EP. 493: The Evolution of Marine Aviation in World War II

0:00Welcome to the Proceedings Podcast. I'm Emily Abdel, Editor-in-Chief of Naval History Magazine. This episode is brought to you by Booz Allen. From rugged 5G on worships to unmanned systems deep below the ocean, Booz Allen builds technology that works, where it matters most. Their AI-driven mission-ready capabilities help the U.S. Navy operate and win in contested environments. No manual, no road map, no problem. Learn more at Booz Allen dot com slash defense. My guest today is Pete Owen, the author of Fighting Falcons, The Campaigns of BMF 221 in the Pacific, a new release from Naval Institute Press. Pete's book is an excellent organizational history and analysis of marine fighting squadron 221 at the Battle of Midway in the Solomon's Campaign and onboard the aircraft carrier Bunker Hill. Pete is no stranger to Naval History readers. In June 2024, he

1:05brought us the story of marine aircraft group 22's, quote, very bad day at the Battle of Midway. And in 2022, he won first prize in the CNO Naval History essay contest professional historian category for his analysis of the versatile role of marine aviation in the Pacific War. Pete, thanks for being on the podcast. Oh, thanks for having me. This is terrific. I love doing this. So it's not an understatement to say that you are an expert in the history of marine aviation. Tell us a bit about your background and how it led you to writing Fighting Falcons. Sure. Well, not an aviator. I was an infantry officer in the Marine Corps for a little over two decades. And so my background in obviously is on the ground side. And my background in writing was primarily about the Marine Corps in the First World War. But I wanted to try something that would challenge me. And I also wanted to do something that would matter a little bit, that people would care about. It would be useful to the

2:06Marine Corps and the Naval Services in general in the 21st century. And I thought a good way to do that would be to look at Marine Corps aviation because we're going to back about eight years ago, the Commodont and General David Berger came out with force design 2030, shifting the Marine Corps to working with the fleet to fight in the Western Pacific. And I thought, you know, one way the Marine Corps really did that and did it. I think pretty well was back in World War II with Marine Aviation. So I said, well, let me look at Marine Corps Aviation and it ended up being, of course, a dissertation from my PhD from the Royal Military College. Well, congratulations on completing the dissertation and being able to make the transition of turning it into a really great book. Thanks. It makes sense that you were looking for lessons learned and how that could be applied today because that's then that we go back to the past. So when you were looking at Marine Aviation and that was your topic of focus, what made you narrow in and hone in on BMF 221 for your case study?

3:12Yeah. BMF 221 is a great case study because there are through line, through the Pacific War for Marine Corps Aviation. And the subtitle of the book is the campaigns of BMF 221 because their participation is really what I see as three distinct campaigns first. The campaign that culminates in the Battle of Midway is Marine Squadrons and Marine Defense Battalions are garrisoning Pacific Islands, advanced bases, protect them from the Japanese fleet and work with the fleet that way to help protect these bases that are vital to the Pacific fleet. So that's why they're on Midway. And then they're in the most famous and well-known part of Marine Corps Aviation in the Solomon's where you have Marine Squadrons helping the third fleet, that is Halsey South Pacific area, gain and maintain control of the Solomon Island's culminating in the isolation of the major base at Rebalt. And then in the final year of the war,

4:15BMF 221 is one of just ten fighting squadrons that deploys aboard fleet carriers. There were five fleet carriers, each had two Marines Squadrons and BMF 221 is one of those. So you see 221 performing that role which had been traditionally a secondary mission of Marine Aviation to be sort of a reserve for fleet aviation. It sounds like they were at a lot of key battles. Of course, some of the biggest engagements of World War II and it makes sense that it lends itself in your book to some very exciting dogfights that you follow with lots of great analysis and insight. Yeah, it was really fun to write the book. There's so much good archival material and a lot of good I witnessed accounts by some of the veterans that really helped them kind of fill in color between the margins and make it a really colorful narrative. Yes, and we use the term case study, but despite maybe a more academic term there, it really does feel like you're just

