The Brood of "Noisy Nan"

Over isolated atolls in the Central Pacific Marine planes flew last week, relentlessly exploiting the helpless position of stranded Japs. In less than two months the Marines had flown 2,330 sorties against Jap-held islands in the eastern Marshalls, peppering them with 1,628 tons of bombs. The Marines were working off some private wrath. The Japs were unlucky enough to be there to catch it.

For a long time Marine flyers have brooded over their treatment by the Navy, which has declined to give them the kind of a job they crave. They think that when landings are made by Marine divisions, Marine flyers should be called upon to support them. Instead the Navy has reserved that job for Navy flyers, tossing the monotonous and unspectacular job of providing air defense afterward to the Marine air arm.

That was what happened at the Marshalls. That was why the Marines there flew with wrath. They pointed with the pride of Marines to the Marine air arm's history and present strength, and vowed they deserved a better deal.

Hatched. Now bigger than the whole Corps was in 1917, Marine aviation got its start in 1911 when a brash U.S.M.C. lieutenant named Alfred A. Cunningham disturbed the serenity of the Philadelphia Navy Yard by hopping around in a rented plane ($25 a month) nicknamed "Noisy Nan." Not satisfied, he instigated among Philadelphia politicians a campaign for a Marine Corps flying field. To shut him up, the Navy offered him flight training. So the Corps's aviation division spread its wings in 1912.

When World War I came, Cunningham headed a Marine air force of five officers, 30 enlisted men. Among them was Roy S. Geiger (now a major general), who commanded the first Marines to fly in France.

The minuscule Marine air arm fought lustily, grew, kept at it after the war ended. Marine flyers developed dive bombing, in Haiti. They improved the technique against the Nicaraguan "bandits." They operated in China during the 1927 civil war. On Dec. 11, 1941, four days after Pearl Harbor, they made their bloody entrance into World War II.

Wake and Midway. On that day four battered old Grummans of Fighter Squadron 211 clattered up into the air over Wake Island and tore into the Jap naval force creeping over the horizon. In that pitiful and heroic last stand the Marine flyers set one enemy ship afire, sank a cruiser. Said a presidential citation: "The courageous conduct . . . will not be forgotten as long as gallantry and heroism are respected and honored."

They fought at Midway, where Major Loften R. Henderson power-dived his flaming bomber onto a Jap carrier and Captain Richard E. Fleming, with his plane in flames, led his squadron against another carrier; Fleming was last seen hurtling into the sea. Eighty-four Marines flew against the Japs during the crisis at Midway; 38 were killed. Said Admiral Chester Nimitz to their commanding officer at Midway: "The sacrifices of your heroic men have not been in vain. . . . They dealt the enemy carriers the first blow and they spearheaded our great victory."

Guadalcanal. The Pacific war moved south and the Marines moved with it. They fought over Guadalcanal, based on the field which they had named after Loften Henderson. They flew workhorse Douglas bombers. They flew old Grumman fighters against nimbler Zeros, but adapted their tactics to their ship. Major Joe Foss tied Eddie Rickenbacker's World War I record of 26 kills. On one day he got two before lunch, three in the afternoon.

Their own casualties were high. Out of one squadron's 80 pilots, only 46 survived, and of these only 13 were effectives when the unit was taken out. But they helped secure Guadalcanal.

The Navy gave them brand-new Corsairs and the Marines flew them from Henderson Field to lead the mounting Solomons campaign.

They called their squadrons by such fancy names as "Hellhawks," "Fighting Falcons" (whose Captain James E. Swett destroyed seven Jap dive bombers in one fight), "Black Sheep" (commanded by famed "Pappy" Boyington). They turned Rabaul into a graveyard of Jap ships while they made screwball talk over their radios: "Here comes Jack Armstrong, the a-a-alll American boy. Ratatat-tat." . . . "Which way'd they go, sheriff?" . . . "Thataway, pardner." . . . "Avast, ye villain, I'll pay the mortgage, take that and that and that."

Proud Corps. In Washington, compact, 48-year-old Brigadier General Louis Woods, who bosses the Corps's air arm, smoked his usual 14 cigars a day last week and worked diligently at his desk in a corner of the Navy Building. He had seen Cunningham's division of five officers and 30 men grow into an organization which embraces almost one-fourth of the Corps's entire personnel. Over its size and its quality Marines pop their buttons with pride.

They only grow indignant when they recall how they are used. The Corps will never be satisfied until its air arm gets assigned to carriers, from which it can support its own foot soldiers. Its flyers are browned off on defensive and strategic operations, based on hot atolls. Says General Woods firmly: "The Marine aviator and the Marine foot soldier must be a team." The welcome scuttlebutt this week: the Navy was about ready for some all-Marine carriers, was going to give its amphibious outfit what it wanted.

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