“Button,” Espiritu Santo

An inauspicious beginning for this fifth diary. 

Took off from Button (Espirito Santo) at 1000 this morning for Cactus (Guadalcanal) in company with 6 other planes. I took a different (more northerly) course than they did and ran into some very bad weather off southern San Cristobal. After three tries at making a landfall (one in which I came within 4 miles of land on the radar in zero-zero visibility) I finally gave up and return to Button with my load of passengers. Felt rather bad about being the only one not to get through until I later found out that two PBYs had turned back at the same spot (one was Ray Tylutki of VP-12).

Got a letter from Gimber to the to the effect that all the PPCs in that first September contingent are now instructors at Corpus and Pensacola. For the little they did they certainly got the breaks.