Black Cat in the Night, Part 3

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“Up, Wake the F--K Up!” the chief line mechanic was barging through the tents …

“Rescue mission, we got planes down!”

Black Cat crews rolled out and trotted to their planes. They shouldn’t be up for another six hours.

Strap on his belt, knife, hatchet, and .45.

Pink Kitty was being given the “spin it up” signal from the ground crew, starters whining, engines coughing to a full throated roar. Steve dashes into the armorers bunker and throws 2 belts of .50 cal over his shoulders and grabs a box of belted .30 cal ammo in each hand.

He’s throwing the ammo into the plane and spies the ground chief … yelling through the prop noise, “Chief, get us another couple life rafts just in case, and it might be good to dig up a Doc to come along”.

Another Cat crew was turned away. One whole engine was torn down for a ring replacement; she’d be down for a few more hours. Their crew brought over some survival equipment and ammo. They wished Pink Kitty luck.

Good, the portside gunner brought extra ammo too, we were learning. The plane was being turned and spotted at the top of the ramp to the shore.

Here comes the eager beaver corpsman looking straight out of bootcamp, young, grinning, giddy for an adventure. He has his bag of Doc stuff and an inflatable life vest (he had to be shown how to use).

Load him up, “Sit there and stay out of the way till were airborne”

Damn, the kid was barely 18 …

Look to his gun, add a bit of lube to the usual parts, cycle the action, then brace as the engines growled louder and they slid, bobbing into the ocean.

Powering up, turn to parallel the beach, slight chop, bouncing a bit … smooth, airborne.

Pull up, higher than their normal night attack wave height. This was search and hopefully rescue. About 20 minutes out from the reported crash. Load up a belt into the .50, charge and fire, all good.

Doc is looking around wildly trying to see everything at once, bet he hasn’t flown more than twice in his life, if that. Steve gestures to the young corpsman to come over, and lets him have the whole starboard waist bubble all to himself for awhile. Steve delivered the cans of .30 cal to the bow gunner, exchanged an unimportant conversation with the flight mechanic and returned to the waist.

Doc was staring transfixed at the beauty, white fluffy clouds, deep blue sea, dark green jungles, tan beaches. “Sorry to interrupt.” The search area was near, time to pick up visual scanning.

Supposedly there were two F4F’s down, and more than a couple Jap planes in the area, down as well. Cactus was re-arming the dawn patrol to get them back out here for top cover. No idea what kind of fighter patrol the Japs might have out. Scan the sky, scan the ocean.

Can’t see anything in the sky, yet. Ocean is empty too. The pilot starts a search grid pattern, mile long legs back and forth over the reported crash area. He pulls his eyes up out of the blue of the ocean to the light and white of the sky … A flash of light, a dark dot … then nothing, what the heck did he just see?

“Uh, I hate to call this out but there might be something flying 10 o’ clock level, from my position, just under the starboard wing. Just a glimpse.”

“Roger”

Straining to see the dot again, the bow turret calls out life raft and dye, 1 o’clock low. The pilot circles around, eyeing the conditions and flies out to line up into the wind to land near the raft.

Sven is focused on the sky where that dark dot was, and where it could have gone. Putting this big Cat down on the surface left it very vulnerable to attack. He didn’t feel like going for a swim just now.

Lower, lower, trailing flaps on the wings adjusting via controls for landing. “Almost there Lads!” bump, splash, lurch forward as the water slows the boat much more than the air could. Engine speeds cut for landing, revved up again as we taxi to the raft. Rolling with the waves, rocking ungently, they pull the soaking Marine out of his raft and into the plane.

Steve lights a Lucky strike and passes it to the wet pilot. Then lights another for himself. Doesn’t appear to be injured, Doc gives him a quick once over, thumbs up.

The Marine aviator says he saw one of his squadron-mates go down a few miles northeast. They bounce their way to a takeoff … Where was that dot?

“Any air contacts?”

“Negative.”

“Keep looking.”

“Surface contact! Raft!” The plane rolls to port, as the pilot works out a landing. Lined up, bounce to a stop a swell picks up their tail and the whole plane surfs forward to the raft.

NOT. GOOD … the bottom of the raft looks like someone threw 5 gal. of red paint in it and over the struggling man in the raft. His eyes were rolling as he struggles to breathe through the blood. We drag him aboard and the doc takes over, engines spinning up for takeoff.

A Marine lieutenant, hit in the left armpit, exit just below the left nipple. Pale, loss of so much blood. One lung collapsed, the other being squeezed to nonfunction by the buildup of air in the chest, every breath draws in air to the chest cavity preventing the good lung from taking in air, he was suffocating by breathing.

Doc poured sulfa powder on the wounds, after cutting the uniform shirt free. Then he worked quickly to make those chest wounds air tight. Now … this 18 year old corpsman had to do something he’d only read about, use a scalpel to cut an incision between two ribs and let the air out of the chest cavity.

The smooth slide of the scalpel through the chest wall was unexpected, slight hiss of air, the copper smell of blood. The trick was to let the air out but not back in, cover on the inhale let the exhale work.

While the Doc worked, Steve kept scanning the sky for whatever he saw out there.

“Oh, God help!... he stopped breathing!”

The other rescued pilot, the mechanic and the radio operator were all working on the dying Marine, with the Doc directing them. Too much blood loss, not enough blood to carry the depleted oxygen to the vital organs. The soaked pilot's body was shutting down.

That young Corpsman begged, pleaded and cursed that lieutenant to live as he pounded on his chest to keep the heart going … In the end … Doc was exhausted and sobbing, the lieutenant was dead.

Tears, hard to see clearly, knock it off! There’s something out there. Look.

Nothing, nothing but beauty, and all he was looking for was ugliness and horror.

Glance back at the Doc, slumped over his dead patient, shoulders and head bobbing, the engines drown out the cries and screams of “WHY!”

Steve walks over and puts his head right next to the Doc’s.

“He was dead the instant that round hit him. If he had parachuted onto the deck of one of our fleet carriers with a full operating room, even they couldn’t have saved him.”

“You did good, look me up on the beach, and we’d welcome you on any missions you’d like.”

Steve got a teary eyed grin for that and an enthusiastic head nod.

Back to the gun bubble, scanning, what had he seen?, And were “they” still watching?

Engines thrumming along, one rescue, one recovery as it were. Back south to Cactus, one good thing, they wouldn’t be going out on a night raid tonight.

Lowering down to lineup to the beach, gently lower down to a smooth choppy landing. Taxi up to the dock, ground crew wants us to haul out of the water, push away and gun the engines, wheels rolling us up the ramp to the maintenance area. Spin around and shut down. Weapons and unexpended ordnance (ammo belts) need to be turned in.

The ground crew is already crawling all through the plane. Steve shuffles off to the chow hall, Spam and … No … New York strip and rice, beef like leather, wish for a baked potato, rice was getting old.

Off to his tent, sitting on a coconut log outside Steve’s tent was the Doc.

“I said look me up but I didn’t think so soon.”

The kid was in pain, “kid” what? 3-5 years younger, they were all young. His tentmate had tuned in Tokyo Rose as she spun Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood.” They passed that jar of moonshine around until the mood passed, then they passed it around a few more times until they passed out.