AIR: The Rippers

On an October day a year ago, pert WAVE Ensign Marie Thompson stood on an East Coast airfield and with a kiss for all hands sent 36 Navy flyers off to the Pacific. They were the pilots of Fighting Squadron Two. Last week WAVE Thompson had the news that all but four of the boys she had kissed goodbye were on their way home, that the squadron had made one of the great combat records of the war.

Young and Cocky. Fighting Two started out with young and cocky confidence. Their emblem was a green dragon tearing a Jap flag to shreds. “Mom” Chung, the servicemen’s devoted foster mother in San Francisco (TIME, Sept. 11), had designed it for them, especially for their leader, Commander William A. Dean Jr. They called themselves the “Rippers.”

They first encountered reality at Makin. They did not distinguish themselves. After Kwajalein they were packed back to Pearl Harbor to rejoin their own group for more training. In March the Rippers were sent off again, this time with their bomber and torpedo squadron colleagues of Air Group Two, aboard an Essex-class carrier.

Hard luck dogged them. Thomas L. Morrissey, non-flying officer, who faith fully kept a diary, noted on March 18:

“This afternoon . . . two of our fighters collided. . . .” Both pilots were killed. The rest of the brooding Rippers went on to fight at Palau and Woleai.

Top of the War. Their carrier task force moved south to the New Guinea theater and struck Hollandia, moved north east for strikes at Truk, Satawan and Ponape. Still the Rippers were no better than any mine-run fighter squadron. In early June the task force went north to lend a hand in the invasion of the Marianas. There the squadron found itself.

On June 11, the Skipper, Bill Dean, led them over Guam and Rota. That day, for the first time, the Rippers flew on top of the war. June 19 Wilbur (“Spider”) Webb slid into a flock of Jap dive bombers circling to land on Guam and knocked off six, ending his rampage with only one gun still working. On that day the Rippers got 51 planes in aerial combat, a record which the Rippers shattered themselves five days later by shooting down 67 planes over Iwo Jima.

The Veterans. They added Ulithi, Min danao, Morotai, Halmahera and Manila to their battles and scores of enemy planes to their tally. They fought now with confidence born of experience, shepherded the bombers with cool, cocky precision.

One day Leroy (“Tex”) Harris, escorting the bombers over Davao Gulf, reported by radio that they had spotted a Jap destroyer. Tex radioed blithely: “Wait about five minutes and I’ll tell you where it was—repeat was.” Less than five minutes later the bombers had sunk the destroyer.

The Record. Last month they knew they were flying their last missions as a squadron. They sweated it out, as all flyers do when home is on their minds again. Bill Dean thought of his wife and three children in California. Mike Wolfe thought of the baby daughter he had never seen, Earling Zaeske of his new son. They also thought of the baby daughter Demarest Lloyd had never seen and never would. Said the squadron diary: “Bernie McLaughlin landed from combat air patrol and announced that he had figured it out over Morotai that there are 84 shopping days to Christmas.”

At last they got their orders. Homeward bound, they added up the record. Among Fighter Two’s expanded roster of 50 pilots, 28 were aces. They had flown 13,888 combat hours, escorting the bombers on 184 strikes. They had destroyed 461 enemy planes, destroyed or damaged some 50,000 tons of enemy shipping—top score in the Navy.