From WWII veteran TOM CHEEK.  Shot Down 3 Zeros, Awarded Navy Cross
This is his account of a WWII air battle.

The fighter escort for VT-3 would be: 1st division, Lcdr. J. S. Thach, Ens.
R. A. M. Dibb; Lt. (jg). B. T. Macomber, Ens. E. R. Bassett.  2nd division, Mach.
T. F. Cheek, Ens. Dan C. Sheedy; Lt. (jg). E. S. McCuskey, Ens. M. K. Bright

As navigational data appeared on the teleprinter screen, we entered it on our aircraft plotting boards.  First to be plotted was Point Option that mythical point that traveled at a set speed, on a predetermined course, and from which all maneuvering of the Task Force was reckoned.  From Point Option we computed our courses, estimated flight times and fuel consumption to and from the expected position of the First Carrier Strike Force.  The answers we came up with were anything but encouraging. From the standpoint of fuel, the anticipated position of the Japanese force was beyond the effective combat range of our Grumman F4F-4s.  Someone else had reached the same conclusion, for shortly an order came down to scratch the VF escort.  Torpedo Three would have to go it alone.   Thach bolted from the ready room heading up the ladder in the direction of the bridge.  Returning half an hour later, he erased the names of McCuskey and Bright from the schedule.  The escort would go, he announced, less my second section.  Six F4Fs would ride herd on VT-3's twelve TBDs.  The two SBD dive bomber squadrons, VS -5 and VB -3, would go without fighter escort depending instead on speed and altitude for protection.  

When the order came to man our aircraft, Thach gathered us in a huddle outside the ready room.  His instructions were short and to the point:
"Whatever happens, stick together!  None of this 'Lone Wolf' business!  You'll only get yourself killed and won't do the rest of us any good!  Another thing, lean your mixture as much as you can, save your fuel!  Cheek, you and Sheedy stick close to the torpedoes, just astern and about a thousand feet above, stop any one trying to get to them!  I'll be three or four thousand feet above you and give you high cover.  Lets go!"

Torpedo Three was cruising in a compact two divisions, stepped-down, formation.  In each division there were two, three-plane, sections flying in the standard vee  pattern.  The first division flew in a left echelon while the second division tucked in close to the lead section in an echelon to the right.  The pattern afforded the rear seat gunners a broad field of fire, a fact that would soon be very evident to me.   We were approaching an area of tall cumulus clouds, rising from fifteen-hundred-feet bases in towering, grayish-white, columns across our course, when the torpedo formation made an abrupt change of course to the right.  I followed penciling the time and new compass heading on the left sleeve of my flight jacket.  Adrenaline began to flow, something was about to happen.  I, also, had a decision to make.  The formation was now on course between two of the large cumulus buildups which were joined at their base by a shelf of cloud.  The shelf extended from the cloud base to at least five hundred feet above my altitude.  Should I climb over the shelf, or, drop down to the formations level and go under the cloud deck as it appeared they would do?  Moments later the question was of no consequence as black puffs of anti aircraft fire  blossomed below and ahead. Then an object I thought to be a belly tank whirled down in the path of the formation.  Looking up, I saw my first enemy aircraft, a Zero fighter.   Silhouetted against the cloud shelf the Zero was in a shallow dive making a head on run at the lead TBD.  Puffs of white spouted from the Zero's engine cowling as, at extreme range, the pilot tripped off a short burst from his 7.7mm guns.  Without hesitating the Zero rolled into a steep climbing left turn, then leveled off in a wide, sweeping, flat turn to the right.  I was momentarily spellbound watching the fighter's clean, seemingly effortless maneuvers.  Within seconds it was in position to make a run on the last plane on the formation's right flank.  Nosing down slightly the pilot continued his curving approach, five hundred feet above and slightly to my right, as though I had not yet been seen.    I moved my engine controls into combat power range, and pushed the throttle to the forward stop.  Easing back on the control stick until the F4F was hanging on the prop, I brought the gun sight pip to an almost full deflection lead on the Zero's nose. The index finger of my right hand squeezed down on the gun trigger set in the molded grip of the control stick.  The six, 50 caliber, wing guns rumbled.  I held the trigger down just long enough to see the red stream of tracers converge into the Zero's engine and start to drift back into the fuselage.  The thought flashed through my mind, right down the target sleeve's throat.  But this was no target sleeve.  The Zero's nose bucked up momentarily, dropped back, then the plane came diving down in my direction.

