from Tulagi and shot down three Vals at three separate levels of his dive. He cut down to pick-up speed, climbed, and roared after four more Vals and blasted them into the treetops of Florida Island. Then, with his cooling system destroyed, his face bloodied by flying bits of glass from his shattered windshield, he crash-landed in the Bay.
Swett was rescued. He received the Medal of Honor, and the nickname “Zeke,” for this is what Zeros were now being called since the cataloguing of enemy fighters with male nicknames, bombers with female ones. He would fly again, but in the cockpit of a Corsair, and he would shoot down seven more planes before he was through. But on that afternoon he had done more than anyone else to stagger Fleet Admiral Yamamoto’s “I” operation, and henceforth all boot Marine pilots would fly out to maiden combat determined “to do a Jimmy Swett.”
In all, 39 Japanese planes were shot down that wild afternoon of April 7, and 28 of these were destroyed by Marine flyers at a cost of seven of their own aircraft, with no pilots lost. In their elation, pilots of all services claimed kills all over the lower Solomons, and many of the antiaircraft gunners on those little merchant ships were already proudly painting red balls on their gun mounts, their prows, their sterns, so that all claims taken together would surely have meant the destruction of more planes than Yamamoto possessed.
The Americans were not the only Munchausens abroad in the Solomons that day and the next, when the “I” armada thundered over New Guinea. Japanese pilots, having sunk only a destroyer, a tanker and a corvette at Guadalcanal and a small Netherlands transport in New Guinea, returned to base with such glowing reports of success that Yamamoto put an end to “I” and sent the carrier pilots back to their ships.
The Marine air arm thereupon countered with an offensive of its own, striking at Munda Airfield on New Georgia about 190 miles up the Solomons ladder. The field had been cleverly hidden beneath a fake forest. The Japanese had cut away trees but had kept the treetops in place with wires. Beneath them they had built the base which became a thorn in the side of the Americans.
On April 13, 16 Corsairs left Guadalcanal to escort 12 Avengers on a strike at Munda Airfield. Young Bill Coffeen flew one of the Corsairs. He was that rarity in air combat, a flying staff sergeant. He was also a veteran, and when he took off that early morning, nearly blinded by a guide light at the end of the runway, narrowly missing the trees at the edge of the airfield, he guessed that he had begun a bad day.
By the time he had passed over Munda and the Avengers had flashed down, Coffeen’s engine was smoking and his oil line leaking. He was losing altitude rapidly, coming down very fast over The Slot between Choiseul and Kolombangara. At 3,000 feet his motor was so hot he feared it would explode.
Coffeen jumped. His parachute opened.
A few seconds later he had slammed into the water. He surfaced and pulled the cord on his life jacket, his “Mae West.”
It had a hole in it and could not be inflated.
He pulled out his rubber raft and inflated that.
The paddle was missing.
Then a storm broke over The Slot and a wave capsized Coffeen’s rubber boat, carrying off his shoes, his medical supplies, his food. Coffeen now had his rubber raft, the clothes he wore, a hunting knife and a pistol—but he also had hope, for he had heard the sound of approaching motors.
It was his flight returning to Guadalcanal. Coffeen waved the raft’s white sail happily. The planes flew on. He fired his pistol. Two Corsairs came in low. Coffeen fired again and waved the sail. The Corsairs flew on. They had not seen him. There were shark fins sliding by and it was getting dark on the waters of The Slot.
The Americans had broken the Japanese code and they had discovered that Fleet Admiral Yamamoto was preparing to visit bases on Bougainville.
Intelligence was queried: Would it be wise to kill Yamamoto? Would his death hurt Japan or would it make room for a commander better than he? The answer was that Isoroku Yamamoto was the best military mind in Japan, and so his doom was sealed.
On Henderson Field, Rear Admiral Marc Mitscher, air commander for the Solomons, rounded up a squadron of triggermen. He chose the Army Air Corps for the job, for their twin-tailed Lightnings were the longest-ranging things aloft. Sixteen pilots of the 339th Squadron under Major John Mitchell were alerted for the day of Yamamoto’s departure from Rabaul on April 18.
On April 18 Sergeant Bill Coffeen decided that if he stayed where he was he would die.
He had spent two days paddling by hand, burned by sun and salt. He had spent two nights sleeping upright for fear of falling, for fear of sharks. At last he paddled to a tiny island. It was uninhabited. It had no fresh food, no water—only coconuts. After three days of eating coconuts, with the growling of approaching dysentery already audible within his stomach, Coffeen looked at a larger island in the distance and made up his mind to try for it.
He floated his boat. He got in, pulled out his automatic pistol, found it rusted beyond use—and threw it away. With a stick for a paddle, he moved out on The Slot. He paddled and rested, paddled and rested, judging the time and his progress from the position of the sun. At somewhere around nine o’clock he rested and heard the sound of motors. He glanced up eagerly.
They were too high, much too high to see him. They looked like Lightnings.
There were 16 of them.
At thirty-five minutes after nine o’clock on the morning of April 18, two twin-engined Betty bombers arrived over Kahili airdrome. They carried Fleet Admiral Yamamoto, his chief of staff, Vice Admiral Ugaki, and the most important officers of his staff. It was as though Admiral Chester Nimitz had flown up to Guadalcanal from Pearl Harbor, collecting Bull Halsey and other top aides along the way.
A cover of nine Zeke fighters patrolled the skies above the Bettys, watching them drop down to land. Just as the Zekes turned for home, 12 white-starred, twin-tailed killers struck at them from above. Four more Lightnings went flashing down on the helpless Bettys.
Captain Tom Lamphier shot one of the bombers down in the jungle. Lieutenant Rex Barber sent the other spiraling into the sea.
Up above, Major Mitchell’s covering Lightnings shot down three of the horrified Zekes who had wheeled to slam the door left so helplessly open. Only Lieutenant Raymond Hine was lost.
The remaining 15 triggermen flew back to Guadalcanal to make the report which would send wild but highly-secret elation sweeping eastward over the Pacific until it spread through the offices of the Pentagon. But the jubilation had to remain guarded; it would be foolish to let the enemy suspect that his cipher had been cracked. Thus such cryptic vaunts as Bull Halsey’s message to Marc Mitscher: “Congratulations to you and Major Mitchell and his hunters. Sounds as though one of the ducks in their bag might be a peacock.”
It was. On May 21 Tokyo announced that the great Yamamoto was gone. He had been in the plane which Lamphier sent crashing into the jungle and he had been killed with a half-dozen staff officers. Admiral Ugaki had been badly hurt, but he had survived.
That brilliant proud leader who had arrogantly told the world of his intention to dictate peace terms in the White House, the Emperor’s “one and only Yamamoto,” was now dead.
Bill Coffeen knew that he was dying.
He had reached that larger island two days after he had seen the returning Lightnings flying high above him and had noticed that there were only 15.
But the larger island had no food or water either. Nor did a third island to which he had made a laborious three-day voyage.
A mosquito bite on his left hand had become infected. A red streak ran from the hand to his shoulder. On the morning after he had reached the third island, Coffeen’s arm was twice its normal size. He seized his knife and cut open the festering sore which was poisoning his blood. He bathed the wound in sea water, and discovered that his right foot was also infected.
He moved on to another island.
He paddled on, coming ashore on another lifeless rock, eating coconuts, sleeping on beaches, scratching in the sand for anything edible, moving on repeatedly while the weeks turned two and moved toward three.
Around the twentieth day he saw a red-roofed house a mile or more ahead of him on the shore of the island he was coasting. But Coffeen was too weak to paddle farther. He went ashore to rest through the night, hoping to
