At approximately noon February 21, 1944, from 25,000 feet above Blanche Bay, New Britain Island, Marine Corps Captain Winfred O. "Pappy" Reid is falling into the maws of “Fortress Rabaul”, Imperial Japan’s Southwest Pacific military headquarters. Unlike Icarus of Greek mythology, his F4U-1A Corsair still has its wings. However, Pappy's 2,000 horsepower “Double Wasp” engine has suddenly vibrated, backfired, and become powerless to keep him flying high over his enemy’s domain.

Even though its windmill sized propellers continued to spin because of the plane’s forward momentum, the iconic fighter plane has lost its 250 knot cruising speed and begins to stall with an immediate drop of its left wing putting the plane into a potential “spiral of death”.

Instinctively easing forward on the control stick with his yellow, capeskin gloved right hand as his right “boondockers” clad foot simultaneously eased the right vertical stabilizer pedal forward, the veteran fighter pilot quickly took back control of his craft and continued “flying” his iconic fighter.

After years of training for every possible flight emergency, the skilled aviator’s reaction was automatic but in the back of his mind he was replaying the sage advice his Pensacola flight instructor gave him some years before to: “never run out of altitude and brains at the same time”.

Capt. Reid’s fighter, now a defenseless six-ton glider with a 13:1 glide ratio was in peril of becoming a mere oil slick in the waters below because Reid had about one minute to methodically and calmly restart his powerful Pratt & Whitney R-2800-8 power plant. Surmising his problem to be either a fuel starved 2800 cubic centimeters engine or a failure of the Magnetos that “sparked” the eighteen cylinders of the single radial engine that made his Corsair the fastest plane in the air.

Pratt & Whitney R-2800-8 "Double Wasp"

Giving a quick glance forward and to the lower right of his Main Instrument Panel, Pappy saw the Fuel Pressure gauge indicating 18 Lbs.; just as it should be. It was then he realized must it must have been the Magnetos that had failed on his monstrous engine.

This wasn’t the first time a “Double Wasp” had suddenly cut out on a Corsair in the Solomon Islands. It would happen at high altitude and a pilot could usually restart the engine by diving to a lower altitude, that is, if Japanese Zeros didn’t take advantage of the pilot’s misfortune on his way down.

The Pratt & Whitney factory “Reps” assigned to the Marines in the Pacific Theatre had decided that insufficient oxygen at high altitudes prohibited the Magnetos to adequately “fire” the fuel-air mixture in the cylinders. There were also the challenges of maintaining aircraft and their engines on equatorial isles in a tropical war zone. Magneto Pressurizing Tubes had been developed to solve the problem but the “Flying Leathernecks” were at the tip of a very long spear, half a world away from the other end of it at “P&W’s” Connecticut manufacturing plants.

Already one thousand feet of free-fall have passed and the man and machine are still powerless and likely a ‘sitting duck’ to the Japanese predators that were possibly already diving towards him like Hawks from out of the blinding mid-day sun.

Moments before, Pappy had been on a forty-fighter escort mission for fifteen Army Air Corps B-24 bombers. His had been one of twelve Corsairs from his squadron, VMF-222, flying medium cover just above the bombers. Air Corps P-38 Lightings were flying high cover at 35,000 feet; and Royal New Zealand Air Force P-40 Warhawks at 20,000 feet had been flying the low cover for the 13th Air Force Liberator bombers. But oblivious of the plight of the lone F4U, the armada continued droning on towards Rabaul’s Lakunai Aerodrome.

Reid wonders if any of his buddies saw him fall out of formation; he couldn’t broadcast his problem as there was still radio silence in effect. It was not uncommon for planes to vanish on these missions and later, after many days of volunteer airborne searches by their squadron mates, the hapless pilots had to be officially declared as Missing in Action.

F4U-1 Cockpit, Left Panel

Despite their “swashbuckling” reputation, Marine pilots were disciplined and their orders were not to leave their slow, vulnerable herds of bombers unprotected en route to a target. The P-38s usually got the “choice” assignment of the high cover because the Lightening had a higher service ceiling than the F4U (44,000’ vs. 36,900’) giving the P-38 the highest “perch” in the Southwest Pacific from which to pounce on the enemy Tony fighters flying at 38,100’ and Zero’s 33,000’ maximum altitudes.

Once the bombers were empty of their tons of high explosives, they could scurry back to their fields in tight formations and able to defend themselves adequately with their own .50 caliber machine guns. The fighters were usually free to “freelance” on their return with their own style of mayhem using their 6, .50 caliber guns against enemy air and ground ‘targets of opportunity’.

Working quickly through the plane’s shut-down procedure to clear the engine of the unburned fuel still flowing into the 18 cylinder engine, the captain reached a few inches forward with his left hand to the Ignition Switch at the front of the Left Distribution Consul to turn the Magneto selector knob clockwise from the BOTH ON to the BOTH OFF position. Switching hands on the control stick to begin the fuel evaporation process, Pappy moved the Cooling Flaps levers on the Right Hand Consul to the OPEN position and then the Alternate Air Control to the IN position.

