HISTORY

Curtiss SOC-1 Seagull from USS Northampton (CA-26) over Wotje Island spotting for the

escorting cruisers when they shelled the island during the Kwajalein strike by USS Enterprise in February 1942.

Gaido was presented, Halsey gave him

a spot promotion to First Class Petty Officer, telling him, “By god, sailor, we need

men like you!”.

Enterprise and her escorts took up

a course to the north and increased speed

to 30 knots. A wag recorded in the logbook that they were “Haulin’ ass with Halsey.”

The CAP identified five G3Ms 15 miles

out. The four Wildcats tried to attack, but

jammed guns and cloud cover allowed the

Nells to escape. Minutes later, they burst

out of the clouds 3,500 yards off the carrier’s bow, approaching in a shallow dive

at 250 mph. The gunners opened fire but

inexperience and battle stress allowed

the enemy to evade the defenses. Captain

George Murray ordered hard left rudder,

followed quickly by hard right. Enterprise responded nimbly and “stepped aside“

the on-coming bombers. The five bombers dropped three bombs each. All but

one fell harmlessly in the sea to port, but

the last exploded close aboard, severing

a gas line, starting a small fire and mortally wounding Boatswain’s Mate 2/c George

Smith, the first member of Enterprise’s

ship’s company to die in the war.

The Nells recovered from their dives 1,500

feet above the ships and four sped away.

The Nell flown by flight leader Lieutenant

Kazuo Nakai turned sharply left and then

circled back towards the carrier. Every

gun that could bear opened fire but Nakai

came on, clearly intending to crash the

ship. At the last moment, Captain Murray

ordered a hard right and the Nell failed to

match the turn. Flashing mere feet above

the flight deck aft, its right wing clipped

the tail of a parked VS-6 Dauntless whose

rear gunner, Aviation Machinist’s Mate 2/c

Bruno Gaido, was firing at the enemy. The

Nell’s wing snapped off and drenched the

island and flight deck with gasoline before it fell into a catwalk. Nakai and his crew

went into the sea and disappeared. Gaido

jumped out of the Dauntless with a fire

extinguisher and fought the fire. With the

flames extinguished, he realized he was

in trouble for having left his battle station

to man the Dauntless’s guns, and promptly disappeared. Halsey ordered the runaway be found and brought to him. When

An hour after Nakai’s attack, two Wildcats

on CAP intercepted a snooping H6K “Mavis” playing cat-and-mouse in the clouds

before finally shooting it down. At 1600

hours, two more G3Ms popped out of the

clouds and made a bombing run. McCluskey and the other three pilots sent one

Nell crashing into the sea in flames while

the ship’s gunners got the other.

Sunset at 1835 hours found 14 Wildcats

still on patrol, with several pilots weary as they flew their fifth mission of the

day. The last Wildcat landed at 1902 hours,

aided by a full moon that illuminated the

fleet’s wakes. Halsey was grateful to find

shelter under a damp cold front. Under

cover of what would become known as

„Enterprise weather,“ the carrier turned

northeast shortly before midnight and the

task forced headed for Pearl Harbor.

Task Force 8 returned to Pearl Harbor on

February 5 to celebration. The daring raid

was the Navy’s first significant victory of

the Pacific War and the publicity saw the

beginning of Halsey’s public reputation

as “America’s fightin’est Admiral.” Despite newspaper accounts that called the

raid “Japan’s Pearl Harbor,” it was soon

known that damage actually inflicted fell

far short of initial estimates. One transport and two smaller vessels were sunk,

with eight other ships damaged at Kwajalein, half the number originally reported

sunk. Nine aircraft were destroyed on the

ground at Taroa and Roi, with three A5Ms

shot down at the cost of one Wildcat and

five SBDs. Though hardly enough to stall

the Japanese South Seas offensive, Halsey’s raid served notice that the Navy’s

striking arm did not lie broken in the mud

at Pearl Harbor.

(to be continued...)

Adapted from Thomas McKelvey Cleaver’s

best-selling “I Will Run Wild: The Pacific War

from Pearl Harbor to Midway,” from Osprey Publishing.

Credit all photos: USN Official

Douglas TBD-1 Devastator over Kwajalein

during Enterprise strikes, February 1942.

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INFO Eduard

August 2022