Air Space Catapult Crews Layout-fm05

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66 A i r & S p a c e F e b r u a r y / M a r c h 2 0 0 5 F e b r u a r y / M a r c h 2 0 0 5 A i r & S p a c e

Rear Admiral Robert C. “Ike”Giffen assembled a small groupof pilots on the deck of theUSS Massachusetts in the pre-dawn darkness. Giffen was a

commander in a formidable invasionforce gathered off the coast of North Africa on November 8, 1942. His mis-sion, known as Operation Torch, wasto create a second front against the

German forces, but in order to beginthe invasion, he’d need the pilots of his aviation detachment to scout for vital informa tion: Would t he Vi chyFrench in Morocco, with troops en-trenched ashore, and the battleship Jean Bartand five submarines in theharbor, resist the U.S. landing? In thedays leading up to the invasion, a U.S. Army g eneral had att empted to ne-gotiate an agreement. If the pro-Vichyforces in Casablanca decided to defytheir German overlords by not fight-ing the Americans, they would signaltheir decision with a white flag. “Theadmiral told us to reconnoiter theFrench positions and look for thatflag,” says Thomas Dougherty, recallingthat morning 62 years ago. Dougher-ty, who today lives in Duluth, Min-

nesota, was an ensign and a pilot of one of the battleship’s two Vought-Sikorsky OS2U-3 Kingfishers. “If weencountered enemy action, we wereto call ‘Batter up,’ and the ship wouldanswer ‘Play ball,’ to let us know theywere launching an attack.” In the eventof an attack, Dougherty’s job as a King-fisher pilot was to be a “spotter,” re-sponsible for directing the fire of a battleship’s guns by overflying a tar-get and spotting the shells as they land-ed. If the shells fell short or too far tothe right or left, the pilots would callback with corrections.

When Dougherty flew over theFrench fleet moored in the harbor, hesaw no white flag. Instead, the inex- perienced pilot was greeted with what

he thought were fireworks. “What didI know?” he remembers. “I was justfat, dumb, and happy, wondering whowas celebrating down there. Then,when an explosion’s concussion justabout knocked me over, I realizedthey were shooting at me!” He im-mediately radioed “Batter up” to the Massachusetts, and within moments,

the ship’s big guns were hammeringaway at the Jean Bart.

Dougherty soon came under attackfrom a French fighter aircraft, and theKingfisher’s canopy disintegrated ina hail of bullets. “If I had had my seatraised one notch higher,” Doughertydeclares, “I wouldn’t be talking to youtoday.” He splashed down safely inthe harbor and was taken prisoner by

the French. His radioman, RobertEtheridge, was wounded in the attackand taken to a hospital. Eventually,

Dougherty and Etheridge were re-turned safely—Dougherty after onlyfive days of captivity.

Birth of an IconDirecting battleship fire was precise-ly the kind of mission for which RexB. Beisel had designed the Kingfish-er five years earlier. A Vought-Siko-rsky engineer who went on to designthe F4U Corsair, Beisel incorporatedinnovations in the Kingfisher, the firstmonoplane ever to be launched froma shipboard catapult, that would make

it the U.S. Navy’s primary ship-basedobservation aircraft during the Sec-ond World War. It was the first to beassembled with spot-welding, a pro-cess Vought and the Naval AircraftFactory jointly developed to create a smooth fuselage that resisted buck-ling and generated less drag. Beiselalso introduced high-lift devices to

keep the aircraft controllabspeeds. Deflector plate flapscial drooping ailerons wereon the trailing edge of the wwere deployed in concert witother to increase the cambwing and thus create additiThe spoilers then took over the job by providing l ateral coning low-speed flight (see illu

next page).For armament, the Kingfiried a .30-caliber machine

breech of which, along withmunition can, was in the pilo partment. Sitting behind theradio operator/gunner manother .30-caliber machine g pair) on a flexible ring mount plane could also carry two 10bombs or two 325-pound depth

Beisel’s first prototype flew

powered by an air-cooled, 4 power Pratt & Whitney R-98radial engine. Within two yearsSikorsky delivered the firsttion Kingfisher, an OS2U-1, totleship USS Colorado . AnoOS2U-1s and 158 OS2U-2s sothe Navy’s ranks. The OS2U-differed slightly from its pred

USS Salt Lake City’s Kingfisdetachment. Robert Epperson row, fifth from left. Jim Davbottom row, second from left

OLD SLOWandUGLYOLD SLOWandUGLYOLD SLOWandUGLY

Slow, maybe. But ugly? OS2U-3s fly their version of a beauty shot. N

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Beforeradar tookover, OS2U Kingfishersweretheeyesof thefleet.by James L. Noles, Jr.



boasting additional fuel tanks andstronger armor. Confronted with thesquat monoplane—some with wheels,others with floats, and still otherswith wheel-float conversion kits—Navy pilots quickly christened it “theBug” or, in mockery of the designa-tion OS2U, “Old Slow and Ugly.”

