“Button,” Espiritu Santo
Patrolled 770 miles. Stewart-Ontong-Java sector. At 1235 on my return leg, about 50 miles NE of the Stewart Is. (off course to the west due to compass error) I was passing through the first curtain of a small front and stumbled onto a Jap Mitsubishi 01(B-26 type) at my altitude (1500 feet). I have been flying through the clouds just above the I had been flying through the clouds just above the base of the overcast and as I broke out into a clear spot, there was the Jap crossing my bow about a mile away on a course 300° true.
I turned to the right to intercept him and as I did so he spotted me and began to climb with a slight turn to the right. I kept turning inside him and we both open fire at about 900 yards. As the range was extreme I could only lob shots into him while his 20mm cannon in the tail fell short. As I closed the range to 600 yards and pulled up abeam and slightly below him his waist cannon opened up. Just as we really started to let fly at him he reached the cloud curtain and disappeared. I plunged in after him, on instruments.
As he entered the cover he must’ve turned sharper right and nose-down. Momentarily I broke out into a cloud canyon and as I did so the Mitsubishi passed directly over me at right angles down the canyon. As he was only about 200 feet above me the waist and tail turret opened up on his belly for a few seconds and sank about 30 rounds into him before we were once again enveloped in clouds. This was the last time I saw him despite a thorough search of the area. The clouds were so thick he had no trouble escaping.
A few minutes after we sent our contact report, Lt.Cmdr. Fowler (ex VP-22 East Indies and Port Darwin) in the next sector in one of VB-102’s B-24s sent a contact report to the effect that he had been jumped by two Mitsubishi 01s (Betty). Have no doubt that this was the same three-plane patrol that Bassett ran into yesterday. I contacted one of them and Fowler, only a few miles west of me, contacted the other two. Why they were split up, I don’t know. They must run a patrol from Buka to Rennell to San Cristobal to the Stewarts and back to Buka. Something new. Maybe they’re getting worried about us.
The attitude of the Jap pilots has certainly changed in the past few months. They used to jump us with anything, now they run, unless it’s a PBY or unless they have good odds.
Their attitude may be well explained by the latest amazing intelligence report from Cactus. Yesterday 60 Jap Aichi 99s and 60 Zeros rated the Cactus area. To meet the 120 Japs we sent up 104 F4Us, P-38s, F4Fs, and P-40s. The Japs succeeded in sinking two small ships but lost 77 planes, plus probables; we lost 6 planes, 1 pilot recovered. What a massacre! That’s more planes than they can make in two Weeks in Japan. No one of the Japs refer to Guadalcanal as “Death Island.”