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“Jack” Wells, an aviation machinist’s mate second class, was an exception . “Tall, trim, and as handsome as a movie star,” according to a hometown paper in Oklahoma, Wells had enlisted in the navy at the age of seventeen on September 1, 1941.14 Following boot camp and aviation machinist’s mate school in Seattle, Wells headed for Pearl Harbor, arriving two weeks after the Japanese attack. He immediately shipped out in Lexington and, like Parachute Rigger James Gibbons, survived her sinking in the Battle of the Coral Sea. Aboard Liscome Bay, Wells was assigned to one of the Avenger torpedo bombers. Seaman Second Class Lloyd D. Whalen, a draftee from a small town forty miles east of Lubbock, Texas, also joined Liscome Bay with VC-39. Whalen was one of the squadron’s alternates awaiting orders for radio operator school so he could eventually help man one of the squadron’s TBM Avengers. After watching a string of crashes of the torpedo bombers as the novice pilots struggled to master their new aircraft, and noting that the radio operators seldom survived such incidents, Whalen had decided that radio operator school could wait inde¤nitely. Seaman First Class James D. Honold, one of the squadron’s parachute riggers, had joined the navy on February 23, 1943. Because Honold was only seventeen at the time, his parents had to sign his enlistment papers for him at the recruiting station in Little Rock, Arkansas. After boot camp in San Diego, he served as a plane captain at Alameda NAS before completing three months of a parachute rigger course. He joined VC-39 to pack and rig parachutes for the squadron’s pilots and aircrews. Soon after he came aboard Liscome Bay, Honold encountered a pleasant surprise . One of his ¤rst cousins, Seaman Second Class Clayton C. Rucker, was also on the carrier. As with Wiltsie’s nephews and the Homec brothers , the ¤rst combat voyage of the ship was destined to be a family affair for Honold. With the pilots and aircrews safely aboard, Liscome Bay steamed out to sea once again, this time to qualify the pilots and train the ship’s launch, landing, and rescue teams. The qualifying exercises made for many anxious moments aboard the small escort carrier. With an overall ship’s length well short of two football ¤elds, there was literally no room for error. According to Ensign Daily’s recollection, two or three planes were lost during the violent takeoffs from and landings on Liscome Bay. Wildcats, Avengers, and a Rear Admiral / 47 He later commented, “We began to learn about death during those qualifying ®ights. Life as a pilot or plane crew was not for the faint of heart.”15 It certainly wasn’t. During aircraft launches, the ®ight deck crews, often called “airedales,” presided over a scene of controlled chaos. While some manhandled airplanes into position for takeoff, others fueled and armed the aircraft. Scrambling maintenance men would clamber onto wings, tear open and slap shut cowlings, and leap clear just before the catapults hurled the aircraft aloft. All the while, the ®ight deck crew kept a careful eye out to avoid being decapitated or blown overboard by a whirling propeller blade. Looking back on their activities, a pilot from another carrier recalled that “a ®ight deck would not be, could not be, worth taking to sea without them.”16 Takeoffs from Liscome Bay held plenty of excitement for the pilots as well. Positioned on the hydraulic catapult mechanism that ran along the port side of the ®ight deck, they would signal they were ready for takeoff with a quick thumbs-up. Then they would be blasted into the air at seventy miles per hour, ¤ghting to keep control of the plane as they cleared the ®ight deck at the bow of the ship. The real challenge, however, came when the pilot tried to return to his shipboard home. First, he would enter the ship’s racetrack landing pattern. Dropping his ®aps and lowering his landing gear (cranking them down by hand if he was ®ying a Wildcat), he would drop down to approximately sixty to seventy feet above the water and bring his air speed down to just above stall speed. It was a delicate moment—a stall at that altitude, with no altitude to recover, would likely be fatal. Flying the traf¤c pattern was only a prelude to the excitement that was to come. Circling around to come in over the...

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