“Slow” was right—it was a lucky pilot who could coax speeds of morethan 166 mph out of the Kingfisher.

A crafty pilot could, howeve r, workthe Kingfisher’s slow speed to his advantage. Joe McGuinness was flyinga Kingfisher from the light cruiser USS Birminghamover Japanese-oc-cupied Wake Island when a Zero jumped him. McGuinness immediatelyreduced his airspeed to just abovestall speed. “We were almost falling

out of the sky,” recalls the retirednaval aviator. He turned the Kingfisher toward the oncoming Japanese fight-er in order to give his gunner a goodshot at the enemy pilot. “He [the Zero]was going too fast, and just skiddedright over us. My gunner was shoot-ing at him, but we didn’t stick around

to see if we hit him or his airplane.”Even as the new aircraft were reach-

ing the fleet, Vought-Sikorsky con-tinued to tinker with the Kingfisher’sdesign. On May 17, 1941, the first of the OS2U-3s flew, powered by a 450-horsepower Pratt & Whitney985-AN-2 radial engine.


Slow, Steady, and Stable“It was a very stable aircraft,” recalls James W. “J im” D avis Jr., who fl ewKingfishers off the cruiser Salt LakeCity. “Very slow, but very stable. Theysaid you could loop it, but with thosebig floats, I wasn’t going to push it. TheKingfisher was a good airplane for its purpose [spotting and observation] be-cause you could see everything thatwas going on.”

Hundreds of Kingfishers served strict-ly as landplanes at training bases inPensacola and Jacksonville, Florida,and Corpus Christi, Texas. Fifty-threeothers found homes at various U.S.Coast Guard air stations, where theyflew anti-submarine and convoy escortmissions along the coasts of the Unit-ed States. The Kingfisher shared itsscouting and observation duties withthe SOC Seagull, a slow but gracefulbiplane built by Curtiss Aircraft Com- pany. Pilots familiar with the SOC ap- preciat ed its superior fuel e conomyand rate of climb, although they rel-ished the Kingfisher’s excellent radios,especially on long hops over the ocean.

“Both were reliable aircraft,” saysWilliam Neufeld, author of the book Slingshot Warbirds and the younger

brother of a naval aviator who flewboth types of aircraft. Neufeld con-cedes that the Kingfisher could be “a little more temperamental” than theSOC. Later, the SC-1 Seahawk joinedthe fleet as another catapult-launchedaircraft. Nevertheless, it was the om-nipresent Kingfisher that was destinedto become the Navy’s iconic floatplaneof the Second World War.

The Kingfisher’s tasks were legion:They included scouting, bombing, straf-ing, anti-submarine patrols, search-and-rescue, training, and even odd jobssuch as towing aerial gunnery targets.Capable of remaining aloft for over fivehours, the Kingfishers could range 400miles from their ships to scour sky andsea for the enemy.

John Mar occhi s erved aboard theUSS Birminghamwhile the light cruis-er supported U.S. amphibious opera-tions in Sicily, and later in the Pacific.During the invasion of Saipan and Tini-an in June 1944, he worked the cruis-er’s main-battery fire-control comput-er, a massive machine of wheels anddials. For him, the Kingfishers were in-

dispensable. “We used the reports fromthe plane spotters to correct aim points,”Marocchi explains. “During pre-land-ing bombardments, the plane spotterswere very effective. And once our troopswere ashore, the planes spotted for usbeyond what could be observed fromthe ground.”

Almon P. “Al” Oliver, a pilot stationedon the battleship North Carolina, re-members that the ship’s gun crews

would begin a fire mission by firing a single round, then radioing the word“salvo.” Just before the shell was expected to land, Oliver recalls, the crewcalled “stand-by,” to alert the pilot toobserve the shell land, then as the shellwas expected to land, “splash.” “As thefiring continued, the pilot would callout any corrections necessary to putthe shells on target, at which time hewould report ‘No change, no change.’”

Ready, Aim, Launch!For Kingfisher crews assigned to theNavy’s warships, missions began lit-erally with a bang.

“Aircraft were launched from theship by a catapult operated by gunpowder,” explains Oliver. Battleshipsand cruisers were, at the time, typi-

cally outfitted with two stern-mount-ed catapults for such purposes. TheNavy even equipped some destroyerswith them, although the smaller shipshad to give up a gun turret and the tor- pedo tubes , to make room for the cat-apult. “An eight-inch shell filled withblack powder was fired into a cham-

—— ✭✭✭ ——

It was a lucky piwho could coax

speeds of more th

166 mph out of thKingfisher.A craftpilot, however, couwork the airplaneslow speed to hi

advantage.

