[larger image] After spinning his Wildcat into the drink, Bob Campbell is returned to his carrier in a breeches buoy. The buoy is shaped like a large mailbag and is used for transferring personnel from one ship to another. The divers from an escort destroyer fished Bob out of the water, got him aboard the destroyer, dried him off, then maneuvered close to his carrier, fired a line across the intervening space, put Bob in the buoy and transferred him like laundry on a clothesline. The destroyer got five gallons of ice cream in exchange. Some mementos from Bob Campbell's career as a naval aviator. [click cards for larger images]

But a lesser known, yet equally important, contributor in the Navy's aerial campaign against the Imperial Japanese Navy was the escort carrier, or CVE.

Based on converted freighter and tanker hulls, the CVEs performed sterling service in both the Pacific and the Atlantic. They couldn't operate the big carrier air groups of their full-sized counterparts; instead, the Navy created smaller squadrons with a mix of fighters-usually FM-1 and FM-2 Wildcats-and TBF and TBM Avenger torpedo planes. The pilots and crews of these unique units served as jacks of all trade, hunting U-Boats in the North Atlantic and providing close air support, coverage of the beaches during amphibious landings, and counter-air/counter-ship services in the Pacific.

It took a special breed of naval aviator and naval air crewman to operate off the CVEs. With a flight deck measuring only 475 feet long by 85 feet wide, flying-in all kinds of weather and during combat-was "sporting."

It was also dangerous; while not designed to slug it out with other warships, several CVEs were sunk during World War II in combat. In November 1943 the USS Liscombe Bay (CVE-56) sank after it was torpedoed by Japanese submarine I-175, while the USS Block Island (CVE-21) fell prey to U-549 in the Atlantic in May 1944. Japanese kamikazes managed to crash into ten escort carriers in the Pacific between October 1944 and May 1945, sinking the St. Lo (CVE-63) and the Bismarck Sea (CVE-95) and putting several other ships out of action.

While many in the service said CVE stood for "Combustible, Vulnerable and Expendable," the escort carriers became better known as "The Little Giants." Employing their air groups and composite squadrons, they often fought as bigger units and earned a string of battle awards for actions across the Atlantic and Pacific.

VC-78 and the USS Saginaw Bay

The CVE-82 USS Saginaw Bay was commissioned on 2 March 1944. After a shakedown cruise she embarked her squadron, VC-78, and departed Pearl Harbor for the Southwest Pacific on 9 July 1944.

Led by Lt. Cmdr. J.L. Hyde, Jr., VC-78 was perhaps a "typical" composite squadron, operating 15 Grumman FM-2 Wildcats and 12 TBM-1C Avengers. The squadron was formed on 29 November 1943 and immediately went into full-time training.

Among the pilots of VC-78 was a young ensign, Robert "Bob" Campbell, a native of Toledo, Ohio (and an invaluable consultant during the production of Microsoft® Combat Flight Simulator 2). Born in 1921, Bob had an early interest in flying and aviation but never imagined that by the time he reached his early 20s he'd be flying off a "jeep carrier" in the Southwest Pacific during some of the darkest and most desperate days of the twentieth century.

The journey was long and involved, and we're pleased that Bob made it, and to present his story here.

Microsoft: How did you get interested in flying in the first place? Do you recall when you decided you wanted to be a pilot?

Bob: It goes back to grade school, along with a mere handful of friends in the late '20s and early '30s (I finished grade school in 1935, high school in 1939). We built balsa wood models of World War I aircraft, both solid and rubber band-powered flying models. We also experimented with "rockets" balsa models with gunpowder taken from shells and packed into holes drilled into the stern.

Sometime in high school I had my first flight with a neighbor friend who had a part interest in a Cub or Taylorcraft. He and his friends were into sailplanes and gliders and competed in annual competitions. Later, as a student at Bowling Green State University I heard about the CPT (Civilian Pilot Training) program [a federal program providing free pilot training, flying and ground school for college students.] It covered everything through a private license with 35 hours in primary, flying J-2 Cubs, and secondary, flying Meyers biplanes with open cockpits. There was more precision flying and aerobatics in secondary, and two versions of the Meyers with either a 125 hp or 145 hp radial engine.

Microsoft: How did you get into naval aviation? I assume the war in Europe had something to do with it?

Bob: [Yes.] I was interested in the air corps or Navy flight training, but the Navy required four years of college to become an aviation cadet. My interest was in the Navy; I perceived their flight training to be superior than the Air Corps.

I dropped out of BGSU-couldn't afford it-and worked at some mundane job as we entered the war. Early in 1942 I heard the Navy had dropped the four-year college requirement for eligibility so I rushed up to Detroit to enlist. I made it, although I had to have my tonsils out and be circumcised first. That must have been my first physical exam, since I recall the chap in front of me had an 88 pulse and I had a 44 pulse-lying down, I guess.

Microsoft: What happened next?

Bob: The CPT program [started taking] in people who were signed up for the service but not yet called to active duty. A bunch of us moved into the University of Toledo field house. We were an assortment of Army pre-glider and Navy pre-LTA (Lighter-Than-Air) cadets, air corps, and Navy V-5. We were issued uniforms that made us look like gas station attendants, caps with "TU"-University of Toledo-on one side and wings on the other.

