The last plane from the previous patrol had finally caught a cable and was down, and the desperate front-to-back respotting began again. Butch looked to the storm-darkened sky and saw a stuttering exchange of tracers from machine-gun fire lighting up the distant clouds.
He put on his headset, got the signal, and called out ahead to clear the nearby crew. As he started up his engine and ticked through his preflight checklist, the radio told him what was happening up there: A formation of nine Japanese bombers had been found heading straight for Task Force 11. The latest patrol was doing all they could to shoot them down before they got close enough to drop their deadly load.
That created another emergency. The deck of the Lexington was crowded with fully fueled aircraft, a prime target for incoming bombers. The planes on the deck were the scouts, torpedo planes, and land attack craft meant for the raid on Rabaul. But they were useless now; the only thing needed in the air right then were fighters.
And there were only two of them left. Butch and Duff were sitting in those fighters, last in line to depart. They could only sweat it out and wait their turn as the rest of the vulnerable inventory was launched, one by one, into the relative safety of the open air.
The action in the sky was now close enough to see with the naked eye. A couple of enemy bombers had already spiraled into the sea, and now another one, the lead plane of the Japanese formation, was on fire and badly disabled—but it was still homing in on the carrier.
Thundering anti-aircraft guns cut loose from the Lex and the surrounding cruisers and destroyers, filling the attacker’s flight path with flak and blooming black bursts of shrapnel. But the plane kept coming. There was nothing left to do but watch as the flaming twin-engine bomber leveled, descended, and approached with suicidal intent, its pilot obviously struggling to hold his course on a kamikaze run toward the carrier deck.
At last focused gunfire tore through the cockpit and destroyed some final, vital system. The shredded enemy bomber lurched and snap-rolled into a screaming, careening, knife-edge pass and disappeared just shy of the hull of the carrier. It had only missed its mark by a stone’s throw as it crashed into the churning water beside the vessel.
Butch looked back to the runway. There was only one departing plane left in front of him, and Duff, in the last ready fighter, was the only backup behind him. He tuned his engine and ran it up to begin his taxi, pulling the canopy forward and closed. Soon the flag dropped to send him barreling down the white line behind 1,200 horsepower, and he was off like a homesick angel.
As soon as airspeed allowed, he banked into a climb toward his hastily assigned coordinates, fighting against buffeting winds as he cranked the heavy handle beside his leg thirty-two times in order to pull up the landing gear.
Manual retracts were one of the many pains-in-the-butt of this aging airframe. But what the Wildcat lacked in other areas, it made up for in pure iron guts and toughness. Butch had seen one of these birds come back from a sortie with more than five hundred bullet holes, perforated from end to end, and it was still out fighting again the next day.
By the time the wheels were up and locked Butch was nearly at altitude. He banked again onto a heading toward the aerial battle, which was now taking place well within sight of the American ships.
As his wingman joined alongside, Butch saw more enemy planes going down in the distance. Some of the survivors had dropped their bombs even as they struggled to evade the fleet’s defenders. So far those falling salvos were missing their targets by a comfortable margin.
Within seconds the few remaining Japanese bombers were breaking formation and scattering. Those that were able were bugging out and heading home defeated, with American fighters hot on their tails.
Butch keyed the radio.
“Raven Six, this is Raven Five. Duff, let’s have a gun check.”
“Roger that, though I don’t know why the hell we’d go to the trouble. Looks like we missed the party again.”
“Always a bridesmaid, never a bride,” Butch replied. Duff was right; by then the sky was empty and the high-speed chases had already disappeared from view. Nevertheless, procedure was procedure. He flipped on his illuminated sights, charged his guns, and fired a quick test burst from the four .50-caliber cannons mounted on his wings.
“Hey, Butch,” Duff radioed, forgoing the call-signs. “I’ve got a little problem over here—”
His wingman’s voice was abruptly cut off by a shouted transmission from the Lexington’s tower.
“Raven Five and Six and all available, we have bogies inbound, repeat, bogies are inbound from the east at—” The remaining words were obscured by a sharp crackle of static, maybe the interference of a stroke of lightning from one of the surrounding storms.
“Lexington, this is Raven Five,” Butch answered. “Say again, say again from ‘inbound.’ Did you say fifty miles out?”
“Raven Five, I said fifteen miles, one-five, large radar contact at your three o’clock low. Check that range, now twelve miles, twelve miles, it looks like a second damned full formation and she’s right on top of us, inbound dead astern at angels niner and descending!”
