The Hellcat came aboard the wrong carrier, with two rounds left in six machine guns, and had to be hauled off the arrestor wire by hand because the engine had stopped and there was no fuel left to restart it.

The pilot had just shot down nine aeroplanes. It remains the American single-mission record, and it has stood since 24 October 1944.

Commander David McCampbell was thirty-four years old, commanded the air group, and was not supposed to be flying that morning at all — his Hellcat was only partly fuelled when the radar plot filled up.

The Man Who Nearly Never Flew

McCampbell was born in Bessemer, Alabama, and moved to West Palm Beach as a boy. He went to Staunton Military Academy, spent a year at Georgia Tech, and was appointed to the Naval Academy in 1929, graduating in 1933 with a degree in marine engineering.

And then the Great Depression took his career away before it began. There were not enough commissions for Academy graduates that year, so he was placed in the Naval Reserve and sent home. The US Navy’s future ace of aces spent the next year in Atlanta, working in construction and in an aircraft assembly plant. He was finally ordered to active duty on 1 June 1934 and commissioned as an ensign.

The US Naval Institute's documentary on McCampbell, which is the authoritative telling and worth the time.

He found his way back, and by February 1944 he was Commander, Air Group 15, running the fighters, bombers and torpedo bombers of a carrier air group from the deck of USS Essex.

The Fabled Fifteen

Air Group 15 flew for six months, from April to November 1944, through the Battle of the Philippine Sea and the Battle of Leyte Gulf. In that time it destroyed more enemy aircraft and sank more enemy shipping than any other air group in the Pacific war: 315 aircraft shot down and a further 348 destroyed on the ground.

McCampbell's own aircraft changed as the tour went on. He flew an F6F-3 called Monsoon Maiden, which anti-aircraft fire retired on 20 May 1944; then an F6F-3 named The Minsi, good for ten and a half kills; then an F6F-5, Minsi II; and finally Minsi III, Bureau Number 70143, in which he scored the last twenty-three and a half of his thirty-four.

Ace in a Day, Twice

The first time was 19 June 1944, during the action American aircrew named the Marianas Turkey Shoot. McCampbell shot down five Yokosuka D4Y dive-bombers in one engagement, then went back up that afternoon and added two Zeros over Guam.

The second time is the one that made the record books. On 24 October, at the start of Leyte Gulf, a formation of around sixty Japanese aircraft appeared on radar heading for the fleet. McCampbell launched with a partly filled tank, and he and his wingman went at the formation alone.

Seven Zeros and two Nakajima Ki-43 Oscars. Nine aircraft, one pilot, one sortie.

The landing is the detail that sticks. Essex's flight deck was not clear, so he put down aboard USS Langley instead. His six guns had two rounds left between them. The Hellcat had to be released from the arrestor wire by hand, because the fuel was entirely gone.

What He Thought of the Aeroplane

A wingman once described McCampbell as having “hands of magic”. McCampbell himself, asked about the Hellcat that made it all possible, offered the least romantic assessment imaginable.

Other Hellcat pilots were less restrained. Lieutenant Commander Hamilton McWhorter, the first man to become a double ace in the type, put the case for the aeroplane more plainly.

Why the Hellcat Could Do This

The F6F was not the most elegant fighter of the war, and it was not the fastest. It was the right aeroplane, available in quantity, at the moment it was needed. Grumman built 12,275 of them between June 1942 and November 1945 — the largest number of fighters ever produced at a single factory.

A widely watched account of why the Hellcat had the measure of the Zero, pegged to the Philippine Sea action in which McCampbell first became an ace in a day.

Hal Andrews, an engineer with the Navy's Bureau of Aeronautics, gave the type the highest compliment an engineer has available.

Afterwards

McCampbell went home in March 1945 and stayed in the Navy for another nineteen years, retiring in 1964 after thirty-one years of service. He commanded the oiler USS Severn and then the carrier USS Bon Homme Richard, and served on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Public-domain film of American carriers, principally USS Essex, shot on 27 December 1944 — two months after the nine-kill mission.

He was the third-highest-scoring American ace of the war, and the highest-scoring one to survive it. The passenger terminal at Palm Beach International Airport carries his name. So does a destroyer.

The record still stands. Eighty-two years on, no American pilot has shot down nine aircraft in one sortie since — and given how air combat is now fought, it is difficult to imagine anyone ever will.

Sources: Wikipedia entry on David McCampbell, including the full Medal of Honor citation; Defense Media Network, “F6F Hellcat: Remembered Firsthand” by Robert F. Dorr, for the McCampbell, McWhorter and Andrews quotes; US Naval Institute.