Like others consigned to this category, Manown and his crew were understood not to be alive, but they were not declared dead, either. Without evidence that the crew might have survived, the Navy declared Manown and his crew “missing” and “presumed dead”-three men among upward of 80,000 American service members listed as missing in action after the war was over. Moreover, nobody aboard the other planes nearby had seen parachutes. If anybody inside had survived the initial hit, they would have had little time to react, much less to escape. When Manown’s plane went down that morning, it was traveling at least 300 miles an hour. Within perhaps 10 or 12 seconds, Manown’s plane-now a meteor trailing fire, smoke and metal-hit the water.Īnd then it disappeared, swallowed by the sea. A wing and rudder snapped off, sending the plane into what a pilot aboard a nearby aircraft later described as a violent spin. Moments later, a fiery blast tore through the underside of Manown’s plane. Suddenly, antiaircraft fire erupted from multiple emplacements in the hills around the harbor. Manown and three other Avengers began to descend, intending to hit the ship. LOC Courtesy of the Mitts and Di Petta Families Brian Frank A telegram informing Wilbur Mitts’ family of his disappearance. The crew of the bomber, known as an Avenger, from left to right: turret gunner Anthony Di Petta Manown radioman and navigator Wilbur Mitts when the plane was shot down, the crewmen were deemed missing and soon presumed dead. As the planes approached their targets-ground installations on Malakal Island and ships in the nearby harbor-a Japanese freighter came clearly into view.Ĭlockwise from above: Manown’s mission was to attack Japanese positions on the island of Malakal in advance of an amphibious assault to take a critical airfield on nearby Peleliu Island. Visibility was reasonably good, a mix of sun and clouds. Once airborne, they fell into formation and headed west. The planes took off at approximately 7:30 a.m. Though they could not see each other, the three men probably chattered on the intercom system while running through their final pre-flight checks. Wilbur Mitts, the radioman and navigator, went last, closing the door behind him and taking up his perch in the dark belly of the beast. Anthony Di Petta, the gunner, went first, squeezing into a tiny glass turret toward the rear that housed a. Now, at age 26, he served as his squadron’s second-in-command.Īs Manown clambered onto the wing and wedged his thin frame into the cockpit, his two crew members entered a door on the side of the plane. A decorated pilot, he’d already flown combat missions throughout the Pacific for more than two years. Born and raised in West Virginia, Manown had worked as a flight instructor for the Navy Air Reserve before entering combat service after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Its pilot, Lieutenant Jay Ross Manown Jr., was later described in a postwar account as a “bold and intrepid” aviator. But what it lacked in speed it made up for in destructive power: Its bomb bay held a one-ton torpedo or four 500-pound bombs, enough ordnance to sink a Japanese aircraft carrier.Īvenger No. Its crew members grimly joked that it weighed so much that it could fall faster than it flew. The Avenger, nicknamed the Pregnant Beast, was the heaviest single-engine aircraft produced by any nation during World War II. Then crews moved the next group into position on deck: 12 fighter planes known as Hellcats, five heavy bombers called Helldivers and seven even larger bombers known as Avengers. At approximately 5:30 a.m., the first contingent of planes taxied and took flight. The day’s mission was critical: to hit Japanese positions and ships in advance of an amphibious invasion of Peleliu, an island in the archipelago of Palau some 50 miles to the west. Just before dawn on September 10, 1944, the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise came to life, as ground crews readied a line of airplanes for battle.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |