"Midway was big. But the Battle for Leyte Gulf was perhaps the Navy's finest hour. The Battle Off Samar was courage on top of courage."
Mark Tempest-Eaglespeak
One surviving sailor who was there that day was recently interviewed about that event. He was asked what it was like being in the Navy. He remarked:
"“People ask what it was like. Ninety-nine percent of the time it was boring as hell. One percent of the time it was pure terror...The Battle of Leyte Gulf was part of the 1 percent."
Article by Dara McBride in Cecil Daily Whig
In my minds eye, I sometimes visualize what that moment of terror that required courage on top of courage may have been like for Wally. His torpedo bomber aircraft pushes over into a dive quickly accelerating to over 350 miles per hour. The mighty Japanese battleship NAGATO below is the target. The NAGATO throws up all of its firepower in defense. Wally being in the belly of the airplane can not see the ship, but the sound of its many huge guns firing is deafening. He feels the whole aircraft shuttering and shaking violently as anti-aircraft fire explodes around them and he wonders with each passing moment if it is their last. The pilot radios him to lower the bombay doors and after doing so he sees the ocean below... he smells the smoke....he smells gunpowder. The sound is now even more deafening. Out the side view window he sees tremendous geysers of water flying up around them as the NAGATO attempts to bring them down. He receives the call to release the bombs and after doing so slides into position at his aircrafts aft machine gun. As the bombs explode the NAGATO suddenly comes into view from the rear of the aircraft and Wally strafes the ship from stem to stern as his aircraft pulls up from the bombing dive. Suddenly the whole aircraft convulses violently as it is struck by anti-aircraft fire from the NAGATO...(the rest of the story is told in the posts that follow :-)
Wally would be 94 years old if he were here with us today. My next door neighbor is 94 years old and I saw him just the other day driving away from McDonalds in his car with some of his buddies in his car with him.
"We must be ready to dare all for our country. For history does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid." - President Eisenhower, First Inaugural Address
