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By Al Zdon
The Inland Sea in Japan is a body of water surrounded by three major islands of the nation — Honshu, Kyushu and Shikoku. These days, it is a picturesque
expanse of sea and mountains and a busy waterway serving such major ports as Osaka and Kobe.
In World War II, it was a bastion of the Japanese military and a safe waterway for the Japanese ships. For
the American Navy, the Inland Sea was not a place you'd want to hang out.
So when two young American airmen had to ditch their plane on May 14, 1945, in the Inland Sea after a bombing run late in the
war, their chances didn't seem too great. All they could do was to float in the water and hope for a rescue – soon.
Don Comb was a young pilot of an OS2U Kingfisher aboard the cruiser USS
Astoria. On that spring day in 1945, he was given the news that he and another pilot would be doing a rescue mission. That was no surprise, because that's what they were trained to do. It was their job.
But this wasn't just any rescue mission.
This one was to be in the heart of the Japanese empire.
ooooooo
Don Comb grew up in South Minneapolis and went to Washburn High School,
graduating in 1939. The only child of a building contractor and his wife, Comb was a sophomore at the University of Minnesota studying civil engineering as the United States plunged into World War
II.
"I had an opportunity to enlist in the U.S. Navy," Comb said. With his two years of college and an interest in aviation, he was able to qualify to be trained as a naval aviator. Because he
wouldn't be called up until fall of 1942, the Navy suggested he get into a Civil Air Patrol program.
"We flew Piper J-3s out of the old Cedar Airport, where the Mall of America is now." He was
required to do some cross-country flights as part of his training. "So I decided to go by the farm where my future wife Peggy lived in Pine Bend. I saw her father out in the field cultivating corn, so I
cut my engine and came up behind him. I was about 50 feet away and I opened the door and said 'Hi, Mr. Wallace.' I don't know that he ever figured out how I could sneak up on him in an airplane."
On
the day he left for the Navy, he was with his mother in the backyard of their home when she reached down and plucked a four-leaf clover for him. "I've still got it in my billfold. I've carried it all
these years, and I've had a lot of luck."
Training was in Iowa, Minnesota and finally in Corpus Christi, Texas. "They gave us choices of what type of flying we wanted to do, and my last choice was
scout-observation. But that's what I got."
Comb got his wings in August of 1943 and spent time in Norfolk before getting orders to the USS Astoria, a light cruiser being built in Philadelphia. The
Astoria (CL-90) bore the same name as a heavy cruiser that had been sunk earlier in the war.
"I used to fly down the Delaware River where the shipyard was and it was really polluted. There was this
hydrogen-sulphite garbage in the river, and it was really putrid. It would just tarnish the gold braid on our uniforms."
Comb trained in his assigned airplane, the OS2U Kingfisher, a small float
plane, in both New York and Florida. "I liked the plane. It wasn't fast, but it could fly for six hours and that's a long time to be sitting on a parachute."
The light cruiser was commissioned in May
of 1944 and went for a shakedown cruise in the Atlantic in June and July. "I had to pick something up for the ship in Trinidad, and it weighed about 300 lbs. The ship was about 25 miles out. I had a heck
of a time getting airborne. Finally, the radio operator at Trinidad said to me, 'Are you attempting to take off, or are you just taxiing back to the ship?"
By the end of October, the Astoria was in
Hawaii heading out to the war zone in the South Pacific.
In Hawaii, Comb was promoted to lieutenant j.g. and it was his duty to buy all the officers of the Astoria a round at the local officer's
club. "I was fully prepared to do that, but that night at the club it was free night. All the drinks were free. You couldn't buy one if you wanted to. Like I say, I've been lucky."
The role of the
Kingfishers had changed by the time the Astoria got to the Philippines to begin its combat career. "Originally, we were supposed to do scouting, but the job was changed. All we did was fly rescue
missions for pilots who had been shot down at sea."
The two Kingfishers assigned to the cruiser were stored at the aft of the ship. They were launched by means of a catapult that used black powder to
blast them off the side of the ship. When the float planes came back from a mission, they landed in the ocean, taxied onto a net at the back of the cruiser, and then were hoisted aboard with a
crane.
But it wasn't all that easy. "We would circle the ship at about 500 feet, and they would signal us with the Charlie flag either on the port or starboard to indicate which way they would turn.
The ship would be steaming at 45 degrees out of the wind, and then would come to a full stop and the rear end of the ship would slide over until it was 45 degrees into the wind.
"It created a slick
on the water in the wake of the ship that we could land on." It wasn't that easy after that, either. Comb would have to get the Kingfisher up on the net, or "sled," and then once the plane was
secure, he would have to get out on the wing and attach the hook from the crane.
