During the months of June, July and August 1945, in the closing weeks of WW II, the U.S. Navy sailed with impunity off the coast of Japan. The Japanese lacked all the vital sinews of war. U. S. submarines had relentlessly sunk the merchant ships carrying oil, raw materials and foodstuffs from Japan’s overseas empire. But the fanatical resistance encountered all through the Pacific war increased proportionately as the war approached Japan proper. Such was the experience at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and soon to be discovered by ourselves while attacking targets at low-level in Japan. Captured airmen rarely survived an enraged populace.

All carrier operations are dangerous, especially in combat when aircraft have a maximum of fuel and ordinance on take-off, and often return combat damaged. Actions over ships under way are to the attacking airplane’s advantage insofar as a plane can easily compensate for any change of course by a ship which must also continually change its angle of defensive antiaircraft fire. The opposite holds true for attacks against heavily defended land targets by low-level aircraft. The high loss of fighters and attack bombers in the European campaign bore witness to this operational hazard of low-level attacks (anything under 2,000 feet). It has been repeatedly experienced in every conflict since.

My first carrier strike took place in early June 1945 on an airstrip just outside Tokyo. Ensign Harold Meyer, the pilot with whom I had been flying for several years, pulled out of the almost ninety-degree bombing dive at ground level without combustion in the engine and heading for a crash. It was the first and only time in combat the dive proved so steep that I momentarily blacked out but recovered in time to return ground fire with the twin barreled .30 calib machine gun.

As a consequence of the damage from excessive G strain on pullout and shrapnel from groundfire, Ensign Meyer gave orders for preparation to abandon the aircraft in the water about a mile or so off the coast. Fortunately, the engine reignited and a lone U.S. navy fighter (F4F Hellcat) attached itself to us as we sought the safety of the fleet a hundred miles away. We reached the carrier and were given priority to land. After crash landing on the flight deck and colliding with the arresting cables, the damaged aircraft was thrown overboard. My pilot and I survived without a scratch; so much for an introduction to combat.

The Pacific air war, as opposed to ground combat in that theatre, had little or no experience against military installations with heavy air defenses. An attack on Yokasuka, the naval base at the mouth of Tokyo bay, in early July had done damage to the dockside moored battleship Nagano with some aircraft loss to us. But the prize remnants of the once proud Japanese Imperial Navy were moored in Kure arbor. Kure naval base on the Inland Sea had been one of the major staging areas for the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Nestled in a series of terraced hills, it had all the advantages of defense from shore batteries and ships. However, no Japanese surface vessel, let alone a warship, could move from a dock or a port in the Inland Sea as a consequence of fuel shortages and aerial mining by B-29’s. Although the Japanese warships were disabled dinosaurs, they bristled with multiple antiaircraft guns and enjoyed the additional protection of shore batteries. As a target, Kure had no operational value, but in short order, aircrews would learn that what the consequences of “victory disease” betokened for the Japanese at the battle of Midway, “victory hubris” would become for us at Kure.

A post war analysis summed it up: “The air strikes on Kure Harbor 24 to 28 July (1945), an action incidentally admiral McCain considered a waste of time, cost Task Force 38,133 aircraft and 102 airmen - a frightful loss.” (The Fast Carriers by Clark G. Reynolds, Naval Institute Press, 1992.)

The US aircrew and aircraft losses exceeded those incurred during the three-day battle of Midway in 1942.

Air Group One had about 96 operational aircraft on the Essex class carrier Bennington. They comprised a fighter/bomber squadron (the largest component, mostly F4U’s known as the Corsair), a torpedo squadron made up of TBF’s or Avengers, and VB-1 (Dive Bombing One), with 14 SB2C aircraft or Helldivers of which I was a radioman/gunner.

By the end of three successive days of strikes on Kure, attacking twice a day, we felt that the defenders knew the color of our eyes, so predictable were our angles of dive-bombing attack. After the low-level recovery following a bombing dive, we closed our cockpit canopies to gain air speed as we hurtled down the bay trying to avoid the ship and shore antiaircraft fire.

With losses of 2 and 3 aircraft on each successive strike over Kure, our squadron was decimated. The next target was to be the Sasebo naval base, a long distance over water and land on the west coast of Kyushu island. Bad weather over the target, necessity of refueling at sea as well as replacement of aircraft and provision needs, delayed the Sasebo strike.

While waiting for the weather to clear over Kyushu island, we made a few strikes in the Honshu archipelago on targets of opportunity, i.e. ships in secluded anchorages, ferries or railway trains. My US Navy flight log for August 15, 1945 reads, “Character of flight: Strike Tokyo, type of machine: SB2C-4”. It proved to be the last US naval air offensive of World War II against Japan.

We had been at sea off the coast of Japan for more than two months attacking air fields and naval installations. The continuation of naval air strikes in our single engine aircraft over heavily defended land targets bred a weary fatalism. Only a month had passed since turning nineteen years of age, and the images acquired as the radioman/gunner of a navy dive bomber would become the unending mental video for which there is no erase button. At the time, I couldn’t foresee all that. Like most of my shipmates, I experienced a cynicism common to men in their forties. My resignation expressed itself in a simple, yet forthright prayer. It was a lone, plaintive cry: “Let the war end one day sooner.”

On that August morning, our plane left the carrier deck in a murky overcast. After circling to get into formation, we headed due west for Tokyo. The orders were to strike selected targets in Tokyo not yet obliterated by the B-29 heavy bomber raids. Some talk had been circulating, really rumors, of a possibility the war might soon end - something about a bomb of unimaginable destructive force. Skeptics that we were, we quipped: “Golden Gate in ‘48.” The suicidal battle for Iwo Jima and the carnage of Okinawa had hardened us against hope for a quick end to the war.
To this day in my mind’s eye, I can see the gradual unfolding of the horseshoe bay leading to the city of Tokyo, and ten miles from the target hear the radio order: “Jettison all bombs, unarmed.” Someone questioned the message with: “What’s up?”, only to be told: “Good news.”

My wingman, Doug Page from NYC, rolled back his plexiglass cockpit canopy and, in celebration, fired his Smith & Wesson 38 revolver into the air. Less in jubilation than in stunned awareness of the answer to my prayer, I stared at the unarmed bombs falling to the bay below.

That evening, the fleet had one of its strongest air attacks from disgruntled Japanese officers contesting the conclusion of hostilities. As I stood on the catwalk bordering the flight deck of the carrier and gazed at the phosphorescent wake alongside the ship, a sailor from the engine room came alongside. We discussed the events of the day. Aware that my conversation lacked the usual conviviality of flight crews with ship’s company, I asked him would he like a drink.

From time immemorial, alcohol has been a post combat soporific, and the US Navy continued this tradition by offering a small medicinal cup of brandy to pilots and aircrewmen returning from air strikes. I had saved some of mine for just such an event as this night. After producing the half-pint or so of brandy, I gave it all to this unknown sailor from below decks who registered surprise at my largess. An overwhelming gratitude had motivated me in what would become a lifetime of trying to say: “Thanks.”
In retrospect, all war participants have stories to tell; each tale being uniquely tailored to an event or individual - and all of them bespeak the magnitude of this human folly.

Signed: Charles G. Westwater Aviation Radioman 2/C USNR Air Group One- VB 1 U.S.S. Bennington CV-20 Dated: 20 July 2000, Died: 12/22/2015.

(Transcribed by Ryan Cummings, Peak to Peak, with permission of Mary Meyer Scully. All photos and story are owned by the family and may not be reproduced in any way.)

(Published in the December 6, 2018, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)