Twelve miles.
Butch checked his own coordinates as he did the math. Whatever was there was only a couple of minutes from the undefended flank of the task force—and, by his rough calculations, only a few thousand feet directly below his current position.
He pushed the nose down, Duff still on his wing, and soon, as he settled through a thick bank of haze and rainclouds, there they were.
Six—no, eight Japanese twin-engine land attack bombers—“Bettys,” as they were called in the briefings—were lined up on Task Force 11 in a tight formation, clearly on the final leg of an uncontested bombing run.
In the flurry of radio traffic during his descent, one thing became clear as a heart attack: No other fighters were anywhere near close enough to help in time. And while Duff was still with him, that problem he’d mentioned before was a fatal one: His guns were all jammed and he couldn’t fire a shot.
Butch was flying the only armed plane left in the sky—with a mere thirty-four seconds of live ammunition—the last man standing between that squadron of enemy bombers and the thousands of sailors and airmen below.
If this had been the Japanese plan all along, they’d executed it perfectly. They’d taken some losses, but they’d also drawn away every defending aircraft from Task Force 11 and left the door wide open for a devastating strike that could send several ships, including a U.S. carrier, straight to the bottom. Their victory was just ahead, and there was nothing the Americans could do to stop it.
Like hell, Butch thought.
He keyed the mic and looked over to his right. The two planes were close enough that he could see the grim expression on his wingman’s face.
“Duff, you stay clear, now.”
“What the hell are you going to do, Butch?”
“The same thing you’d do, buddy: whatever I can.”
? ? ?
If Butch had any advantages, they were raw speed and surprise. He rolled hard left and then pitched his Wildcat into a screaming descent, setting his sights on the trailing bomber on the right-hand side of the V formation. He streaked in from the high side and stayed off his guns until the Betty’s starboard engine crept into the crosshairs. When he fired, it was with a rifleman’s precision.
Those first few precious bullets tore through the enemy’s cowling and a cloud of black smoke and flames burst forth as a second careful volley pierced the wing tanks. Target number one dropped out of formation, badly disabled and barely under control.
Butch’s dad had taught him to shoot long ago and, so far, he would have been proud. The score was one down and seven to go, but from here on out it would be different. They knew he was there.
Butch jinked and evaded but held his heading as the Japanese tail-gunners swung their own cannons around and began returning fire. He took three quick shots at the next bomber up the line, and then, as Butch leveled off and rocketed through the crumbling formation, another Betty dropped out and spun downward in flames.
He pulled up and rolled out to set up for another run—this next one surely doomed to fail—and caught a brief glimpse of another lone Wildcat weaving its way through the bright tracers of the enemy defenses. It was Duff, dead guns and all, flying like a man possessed, trying his level best to distract their adversaries and draw their fire.
The second pass began just like the first, but things changed fast. As Butch pulled the trigger on the left-rear bomber he felt several heavy impacts thudding through his airframe. The Wildcat absorbed its punishment without a hitch. Meanwhile, Butch’s latest target had taken critical damage. The big plane banked to flee the fight, one engine afire, and dropped his bombs into the empty ocean below as he made a limping turn away.
Butch was amazed when he came around for his third high-side pass and saw only four bombers left in formation. The Lexington was now clearly in sight down below. Fierce anti-aircraft fire began to fill the air ahead. He dove in again, but this time there was nearly as much danger from the flak of the ship’s response as from the guns of the Japanese.
By the count in his head, his guns were running low. He again fired in metered bursts toward the most vulnerable points on the enemy planes. Through the crosshairs he watched one of the engines on the nearest Betty burst into flames, then he shifted toward the head of the V, scoring yet another direct hit on the leader that sent his port-side radial engine exploding out of its nacelle.
Between Butch’s one-man assault and the anti-aircraft fire from the task force, the remaining planes were bracketed and their formation nearly broken up.
On his fourth and final shooting pass, as those last bombers prepared to let loose their loads, Butch felt his guns finally run dry and silent. He banked and then leveled off with a seat-of-the-pants plan to run his plane into the side of one of the Bettys if need be.
But then, streaking in from behind and overhead, the cavalry arrived.
Led by Lieutenant Commander John “Jimmy” Thach, several fighters had just returned from their pursuit of the survivors of the first wave. The sight of them evidently convinced this tattered second formation of Bettys to give it up and flee. They dropped their bombs well short of the ships of the task force and split off to run for clear air with the Americans closing in for the kill.
? ? ?
