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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 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.”
Text: Jan Bobek
Illustration: Petr Štěpánek
A Hell of a Morning
#7077
BOXART STORY
INFO Eduard
41
April 2024