BY LATE SEPTEMBER 1944, the men of U.S. Marine fighter squadron VMF-122 were stuck on Peleliu and bored. Their F4U Corsairs were only 10 minutes' flight time from Japanese-held islands, but the enemy, cut off from their supply lines, posed no aerial threat. As squadron commander J. Hunter Reinburg recounted in his autobiography Combat Aerial Escapades: A Pilot's Logbook, he told a reporter, 'This dive-bombing and strafing just isn't as exciting as dogfighting, but the damn Japs won't come up and fight".
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