Fletcher put out the same day from Pearl Harbor with the aircraft carrier Saratoga; the cruisers Minneapolis, Astoria, and San Francisco; nine destroyers; a fleet oiler, and the transport Tangier.
Marine Fighter Squadron VMF-211, equipped with Grumman F4F-3 Wildcats, was aboard the Saratoga (in addition to Saratoga's own aircraft), and the 4th Defense Battalion, USMC, was aboard the Tangier. The relief force carried with it nine thousand shells for Devereux's old five-inch battleship cannon, twelve thousand three-inch shells for his antiaircraft cannon, and three million rounds of belted.50-caliber machine-gun ammunition.
The aircraft carrier Enterprise, and its accompanying cruisers and destroyers, was ordered to make a diversionary raid on the Japanese-held Marshall Islands. The carrier Lexington and its accompanying vessels put to sea to repel, should it come, a second Japanese attack on the Hawaiian Islands.
At 2100 hours, 22 December 1941, a radio message was flashed from Pearl Harbor, ordering the Saratoga Wake Island relief force back to Hawaii. It had been decided at the highest echelons of command that Wake Island was not worth the risk of losing what was in fact one third of U.S. Naval strength in the Pacific. When the message was received, the Saratoga was five hundred miles (thirty-three hours steaming time) from Wake.
At shortly after one in the morning of December 23, 1941, Japanese troops landed on Wake, near the airstrip.
That afternoon, his ammunition gone, his heavy weapons out of commission, and greatly outnumbered, Major Devereux was forced to agree with Commander Cunningham that further resistance was futile and that surrender was necessary to avoid a useless bloodbath.
Major Devereux had to roam the island personally to order the last pockets of resistance to lay down their arms.
Four hundred seventy officers and then of the Marine Corps and Navy and 1,146 American civilian workmen entered Japanese -captivity.
Chapter One
(One)
Wake Island
1200 Hours, 18 December 1941
Ensign E. H. Murphy, USN, had planned the flight of his Consolidated Aircraft PBYS Catalina to Wake Island with great care. It wasn't a question only of finding the tiny atoll, which of course required great navigational skill, but of reaching Wake when there was the least chance of being intercepted by Japanese aircraft.
His Catalina was a seaplane (though the PBY5-A, fitted with retractable gear, was an amphibian) designed for long-range reconnaissance. Its most efficient cruising speed was about 160 MPH, so it had little chance of running away from an attacker. The high-winged, twin-engine Catalina had three gun ports, one on each side of the fuselage mounting a single.50-caliber machine gun, and one in the nose with a.30-caliber machine gun.
If Ensign Murphy's Catalina encountered one of the Japanese bombers that had been attacking Wake on an almost daily basis, all the Japanese would have to do was slow down to his speed, and, far out of range of his.50-caliber machine guns, shoot him down at his leisure with his 20-mm machine cannon.
It was a five-hour flight from Guam. Murphy took off at first light in the hope that he could be at Wake before the Japanese began their "scheduled" bombing attack.
Hitting Wake on the nose was skill; finding it covered with a morning haze was good luck. He landed in the lagoon and taxied to the Pan American area. Commander Cunningham's requisition of Pan American's Philippine Clipper had been almost immediately overridden by Pacific Fleet, which had plans for the use of the aircraft itself, and it had flown on to Guam, carrying hastily patched Japanese bullet holes in its fuselage.
Marine Fighter Squadron VMF-211 was down to two Wildcats, although Major Putnam told Ensign Murphy that he hoped to get a third Wildcat back in the air within hours with parts scavenged from wrecked airplanes.
Murphy carried with him official mail for Commander Cunningham and Major Devereux, including the last known position of the Saratoga relief force, but the Navy had not risked one of its precious few Catalinas solely to deliver messages. Many Catalinas had been destroyed on December 7, and what planes were left were in almost constant use.
But there was on Wake one of the Marine Corps' few highly skilled communications officers, Major Walter L. J. Bayler, USMC, who had previously been assigned to the USS Wright and had come to Wake with Commander Cunningham. Bayler's services were desperately needed on Midway Island and the decision had been made to send for him, even at the great risk of losing him, and the Catalina carrying him, in the attempt.
Bayler spent the afternoon of December 20 collecting official documents (including casualty lists) from Cunningham and Devereux, and then personal messages from the Marines of the garrison, for delivery, when it could be arranged, to their families.
The next morning, Ensign Murphy lifted the Catalina from the Wake lagoon and pointed the nose toward Pearl Harbor, eight hours and 1,225 miles distant. The Catalina was the last American aircraft to visit Wake Island until the war was over.
At Pearl Harbor, mechanics swarmed over the Catalina to ready it for another flight. Three hours after it landed, it was airborne again with another flight crew, this time bound for the Philippines, where the Japanese were approaching Manila, and demolition at the Cavite U.S. Navy Base had already begun.
The Catalina remained in the Philippines only long enough to drop off its passengers-a Navy petty officer who was a Japanese linguist, and an Army Ordnance Corps major, a demolitions expert-and its mail bags. It loaded aboard the outgoing cargo, mail bags, and its Pearl Harbor-bound passengers while it was taking on fuel. These were a U.S. Foreign Service officer, an Army colonel of Artillery, and a Marine Corps second lieutenant.
Manila Bay was choppy, and the Catalina smashed heavily into unyielding water several times before the pilot was finally able to get it into the air. When they'd reached cruising altitude, he went back into the fuselage to see if any damage had been done to the aircraft-in particular to the floats-and to the passengers. He found the Army colonel and the Foreign Service officer doing what they could to bandage the Marine Corps second lieutenant.
Although it had not been visible under the lieutenant's uniform when he boarded the Catalina, his body was bandaged. The bone-jarring bounces of the Catalina as it had taken off had ripped loose four or five of the two dozen or so stitches holding an eight-inch gash in the young Marine officer's side together. There was some bleeding, and he was obviously in pain, but he refused, rather abruptly, the pilot's offer of a syringe of morphine.
They rigged a sort of bed for him out of life preservers and blankets, but that was all that could be done for him until the seaplane reached Pearl Harbor.
An hour out of Pearl, the young Marine went forward to the cockpit. The pilot was surprised to see him.
"Feeling better?" he asked.
The young Marine nodded.
"In a couple of minutes, I'll radio ahead, and they'll have medics meet us," the pilot said.
"I thought maybe you'd do that," the young Marine said. "That's why I came up here. Don't."
"Why not?"
"Because, unless I get put in a hospital, my orders will carry me to Washington," he said. "I can get myself rebandaged there."
"You may not make it to Washington, in your shape."
"Then in San Francisco, or Diego, wherever they land me. Do me a favor, just don't say anything."
"Suit yourself," the pilot said, after a moment's thought.
"Thank you," the young Marine officer said, and he went back into the fuselage.
Curious, the pilot took his flight manifest out and looked at it. It gave no identification beyond, "McCoy, Kenneth J. 2nd Lt USMCR," but then the pilot noticed that Second Lieutenant McCoy was listed first on the manifest. Passengers were listed in order of their travel priority, which meant that McCoy had a higher priority than even the Foreign Service big shot.