5:18reading a lot of action-packed scenes. I'm curious, where did you find much of the archival material in firsthand accounts when you were doing your research? Yeah, first and foremost was the National Archives, the records group, records of the Office of the Chief and Naval Operations, and of the United States Marine Corps. And it was kind of neat because they were really good at record keeping in the Second World War, both Navy and Marine Corps, especially in aviation. So after each mission, the squadron would prepare an ACA-1 report, an air combat action report, which would detail how many aircraft went and who were the pilots, what did they do, what did they see, you know, how the fight turned out, did they accomplish their mission, what kind of weapons did they use, really detailed stuff. That's for every single mission that they flew. And then also, I benefited from some really good eyewitness accounts as I alluded to. First off, I got in contact with Jim Burns, whose dad, Robert Burns, was a squadron commander during their first combat tour in the Solomon's. And he provided me some excellent background

6:22material about his father to kind of flesh that out. And then also, I was in contact with the children, and especially the daughter-in-law Judy Roberts of major Edwin Roberts, who was the squadron commander during their time aboard Bunker Hill. And Judy provided me with a copy of his diary, which is phenomenally detailed. Of course, he's the squadron commander, so you can hear him talk about what he saw and what he did, but also what's worrying him about, what's making him angry about his pilots, maybe not doing what he wanted them to. So that was really cool. Cool. And then a phenomenal opportunity was a group of the veteran pilots privately published a compilation of what I call war stories. There I was stories. And all about the MF-2 21. Only from their time in the Solomon's and primarily from Bunker Hill. But it's really cool. When you're reading this very dry ACA-1 report about a mission, and then you're reading this guy, maybe 10, 20, 30 years after the order, telling his I was their story, and saying,

7:28oh, that's what he's talking about. He didn't talk about urinating on himself in his ACA-1 report, but it's right here in his firsthand account. So that stuff was really cool. That makes a lot of sense for where you got all of those like colorful tidbits that you were able to add in, especially a diary and things where they're sharing their emotions. I think one of there are two details actually that are a little bit random, but that stuck out to me, one of which is in one dogfight. You talk about a pilot who ends up in the water, and Albatross, I believe flies over. And he has to ring its neck because he's thinking, I might need some food. Another one is you'd, I think you mentioned green powdered eggs that they ate. That green powdered egg thing, it's not a delicacy like green eggs and ham. It's just something that a lot of veterans of the Pacific War of the Navy and World War II talk about having to eat these powdered eggs that would be there on the mess line and doesn't sound too appetizing. No, it did remind me of the Dr. Seuss book, and then I thought, I don't know that that sounds

8:29very, very appetizing, but it added a really nice tidbit amount of color before, quite literally the green color before we go off and watch their dogfight. So that was a really great detail. And thank you for sharing about your sources. So you start your book telling us about how we have the outbreak of war in Europe and a result naval aviation undergoes this rapid expansion with Congress authorizing like 15,000 aircraft. Sure. A bit about how this impacts marine core aviation and what challenges are posed by this sudden and rapid growth. Yes. So certainly rapid organizational transformation happens to every military organization, World War II in every country. The way it hits the marine core and marine core aviation particularly is especially dramatic because this squadron gets formed up on 1 July 1941 as part of that expansion. And so the marine core is now gone. They've got all of

9:3513 squadrons only on 7 December 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. And BMF 221 is one of only four fighting squadrons in the marine core. Now the marine core is going to expand to something over 100 squadrons. 98 squadrons will deploy to the Pacific. 40 of those are fighting squadrons and a couple others are BMO squadrons that actually are fighting squadrons at everything but name. And so that's a huge expansion. The way that impacts BMF 221 is they first go to midway islands. So the Pacific fleet's only got two squadrons that aren't wiped out at Pearl Harbor in midway and the whole Pacific fleet. They send both marine squadrons to midway island. It's a dive bomber squadron and our story BMF 221. And they're there for the next six months and they're a very experienced bunch when they land on midway around Christmas. However, as the marine core expands they start pulling experienced pilots from midway to use