Joe McGuinness trained a Jacksonville Naval Air Stain Florida in 1942.

Curtiss Aircraft Company’s SOC Seagulls scouted with Kingfishers.

The Kingfisher’s landing speedwas a remarkably slow 55 mph,thanks in part to low wing loadingand a 262-square-foot wing area.

The spoilers (1) provided lateral

control when the droopingailerons (2) deployed withthe flaps (3) to maintainlift during low-speed flight.

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Robert Epperson served as a radiooperator-gunner with Salt Lake City’sKingfisher unit. He recalls the explo-sive moment of launch from inside theaircraft. “The pilot would clamp hishand down on the throttle, stick hiselbow back in his stomach, and lockhis head back in a headrest,” he says.

“In the back, I would put my head downin my lap, cross my arms over it, andgrasp a pair of handles with my hands.

“When we were catapulted fromamidships, the force was fantastic. Anything that happened to be loose inthe cockpit—in fact, just about any-thing in the cockpit—became a pro- jectile. For the first few seconds after launch, you were busy putting radiosand spare ammunition cans back wherethey belonged so that those thingsweren’t jamming the controls.”

Of course, getting into the air wasonly part of the battle. Even with ex- perience, landing a Kingfisher in theocean could be a challenge.

“Swells in the landing area are pre-dictable,” Oliver explains. “[Usually]

they can be judged by the pilot and pose no big problem to operations un-less they are extremely high.” In thechoppiest waters, the ship created a “slick,” a wake of relatively calm wa-ter, by making a s weeping turn to oneside. The airplane flew a pattern par-allel to the ship’s course at 500 feet,with the ship flying a signal flag at half

mast. A green flag on the starboard yardarm indicated to the pilot that re-covery would be made on the ship’sstarboard side, while a red flag on the port yarda rm i ndica ted a port-s idelanding. When the airplane was abouta quarter-mile ahead of the ship, the“C” flag—“Charley” flag in Navy par-

lance—was waved to signal the pilotto begin the landing sequence.

“Upon signal to execute, the airplane started a circling 360-degree ap- proach and the shipexecuted a maxi-mum-rate turn of 90degrees,” says Oliv-er. “A crewman onthe fantail threw a smoke flare over-board so that the pi-

lot could align his approachinto the wind, as close to th possible” (see illustration, o

After landing, the pilot ta“sled,” towed from a boomstern. The sled, which measu10 feet wide and 20 feet long, of a heavy rope tied into a

one-foot squares. A spring-loaattached to the bottom of tfisher’s main float engagedand the plane was towed un


ber, and by the movement of a pis-ton [and] a series of pulleys and ca-bles, a cradle holding the plane wasliterally fired down the catapult track,”says Oliver. “This amounted to be-ing fired from a cannon, since the plane a ccele rated from z ero to 60knots within a few feet.

“It was a sturdy aircraft and couldtake a lot of punishment,” he adds.“We may have called them ‘low and

slow,’ but they were rugged.“Prior to launch,” Oliver contin-

ues, “the ship would turn to a head-ing that would place the relative windabout 30 degrees off the bow. Thecatapult would then be trained out-board to put the wind directly downthe track.” When crews wanted to

launch two Kingfishers in rapid suc-cession, they expedited the processby loading both catapults, starboard

and port sides. “The ship would turnso that the starboard catapult wasfacing into the wind, and launch thatKingfisher first. Then they rotatedthe port-facing catapult 90 degreesso that it now also faced the star-board side, and launch that King-fisher as well. This process avoided

the labor-intensive maneuver of chang-ing the ship’s direction, and enabledus to launch quickly.”

—— ✭✭✭ ——

Getting into the airwas only part of thebattle. Even withexperience, landinga Kingfisher in the

ocean could bea challenge.

Landing sequence: The Kingfisher flew parallel to the ship (1). When signaled, it made a 360-degree turn while the ship headedinto the wind (2). The airplane then landedon the “slick” created by the ship’s turn (3).

The gunpowder-driven catapultwas noisy enoughto make onlookers plug their ears.The force of the

catapult propelledthe aircraft to aspeed of about70 mph.

A pilot haattached th from a shcrane so th Kingfishebe hoisteddeck (left)a recovery(opposite) pilot taxiesometimes

rough waengage a “with a sprloaded hoothe airpla main floa

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“The airplane started what appearedto be a takeoff run into the wind,” Oliv-er remembers. “I expected Jacobs’ take-off might be rough due to the choppywater, but the high wind would be help-ful. Yet as I watched the plane run intothe wind longer than I felt necessaryand begin to bounce and porpoise, Ibecame concerned and flew downalongside the plane. To my amazement,both cockpits were empty.”

