HELLCAT ACE: 'Mac' McWhorter splashes Zeros

摘要

Imagine you're in a metal shed and someone throws rocks against the outside. That's what it sounded like when machine-gun fire ripped into my Hellcat.I looked around, and sure enough, a pair of Japanese Zero fighters was right behind me. Tracers were coming at me.I was the pilot of a magnificent Grumman F6F Hellcat, probably the best fighter of World War Ⅱ. I was a member of Navy fighter squadron VF-9, operating from the USS Essex (CV 9). We were escorting our carrier's bombers on a strike to Rabaul, New Britain, in the South Pacific on November 11,1943. American troops had just landed at nearby Bougainville.This was a big battle, high over Rabaul, with 100 Zeros and 50 Hellcats fighting one another and planes tumbling all over the sky. When I heard slugs hitting my Hellcat, I wondered if this huge, sprawling dogfight was going to be the last of my brief (so far) Navy career, which had begun shortly before Pearl Harbor. I had never really wanted to kill or be killed, but since childhood, I had wanted to fly.I was born in 1921 in Georgia into a middle-class family. I was nine years old when Dad arranged my first flight, in a Ford Tri-Motor. Soon afterward, I saw a fighter plane for the first time. I wanted to fly fighters.I attended college in Georgia, but my real satisfaction came from qualifying for naval aviator training. I was learning to become a Navy pilot when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. In training, I flew the Brewster F2A Buffalo; it was completely inadequate.