A Hell of a Morning

Text: Jan Bobek

Illustration: Petr Štěpánek

Cat. No. 7077

At first glance, there is nothing remarkable about the illustration depicting Hellcats created in 2011 by our colleague Petr Štěpánek. A group of Hellcats from VF-27, led by Lt. “Brownie” Brown, circles above the mothership USS Princeton. This boxart, however, is tied to one of the most dramatic moments in the history of the U.S. Navy's aviation units. Twenty-seven-year-old Carl Allen Brown, Jr. hailed from Texarkana, Texas, and joined the Navy in 1941. After serving in the Aleutian area, he was assigned to VF-27 aboard the USS Princeton in May 1944. He scored 5.5 confirmed aerial victories in the air battles over Marianas, over Philippines, and off Taiwan by mid-October 1944.

The first combat action for VF-27, however, was Operation Torch in North Africa in November 1942 aboard the USS Suwannee. Unit then moved to the Pacific, operating from a land base on Guadalcanal from February to July 1943 and scoring 12 victories. During her second operational tour, VF-27 was reorganized at NAS Alameda and embarked aboard USS Princeton in May 1944. The toughest test awaited Brown and his carrier during the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944.

It was the largest naval battle in human history, involving two hundred thousand personnel on board, some 300 vessels on the Allied side, and approximately 70 warships of the Japanese Navy. The Allied objective was to secure a landing on the Philippine island of Leyte. The battle occurred during several engagements between 23 October and 26 October 1944. The Japanese failed to prevent the landing and lost the aircraft carrier Zuikaku, three light carriers, three battleships, ten cruisers and eleven destroyers. The Americans lost one light carrier, two escort carriers, two destroyers, and two escort destroyers. The battle was overwhelmingly affected by the numerical superiority of the US naval aircraft and the experience of its aviators. The Japanese naval and army air forces, weakened by the recent fighting off Taiwan, were unable to counter this onslaught, although the naval units  resorted to  Kamikaze airmen tactics for the first time.

 However, this was a hard won victory  as shown by the fate of VF-27 and  USS Princeton . This carrier, nicknamed “Sweet Pea”, was part of Task Force 38.3. Japanese naval aviators managed to locate the American force during the first night , and at dawn of 24 October, a strike group was sent against TF 38.3. A total of 105 A6M Zero fighters, six more Zeros as fighter-bombers, 21 N1K-J George fighters, 38 D3A Val dive bombers and 12 D4Y Judy bombers attacked. The Japanese strike group, which was divided into several formations, was met primarily by airmen from VF-27 and VF-15 (USS Essex). It was in this fight that Cdr. David McCampbell of VF-15 achieved nine victories. VF-27, which was outnumbered 1 to 10 early in the fight, destroyed 36 enemy fighters, with one pilot achieving six victories in this engagement and three other airmen, including Lt. Brown, claiming five kills. Brown, however, had to break away from the fight with a badly damaged machine, two shrapnel wounds in his left leg and four Zeros behind him.

Returning to his mother ship, he was horrified to find the “Sweet Pea” in flames. At 10:00 a.m she had been hit by a bomb  launched by the crew of  a lone dive-bomber Judy. Brown was successively refused landing by the USS Lexington and the USS Langley. However, he managed to contact USS Princeton, which was trying to coordinate a pickup by a destroyer if Brown ditched. Eventually, colleagues from the USS Essex got in touch and offered to allow Brown to land if he did so immediately. Brown landed with the hydraulics damaged, lowered the landing gear with the emergency system, managed to release the hook by hitting the ramp hard, and immediately afterwards caught the first wire. For this action, he was awarded the Navy Cross.

The bomb hit the hangar of the USS Princeton, where the Avenger bombers were refuelled and armed. Sixteen Hellcats were on board, but they never had a chance to take off. The other nine, which were still in flight at this time, landed on other carriers. The light cruiser USS Birmingham, commanded by Capt. Thomas B. Inglis and three other vessels tried to help with the rescue and firefighting. But collisions with the aircraft carrier and other explosions aboard damaged her saviours. After eight hours of raging fire, the USS Princeton eventually sank following a last large explosion. Total 108 of her crew were killed, but 241 men aboard the USS Birmingham were also killed and 412 others were injured. When Capt. Inglis was asked if he would have done the same if he had known the risk to his cruiser, he replied, “I should take the same action – providing the same factors were involved and I had no crystal ball.”