[R Leonard]

Originally Posted by aileron44

Hello all:
I was less than a year old when the Battle of Okinawa took place so I have no first hand knowledge to add. However, my brother-in-law served on the USS Chenango-CVE28-during the early part of 1945. He recently e-mailed me asking about something that happened on board. I attach his comments...

Although no squadron of F4U's operated off carriers in the pacific, we trained a marine squadron of 28 F4U's on our way from Seattle to Pearl Harbor. Nobody could figure out why were training Marine pilots flying F4U's. It was total secrecy.

As far as I know, no marine squadrons were assigned to carrier duty. All carrier squadrons were Navy. Anyway, the other interesting thing is that the training consisted exclusively on night launchings and landings. They kept it up every night, in total darkness, for two weeks that we took to get to Pearl. Of the 28 corsairs, 22 were lost or damaged. My office was in the rear of the hanger deck but up high and to the right and immediately under the flight deck. I could hear them slamming into the deck all night as they came in. My quarters were just about the spot where they first hit the deck as they came in.

Perhaps it was a one time raid that the Marines wanted to pull on the Japanese somewhere and it was important enough to warrant all the time and cost and equipment expended. Nobody has ever explained what this was all about.

At any rate, the Navy never took to the F4U. They were not easy to fly and, more important, the Navy could buy 3 F6F hellcats for the cost of one F4U.

I wonder if there is any reference to this somewhere on the internet?

Does anyone have any knowledge of this that I might share with him?

Thanks a bunch!

George

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George

Look at message #10 on page one of this thread and you’ll find a long list of just F4U-4 aircraft assigned to many squadrons, many of which were USN VF or VBF squadrons operating off carriers in combat. And that leaves out the USN squadrons with F4U-1D’s and FG-1D’s of which there were several operating off carriers.

You can find all this data in the USN aircraft location reports
http://www.history.navy.mil/a-record/ww-ii/loc-ac/loc-ac.htm

Where, also, if you look hard you will find various VMF squadrons operating off CVEs. You’ll also find VMFs operating off CVs as part of USN air groups. In fact, there was one USN air group that was briefly commanded by a Marine in the course of its deployment, CVG-4 aboard USS Essex, LTC William Millington. There were two F4U equipped VMFs operating off Essex at the time, VMF-124 and VMF-213, the other fighter squadron aboard was VF-4 operating F6Fs. The aircraft location report for 16 Jan 1945, for example, shows these assignments http://www.history.navy.mil/a-record/ww-ii/loc-ac/1945/jan1945/16-1-45.pdf. Millington took over CVG-4 when the CAG Cdr Otto Klinsmann was killed in action on 15 Jan 1945.

So, really, there were plenty of F4Us operating off carriers, both USN and USMC.

Rich