One of the casualties of Butch’s run had been his radio, so he could neither transmit nor receive as he waited his turn for a landing on the Lex. It hadn’t hit him quite yet, what he’d done; all he felt was anxious to get the wheels back on the runway.
But his anxiousness didn’t last long. After rolling to a stop on the deck, Butch pulled back the canopy and stood up in his seat to a ship-wide cheer so loud and long, it sounded like the Cubs had finally won the Series at Wrigley Field.
Aboard the USS Enterprise, Central Pacific,
near the enemy-controlled Gilbert Islands
Twenty-two months later: November 26, 1943
With time and experience he’d grown accustomed to the rigors and chaos of battle. Every engagement was unique, of course, but that evening, as Butch sat in his cockpit—now in command of his own squadron—the scene outside looked strangely familiar. It was almost as though he’d lived this moment before.
Just like that long-ago day aboard the Lexington, the flight deck of the Enterprise was well-controlled mayhem. And, just like that day, a score of Japanese bombers had been detected on radar, heading in for blood. The Allies were preparing to go up to try to bring them down—but, unlike that first dogfight, this would be a rare nighttime engagement, a daring mission planned by Butch himself.
He completed his preflight checks and his eyes soon found the picture of his wife, Rita, that he’d clipped near the altimeter. Right beside it was another photo—his father and mother on one of their happier days, twenty years earlier. It was cracked and fading from time and much thoughtful handling.
In the end, it seemed as though Easy Eddie had been granted his final wish: He was already forgotten by most, but not by those he’d done his best to protect and care for.
Butch thought for a moment about his father and about everything that had brought him to the deck of this carrier. Two months after his incredible mission to save the Lexington, Butch had returned to the States on extended leave. With his wife by his side, he was escorted to the White House, where FDR himself promoted him to lieutenant commander. He was then presented with the first Medal of Honor awarded to a navy man in World War II.
The citation was for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in aerial combat, but later in the text it was stated more simply: In the course of saving his carrier and countless lives, Butch had performed the most daring single action in the history of combat aviation.
When he’d returned to his native St. Louis, sixty thousand people turned out for the parade that was held in his honor. The event was compared to the celebration of Lindbergh’s homecoming after his pioneering solo flight across the Atlantic.
The war effort needed heroes in the conflict’s earlier years, and Butch could very well have parlayed his well-earned fame into a safe, extended stateside public relations tour. But that wasn’t him. Before long he was back on active duty, first as a trainer and then in combat again.
Now, as Butch peered out his cockpit window and watched the busy deck of the USS Enterprise, he realized he’d been right: this was where he belonged. He took a last quiet moment to give thanks for everything and everyone who’d helped him get there, including a flawed man who’d no doubt be the first to admit he’d been far from the perfect dad.
The deck boss gave him the sign, the flag dropped, the engine roared, and Edward Henry “Butch” O’Hare tore down the runway and took off into the sky, never to return again.
? ? ?
Six years after being killed in combat and four years after the end of the war he’d helped the Allies win, Chicago’s Orchard Depot was renamed in Butch’s honor: O’Hare International Airport.
8
The Saboteurs: In a Time of War, the Laws Are Silent
The Farm
West of Berlin, Germany
April 14, 1942
The Farm looked like every other large villa in the serene countryside near Berlin. Once owned by wealthy Jewish industrialists, most of these estates were now the property of the Third Reich and had become uniform in their operation and appearance.
But this particular estate was different.
As the sun rose over the center of a million square miles of Nazi-occupied Europe, George Dasch—thirty-nine years old, with long, lanky arms, and a streak of silver through the center of his dark hair—sat through another class on bomb-making. Well-trained German shepherds patrolled the perimeter of the estate, just beyond a large stone wall.
Each student at the Farm had been specifically chosen for a special mission based on their ability to blend into ordinary American communities. All of them had spent time in the United States, most having left only after failing in a string of professional pursuits.
As George watched the instructor demonstrate the bomb assembly for what seemed like the five hundredth time, he looked around the classroom and began to wonder about his classmates. None of them, to his knowledge, had demonstrated any real loyalty to the Nazis or hatred toward the United States. He had neither. Worse, none of them had experience in espionage or military tactics or any of the other skills that might make someone a useful candidate for this kind of mission.