Trading hands again, the Arkansas pilot reached for the Engine Control Unit quadrant beside him and pinching the black Bakelite knob of the Prop Control lever with his left thumb and forefinger he pulled it back and down to put it into Low Pitch, High RPM mode.

In the last step of the evaporation process, Pappy moved the Blower Lever in the left consul forward with the same grasp until it clicked into its neutral position and then moved the Mixture Control Lever in the same unit into its IDLE CUT-OFF position. Two thousand feet of altitude has now been lost and after taking a moment to reflect on his next task, Reid decides enough time has passed to attempt an engine restart.

Reid has sufficient altitude for this first attempt but if the engine doesn’t respond to his efforts, he will have to make a decision: to take a chance and keep trying to revive his power plant or to “hit the silk” while still high enough to drift away from enemy territory and pray for a PBY “Dumbo” rescue. To be captured by the Japanese would probably be a ‘death sentence’ and maybe, just maybe, a buddy would notice the splash of his plane or see the big white dome of his parachute and protect him from becoming ‘target practice’ for the Japanese fighter pilots.

F4U-1 Cockpit, Right Panel

Reaching forward a few inches with his left hand to the Fuel Switch Control, Pappy turned its knob clockwise one position from BOTH to RESERVE to raise the fuel pressure temporarily. Switching hands again, the captain grasped the Mixture Control lever once more and moved it back and forth once to aide in the fuel flow into the induction system.

Reid next turned the Electric Auxiliary Fuel Pump to ON, then moved the Carburetor Air Control to DIRECT, and the Supercharger Control to NEUTRAL followed by his closing the throttle and then moving it forward one inch to let just enough fuel into the carburetors to restart the engine. Then Pappy, with his right index finger, pushed forward on the Electric Fuel Primer toggle switch on the Distribution Panel on his right side for a long, anxiety producing five seconds. Now needing both hands simultaneously, the captain deftly put the control stick between his knees, so he could slide the Mixture Control lever to AUTO RICH while simultaneously switching the Electric Auxiliary Fuel Pump to ON. Swiftly grabbing the controls with his right hand again Reid was ready for the final steps. With his left hand Pappy turned the Ignition Magnetos knob back to BOTH.

Yet another thousand feet of altitude have been consumed by this twentieth century Icarus as the naval aviator held his breath as he finally pushed the Starter switch to ON and held it there for a few tense seconds. In  a moment, the captain hoped to hear the familiar sound of the 18 radial cylinders struggling to reawaken and to see the murky sight of his engine spewing dark gray smoke as it coughed and wheezed its way back to its steady growl.

With his left hand at the ready on the Mixture Control lever Pappy felt a vibration and the sudden surge of power return to his craft. The now grinning pilot moved the lever forward slowly a few inches to the Automatic Rich position and then grabbed the nearby Throttle lever on the quadrant and moved it steadily forward as he pulled back on the flight control to leave the nadir of his fall and begin his steep climb back into the heavens. But out of the corner of his eye, the “Flying Deuces” pilot caught a flash of light from something behind him in the sky- another aircraft!

Friend or foe? Was the flash from sunlight off a cockpit or was it the flash of gun fire? Either way, the Arkansas native knew his plane could out-climb anything the Japanese had so without looking again he reached with his left thumb and forefinger for the Propeller Control Governor knob on the back of the throttle quadrant and pushed it down to give his prop the 2,700 RPMs that would get him away fast and to regain the 3,000 feet of altitude he had lost.

F4U-1 Cockpit, Main Instrument Panel

Struggling against the many “Gs” that were pushing him backwards and down onto his hard canvas parachute and jungle survival kit 'padded' seat, Pappy now had a moment to turn his torso as much as his shoulder harness would allow him to look back to see what had been lurking behind him- another Corsair! Someone had risked his own safety in the “pack” and had followed to protect him; but who? No time to talk as both knew they had to constantly search the sky around them for the enemy as they scrambled to a safer altitude.

Not finding other “friendlies” to join or Japanese fighters to attack in the vast but now empty sky over Rabaul, Pappy wiggled his wings and throttled back some to bring the other fighter beside him. When the ‘guardian angel’ F4U came alongside, Reid could finally see who his protector had been: his wingman, the good-natured, drawling Mississippian, 1st Lt. Jessie Leach. The two pilots from the opposite banks of the “Big Muddy” gave each other the “thumbs up” signal and then turned their war birds back home to Piva Yoke, Bougainville.

 

EPILOGUE:
In the unpublished diary of then Capt. W. O. Reid is his Feb. 24th, 1944 entry: “…Leach’s motor quit on him over Rabaul (Duke of York Is.). Have been looking for him all afternoon. Don’t know results yet. He called up and gave his position where his motor quit. He makes the 4th man we have lost in combat and the 8th since we left the states. …”

and…

From a handwritten note found in in my father’s copy of Capt. John Foster’s Hell in the Heavens, a chronicle of VMF-222 in the Solomon Islands: “Leach: He saved my life one hop when my engine quit over the target and I fell 3,000 ft. before I could start it again. He stayed with me protecting me. He was killed 4 days later.”

 

Capt. W. O. "Pappy" Reid	1st Lt. Jessie Leach