America's Few

- Blurb -

In the South Pacific during World War II, the aviators of the US Marine Corps came out of the shadows to establish themselves as an air force second to none. During the war, the number of Marine squadrons mushroomed from 13 to 145. The centerpiece of the action was in the Solomon Islands and adjacent archipelagos, from Guadalcanal to Bougainville and beyond. Marine Corps Aviation began in 1915 under the concept that the USMC, functioning as a self-contained expeditionary force, should carry its own air support element. However, during World War I - in addition to ground attack duties - several Marine aviators saw air-to-air combat action and achieved aerial victories against the Germans over the Western Front. During the interwar period, the support of USMC amphibious operations became a key element of Marine Aviation doctrine, and the small force gradually grew. In December 1941, came the rude awakening. Within hours of Pearl Harbor, heroic Marine aviators were battling the Japanese over Wake Island. In the war in the Pacific, the first half of 1942 belonged to the invincible forces of Japan, who gobbled up Southeast Asia from Thailand to Singapore, as well as the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies. To protect the vital sea lanes to Australia, Allied strategy called for a line in the island coral and jungle to be drawn though the Solomon Islands, and the island of Guadalcanal (code named "Cactus") became the focal point. The key instrument of the Allied Guadalcanal land campaign was the USMC. In the summer of 1942, when Allied airpower was cobbled together into a single unified entity - nicknamed "the Cactus Air Force," Marine Aviation dominated, and a Marine, Major General Roy Geiger, was its commander. Of a dozen Allied fighter squadrons that were part of the Cactus Air Force, eight were USMC squadrons. It was over Guadalcanal that Joe Foss emerged as a symbol of Marine Aviation. As commander of Marine Fighter Squadron VMF-121, he organized a group of fighter pilots, nicknamed "Foss' s Flying Circus," that downed 72 enemy aircraft. Foss himself reached a score of 26, matching the score of World War I "Ace of Aces" Eddie Rickenbacker, by February 1943. He became a media hero at home and was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Roosevelt. After about a year stateside, Foss returned to the Pacific to command VFM-115 in February 1944. Pappy Boyington, meanwhile, had become a Marine aviator in 1935, but resigned his commission in 1941 to join the American Volunteer Group, the "Flying Tigers. " He quit the AVG in April 1942, rejoined the USMC in September, and became executive officer of VMF-122 in the Solomons. Best known as the commander of VMF-214 (the "Black Sheep Squadron"), Boyington came into his own in late 1943 while Foss was stateside. Boyington eventually matched Foss' s aerial victory score. Though the emphasis of this book will be on the two top-scoring aces, Foss and Boyington, the second tier aces will also be discussed. They include Robert Hanson (25 aerial victories), who might have exceeded the scores of Foss and Boyington, but who was killed in action off Bougainville in February 1944, one month to the day after Boyington went down. The others include Ken Walsh (21 victories), Don Aldrich (20), John L. Smith (19), and Wilbur Thomas (18. 5), and the first USMC ace of the war, Marion Carl (18. 5). Hanson, Walsh, and Smith, like Foss and Boyington, were awarded the Medal of Honor.