Ground school was taught by aeronautical engineering professors. I learned to use a slide rule for solving complex aerodynamic lift problems, a skill later prized as a cadet. We finished and shortly afterwards got called up to active duty. I went to Iowa pre-flight school at Iowa State University.

Microsoft: What was that training like? You were already a private pilot, did you find the training difficult?

Bob: It was a rigorous three-month program of academics, aerology, aerodynamics, recognition, and navigation. The other half was Phys Ed every imaginable type of sport, cross-country running in the snow over the hills, football, wrestling, boxing. The endeavor was to make vicious, bloodthirsty fighting men out of nice, young college kids with an interest in flying, in only three months. We were ready to drop at the end of each day.

Microsoft: Then you moved on to flight training?

Bob: We went in a couple of train cars. A great event was the stop in Des Moines, Iowa. The train broke down and the word got around there was a WAC (Women's Army Corps) base there. The state was dry but there was a nightspot upstairs someplace downtown that most of us migrated to. It was loaded with WACs and virtually no men.

We'd been cooped up for three months, hadn't seen any women nor been close to drinks. So while the train's problems continued, so did our party. When it finally left, several gals were on board until the next station, wherever that was!

Microsoft: So the training involved moving around a lot and flying several different types of aircraft, right?

Bob: Right. From there I moved to the Primary base at Norman, Oklahoma, a cold, windy place. You could allegedly stand in the mud while the dust blew in your face.

During Primary we flew two-place open-cockpit biplanes, either Stearmans or N3Ns from the Naval Aircraft Factory. I don't recall any difference. Ground school consisted of more aerodynamics, theory of flight, powerplants, navigation, aerology, code-including blinker-and aircraft and ship recognition. We were so burned out on all matters physical that no one was interested in any gym, sports, etc. They tried to whet our interest in doing something athletic or physical, to no avail. It was an arduous pre-flight experience.

Wednesday was the instructors' day off and [some] took advantage of the situation and went off upriver, flying under bridges or trying out aerobatics not yet taught.

Microsoft: Did you run into any trouble?

Bob: One time I had to wait in line to draw and don my heavy fleece winter flight gear-pants and jacket-and parachute and lumber out to the flight line, and I was late. The hard-nosed Marine 2nd Lieutenant was raging. Then when he was trying to teach me snap-rolls my bulky flight gear didn't let him get full throw of the stick and fouled up the maneuver on which he prided himself for excellence. He raged on that if I ever wore that heavy winter flight gear again it was an automatic DOWN [poor check ride]. Fortunately, I got a different instructor when he broke a leg in an Oklahoma City barroom brawl.

Microsoft: Where did you go next?

Bob: On by train to Corpus Christi, Texas, and one of the outlying fields for basic training, Cudahy, as I recall. I was flying "Vultee Vibrators," the Navy's SNV, flown by the Air Force as the BT-13 and officially called the "Valiant." The students called it the "Vibrator" because of its severe in-flight vibration. It was a low-winged monoplane, more complex; it had a controllable-pitch prop, among other things.

The next phase was Advanced Squadron. Where you went was a function of what you had put on the preference card filled out at each base. I had requested dive-bombers, carrier-based, so I went to Kingsville, where I flew SNJs, the Navy's version of the North American Aviation AT-6. We did a lot of skip bombing, gunnery on towed sleeves, and strafing. I don't recall whether we started FCLP-Field Carrier Landing Practice-there or not until Operational Training later, after graduation, in Florida.

Combat Flight Simulator 2 advisor Bob Campbell flying his Wildcat fighter. [larger image]

Microsoft: That just about finished up your flight training, right? Now it was time to qualify in your fleet aircraft?

Bob: Right. I graduated in September 1943, took my commission in the Navy, although there were many discussions about whether we wanted to go into the Marines or the Navy. The factors were how soon could we got to see combat, how fast for promotions, uniforms, that sort of thing. The Navy would fly from carriers, whereas the Marines might be land-based.

There was no leave for most of us. I was ordered directly to two months of Operational Training at some base in Florida; I ended up in Vero Beach.

Microsoft: You took your Navy commission and flew off CVEs, but it turned out not all Marine aviators were land-based, right?

Bob: Towards the end of the war, Marine squadrons started deploying regularly in the CVEs. While the Marines were proud "tailhookers," their experiences operating off the little ships led to the following barroom song:

Cuts and Guts (The Marine CVE Song)

Navy fliers fly off the big carriers
Army fliers aren't seen oe'r the sea
But we're in the lousy Marine Corps
So we get these dang CVE's!

Cuts and guts, cuts and guts
The guys that make carriers are nuts, are nuts!
Cuts and guts, cuts and guts
The guys that make carriers are nuts!

O Midway has thousand-foot runways
And Leyte, eight hundred and ten
We'd still not have much of a carrier
With two of ours laid end to end

Our catapult shots are so hairy,
Our catapult gear is red hot
It never goes off when you're ready
It always goes off when you're not!

We envy the boys on the big ones
And we'd trade in a minute or two,
'Cause we'd like to see those poor bastards,
Try to do the things we do!

Cuts and guts, cuts and guts
The guys that make carriers are nuts, are nuts!
Cuts and guts, cuts and guts
The guys that make carriers are nuts!

Some day when this fracas is over,
And back at El Toro we'll be,
We'll load up with rockets and napalm
And we'll sink every damned CVE!