Four Wildcats at Wake island

[i16stealth]

I'm interested in information about four F4F that defended Wake island(sorry, don't know the correct transcription) from Japanese in 1942 (model, squadron, pilots, etc.)

[Romantic Technofreak]

The best link I found is this one:

http://www.acepilots.com/usmc/hist6.html

I hope it is what you were searching for.

[B-24WillowRun]

RT- I read the acepilots artical and think it was great!:) I had forgoten how scrapy the Marine aviators really were and had to be for most of the pacific campain. ;)

[JoeB]

A good fairly recent book is Cressman's "Magnificent Fight" which gives good info on Japanese units and their losses too. Extracting from that the aerial "scoreboard" for VMF-211 was:
1 G3M (Nell) Dec 10
2 G3M's Dec 11
1 H6K (Mavis) Dec 12
3 B5N (Kate) Dec 22

Wake's ground fire only seems to have destroyed perhaps two Japanese floatplanes Dec 23 after the Wildcats were all gone.

-211's air combat losses were 1 downed (KIA) and one crashlanded on return due to the same A6M (Zeke) pilot, PO Isao Tahara of the Hiryu, Dec 22. Another 9 were destroyed by G3M's on the ground, 8 on Dec 8 and 1 Dec 14. The 12th was written off in an accident Dec 14.

211 sank the DD Kisaragi Dec 11 (one of the remarkable sinkings of WWII, using only 100# and .50cal) and damaged the CL's Tenryu (5 WIA, 3 torpedo tubes out of action) and Tatsuta (also 5 WIA) and the converted seaplane tender Kongo Maru (gasoline fire 3 KIA, 19 WIA, E13A [Jake] damaged while aboard) all by strafing; the references in the article to bomb hits probably still reflect original claims.

Joe

[i16stealth]

quote:Originally posted by Romantic Technofreak

The best link I found is this one:

http://www.acepilots.com/usmc/hist6.html

I hope it is what you were searching for.


Thank you. It is exactly what I asked!

[B-24WillowRun]

JoeB thanks for the Wake info. I had read some on the net, and a wake site, but that seemed to have more numbers of planes down to the F4F. But then that could be poor info or I was reading it wrong.[B)]