At the moment my guns were firing and the tracers were curving up and into their target, I was literally hanging in air.  The muzzle blast and recoil of the six fifties was all that was needed to push my overloaded, under powered,  F4F over the edge into a control sloppy stall.  As I let my fighter's nose drop and started a recovery rolling to the left, the Zero swept past on my right,  black smoke and flames spewing from the engine, a river of fire trailing back along its belly.

Clearly visible, the pilot sat rigidly facing straight ahead.  He's dead, flashed across my mind.  Alive he would have been watching me; looking for any movement of my control surfaces; anticipating my next move.  This night, Teruo Kawamata, P O 3c, Imperial Japanese Navy, would be listed as missing in action.  Rolling into level flight, the throttle still fire walled, I tried to bring my guns to bear on two Zeros diving in on the formation's left quarter.  The Wildcat's straining engine could not build up maneuvering speed fast enough.  With the pipper of the gun sight at a point well ahead of the pair, I snapped off a short burst.  As the tracers crossed their diving path the Zeros abruptly zoomed skyward.  Their climbing ability was stunning to watch, they were out of sight, and mind, in seconds as I rolled to the right reversing course.

With airspeed increasing the Grumman began to respond to my mind's commands rather than my deliberate moves.  Time ceased to be measured, hands and feet moved automatically evoking control responses moving the plane as one with my body as I turned and twisted to face each new situation.  I moved to intercept a lone Zero diving in on the last TBD on the right.  Just short of coming into firing range, it, too, zoomed up and out of my sight.  Reversing course to the left I scanned the sky for more attackers and saw none.  Looking to the left, back across our course, I watched as a Zero trailing black smoke and flame crashed into the sea.   A mile beyond an F4F made a last spinning turn as it too disappeared nose first into the ocean.   Only rippling rings in the water marked the F4F's impact, while a puffball of black smoke hovered over the spot where the Zero had  disappeared.  Several other such puffs of black marked similar ruffled spots of water.  

Grumman or Zero, I wondered turning my attention back to my own line of flight.  The lack of Zero attackers had only been momentary.   Diving in on the last section of TBDs on the left came a pair of Zeros.  As before I was not in position to intercept and without hesitation snapped a burst of tracer in their direction.  The results were the same as before, an exhibition of the climbing ability of this nimble fighter.  The thought struck home, this was not one to tangle with in a dogfight, at least not with an overweight F4F-4.  Again reversing course to the right I was startled and alarmed to see that the TBDs had increased speed, the distance between us had doubled.  A duo of Zeros were just pulling up from a run on the trailing plane on the right flank of the formation.  

At that moment a Zero dove in front of me aiming at the center rear of the group.  I rolled after him, sliding into his trail aiming for a no-deflection shot.  All the while, so sure of my target, I was mentally painting a 'Rising Sun' on my Grumman's fuselage.  As my finger tensed to squeeze down on the trigger, the Zero seemed to shudder, then pitched forward into a near vertical dive into the sea as I pulled up in a climbing turn to the right.   The TBD gunners had beaten me to the punch, but the inning was far from over. I was snapped out of a momentary trance as a burst of tracers, shoulder high, swept past on the right side of the cockpit.  Nosing down and twisting left, glancing back I could see no one.  A burst of tracers brushed across my left wing, I snapped the fighter tightly to the right, again I could see nothing tailing me.  Hesitating, a mistake, I allowed the F4F to level off.  Immediately 7.7 tracers zipped past on both sides of the canopy and I heard or felt the thud of hits on the armor plate behind my seat.  The 7.7s abruptly stopped, replaced by 20 mm cannon tracers, seemingly the size of oranges, floating past in slow motion on both sides of the canopy.  I violently kicked the F4F into a vertical turn to the left and found a Zero tucked in under my tail.  The turn had caught him off balance, he was drifting rapidly to the right.  I snapped the Grumman back to the right hoping to catch him in a scissors, let him face my guns.   As the Wildcat rolled past the horizontal a fiery stream of red tracers flashed over the canopy, seemingly just inches above my head.  It was like a broad stream of fire, leaving a mental impression of heat.  The Zero was not in sight as I completed the turn, and I immediately swung the fighter back in the direction of the torpedo squadron. 

The last TBDs in the formation were just passing from view under the cloud shelf.  To the right of the formation the plane that had last been under attack was now in a  curving glide down to the right.  A parachute blossomed behind the TBD and from the side a Zero knifed down toward it.  I felt helpless, hog tied, there was nothing I could do to stop what I thought was going to happen, the TBD, then the chute hit the water.  Dangerously close to the water and with out firing the Zero pulled up to the right climbing in my direction.  I glimpsed other Zeros above and to my right.  Shifting my gaze to the instrument panel, steadying the fighter on course I flew into the cloud deck.  Passage through the murky cloud was brief in time, but as the seconds ticked by questions raced through my mind.  Where was Jimmy and his high cover?  Where were the puffballs of AA coming from?  Where was Dan Sheedy?  I had not seen him since we came under fire!  Was that Dan's F4F I saw go in?  All questions remained without answers as I burst from the cloud cover into a clear narrow avenue between two towering cumulus. 

