Why the Japanese Feared the F6F Hellcat

It is April 6, 1945 and as the battle for Okanawa rages, a group of F6F Hellcats roar over the Pacific providing key support to ground forces and attacking Japanese airfields to protect their own fleet, but suddenly, in a From these missions, unexpected visitors arrive and without time to think, Dawn McFerson pushes the lever and begins the first dogfight of her career writing a crucial page in the history of a future Ace, let's hear the story, dive into the records and relive The mission after participating in its first The actual Dawn mission of March 19 has now officially seen combat in the Pacific and was almost a foot away from becoming a casualty, but she survived and now the fighting was only going to get more intense. , as we can see in his logbook after his first mission.

Dawn flies on patrol protecting the crippled USS Franklin and then on March 21 sends out a message mission and here after some digging we can find a color film of the USS Essex launching and recovering aircraft on this exact date , March 21, 1945. I haven't been able to specifically see any of the identification numbers on the side of the Hellcats, but somewhere on one of these fighters is young Don Mcferson. After this, on March 23, the real fight would begin here. We can see that the next missions will focus on an Okanawa objective. On these raids, the 83rd Fighter Squadron bombed airfields and bombed targets throughout the island in the hope of clearing the way for troops who would soon arrive ashore.

With Okinawa in our hands we could control the coast of China. Send plains swarms to suffocate the Japan we were reaching. For the throat of an Empire, the risk must be taken. We started really focusing on Okanawa, you know, trying to smooth things out there. You know, for the actual invasion of Okana, we worked on a lot of their airfields and, of course, a lot of their facilities. The military facilities and our search camera people even found a subbase, it's where they made the one man submarines so they could use them like the comicazi little submarine as a single type and if they had the opportunity to drive it onto a ship, you know. and it exploded, so we found that base and destroyed it at one point while these attacks were headed to Don McFerson and the rest of the fast carrier task group aircraft attacked Okanawa in preparation and then on April 1st they were given A new prepare for a different type of attack on Napal, this meant that something was happening today.

The men of the Navy invasion 400,000 men called it the day of love in another place in the world it was Easter Sunday 1945 at 8:30 that morning the marines and the army were In the first seven days we were mysteriously battling silently on land. The army and marines advanced steadily searching for an enemy that had disappeared into the 1,400 ships they supported. The men of the invasion waited at their battle stations and waited. We knew that the blow would come, but how and when in April. on the 1st, which happened to be Easter Sunday early that morning, why the invasion forces were off the coast of Okanawa and it was surprising how many ships bombed the coast.

They had battleships firing. The cruisers launched shells there. one, a rocket launcher that started firing rockets there on the island of Okwa, 5,000 miles from San Francisco, the Earth shook from a terrible blow from our ships and there is an aircraft carrier in trouble. We were carrying napon bombs that morning, which is an incendiary bomb. and we went to Scorch the beach in front of the landing barges, we know we could see the landing barges starting to arrive when we dropped it and it really turned out, I guess, as good as can be expected as far as the landing goes because the Los The Japanese had guessed or obtained information about when the invasion was going to occur and had withdrawn many forces from the beach towards the mountainous areas of Okanawa.

There's another thing we did then to help. okanawa, we were reporting there and they had an Air Force guy flying a small plane flying very low around the area and he had targets for us, we used the same frequency on the radio with him and one time I reported and what he got for us today and says I have an old grass hut here. I don't like the look. He says to put some LMO in that well. We discard it. It was ammunition. Something the boy took. On the fourth of July, it was a big explosion and then another time he had a fog buildup and he said he put a rocket in that well, which was a fuel jump, so black smoke was rolling around, you know? ?

Those were funny because you didn't do it. You don't have anyone shooting at you, you know, when you do it to have close support, you know why not only could they be shooting at you, but it's also dangerous because you would go over a peak on the mountain in this area and throw your Then stop until you don't crash into the next, you know, they're pretty tough, but despite the quiet on the beaches miles away, the forces of Imperial Japan were mounting a massive response to the American Invasion Force. It would be headed by the divine wind or kamakazi, then estru, they call it kamakazi, which means Divine Storm, we call them suicide planes.

