ve yet written because it’s the most personal, and because it could not be written again. Here’s why:

Over the past several years I’ve tracked the rising attrition among World War II veterans via the contributors to my books. When Clash of the Carriers was published in 2005, 25% of the contributors were already deceased. Five years later, the figure for contributors to Whirlwind had risen to 40%. As of last year, at least 53% of the Big E men I interviewed have departed the pattern. In other words, mortality doubled in six years. Even more notably, when I began the book in 2009 only four of the original 2,100-some crew and air group remained from 1938. Just one of those “plankowners” was willing and able to talk.

Therefore, the story of USS Enterprise (CV-6) is very much a last-minute grab at history.

Fortunately, I started interviewing Enterprise veterans while there were still thousands living, in the 1970s. Today, the ship’s association knows of fewer than 450 among an estimated 15,000 or more who served aboard her between 1938 and 1946. She languished for 12 years before being sold for scrap, a terrible loss to the nation’s naval heritage.

In researching previous books I came to know, respect, and appreciate many Enterprise fliers. Fighter aces such as Swede Vejtasa and Don “Flash” Gordon; dive bomber greats including Dick Best and Jig Dog Ramage; torpedo pilots such as Mr. Night Flying, Bill Martin, and the irrepressible “Hotshot Charlie” Henderson. But I wanted my book to include the huge majority of Big E men who never flew. They include Barney Barnhill, the teenaged bugler who sent Enterprise to general quarters on December 7; Bill Norberg, yeoman for almost every wartime captain; and violin artist Arnold Olson who became a radar technician. Plus so many more.

The long-service “whitehats” and chief petty officers provided the basis for Enterprise’s exceptional performance. Probably no other warship retained so many highly-experienced sailors for so long. In fact, about 120 served for the entire war, and when the ship lowered her commissioning pennant in 1946 there were still four plankowners aboard from 1938.

Throughout her career the Big E had 15 captains, including nine wartime, though three of the latter were temporary. That none of the remaining six left a lasting impression should be seen in context. They averaged about six months aboard, whereas the executive officers, air officers, and damage-control specialists remained longer. Even today Enterprise vets speak reverently of Commanders John Crommelin, Tom Hamilton, and John Munro—committed leaders who knew their jobs and their men intimately. “Uncle John” Crommelin was one of those rare people who did everything extremely well, and always had time for subordinates, even after he left the ship. Tom Hamilton, Navy’s winning prewar football coach, had helped prepare naval aviation for the coming war. And John Munro proved expert at his trade, keeping the Big E going though hit by Japanese bombs and kamikazes four times in two months.

Among my favorite characters was one whom I regret that I never met. Chief B. H. Beams was a big, brawny man who served as the ship’s master at arms—basically the police chief. “Bulkhead” Beams wielded his considerable authority with easy competence, seldom if ever resorting to force. Upon finding an illicit crap game he faced a dilemma: he could ignore the miscreants, who knew they’d been busted, or run them in. But Bulkhead had a third option. He knelt on the deck, anted up, and in an astonishingly short time he won the more astonishing total of $17,000—1944 dollars, equal to more than $200,000 today. He made sure that he lost it all before resuming his duties.

Then there was the irreverent Ensign Jerry Flynn, erstwhile Notre Dame cheerleader in charge of the ship’s lookouts. He was also the Big E’s sparkplug, the morale booster who feared no man—nor admiral. His ongoing feud with task group commander “Black Jack” Reeves (named for his disposition rather than any gambling acumen) became Enterprise legend.

Other Enterprise alumni made their marks after the war. One of the late-war officers was Lieutenant Charles B. Wilkinson, better known as Bud, the stellar Oklahoma football coach of the 1950s and 60s. And fighter pilot Jack Taylor named his business after his beloved carrier, founding a fabulously successful rental car business in 1957.

Today the current Enterprise (CVN 65)—the first nuclear-powered carrier--is scheduled for her final deployment of a 51-year career. Regrettably, there will probably never be a third flattop to bear the name because the Navy prefers to recognize mere politicians over essential warships. But whatever future vessels may be named, one thing is certain: there can never ben another ship so vitally important as the original Big E.

Available for preorder on Amazon.com until February 13 and for regular orders thereafter.

http://www.amazon.com/Enterprise-Americas-Fightingest-Helped-World/dp/1439190879