While it was being hoisted, ship's crewman held 15-foot poles out to push the plane away if it looked like it was going
to hit the side of the ship and do damage.
Launching could also be fun. "It was quite a thrill. You'd put your head back in the headrest, and when the cat officer launched you, the plane would go down
this 60-foot catapult and by the end of those 60 feet you'd be going 60 miles an hour."
That sometimes wasn't enough. "Sometimes you'd just about hit the water as you tried to gain speed. You'd be at
full power with the propeller set at low pitch." Comb guesses he was probably launched off the cruiser 15-20 times during the war.
"We had duty every fifth day. We'd have to be in our flight gear,
ready to launch within 20 minutes."
The Astoria advanced along with the rest of the Navy closer and closer to Japan, providing anti-aircraft protection for the carriers. The crusiser was part of the
action at Iwo Jima, and then Okinawa.
At Iwo Jima, the Astoria was anchored just 300 yards off the shore. "When we weren't flying, we were assigned to a general quarters station. Mine was in what was
called the 'second station.' If the bridge was knocked out, we could run the ship. We were observing the shore, and we really had some powerful optics. I could see the Japanese in their trenches and I
could see the Marines in their trenches. They were all lying in that volcanic dust.
"It made me appreciate what I had on the ship. That night I went down to dinner at a table set with linen
tablecloths. I knew I had made the right choice of service."
At Okinawa, Comb was sent out to rescue a pilot that had gone down at sea. "An air group commander had been shot down, and they sent me
out. I had fighter protection with me. I found the location of the pilot by the yellow dye in the water, and I attempted to land. The winds were incredibly strong and I didn't realize how rough the sea
was.
"I hit the top of a swell and coasted into the trough. Up and down I went. When I looked out, all I could see was sky, and the next minute all I could see was water."
Comb had overshot the
downed pilot and he taxied his plane back to the form bobbing in the water. "When I got there, he was dead. So I just punctured his Mae West and let him go.
"I was only about a half mile off the
coast, and now they were starting to shoot at me. But the swells were 15 or 20 feet high with white caps on the top. There really was no place to take off.
"I had a feeling at that point that I
should never have landed in the first place, but there I was. I got the plane to the top of a swell and gave it full throttle. I was afraid that I would just auger right in. I hit the top of the second
swell and then the third and suddenly I was airborne. It was amazing."
The fleet worked its way up toward Japan and began attacking targets on the Japanese mainland. That meant that more and more
pilots were being shot down in Japanese waters.
On March 29, 1945, a pilot was shot down in the northern part of Kagoshima Bay on the southern Japanese homeland island of Kyushu. The Astoria,
operating near Okinawa, got the call.
"They gave us 24 fighters for escorts, but the rescue was way up in the north end of the bay. We had to fly 70 miles up the bay to get to the location.
"We
were flying at about 500 feet, and I looked out the window and saw a twin-engined bomber flying wing on me. It suddenly occurred to me that we didn't have twin-engined bombers. He was a Jap bomber. He
must have thought I was a Japanese seaplane or something. I could see him very clearly. He had his goggles up on his forehead.
"Once our fighters saw him, he didn't last long."
The other Kingfisher
pilot out that day was Lt. (jg) Jack Newman, and it was Newman that landed the seaplane and rescued the pilot.
"Our fighters had been told not to expend any ammunition until the rescue was made, but
now that we were on our way back to the ship, they wanted to attack a seaplane base they had spotted. They got permission to strafe.
"They made a run, but they were really disgusted that they hadn't
set anything on fire. So they received permission to make another pass."
The second time through, one of the American F6F Hellcats was hit by machine gun fire, and his belly tank burst into flame. He
was advised to bail out, and he did – at 300 feet.
"They called me and asked if I had space on my plane. He had bailed out so low that his chute had just barely opened when he hit the water.
When I got there, the canopy of silk had come down on top of him. I taxied up alongside.
"I started reeling in the silk, and finally uncovered the pilot. I got him aboard the float, and he just clung
to one of the struts. He said, 'Take me home.' I told him, 'Heck, no, you've got to get into the rear cockpit.' I helped him up and he made it.
"The pilot had taken in a lot of salt water, and he was
really sick. He threw up again and again. It all landed in the bilge, and on a Kingfisher, the draft is all from back to front. The smell was a little rough.
"Now I'm nearly back at the ship when the
whole fleet opened up with anti-aircraft fire. A couple of Japanese planes apparently had snuck in. I think it was Halsey himself that got on the radio and said there's a friendly seaplane out there.
They sent me about 10 miles out and told me to stay there until the shooting stopped."
