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The Pacific Ocean, 1942. These young people had been away from their dormitories and university lecture halls for a year.
Charles “Red” Kendrick spent his 16th birthday in the shadow of Stanford University’s Hoover Tower as a child prodigy who spoke seven languages fluently, and before moving on to Harvard, he was initiated into Sigma Nu.
His classmate in Delta Tau at Miami was the lanky Yale Kaufman, who also played football and ran track at the school.
The oldest and wisest of them all, Dick Mangrum, had been a member of Phi Delta Phi at the University of Washington before going to law school and enjoying a decade-long career as an aviator.
On this day in history, November 12, 1942, the Battle of Guadalcanal begins in the Solomon Islands.
The Navy made them aviators, and because they were all in the top 10% of their cadet class, they were asked to join the Marines, which they accepted.
They had never been to boot camp; Parris Island was a new place to them; their logbooks listed only a few hundred flying hours in training aircraft; and until a month ago, most of them had never flown a frontline fighter jet.
In the summer of 1942, these few fraternity boy fighter pilots spearheaded the aerial assault in America’s first offensive of World War II, Operation Watchtower, the operation to seize the island of Guadalcanal in the Southern Solomon Islands from the Japanese.
On August 7, 1942, the Navy landed the 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal and then withdrew, leaving only some supplies behind. The Marines occupied the island’s key airfield and established a perimeter defense in anticipation of the Navy’s return.
The day an 18-year-old Marine landed on the beaches of Guadalcanal and changed the course of World War II.
By August of that year, the Japanese controlled the seas around Guadalcanal. And the skies, too. Raiding Japanese bombers attacked the Marines almost daily. With no fighters or dive bombers to stop the Japanese warships offshore, all the Marines could do was hunker down and withstand the attacks.
Kendrick, Kauffman, Mangrum and 41 other airmen were sent to Guadalcanal on August 20, 1942, and were told by their senior officer, Lieutenant Commander Charlie Fike, that their mission on the island was to “bid our lives for time” until Navy reinforcements could arrive.
Two squadrons, VMF-223 Fighter Squadron under Captain John L. Smith and VMSB-232 Dive Bomber Squadron under Major Richard Mangrum, totaled 31 aircraft. They faced off against hundreds of Japanese planes that were shooting down planes while most Americans were playing JV basketball in high school.
The Marines had 30 days to train their fighter jets against a Japanese force they had been fighting since 1937.
U.S. Marines posthumously honored in Massachusetts for heroism at Guadalcanal
The difference in experience led to disaster whenever the naval aviation service fought the Imperial Japanese Navy. At Pearl Harbor, a Marine squadron at Ewa Field was wiped out on the ground. At Wake Island, a small Marine fighter squadron fought valiantly but was quickly wiped out. The survivors reported as infantry and fought on the shore until the garrison surrendered.
At Midway, Marine fighter squadrons lost 19 of 25 aircraft in 60 minutes of combat, dive bomber squadrons lost three captains in three missions, and more than two-thirds of the squadron was shot down in attacks on the Japanese fleet.
The chances of survival on Guadalcanal were not good. After arriving on the island and taking cover under tarpaulins in the jungle that night, the Japanese launched their first ground attack on the island’s outskirts. As they set out on their first mission, they were awakened by sniper fire and Japanese machine gun fire.
Back home they were said to be spoiled and spoiled, more interested in women and barrels of wine than in the affairs of the Foreign Office, which ultimately committed them to this war, but on Guadalcanal they showed the extent of their mettle.
WWII veteran from the Pacific calls on current generation to overcome obstacles
They flew two or three missions each day, sometimes under small arms and artillery fire from the airfield. Because the Navy had not brought them beans or ammunition, they gradually starved themselves on captured Japanese rice and canned fish. The pilots, who had been thin and healthy to begin with, lost more than 30 percent of their body weight.
There was nowhere to escape the fighting. They lived in the jungle in horrible conditions. They were constantly under artillery fire and sniper fire. One of the fighter pilots, John L. Smith, was shot by a sniper while bathing in a nearby stream.
One night they witnessed Japanese warships bombarding them with devastating naval gunfire, and another night they watched as moonlit raiders glided overhead, dropping bombs and disrupting the soldiers’ much-needed sleep.
Every day they climbed into the cockpit to face off against the Japanese, knowing they were superior in every way except sheer grit. All fell victim to a host of tropical diseases unknown to Western medicine at the time, including dysentery, malaria and dengue fever.
Guadalcanal – When a bold attack was the best defense
But they faced the Japanese. John L. Smith led them into the fight. His leadership and skill as a fighter pilot were their trump card. He inspired not only his company, but every Marine on the island. They watched as he tormented a Japanese bomber with extraordinary intensity and skill. The Japanese shot him down. He ran through the jungle, found another cockpit, and continued the fight.
He was awarded the Medal of Honor for his service on Guadalcanal.
Inevitably, college-aged fighter pilots started to die. Yale Kauffman was in a dive bomber, flying slowly at low altitude to land on Guadalcanal, when an unseen enemy fighter strafed his cockpit, blood splattered the plexiglass, and his plane plummeted straight into the ocean. There were no survivors, and he and his gunner were never recovered.
Stanford genius Red Kendrick became Smith’s favorite. He was cool in battle, a quick learner, and was shot and wounded multiple times, but he always dragged his fighter back home and was always back in the cockpit the next day. On October 1, 1942, Admiral Chester Nimitz personally awarded Red the Distinguished Flying Cross.
A few days later, Red Kendrick’s luck ran out when he disappeared in an aerial ambush, and Smith also lost Willis Reese, a Rutgers University graduate.
Guadalcanal, 1942: Rare Photos of the Pacific Offensive
Fifty-three days after arriving on the island, Smith and the eight surviving pilots were fortunate enough to be evacuated from Guadalcanal. Richard Mangrum was the last surviving pilot from VMSB-232. All the other pilots had been killed in the air or during bombing raids, wounded, or medically evacuated due to illness.
They accomplished their mission: protecting the American flag on Guadalcanal and buying time with their own lives so that more planes and pilots could reach the island and continue the fight. The cost was high, both to the inexperienced Americans and to the Japanese. The schoolboys who had become Marines in 53 days suffered heavy losses, but it was the Japanese who suffered the most.
Smith’s forces were credited with shooting down approximately 90 aircraft, mostly bombers. Mangrum’s forces destroyed two important Japanese convoys and later killed over 300 enemy soldiers aboard barges and landing craft en route to Guadalcanal.
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Not only did they buy time, they also defeated superior odds and helped thwart the first major counterattack on the island in what would become known as the Battle of Bloody Ridge. Their service and sacrifice shocked the nation and inspired countless men to enlist in the Marine Corps Air Corps.
Eighty years later, when fellow fraternities from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Ole Miss University defended the American flag from anti-Israel protesters, it was no isolated incident, but the continuation of a century-long tradition of patriotism and service.
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