Page 158 - Micronesia

alling Truk the Gibraltar of the Pa- fallen to American forces early in February, vast improvement over the older Grumman
she feared that the U.S. Navy was in a posi- F4F Wildcats. As the first rays of the rising sun
C cific was no exaggeration. It seemed tion to launch a strike at Truk, a thousand reached Truk, the U.S. Hellcats swept down
miles to the west. With U.S. air superiority on the islands of the atoll. Japanese planes
impregnable. American sailors spoke of it in now a reality, Japan ordered the bulk of the already aloft were blown out of the sky by
awe-struck tones. Intelligent officers tried Combined Fleet out of Truk Lagoon on 10 the twos and threes.
to get them to pronounce it “trook” (rhymes February. A dozen cruisers and destroyers
with spook), which was closer to the native remained behind but other cruisers and W ave after wave of American planes —
pronunciation, but Navy pilots looked at destroyers and, most importantly, the car- Hellcat fighters, TBF Avenger torpedo
the name on maps and called it “truck,” and riers and battleships, sailed for Palau. The bombers, and Dauntless dive bombers —
truck it became. Whatever the pronuncia- lagoon was still packed with merchant and continued to strike Truk throughout the
tion, Truk would be a tough nut to crack. troop ships, all critical to Japan’s war effort. day. The American fighter pilots, flying the
Assigned to crack that nut was Task Force The airfields and all other ground installa- Hellcat, proved more than a match for the
58, commanded by Adm. Marc Mitscher. The tions on the islands in the lagoon were put Japanese fighter pilots and their vaunted
force included five fleet carriers — Enter- on high alert. Mitsubishi A6M5 Zero. By the end of the
prise, Yorktown, Essex, Intrepid, and Bunker day, Hellcat fighter pilots had shot 124 Jap-
Hill — and four light carriers. There were A dmiral Mitscher’s Task Force 58 reached anese planes out of the sky and destroyed
also enough battleships, cruisers, destroy- the launch point, about 90 miles east of that many again on the ground. Dauntless
ers, and submarines to push the total of Truk, two hours before dawn on the morning dive bomber and Avenger torpedo bomber
ships involved to more than 60. However, of 17 February. Streaking into the sky were pilots had put dozens of Japanese ships on
it would be Navy pilots who would actually 72 Grumman F6F Hellcats, the Navy’s new the bottom.
hit Truk. The American pilots had no way of fighters, which had first seen action against
knowing that the Japanese were even more the Japanese in September 1943 and were a
apprehensive. When Japan got word that
Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands had