Flying Crucial Missions in the Echaotic Pacific

WWII Navy pilot shot down days after his 24th birthday

By John "Jack" Scott Haack

Reprinted with permission from the Wright County Journal-Press and the Maple Lake Messenger

Submitted by Maple Lake resident John “Jack” Scott Haack, nephew of United States Navy Pilot Ensign Jack Carl Fuller, and tells the story of Fuller’s arrival in March of 1945 on the USS Bennington, an aircraft carrier used by the US Navy during WWII. Fuller served on the front line during the Okinawa Campaign on the East China Sea, taking part in an attack on the Yamato, a Japanese battleship, ending with this death on April 7, 1945.

March-April 1945

United States Navy Pilot Jack Carl Fuller in his formal Naval uniform in the midst of WWII. Contributed Photo

It was a big day when Fuller arrived on the huge Essex Class aircraft carrier CV20 Bennington, to start flying combat missions against Okinawa. Up to this point, he had been on a small Casablanca Class CVE escort carrier, CVE100 Bougainville, delivering pilots, aircrew, and planes to the big carriers being depleted in their ongoing attacks against Japan during the Iwo Jima campaign, now ending.

The war in Europe was winding down with the Germans on the run, but all hell was breaking loose in the Pacific. With the Okinawa campaign now starting, the Japanese were in a very intense struggle with the Americans, using kamikaze aircraft on suicide missions and manned flying guided missiles called Ohkas (Cherry Blossoms), all taking a terrible toll, in particular sinking protective task force destroyers on picket duty protecting our carriers, but also some CVE and CV carriers themselves, most notably the Franklin.

It had been many months since the Battle of Midway, which pretty much decimated the Japanese navy, turning the tide towards victory in the Pacific for the Americans, but Japan’s top-secret Yamato, “the world’s largest battleship” with its nine massive 18.1-inch guns and numerous antiaircraft gun emplacements was holed up in Japan’s Kure Harbor. It had been waiting to come down to Okinawa on a one-way suicide mission, beach itself, and aid the Japanese army defending this outpost on Yokohama south of the southern tip of Japan. We’ll get to that later.

March 22, 1945  

Ensign Fuller and his Helldiver Gunner Charles T. Williams leave Bougainville Island on a destroyer, the Lyman K. Swenson. He would be transferred from the Swenson by “breeches buoy” to the Bennington, which had lost a Helldiver, pilot, and crewmember March 17, while attacking the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) Yamato in Kure Harbor. Ensign Worden had been the most recent Bennington loss.

Months earlier, Bennington lost planes over Chichijima Island, whose pilots and crew were taken prisoner as they were shot down. That story is told in “Flyboys.” These Americans were captured and kept in a stockade until the defenders cannibalized and ate them. Keep this in mind later when reading about Fuller and Williams bailing out on April 7, over the ocean near Yamato, early in that second (final) battle against this huge ship and its escorts.

March 25, 1945

Fuller flies his first combat mission after arriving on Bennington, one of 15 helldivers in the Bennington’s internal flight hanger, also housing torpedo planes and fighters. It’s a successful mission against Okinawa, as the Navy was preparing for the campaign to start on April 1, 1945. With this, his first combat flight, Fuller had flown 3.3 hours, bringing his total flight time in his flight logbook to 559.8 hours. He was flying with squadron mates having 3,000 hours flying time in their logs, going back a year when the new Bennington left Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Ed Sieber, a squadron mate, shared some interesting insights into this. “We didn’t want to get close to these replacement pilots. They were a liability for their inexperience, having not trained with the rest of our squadron, so coming on the scene as they did, we ‘shunned’ them. I’m not proud of that, but that’s the way it was. I honestly have to say that I never got to know your Uncle Jack.”

April 1, 1945

Fuller and Charles T. Williams (who was also trained as a radioman) take off on another strike in another Helldiver against Okinawa. This time, it was a 3.6-hour flight softening up the Okinawa beachhead where landings were underway that very day. The Japanese strategy was to not meet their enemy on the “breeches buoy” so action was light and basically unopposed. This would not turn out to be an “April fools’ joke,” as later bloody action would ultimately expose very real massive death and destruction to both the Japanese and American forces.

April 2, 1945

This was an extraordinarily long day for Ensign Fuller and Charles T. Williams. He flew two back-to-back missions, and 4.0 hours. Again, it was against the Okinawa beachhead that was opened the day before. The Bennington air squadrons were fully deployed, softening up the Okinawa beachhead with full participation from all their available dive bombers.

April 3, 1945

A most memorable day for Fuller, as this was his 24th birthday. Born in 1921, he had been the middle child of my maternal grandparent’s family, Lewis and Anna Magdelene Fuller, married in 1916.

Did Fuller’s squadron celebrate this special birthday? Probably not. It was just another day of combat, but Fuller now earned the Air Medal with this being his fifth combat mission. He really wasn’t the type focused on earning medals, but one can’t help but imagine how he felt about such a well-deserved birthday present earned on the actual day of his birthday.

April 7, 1945

Fuller and Williams MIA today – determined KIA a year later. No one knows exactly what happened. “After Action Reports,” give conflicting eyewitness accounts as a pilot from another squadron, thought to be a torpedo squadron, witnessed a falling helldiver with a missing wing fluttering down and a pilot and gunner also coming down under open parachutes. It appears unknown if their decent was successful, if the air crew smothered under their parachutes after hitting the sea, or if they had or were even able to inflate a life raft, which would have been possible had they successfully belly landed their plane on open water and if it floated for a short time. In any event, being so close to Yamato, capture would be the most horrible outcome imaginable. Also, the enemy was known to shoot men after leaving their plane in fully-deployed parachutes. Then there’s that other possibility, also based on another witnessed account, expressing that the first of four helldivers (Fuller’s), exploded as it crashed into the sea. This report showed no one left the plane before it crashed and exploded.

One of Jack Fuller’s pictures shows him (first row, last on the right) with other squadron members posed on and in front of a Helldiver. Fuller flew one like it when he dropped a 1,000 pound bomb on the Yomato. Contributed photo

In any event, this is that tragic day where Ensign Fuller and his gunner took off on a spectacularly huge mission involving more planes (around 300) than the Japanese launched against Pearl Harbor. It’s said he really wanted to fly this mission. The target was to stop the Yamato flotilla headed out of southern Japan (Kure Harbor) toward the South China Sea, as reported by a couple PBMs (patrol bomber flying boats) that were monitoring the expected movement of what was left of the Japanese fleet. Fuller got his first Helldiver back to do that. Would this be some sort of luck? This was a massive five-hour flight to the target chronicled in Russell Spurr’s book, “A Glorious Way to Die,” describing the sinking of “the world’s largest battleship,” IJN Yamato. Fuller is mentioned in that book, so I had the chance to communicate with Spurr about his well-written and carefully-documented book. The final hours of flight time documented in Fuller’s flight logbook for the day are now totaled as 15.4 combat hours for April and 571.9 hours as a final total.

The sinking of the Yamato cost the Americans 10 aircraft (four Helldivers, three torpedo planes, and three fighters – 12 pilots and aircrew). It appears Fuller’s VB82 squadron carried out the first dive bombing/strafing attack, landing bombs that knocked out the ships radar and some anti-aircraft batteries, starting fires that never stopped until a couple hours later when the ship finally sank under the might of planes from Task Force 58.2 and 58.4. Planes from 58.3 apparently got lost and failed to arrive on scene. It was a huge victory for the Americans. On Yamato alone, nearly 3,000 sailors went down with the ship leaving fewer than 200 survivors. The supporting cruiser was sunk, along with several of the destroyers accompanying this flotilla.

USS Bennington After Action Report:

Bennington’s Aircraft After Action Report for this huge operation shows that 10 Torpedo planes, eight fighters, and 11 dive bombers took off from her deck that morning between 10:17 and 10:42. They were joined by units from Belleau Wood, San Jacinto, and followed by Hornet. Antiaircraft fire did not commence until these units were within five miles of the target. Shortly after, the report goes on to say that the strike leader from the Hornet directed, “Sugar Baker 2 Charlies (SB2Cs) take the big boy.”

The same target was given to the torpedo planes:

“Four VB-82 planes pushed over to attack the battleship, the steepness of the glide varied for each plane, depending upon its position in relation to the target. The glide course (from north to south) was along a length of the ship, which was then heading southeast increasing speed. It seems clear that Lt. Comdr. Wood, Lt. (jg) Sieber and Lt. (jg) Ferry were the first planes of any type to attack this target. It is possible that an element of Hornet planes may have attacked prior to Lt. (jg) Murphy of VB-82.

Six of the Helldivers broke through the clouds in positions where an attack on the battleship could not be made effectively. Two planes attacked a cruiser and a large destroyer to the east of the Yamato; two others attacked a cruiser and large destroyer to the west of the Yamato; one plane attacked a destroyer to the west of the battleship. During the VB-82 attack, the Japanese ships commenced a coordinated simultaneous turn to the left. Subsequently, the ships were observed making individual disorganized maneuvers. The antiaircraft (AA) fire continued throughout the glide and the retirement. During retirement, at a range of 10-12 miles, the main battery fire from the battleship was directed against the planes.

Some helldivers flying off to a mission in WWII. Contributed photo

Three (and very probably four) of our planes were hit by AA. Two oil lines in the plane piloted by Lt. Comdr. Wood were severed by one burst (which also did damage to the left flap of his plane), and he landed aboard with only one gallon of oil in his engine system). Ensign J.C. Fuller was not observed after his breakoff for the attack, and it is believed that his plane was hit by AA. A VT-82 radioman observed an SB2C wing fall from ahead and above his plane. Just prior to the commencement of the VT-82 attack. Two open parachutes were observed at about the time of the VB-82 attack, but no identification of the survivors could be made. Searches have been negative….”

This report concluded with facts like, our planes were loaded with two 1000-lb. semi-armor-piercing bombs set to drop as a salvo and because of that, actual direct hits were hard to determine in all the confusion. Wood, Ferry, and Sieber are credited with those hits, and it remained unclear, even with replacement pilot Fuller and his action-equipped camera plane being the fourth SB2C to dive on Yamato, what actual role he played and/or what happened to him during all this immediate confusion. There apparently was a rumor that he dropped his bombs prematurely, but that flies in the face of all the official reports and certainly with his Navy Cross Citation. According to Ed Sieber, someone apparently did say that a Helldiver pilot in this early attack dropped his two bombs harmlessly into the sea, well away from Yamato. He stated that he didn’t necessarily mean to suggest that this could have been Fuller, VB-82’s sole replacement pilot on this mission equipped with a wing camera to document the success of their attack. Curiously, Sieber could not recall that Fuller was even in with his first tight-knit group of three longtime VB-82 pilots, diving together on Yamato. Eleven of the VB-82 aircraft were flown by Navy pilots, but Bennington also had a Marine squadron on board with only one in a Corsair able to join that vanguard group of VB-82 Helldiver pilots diving on Yamato, with the rest diving on the remaining Japanese task group, participating in this action.

Medals

The President of the United States presented  Jack Carl Fuller with both the Air Medal and the Navy Cross. In the citation for the Air Medal, it read, “For meritorious achievement in aerial flight as pilot of a Dive Bomber attached to the USS Bennington in action against enemy Japanese forces on Okinawa and nearby islands from March 25-April 4, 1945. Participating in five missions in enemy-controlled territory, Ensign Fuller rendered valiant service throughout each vital assignment despite grave hazards and, by his expert airmanship and cool courage, contributed to the success of his squadron in the fulfillment of these important missions. His resolute conduct and unswerving devotion to duty were in keeping with the highest tradition of the United States Naval Service.”

And for the Navy Cross, the citation read...

“For extraordinary heroism as Pilot of a Dive Bomber attached to the USS Bennington in action against an enemy Japanese battleship and nine escorting warships near Kyushu, Japan, on April 7, 1945. Despite extremely poor visibility and low ceiling, Ensign Fuller boldly took the lead in a determined and skillfully executed bombing attack on the target and plunging through terrific antiaircraft fire of all calibers from the enemy vessels, personally bombed the battleship in the center of the formation, thereby inflicting severe damage on the enemy. Continuing his daring run at great risk to his own life, he contributed essentially to the success of this squadron in the hazardous attack, which resulted in the sinking of the battleship, two cruisers, and three destroyers, and in the damaging of three other destroyers. By his superb airmanship, relentless fighting spirit, and great personal valor in the face of grave peril, Ensign Fuller upheld the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.”