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Rescue at Truk
  
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"How an American submarine and an old Kingfisher scout plane, operating in Jap waters, teamed together to save 20 downed Navy airmen from capture."
by Sgt. Larry McManus, YANK staff Correspondent
 Click here for a large image & all the names of the rescued airmen aboard the submarine Tang.
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Pearl Harbor - A submarine, many people believe, is a sleek, stealthy craft devoted to the science of destruction and manned by pallid sailors who consider a mission successful only when thousands of tons of enemy shipping have been sent to the bottom of the sea.
If that is true, then the U.S.S. Tang's mission in the two-day attack on Truk was a failure. For on that trip, the sub sank only two objects - Navy scout planes, venerable OS2U Kingfishers which were set afire by the Tang's deck guns.
It was in the first raid on the first day of the Truk attack that a Jap ship blew a four-foot hole in the port wing of the TBF (Grumman Avenger) piloted by Lt. (Jg) Scott Scammell II of Yardley, PA. Scammel continued his run and dropped his bomb on the atoll before banking steeply for a crash landing in the ocean. A fire kindled by the shell near the wing tank changed his plans, and to prevent an explosion that probably would have killed him and his crew, he ditched the plane in the lagoon two miles south of Dublon Island, principal Jap base of the atoll. (See Map-Truk Lagoon)
"The indicator read 200 knots when we hit the water," said Harry B. Gemmel ARM2c of Philadelphia, PA., the radioman, "and we usually land at about 80. Somehow nobody was hurt. We just climbed into the raft and took a look around. We saw Dublon a short distance away and started paddling like hell."
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 Downed U.S. Pilots
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Scammel, Gemmell and Joseph D. Gendron AMM2c of Oakland, R.I., the turret gunner, wantedto raise the sail but they were afraid the Japs would spot them if they did.
"The sail is yellow on one side and blue on the other, " said Gendron. "It's okay when you're sailing away from the Japs: you can face the blue side toward them. But what can you do when you're right in the middle of the Japs?"
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The three airmen solved that problem, after a fashion, by folding the sail to hide its yellow side. This left a ridiculously small surface but enough to help somewhat as they paddled toward the sea.
Two more strikes hit Dublon while the raft was in the lagoon, and the Jap planes fled into the clouds as American flyers blasted the navy yard there. Between raids the men in the raft watched the Japs come out from their cover, make ferocious passes at the empty air and then go into hiding again as the Americans returned.
"We'd see a flight of planes overhead," Gemmell said, "and we'd make believe they were F6Fs (Grumman Hellcats) coming to protect us. Then those damned meatballs would show up on each wing." When that happened, the men tried to cover the bright yellow raft with their bodies and with the blue side of the sail.
At noon, four hours after their crash inside the Truk reef, the three men steered their craft into the open sea between the islands forming South Pass. Joe Gendron, the only one aboard who wasn't seasick, bailed out the raft until the Tang - directed by fighter planes circling above - pulled alongside four miles southeast of Ollan Island. The three men were hauled aboard the sub. Lt. Comdr. Richard H. O'Kane of San Raphael, Calif., commanding the Tang, told them to bring the raft aboard, too. "For my kids," he said.
Some time later another flyer was reported down off Kuop Island, 30 miles to the east. To save time, Comdr. O'Kane decided to keep the Tang on the surface for a full power run. This meant that the sub had to pass close to Ollan Island. The commander figured the Japs might open fire, so he ordered his men to fire first to keep the Japs busy. A tall, red-haired subman named James M. (Gunner) White GM1c of Springfield, La., was the first man to shell Truk. By the time the Japs recovered and opened fire, the sub was 1,000 yards out of range. After searching vainly for the flyer until dark, the Tang pulled out for the night.
Early the next morning the Tang spotted a Jap sub escaping through the South Pass. The Tang dived, made an approach and came up for a quick periscope search, but the enemy sub had dived, too, because American planes were overhead. All the way back to Pearl, the Tang's crew blamed the flyers for driving away its quarry just when the American sub was closing in for the kill.
After the Jap sub had escaped, the Tang dived again and cleared away from the area for an hour of good speed. Then she surfaced and found American fighter planes overhead. The Tang followed then toward Ollan Island, expecting to find the pilot sought the night before.
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Instead Comdr. O'Kane's men found one of the Kingfishers planes, piloted by Lt. (Jg) John A. Burns of Wynnewood, Pa., with Aubrey J. Gill ARM2c of Compton, Calif., as his radioman. Crowded aboard the plane were Lt. (Jg) Bert F. Kanze of Freehold, N.J.; Lt. John H. Dowdle Jr. of Wilmettee, Ill., and Robert E. Hill ARM2c of Houston, Tex.
Lt. Kanze had been piloting his F6F over Fefan Island around noon of the first day of the Truk strike when his plane was hit by antiaircraft fire. He was forced down into the lagoon, climbed into his raft and put up the sail.
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 Truk Attackers Over Tsis Island, Truk
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"But I yanked it down in a hurry," said Kanze, "when ack-ack tried to blast me. I camouflaged the raft and myself with said and drifted till dark, when I set sail again. I wasn't thinking about being rescued; I was scared stiff I would wash up on Jap shores."
The wind carried Kanze away from Fefan Island, and once out of range he set sail again. Finding that he was drifting toward Ollan, he rigged up a sea anchor to slow the raft. Then, by paddling and sailing all night, he managed to cross the reef of the lagoon at high tide, the only time it was possible to do so. At daybreak he was two miles out.
Soon after, Lt. Burns and Lt. Dowdle, who was flying the second Kingfisher plane, spotted Kanze. While Burns patrolled above, Dowdle went down to make the rescue. His Kingfisher landed in the heavy seas, bobbed dangerously and finally overturned as a gust of wind caught under one wing. Dowdle and Hill, his radioman, were tossed in the water alongside Kanze.
Then Burns landed in waved five feet high and the men climbed on the wings of his plane. Fifteen minutes later he taxied up to the Tang, put the three flyers aboard and took off again with Gill, his radioman, to resume the patrol. Dowdle's overturned plane was sunk by the sub's guns.
Meanwhile the Tang's crew had seen a TBF crash near Ollan and throw up a column of thick smoke. Following Lt. Burn's plane, the Tang cruised toward the island and hove to 4,000 yards offshore, giving Gunner White a chance to throw some more shells at Ollan. Comdr. O'Kane also called for planes as support and they blasted the island's gun emplacements while the sub sped on to pick up the pilot of the crashed TBF, Comdr. Alfred A. Matter of Butte, Mont., and his two crewmen. Matter, who was also air-group commander, said that his planes had been hit as it made an approach to the target, Parem Island, 25 minutes earlier.
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 Tang Rescue
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"I was taking pictures through the bomb-bay windows when I felt a thud,"said James J. Lenahan ARM2c of Westfield, N.J. "When that shell hit our engine," added H. A. (Tommy) Thompson AOM2c of San Bernadino, Calif., turret gunner, "the oil covered my turret and I thought, 'What a pot-poor way to die.'"
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After landing in the water, Comdr. Matter and Thompson had worked for several minutes to inflate the raft while Lenahan rested, one arm thrown over the fuselage just forward of the fin. He was holding the emergency rations and chute pack in one hand. When the plane plunged toward the bottom, 250 fathoms below, Lenahan was momentarily dragged down with it. "What did I do?" he asked when questioned later. "I dropped the rations, of course."
Continue Rescue at Truk, Page 2
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