I found another very damp and bedraggled pilot, clutching a tangled mess of soaking-wet fight gear. He was streaked with the green and yellow of his emergency dye marker, it was Lieutenant Winfred Reid the high-stepping ex-drum major from Delight, Arkansas, and the Casanova of Waikiki.

Pappy Reid had had a lively day. He was the skipper's wing- man and had followed him as Volcansek attacked a Zero from behind poured in a burst of 50 calibers until he was as close as fifty feet from the Jap, then pulled away. The Zero turned on its back and went down in a “spilt-S.” Reid was to the side of and behind the skipper and was able to put in a good slug from his own .50's. The Jap plane headed straight down from 25,000 feet trailing smoke until it disappeared from view. Craig and Williams had left the division 20 miles southeast of Ballale. Craig was trailing black smoke, which changed to white and looked like the emission of a crop-duster. The skipper and Reid had stayed to protect the bombers and watched the other two men of their division head for home.

There had been a mix-up in the rendezvous and the fighter planes had thirty minutes less gasoline than they had anticipated. When their fuel got down to sixty gallons each, Reid and his leader started back for Munda. They were cruising along comfortably when Reid looked behind and saw several Zeros sneaking up.

"Volcansek from Reid. There's six Zeros on your tail."

Excerpt from Capt. John F. Foster's book "Hell in the Heavens" about his experiences as a pilot with the "Deuces""

"...Both of the Corsair pilots then "bent their throttle over the throttle-quadrant" using 2,700 RPM (used only for extreme emergency and takeoffs). After going into a shallow dive they gradually pulled away from the Japs. Two more seconds and the Japs would have been within firing range. As it was, the skipper found some holes in his elevators.

As they neared the Munda fighter strip, both pilots realized they only had about three to five gallons of fuel. Reid decided to break of and make a straight-in approach, but Volcansek heard the tower call and say that the landing course had been reversed. The skipper continued on and made his approach according to the new course. Reid made his an emergency approach. Both were justified in their actions.

When the skipper saw the other airplane approaching head on, the knew he never had the gas to take a wave-off and go around the field again; so he decided to wait until the other plane had landed before setting his own down.

Reid saw that he was safely over the runway, when he observed the other Corsair coming head on. He continued in his approach hoping the other pilot would apply throttle and take a wave-off, because he thought his own gas supply would fail if he tried it. The other plane kept on coming so Reid decided that he ''would have to get the hell out of there'' to avoid a collision. He poured the coal to his plane and banked to avoid passing too close, then banked again to the right to get over the water as quickly as possible, for if he should run out of gas over the rough, crater-strewn shore at Munda it would spell finis. Most pilots had been able to survive crash landings in the water, unharmed.

When he reached the water his engine suddenly stopped for a second, then started again. After this warning it ran a few more seconds then conked out for good. Reid had already retracted his landing gear. He stuck the nose of his plane down to keep from stalling, then leveled off just above the water and settled down in a neat water landing. He had time to get out of the cockpit and save his parachute before a rescue boat came by and picked him up.

It had been a black day for the Flying Deuces. We had lost four airplanes and two pilots, although we hoped to see these pilots come back alive in the near future...."