I fully expected to see the torpedo group ahead as I came into the open.  They were not in sight, but others were.  A  thousand feet above my right shoulder flew four or more Zeros.  Three hundred yards off my left wing, on course and at my level paced another Zero.  I snapped to rigid attention as I realized the speck in the middle of my gun sight was a Zero coming straight at me.  Wait for him to close was a momentary thought instantly overruled by a reaction that closed my finger down on the trigger. Tracers spewed out, pieces of metal from the Zero's engine and cowling flashed as I released the trigger, pulled up and rolled to the left.  Still in the turn I began firing as the nose of the plane on my left appeared in the outer ring of my gun sight.  Tracers raked through its engine and the length of the fuselage before I released the trigger and passed astern.  Rolling into level flight I flew straight for the billowing cloud that had been to the left of course as I broke into the open leaving the first cloud deck. With attention riveted on my flight instruments, the dim gray light of the cloud closing around me was a welcome feeling.  Once in the cloud I made a brief adjustment to flying on the gauges, then made a 90 degree turn to the right, reduced power and began a slow descent.  There were two reasons for this action.  First, the turn should shake off any Zero that had followed me into the cloud; the one I had last fired on evidently flew through the first cloud deck with me. Secondly, and hopefully, when I again broke into the open I would be in the vicinity of the torpedo squadron.  It was not to be.  There were no aircraft in sight.  As two puffballs of AA blossomed in the direction I was searching, I looked closer, still nothing in sight.  Then one, two, three more puffs of black popped up, each successively closer to me.  Realizing I was the target I glanced down to the left, and found a large cruiser of a design I'd never before seen.  With its bow splitting the water in a foamy white wave, "a bone in its teeth," what ever its destination the ship was wasting no time getting there.  I  pushed over and rolling right dove for the ocean leveling off at a hundred feet above the water.  Swinging back to the left I found what the clouds had kept hidden from me.  There before me was the target, the First Carrier Strike Force.

Ahead and on a course to my left were three large carriers, all with bow waves and stern wakes that indicated a high rate of speed.  These were later identified as Kaga, Akagi, and Soryu.  The fact that there should have been a fourth carrier, Hiryu, failed to register in my memory.  Kaga was in the lead with Akagi not more than three miles, broadside to, and directly ahead of me.  Soryu, which I compared to Enterprise in size, was a mile beyond and to the right of Akagi, and appeared to be just starting a hard turn to starboard.  Flashes of gunfire spotted the decks of nearby escorts  but I saw no shell burst or possible targets.  It appeared I had the sky to myself. A brief thought flashed across my mind: should I make a strafing run on the nearest carrier?  Then as I looked back to Akagi, hell literally broke loose.  First the orange colored flash of a bomb burst appeared on the flight deck midway between the island structure and the stern.  Then in rapid succession followed a bomb burst midship and water founts of near misses plumed up near the stern.  Almost in unison on my left Kaga's flight deck erupted with bomb bursts and flames.  My gaze remained on Akagi as an explosion at the midship waterline seemed to open the bowels of the ship in a rolling, greenish yellow ball of flame.  A black cloud of smoke drew my attention to Soryu, still in a turn to starboard, she too was being heavily hit.  Dense black smoke billowed from the entire length of her hull.  All three ships had lost their foaming white bow waves and appeared to be losing way.  I circled slowly to the right, awe struck, my mind trying to grasp the full impact of what I had just witnessed and the scene still in motion.  In reading the script, the briefing team had voiced this happening as only a hoped for possibility.  The infernos I now watched in creation were not being viewed from a comfortable seat in a movie, but from atop a parachute pack in a Grumman fighter.

"Group rendezvous!  Rendezvous!"   The command piercing into my ears from the head phones in my helmet jerked me back to reality.  I was also startled by the realization that except for an occasional sputter of static, the abrupt command was the first radio transmission I had heard the entire time we had been airborne.  I reached for my microphone and began to call, first Jimmy, then Dan, finally any station!  I desperately wanted the sight of a friendly set of wings.  My head phones remained silent. At briefing, the rally point after the attack had been given as twenty miles north of the target.  Japanese ships were visible in that direction, and to get there it would take fuel that I did not have to spare.  "Thach's admonition popped to mind, None of this lone wolf business!  It was time to get out of here."