Lt. Dick Tripp, landing signal officer of the USS Yorktown stood on the aircraft carrier's flight deck, the fluttering flag paddles in his hands pleading to the pilot of a "wounded bird" to pay attention.
In the shot up F6F Hellcat fighter plane, Charlie Crommelin squinted out of his one good eye. His cockpit had taken a direct hit. His two wingmen in Air Group 5 had guided him 200 miles back. Now it was up to the coolest LSO in Task Force 58, maybe the whole US Navy, to use his arms and paddles to descent to the carrier deck.
As Crommelin leaned his bloody head out of the shattered cockpit, Tripp's paddles coaxed the Hellcat's wings level and its tail down. There was no wave off. The tail hook caught one of the cables stretched across the deck and the Hellcat lurched to a halt.
Crommelin lost an eye in that World War Two battle off Tarawa in 1943. He lost his life flying during the waning days of the war.
Before Santa Clara California Realtor Dick Tripp lost his own life in August 7, 1991, he wept with his daughter Joanne, not so much because of the cancer that was killing him at the age of 70, but because of his Navy buddies, who died nearly 50 years ago. "What do I have to cry about?" he said, "Three of them are 23 years old forever."
Dick Tripp saved hundreds of Charlie Crommelins during World War Two and he directed more than 10,000 carrier deck landings from 1943 to 1945.
He earned at least one medal for his heroism. He received numerous citations but his fellow officers and his family don't know how many. They do know he gained an unmatched reputation among naval aviators.
"Their lives were in his hands" said Clark G. Reynolds, author of "The Fighting Lady," the story of the second Yorktown in the Pacific war. "They always wanted Tripp working the paddles after a battle."
Perhaps his finest hour came June 20, 1944 during the Battle of the Philippine Sea. In what because known as the "Mission Beyond Darkness" Navy Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher sent 216 planes to attack the Japanese fleet. It was 4 p.m.
"You could see them glance at their wristwatches and then at the position of the sun," Tripp later told his friend. "they knew what they were heading into and they knew what it would be like when they came back."
The Navy planes sank the carrier Hiyo, damaged others and send the Japanese Navy into retreat.
Blind Landings
But few of the pilots of Task Force 58 had practiced night landings, much less on carriers in darkness imposed to cloak them from Japanese submarines. As the aviators returned, they were frantic. "They were running out of gas...they couldn't see."
The Yorktown's captain ordered the lights turned on.
Only 20 American planes had been lost in the battle with the Japanese but 72 hit the drink or crashed trying to land on the carriers. Dick Tripp didn't lose any on his Yorktown's flight deck that night.
He had come reluctantly to his job. He had earned his wings at Corpus Christi Texas Naval Air Station and desperately wanted to fly for his country. After the original Yorktown had been sunk in the battle of Midway, the second Yorktown was commission in April 1943 and Tripp was assigned to the ship. Trip became the LSO, a more valuable job than pilot.
Damned near magic
"The guy was damned near magic" said Jean Balch, a radioman in an SB2C Helldiver. "Dick Tripp, for my money, was the best LSO in the whole Pacific."
When the state of South Carolina paid a token $1 to keep the Navy from scrapping the Yorktown, it ultimately dragged its old LSO back. By the late 70's Tripp was out finding old Corsairs and Grummans to restore for the Yorktown museum in Mouth Pleasant SC.
And by 1982, when the presidency of the USS Yorktown club was left vacant, the old salts of the Yorktown once more turned to the man who could bridge the gap between the enlisted men who ran the ship and the officers who flew the planes.
At age 69 he continued to take bicycle tours up Mount Hamilton, California. Cancer was diagnosed. He took it philosophically, "It's been a good ride" he told his sister.
Dick Tripp's good ride will finally end in October 1992 in South Carolina where plaques identifying the Navy's 104 carriers list the 8,030 sailors and aviators who have died. On the Yorktown the musket squad will fire a salute, the bugler will play taps, and Tripp's life sized photograph will stand on his LSO platform above a bronze plaque dedicated to his memory.
Mercury News by Mack Lundstrom