10:39as cadres to form up new squadrons from Hawaii and California. Make sense. But the problem is it's at the way Naval Aviators were trained in 1941 and 1942. It's a little different from how we do it today. So how we do it today. A guy gets through his officer training whatever he shows up at Pensacola. He's going to do primary training. He's going to do intermediate training. He's going to do advanced training and then he's going to go to a fleet replacement squadron and learn how it flies type model aircraft. And only after this long progression of maybe a year and a half or two and a half years is he going to show up at a fighter squadron, right? Well back in World War 2. At the early days of World War 2 you did just primary and intermediate and you got your ways. You haven't landed on a carrier yet. You haven't even seen your type model aircraft and you show up at your squadron. And now it's your operational squadron's job to teach you how to fly and fight. And that operational squadron happens to be VMF 221 on Midway Island and all the second

11:42lieutenants are showing up not to, you know, we're asking them to defend Midway. But what they're really there to do is learn how to be marine aviators in a fighting squadron. And unfortunately a lot of the time has spent doing things that need to be done in order to protect Midway like flying aerial reconnaissance missions over the ocean and helping the defense battalion calibrate its radars and so they don't actually get a lot better. And then there's another like nine pilots show up seven days before the battle of Midway and of course they have absolutely no opportunity to train. So the bottom line is VMF 221 is not really ready to fight when the battle of Midway comes to them. Sounds like it was a lot of on the job training that couldn't necessarily happen as well as it could have because of all of these competing missions. So you talk about Midway in this quote very bad day in your Naval history article. And then you delve in in much more detail in fighting Falcons. Can you tell us a bit more about what went so wrong through VMF 221 on

12:47Sure. Sure. Sure. Yeah. You know, it's first off before I start criticizing VMF 221 in Midway or marine aviation in general. You know, we got to salute the fact that these guys were extremely aggressive and when they get into action on June 4th, they're the first fighter pilot to get into action. They don't hesitate. They're outnumbered 36 to 26 in fighter aircraft. And the Japanese have a total of 108 aircraft and this strike group come into attack Midway. They don't hesitate. Every single one of them makes a beeline for the Japanese formation and does what he thinks he's been prepared to do. But we've taken a step back. We look at how marine core aviation envisioned itself being employed during the war. They start off with a sort of a doctrine that emphasizes leaving fighters to go after the enemy aircraft and bring them up to do it. They call it general support. And it was expoused by the first guy to command all the aviation on Midway. He left command a marine aircraft group. But this is what the Marines are doing.

13:50So when we think about it, every single aircraft carrier commander at Midway, whether he was Japanese or American, when they launch strikes with dive bombers and torpedo bombers, they carved out some fighters to escort the bombers to protect them to give them a better chance of hitting the enemy carriers. Well, the Marines don't do that. Midway doesn't do that. The marine aviation is working for the Naval Air Station commander there and who reports to Admiral Nimitz down at Pacific Fleet. And Admiral Nimitz had wanted all these aircraft on Midway, marine, Navy, Army, all of them to go all out for the carriers. He said that in a planning memo to his planners. I want the aircraft to go all out for the carriers, leave the defense a good of Midway to the anti-aircraft boats. They don't do that. All the fighters go after the Japanese incoming strike in accordance with Marine Corps doctrine because that go all out for the carriers desire that Nimitz had didn't make it into the actual operations or that went to Midway.

14:54And the Marines were pretty much on their own program, according to their commander. So what does that mean? That means that the Marine dive bombers, when they find the Japanese task force and they attack the carrier here, they don't score a single hit. That's why I call it a very bad day. Not only do they lose a lot of pilots in both the dive bomber and the fighting squadrons, but they don't inflict a significant amount of damage. None of the Marine bombs hit a single Japanese ship, but if they'd had Marine fighters escorting them, maybe they would have had a little bit better chance. Marine Corps would have had a little bit less of a bad day. So you talk a bit about Marine Corps doctrine and how the Marine Corps is following that at this point, can you tell us a bit more about what the stated mission of Marine Corps aviation is at the outbreak of World War II and how that shifts as we progress through fighting Falcons? Sure, it's a really important aspect when you're looking at this. I was in enlisted Marine