Comb was finally able to get his plane back to the Astoria. "They sent me down to the sickbay, and the doctor
offered me a couple of shots of Old Grand Dad. I had been out to sea for a few months without even having beer. Those two shots really put a smile on my face. Then I had to go up and talk to the skipper
about what had happened."
Comb earned his first Distinguished Flying Cross for the rescue.
"We would go to such extremes to rescue one guy, but it really boosted morale."
All was not daring
rescues, though. Comb recalled probably his most embarrassing moment. "We were at Ulithi, and I was ordered to take an officer ashore in my plane. I thought it would be really neat for me to take off
right beside all the other officers who were going ashore in a boat. I got right up alongside of them when all of a sudden the engine fell out of the airplane. It was just ka-boom. I thought I had hit a
surface craft, but when I looked, there was the engine lying down on the float."
The rescue at Kagoshima Bay was hairy enough, but Comb's next call appeared to be even worse.
On May 14,
1945, Two Navy airmen were downed in the Inland Sea, waters locked in by the islands of Japan and completely controlled by the Japanese military. The men were shot down at 7 a.m. and waited in their life
raft for help. They had to paddle against the tide in order not to be swept into shore where they would be captured.
The senior aviator on the Astoria, Lt. Charles Tanner, and Comb were picked for the
rescue.
"I was so excited, I just kept running to the bathroom. Oh, my God, I'm flying into the Inland Sea. I was extremely excited about flying into the heart of Japan. They weren't very friendly in
those days.
"Even when I was on the cat, I think you could say I was visibly concerned about the flight. But once they launched me, and I saw Tanner's plane ahead of me, I started to calm down a
little.
The downed airman, a pilot and his radioman/gunner, had put yellow dye into the sea. A small group of American planes kept an eye on them, and one of the pilots, Burton Bardeen, later received
the Navy Cross for his actions. Twice, when Japanese destroyers began to approach the life raft, Bardeen and others strafed them and made them change their course.
The two float planes, and four
fighters from the USS Randolph, encountered anti-aircraft fire as they flew over the coast. They flew another 50 miles into the Inland Sea where they spotted the yellow dye. It was now noon,
and the men had been in the water for five hours. "Tanner went down and tried to do the rescue, which he did. Tanner got the pilot into his plane."
Now it was Comb's turn to rescue the radioman. The
Japanese shore batteries were firing at the seaplanes and the raft, but the shells were not coming near. In the sky, the fighters shot down two Japanese planes over the rescue scene. "Right then a Jap
destroyer came right at us, but he was attacked by our fighters. The destroyer went out of control and hit the opposing bank of the sea."
Comb tried taxiing up to the raft, but was coming in with too
much speed so he killed his engine. Comb helped the radioman, Cletus Phegley of Fristoe, Missouri, onto the float, and then into the rear cockpit.
To start the engine at sea, Comb had to use a starter
gun. The shells needed to crank the engine over looked like shotgun shells, and Comb kept a box of them in the cockpit. He tried one, and it didn't work. The second one didn't work either. Finally, on
the third shell, the engine roared back to life.
"I didn't find out until later that that was my last shell. That was a close call."
Comb headed back. The Kingfishers encountered strong
anti-aircraft fire again as they went over the Japanese coast, but made it through unscathed. For this rescue, Comb received his second Distinguished Flying Cross.
The rescue was so extraordinary, it
made headlines back in the United States. A United Press story called it, "one of the most daring actions of the war." Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher told the press after the rescue that if need be, the Navy
would recover pilots "right out of the Emperor's fish pond on the Imperial Palace grounds."
In August, the Astoria was part of the fleet heading right for the coast of Japan to continue the air
attacks. "All of a sudden we did a 180-degree turn and steamed as fast as we could in the opposition direction. No one had any idea what was going on.
"In the days following, we learned that the Air
Force had dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima."
The war was soon over, and the Astoria headed back to the United States. "We had to go around to the other vessels and pick up their personnel
who were ready to go back. We had pulled up alongside the carrier USS Hancock and they set up all the lines between the ships to send those guys over. When the first sailor from the Hancock stepped off
that ship heading for ours, the hangar door popped open and the Hancock's ship's band began playing, 'California, here I come.' It was one of the most thrilling moments of my life."
Comb left the
service and went back to college and got his engineering degree. He worked for his father building airfields around the Midwest for many years, and completed his career working for 3M. He retired 19
years ago.
He and his wife, Peggy, were married during the war, and have been married for 67 years. They have five children, nine grandchildren, and six great grandchildren. They make their home in
Edina.
(Color motion picture footage of the rescue at Kagoshima Bay can be seen by going to the USS Astoria's official website at http://mighty90.com/Film_Footage.html)
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