The Navy’s standard torpedo bomber
The TBF became the Navy’s standard torpedo bomber during the war, despite an unsuccessful start to combat at the Battle of Midway, where five of the six Grumman TBF-1 Avengers assigned to Torpedo Squadron (VT) 8 were shot down and the lone survivor suffered severe damage. It also served various roles, such as light transport, reconnaissance, and glide bombing in close air support. and also tangled with Zeros during the US Navy raid on Truk Lagoon, Operation Hailstone.
Operation Hailstone
The Japanese Mandate island of Truk in the Central Caroline Islands had gained a forbidding reputation as an impregnable stronghold, the “Gibraltar of the Pacific,” during the interwar years and into World War II. This reputation was slightly overstated.
However, by early 1944, Admiral Chester Nimitz, the Commander of the US Pacific Fleet, had decided that it was time to break through Truk’s aura and that he had enough carrier forces to launch a significant multi-day attack on the Japanese stronghold. Nimitz had the right man for the job in Rear Admiral Marc “Pete” Mitscher, an aggressive carrier task force commander. As it happened, Admiral Mineichi Koga, the commander in chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet and Nimitz’s counterpart, made the same assessment at roughly the same time and decided that it was time to get the Combined Fleet out of Truk.
Operation Hailstone, the first carrier strike on Truk, was planned for February 17–18, 1944.
Despite suffering significant losses in the initial wave of early-morning strikes on February 17, some Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service (IJNAF) Zeroes were able to take off against the afternoon attacks, and one of these almost shot down one of VT-10’s TBFs, according to the bookazine Second World War Stories by Mortons Books. Lt. (jg) Bob Jones found himself separated from the rest of his section and left alone as the US Navy squadron’s formation launched an attack on shipping on a large freighter steaming close to Dublon Island. Flying a single Avenger over Truk Lagoon was not for the faint-hearted and Jones soon attracted the unwanted attention of a Zeke.
TBF Avenger Vs Zero
His first inkling of trouble came when bullets began raking his wings and cockpit. Jones looked out to see flames pouring out of his port wingroot. Alerting his crew to prepare for a ditching, he dived down to the sea to escape his attacker.
Jones’s unlikely rescuer was fellow VT-10 pilot Lt. (jg) Charles Henderson. Heading back to the rendezvous, Henderson spotted a TBF ahead of him trailing smoke with a Zeke on his tail. Even though he was flying the portly Avenger and not a Hellcat, Henderson dived down to get on Zeke’s tail, only to discover that his wing guns were out of ammunition from an earlier attack on a Pete floatplane. He told his turret gunner that he would pull up alongside the Zeke to give the gunner a clear shot, but this attempt made the Japanese pilot “mad as hell,” although it did distract him away from Jones’s damaged Avenger.
Henderson then engaged in a remarkable one-on-one combat with the Japanese pilot. As the Zeke came in on a high-side run, Henderson turned into the attack and did a half snap-roll just before the Zeke could open fire. The Avenger and the Zeke went at each other four times until the Japanese pilot ran out of ammunition. With a waggle of wings, he flew off to his base.
Jones, meanwhile, had made it back to the USS Enterprise, where his extensively battered aircraft was promptly pushed over the side.
Second World War Stories is published by Mortons Books and is available to order here.
Photo by U.S. Navy, NARA and Umeyou via Wikipedia