15:56before I went to the Naval Academy and it was drilled into me then and it's drilled into every Marine that the purpose of the entire Marine Corps is to support the rifleman up front. So a mission of Marine Corps aviation before World War II, its primary mission, was to support the landing force during an amphibious operation and then it had that secondary mission of providing a reserve of aviation assets for the fleet, for naval aviation. Well, that's not what Marine Corps aviation did in World War II, at least not most of the time. So there was an article that I wrote that Naval History published where I talked about what was Marine Aviation really doing during World War II and what they were really doing is what VMF 221 does during the first two campaigns. They're supporting the fleet at sea as land-based aviation and the reason they're doing that is not a mistake. It's not because they're misemployed. It's because Marine Aviation is an extremely useful tool. It's an extremely

17:01versatile weapon system and fleet command is recognized and like here's the job that I need Marine Aviation to be doing. I need it to be helping me gain and maintain sea control so that they can advance up the Solomon Islands. Dropping bombs and strafing in front of Marine Corps infantry is something that Marine Aviation does and does very well during the Okinawa campaign towards the end of the war and to a small degree in some other campaigns like Iwo Jima, they do a really good job in the Philippines supporting the army there, but it's not the primary activity that Marine Corps aviation is performing for the fleet and the fleet Marine Force during the war. It sounds like in the first two case studies in your book, they're sticking more closely to established doctrine and that evolves as the book continues and as we get into the later years of World War II, you also talk about how throughout these three different campaigns, the aircraft themselves evolve. Can you tell us a bit about the main

18:06aircraft that the MF-221 was flying and how that evolves? Sure, it starts the war with the F-283 Brewster Buffalo, which is decried by historians, by aviation enthusiasts, and by the pilots who survived the Battle of Midway themselves saying this thing is terrible, even one of the officers in the MF-221 Captain Philip White who survives the Battle of Midway states in his after-action statement any commander who sends a pilot into combat in a Brewster Buffalo should just consider and last before he ever leaves the ground. I mean that's a pretty darn horrible thing to say about your primary aircraft and the Buffalo was inferior to the Wildcat and both the Buffalo and the Wildcat were inferior to the aircraft the Navy was using later in the war, but there's also a lot of evidence that hey, it really wasn't the Buffalo's, all these other factors that I talked about, they do have F-403 Wildcats in Midway, they've got about seven of them

19:08and those do a little bit better at Midway in the hands of the pilots that know how to fly them and it's the Wildcat, the F-404 Wildcat, slightly modified version that the Squagga begins flying the Solomon's campaign with and they do extremely well with this and I think the reason they do better isn't so much because the Wildcat was so much better than the Buffalo, it's because the pilots that show up at Guadalcanal in the last part of February, first part of March of 1943 have it been able to train together as a team for at least two to three months in this aircraft and they've gotten very good so when they finally get unleashed into combat on April 1st is their first major dog bite, they do fairly well and on April 7th they do extremely well. After that first combat tour, which lasts about seven weeks, they get about six to seven weeks, they get to go to Australia and cool off and show out and get some rest and relaxation and then by a week or 10 days

20:08later they show up at Esperanto and they get the F4U1 Corsair, phenomenal aircraft, maybe the best fighter aircraft of any country in the Second World War, certainly probably the best or most effective in the Pacific running head to head with the F6F Wildcat. So they fly the Corsair for the rest of the war, they fly F4U1's for their second two combat tours in the Solomon's, have a very, very favorable kill to loss ratio in the Corsair and then when they finally get aboard carriers in January 1945, they're flying the F4U1 D Corsair, which has been improved to make it safer to fly on and off carriers, but it also has the advantage of being able to fly a little bit faster because it's got a water booster and it's also able to shoot rockets in the air support room. Great, great aircraft and pilots loved it. So it sounds like this kind of steady trajectory of improvement both in the aircraft themselves and in the training that allowed them to use their aircraft