It was all pretty surreal, George thought, and so atypical of the way the Nazis normally operated. Loyalty and allegiance to the Third Reich were everything to them. He’d expected to be interrogated, maybe even tortured, in an attempt to break him. He’d prepared for the inevitable pain that was to come; worked to control his heart rate and breathing, and he thought carefully about how he would answer questions about his time in the United States. How would he fake the animosity they would so desperately want to see? He worried that he’d never be able to pull it off. He worried that he’d be labeled a sympathizer of the enemy and executed, his body thrown in some shallow grave outside the Farm.
But George didn’t need to worry about any of that, because the interrogation never came.
There were no questions, no torture, and no threats against his family.
Now he and his classmates were inside the Farm, training for an incredibly difficult and important mission—and none of them had the slightest idea how they’d gotten there.
New York City
Monday, December 8, 1941
John Cullen thought he was minutes away from becoming a U.S. Marine.
That morning he, along with hundreds of other tall, blue-eyed twenty-one-year-olds, set out for the New York City Armed Services recruiting station. He wanted to hit back against the Japanese personally, violently, and immediately.
Well, not quite immediately. After all, Christmas was just over two weeks away. He figured he could sign up now, spend one more Christmas with his family, and then ship out right afterward.
John entered the recruiting station, waited in line, and eventually reached a Marine sergeant who looked to be straight out of Hollywood central casting. “We’re here to sign up,” he said, pointing to the friend he’d brought along.
“If you fellas are ready to ship out tonight, we will take you,” snapped the sergeant. “If not, leave now. Don’t have no time for those who prioritize holidays over freedom.”
John and his friend looked at each other. Neither of them wanted to be the first to say what they were thinking—but, to the sergeant, the look on their faces was obvious.
They left the Marine recruiting station and joined the Coast Guard instead.
The Farm
Wednesday, April 29, 1942
5:30 P.M.
George carefully mixed the chemicals and prepared the detonator as he was taught—but he knew it was hopeless. Remembering details was not his strength. That might be okay when it came to names and dates and places, but when those details meant life or death, bad things were bound to happen.
Would the bomb explode? At the right time? With enough power?
Creeping through the darkness, looking in every direction for anything out of place, George attached the bomb to the fuel tank and turned to leave. As he did, a series of explosions stopped him dead in his tracks. The noise was incredible. George covered his head with his arms, his ears ringing, eyes burning from the smoke and legs singed by sparks.
Then it all stopped just as quickly as it had started. The fireworks were done; the drill was over. George had failed.
That night, every student at the Farm took a version of the same final exam. Every student failed.
The next day, they received their assignments.
They were headed for America.
The Farm
Thursday, April 30, 1942
9:15 A.M.
“There will be two teams of four men,” the heavyset instructor told his students. “U-202 will take Team One to New York’s Long Island. U-584 will take Team Two to the east coast of Florida. The subs will get as close to shore as possible, surface briefly, and then each team will take a small rubber boat to the shore.”
George and his seven classmates stared incredulously at the instructor. If the bomb-making classes had seemed surreal, this plan—or whatever it could be called—seemed downright absurd.
“Your first task will be to bury the TNT crates on the beach—you’ll retrieve these later, right before the attacks are set to begin. In the meantime, you’ll go out and find lodging and clothing and begin to blend back into the American society. This should not be difficult; you’ve all done it before.”
The instructor, sweat dampening his forehead and cheeks, then began to explain the carefully selected targets designed to cripple American morale and frustrate industrial production.
“This bridge is called the Hell Gate Bridge. It connects Queens to the Bronx. Team One is going to blow it up.
“This bridge crosses Horseshoe Curve. It’s critical to the Pennsylvania Railroad. . . .
“These two factories in Pennsylvania process cryolite, which is needed for aluminum production. . . .”
He continued down the list, explaining the need for each operative to memorize the targets, which included bridges, railroads, canals, factories, and, most important of all, he said, a series of aluminum factories in east Tennessee.
“You can’t make a war plane without aluminum,” he said. “And every blue cross you see on this map is a factory that produces it.” Many of the crosses were dotted around a small town, just south of Knoxville, called Alcoa.
“Team One”—he looked at George, who had been selected as its leader—“your job is to blow out the electricity at these power plants for eight hours. Eight hours. That’s all it takes. After eight hours of no electricity, the metals will harden. If the metals harden, the stoves break. If the stoves break, the factory dies. If the factory dies, the aluminum supply dries up. If the aluminum dries up, there are no new planes.”
He paused to dramatize the moment, as though some of the students might not be taking it seriously enough.
“And if there are no more American planes, we win the war.”
Long Island, New York
Saturday, June 13, 1942