[The following takes place in the Pacific Theater of World War II.]
Dick Best was first to launch. He quickly realized that the SBDs were being sent off without sufficient airspeed. When he got to the bow, instead of lifting off, his left wing dropped. I’m stalling, Best thought. He managed to fight his aircraft up over the waves and gain altitude before he opened up on his radio and called to the carrier to cease launching at her reduced speed.
Best’s warning came too late, for other SBDs were already rolling down the deck. Willie West of Scouting Six failed to get airborne. His 6-S-2 smacked into the ocean just off the Big E’s port bow at 0530. West, who had survived the Pearl Harbor attack and was wounded during the Marshalls strike, struggled to get free of his sinking Dauntless. Cleo Dobson saw West’s head and shoulders final pop up close to the tail of the plane. Then a wave dashed over the SBD and West, and they both disappeared. The destroyer Conyngham picked up West’s rear gunner, AMM2c Milton Clark, uninjured. Dusty Kleiss considered the loss of his buddy Willie West “one of the greatest shocks of the war. I was on deck, about two hundred feet away, when the sinking aircraft dragged him down. A very special friend.”
For Dobson and Mac McCarthy, this loss was very painful. All three pilots had survived rough experiences over Pearl Harbor in December 7 and had become close. As he and McCarhty surveyed West’s personal effects, Dobson found “it was one of the hardest jobs I have had since I came into the Navy. It doesn’t seem right for a man whose every idea and thought was so pure and good should have to go as he did. I guess when your number is up, you have to go.”
Source:
Moore, Stephen L. “Something Big Was in the Works.” Pacific Payback: The Carrier Aviators Who Avenged Pearl Harbor at the Battle of Midway. NAL Caliber, 2014. 161-62. Print.
Original Source(s) Listed:
Richard Best oral history, 36.
Dobson diary, 20, 21 May 1942.
Kleiss, VS-6 Log of the War, 80.
Further Reading:
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