21:13better and it sounds like there were also other improvements than only this training, but this respite you talk about during the Solomon's campaign in Australia that allows the pilots to rest and recover. I'm curious what other improvements can you tell us about that readers can expect to see that increase the effectiveness of BMF 221 during the Solomon's campaign? Sure. Well, one of the keys to their success has nothing to do with the squadron and it's the integrated fire direction system that the allies and mainly the US fleet had. So they establish, Halsey establishes fighter command on water canal and it's led by a marine colonel. They've got both American Marine and New Zealand radars that do a really good job of detecting and tracking Japanese incoming flights, but they've also got that network of coast watchers, British and Australian missionaries, planters, reserve naval officers who are distributed throughout the Solomon's that

22:14give the Marines an extremely good early warning when a Japanese strike is coming down from Bougainville or Rabal or something like that. So that what does that do? That gives them even if they're just flying wild cats, they've got more than enough time to get all their aircraft up in the air and get them up high above the Japanese because if you've got an altitude advantage when you initiate contact, you can dive at your enemy at a high speed and he's at a disadvantage and it gives you a huge upper hand. So that's probably the most important. Now when they go to sea, one of the things that really makes them more effective is that they're no longer operating from jungle islands. So the environment is much more conducive. They have a much better supply chain, so they're getting the parts they need, they're getting the fuel and supplies, they have the tools they need to keep the airplanes flying, they have a very robust supply chain of bearing aircraft

23:14out to the carriers. So when one gets damaged, they can just push it over the side and get a new one the next day. So their their sortie rate is much higher. So for their second tube combat tours in the solomans because or a variety of environmental factors, not just the supply chain being so terrible and their logistics organization being so poorly managed, but just the the effects of malaria and everything else going on with being on a jungle island just wears at the mechanics and the pilots alike and they're just not able to keep aircraft flying. So the sortie rate for the corsairs in this squadron is about 13 and a half sorties per combat day in the solomans. The sortie is one combat aircraft taking off on one combat mission. That's a sortie. When they're aboard bunker hill, they during their second combat tour when they're really busy, they're putting up 22 and a half sorties per day. Now living aboard a carrier in combat off Okanala is not an

24:18easy life. It's a really harrowing and exhausting experience for the sailors and Marines aboard these ships, but they are able to do a much better job of getting aircraft up in the air. So you tell us about a VMF 221 coming on to bunker hill. Right. That is your final case study in the book and you talk about how this is quite the departure from earlier Marine Corps doctrine for aviation. So can you tell us a bit more about what factors led to VMF 221 being aboard and launching from an aircraft carrier? Sure. Sure. As a mission, you know, it's back to the future because in between the wars, the mission was primary alone. We're supposed to drop bombs and shoot things for the landing force, but then there's that secondary mission. We're supposed to be a reserve for naval aviation. Well, as the Pacific fleet gets into late 1944, our squadron, VMF 221, is in California. They're in California because the Pacific fleet has run out of foot of jobs that marine aviation can perform

25:25for them because revolves been isolated, neutralized. They only need so many fighting squadrons to garrison these islands that we now occupy. They can't fly off carriers because we haven't been training marine aviators to take off and land from carriers. And the Marines have basically been been squeezed out of the southern Pacific with MacArthur's army and Kenny's fifth air force taken over everything that's going on in the south and southwest Pacific. And then the central Pacific drive, well, the islands are just too far apart for land-based aviation to have much of an impact if they're not heavy bombers with much longer range than marine aircraft have. So marine aviation is just not really the right tool for the right job in 1944. Seven fighting squadrons, including VMF 221, rotate back to California where they start training up for whatever's going to happen next. Well, in late 1944, the Pacific fleet's got a new problem. Their new problem is that the Japanese have started the suicide attacks, the kamikaze,

26:28special attack aircraft. And they're inflicting pretty heavy losses on our fleet. Also, the Japanese fleet has really taken a salacking and the animals realize we really can get away with fewer bombers and increase the number of fighters aboard our aircraft. But they look around the Pacific fleet and they realize we really don't have a large reserve of Navy fighter pilots where we can do that. But the Marine Corps got all these fighting squadrons that are sitting in California in places like that and nobody's using them. And they realize, hey, it's much easier for us to take a Marine and teach them how to take off and land on a carrier than it is taken Navy dive bomber or a torpedo bomber pilot and try to train them to be a fighter pilot. So that's what they do. They qualify aboard carriers in December and they embark aboard Bunker Hill in Oakland, Alameda in January of 1945. And they're aboard that until she takes a catastrophic hit on 11 May 1945, a couple of them and takes Bunker Hill out of the war. So you talk about how