Man by pilots who wear the ceremonial reds of the Kamakazi core, they specialize in one-way trips to their destination, the deck or The hull of any American ship under which the airplane bombs burn gasoline and the pilot with red saxophone can click that period of time when I was in the second half of March and the second half of March until April, the Kamakazi Corporation was simply harassing the fleet like crazy, our gunners on the ship almost ate and slept in their gun mounts because there was a ghost on the screen, you know, it seemed like something all the time, mostly.

As the Kamakazi attacks began to become more ferocious, the invasion of Okanawa officially began only a few. Days after this, the Japanese Navy launched its last true offensive of war Operation 10th. This would be an attempt to drive the Allied Forces from Okanawa using the kamakazi as their primary weapon. Hopefully to put an end to this the USS Essex sent Don mcferson and Wonder 5 on a strike mission to attack one of the airfields facilitating these attacks with Wonder Five um then they decided on this island of Kikushima on an airfield where they sensed that possibly some of those suicide bombers were stationed that were harassing the fleet and that's why they sent the four of us there with the Rockets to destroy that place.

We got there, there were no air planes, so we started, there weren't many on the ground either, apparently they were all awake , you know, trying to do his thing and So we really worked on his hangars and his buildings and stuff and we even put some rockets on his landing pad to make it hard for him to use that and stuff and then we decided it would be better come back because you. We were running out of ammo and stuff so we went back to basics and we just started and we were probably no more than 1,800 feet from the ocean and a flying wing at Carlos and all of a sudden I saw these two dive bombers. coming towards us on a converging course, only they were very low in the water, so I had to dive to get on one of them and, uh, all I had was good, I hadn't put my guns back on safety.

Since I hadn't had time to fire, I pushed the nose and set my sights on the path of that Val bomber, the first one, and I saw the pilot fall forward and dive into the ocean just like that. Don Mcferson scored his first aerial kill. He saw a pair of Val dive bombers just above the ocean's surface heading straight for them and, attempting to return home, responded quickly and pushed the stick down, barely managing to lower the nose in time to fire here da ve The Val's cockpit took a hit probably hitting the pilot and then the plane sank into the water but there was no time to think about this Victory but then I wondered what happened to the second one I wondered where the other guys were I had jumped on him, but I made a wing and saw that it was flying towards this airfield that we had just damaged, so I gave the old Hellcat Full Throttle and they started to catch up and I was ready to press the button.

I pulled the trigger and heard my division leaders yelling at me over the radio. Dawn, get out of there, they're shooting at you from the plane, the shore batteries, but I kept pulling the trigger and that one exploded and then I did a Wing and some real maneuvers you know to avoid getting shot down and get out of there, still coming to the field of hearing, it was the second vote without any of his friendly Hellcats around him. Dawn turned and followed him, but then she receives a call on her leader's radio warning her that the Japanese anti-aircraft batteries are beginning to open.

Dawn, however, was not going to let this one get away, she gets into firing position as quickly as possible, pulls the trigger and this time turns on the Bandit. a flame that sent him down near the coast of the island added up to two kills for don mcferson after doing some maneuvering to avoid the fire in the void he turned around and located the rest of w 5 well so i was wondering what the other three guys had been like. doing all this good time, I discovered that there were two other vile deadly bombers behind those two that I saw that I shot down and then the division leader shot down one of them and the platoon leader got the other until Charlie found Lily and I guess they're investigating later, I guess it was a twin-engine search plane of some kind, so we each got our first kill that day during this time, Wander 5 had been doing its own work with each member of the flight it scored. one kill, it had been a big day not only for Fighter Squadron 83 but also for the rest of the fast carrier task group supporting Ganawa.

Dozens of Japanese aircraft had been shot down, including 69 9 kills for the 83rd Fighter Squadron alone with little in return, American lives would be lost, but the Japanese would not surrender. There would be more waves of Kamakazi planes in the coming days and it would still be up to Dawn and Wonder Five to take off again and defend the fleet and what a fight. he would be involved in all this, he will appear in the third part of Dawn's Story coming soon in the tj3 story. If you want behind the scenes content and support my work, check out my patreon at the link below or sign up for free.

World War II History Newsletter, thanks for watching and we'll see you next time.