Turning back toward the beach, Oliv-er spotted both Jacobs and Coumbestruggling in the surf. While Jacobs hadstood in the cockpit trying to helpCoumbe on board, the blast from a nearby shell had dumped Jacobs outof the airplane. As he fell, he had in-advertently kicked the throttle wideopen, and the aircraft took off un-manned, leaving him and Coumbestranded on the hostile shore.

“I landed and taxied back, then turnedinto the wind, flaps down, and sailedbackwards through the surf with themain float touching the beach,” Oliv-er recounts. “Since the plane had onlyone seat in the rear cockpit, I yelledout to Jacobs that he should help therescued pilot into the back seat andthat I would send someone back for

him.” Jacobs understandably disagreedwith Oliver’s idea, and scrambled intothe back seat along with Coumbes.

Within moments, Oliver’s Kingfish-er labored aloft. With its center of grav-ity so far aft, his aircraft “flew like a pregnant duck.” It also burned fuel atan increased rate, so Oliver kept a care-ful eye on his fuel gauge. Some twoand a half hours later, he landed along-side the North Carolina with what hedescribed as “one cup of fuel” in thetank. For the three pilots, it had beena remarkably close call, and both Oliv-er and Jacobs received DistinguishedFlying Crosses for their bravery.

The Kingfishers RetireThe end of World War II marked theend of the era of using catapults tolaunch aircraft from ships other thanaircraft carriers. Increasingly effective

anti-aircraft weapons, improvementsin radar-controlled gunfire, and theasecendancy of the helicopter con-spired to edge the slow, vulnerableKingfisher off the stage. Today, somehalf-dozen Kingfishers reside in mu-seums around the world, including theNational Air and Space Museum’s StevenF. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Vir-ginia. Kingfishers are also on displayat the USS Alabama and the USS North

Carolinabattleship memorials, at theNaval Aviation Museum in Pensacola,Florida, and at museums in Havana,Cuba, and Santiago, Chile. These fewexhibits are all that remain of the morethan 1,500 Kingfishers that served dur-ing World War II.


from the cockpit was attached to anaircraft crane on deck. The airplanewas then hoisted on board and placedin a cradle atop the catapult track.

Scout, Search, and RescueMeandering over enemy lines for hoursat a time to call in naval g unfire on ob-stinate enemy positions, the Kingfishersendeared themselves to the troopsslugging it out with the Japanese be-low. But few men held the Kingfish-er in higher esteem than the downednaval aviators who relied on “OldSlow and Ugly” to save them fromcapture or death. An incident relat-ed by Oliver from the last days of thewar represents countless such episodesin the Pacific.

On August 10, 1945—the day after the atomic bombing of Nagasaki—hurried orders scrambled Oliver off the North Carolina to rescue a Navy pilot who had ditched off the Japanese

island of Honshu. Before he even hadtime to plot a decent course, Oliver blasted off the catapult. Another King-fisher, piloted by Lieutenant Ralph Ja-cobs, linked up with him for the res-cue. To free up space, both men flewwithout backseat gunners. Instead,eight fighters flew escort overhead.

Dodging friendly fire from a U.S.submarine, quickly followed by heavyanti-aircraft fire from Japanese shore positions, Oliver a nd Jacobs spottedthe downed aviator, Lieutenant (Ju-

nior Grade) Vernon Coumbe. Shotdown the day before, Coumbe hadspent a tense night a scant two milesfrom a major Japanese naval base.

Ordering Oliver to remain airborne, Jacobs braved high winds and chop- py surf to splash down near Coumbe.Immediately, automatic weapons firestreaked through the air while shells plunge d int o the wate r ar ound t heKingfisher. As Oliver took evasive ac-tion overhead, Jacobs taxied near thebeach.

—— ✭✭✭ ——

Capable of remainialoft for over fiv

hours, the Kingfishcould range out f400 miles from the

ship to scour skyand sea for theenemy.

A Kingfisher overflies the firstwave of the invasion of Angaur, Palau Island, in September 1944.

In April 1944, a Kingfisher rescued ninedowned navalaviators inTruk Lagoon. Here, theaircraftapproaches thesubmarine USS Tang as the rescued flierscling to itswings.

The OS2U-3 was the only variantexported. In all, 1,519 Kingfishers flew, bearing not only U.S. markings,but those of other countries, fromUruguay to Australia.

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Air Space Catapult Crews Layout-fm05