27:34Marine fighting squadron 221 was sort of the Navy's best bet to fill this gap in having a carrier aircraft. I'm curious, how does the Marine Corps, how do their aviators do launching from carriers in comparison to their Navy aviator counterparts? Yep, there's a lot of complaints both by Major Roberts and his superiors, the captain of Bunker Hill, and especially the task group commander, that the Marines seem to damage aircraft on landing a lot more often than the Navy does. And I think we can chalk that up to they just haven't had as much experience landing on carriers. And the course air is an aircraft that what the pilot has to do is fight his instinct to dive at the deck when landing and he has to just let the aircraft drop, cut the throttle, let it drop. So you're kind of fighting your pilot instinct to do that. So when they fail to do that, when they dive at the deck very frequently, they damage the fuselage, sometimes beyond repair and they have to chuck the aircraft over the side. But it's rare that any

28:40of the pilots get hurt doing that. So that's probably the biggest one of the weirdest things that I did find was that they're part of Air Group 17. So Air Group 17 has a dive bomber squadron, they have a torpedo bomber squadron, and they have a Navy fighting squadron, and there's the two Marine fighting squadrons, two twenty one and four fifty one. And because Air Group 17 had been training to do close air support for a landing force for much longer than the Marines had, when they get to Ebojima, it's actually the Navy's bombing squadrons and fighter squadrons that kind of take the lead initially supporting the Marines attacking Ebojima. The Marine squadrons do do that perform this as well, but it appears that the Navy was more proficient at that particular mission within this Air Group than the Marines were. That is a very interesting comparison. Essentially you're your insight too of how they landed. I can't imagine the pivot that must

29:46have been for pilots who were used to landing a certain way and then having to let their plane plane drop would go against every instinct. You give us so many exciting dogfights in the course of your book. And so one of the questions when I was reading that I knew I had to ask you was I was just curious which one was your favorite to write about? Sure. Hard to pick one because they are you know obviously June 4 is very exciting and there's so many good ones that are 1945 when they're intercepting Kramakazis and other Japanese strikes. But I would have to say the dogfight on 7 April 1943, which is known as IGO or Operation I when the Japanese attack Hulsies build up of supplies and ships off water canal there in April 1943 trying to preempt the invasion or at least delay the invasion of New Georgia. And it's really cool to read about and to write about because the official reports start with hey days before we've got this intel the Japanese are

30:49planning something and then we've got aerial reconnaissance photos showing all these Japanese planes over Japanese airfields they're obviously increasing number of Japanese planes and the northern solomans and a revolve. And then you've got the coast watch reports coming in hey I've got this many planes at this altitude coming towards you and then you have the radar reports you know it's like this bearing this many aircraft this altitude and you can plot all this out and you can kind of put yourself in the shoes of the Marine fighter directors saying okay how am I going to manage all my assets here where am I going to put all my aircraft and then VMF 221 like it's pretty much every aircraft they own up in the air and so they're in every part of this dynamic and this is the one action by the way that's probably most famous to historians that involves VMF 221 outside Midway because there's a first lieutenant named James Sweat or Jimmy Sweat and Jimmy Sweat earns a medal of honor he's credited with shooting down seven and probably an eighth dive bomber

31:54reality of looking at Japanese records there's an historian named Rick Dunn who's established he probably shot down no more than five but still that's great that's incredible and it's a really fascinating action. I enjoyed reading about Sweat throughout the narrative he's definitely a name that occurs a lot you get you get to know him through the course of the book it's a it's a fantastic read I have my copy here I'll have to if we meet in person I'll have to get you to sign it at some point yeah and so for anyone listening who wants to read it as well highly recommend fighting Falcons and you can visit us and I's website to order a copy Pete thank you so much for coming on today to talk to us about your book thanks for having me Emily this has been great and to our listeners if you like the show subscribe and tell a friend we'll see you next episode with more see stories