Chapter 9
The Last Stand of Captain Henry T. Elrod
By Laurence M. Burke II, PhD, Aviation Curator
Featured artifacts: Relic, Part, Propeller, Aircraft, Grumman F4F-3 Wildcat (1983.278.1); and Medal, Medal of Honor, Captain Henry T. Elrod (1977.326.1)
Capt Henry T. Elrod’s Medal of Honor.
Photo by Jose Esquilin, Marine Corps University Press.
Capt Henry T. Elrod’s Medal of Honor (reverse). The inscription reads: “The President of the/United States/to/Capt. Henry T. Elrod/USMC/Deceased/For Gallantry Above and Beyond/the Call of Duty Against/Enemy Japanese Forces on/Wake Island/8 to 23/December/1941.”
Photo by Jose Esquilin, Marine Corps University Press.
A Grumman F4F-3 Wildcat propeller from Wake Island.
National Archives and Records Administration.
The United States claimed the uninhabited Wake Island in 1899, with the idea that it could serve as a station for a new submarine telegraph cable to the U.S. colony of the Philippines.[1] Wake remained uninhabited until 1935, when Pan American Airways (Pan Am) began developing the location as a stopover point for its flying clippers. At that time, the United States was prohibited by treaty from establishing new military bases in the Pacific, but the civil facilities that Pan Am planned at Wake could also be used by the U.S. Navy.[2] In 1939, the treaty restricting new fortifications in the Pacific had expired, and the Navy began planning to expand the Pan Am station at Wake, turning it into a Navy seaplane base. Work began in January 1941. By December of that year, the construction was about 65 percent complete, but little had been done to build defensive fortifications.[3] The advance detail of the U.S. Marine Corps’ 1st Defense Battalion had only begun arriving in August. The first airplanes from Marine Fighter Squadron 211 (VMF-211) arrived on 4 December, joining an advance party of about one-fifth of the squadron’s ground crew.[4]
A composite photograph of Wake Atoll. The airfield on Wake Island is at lower right.
National Archives and Records Administration.
At 0650 on the morning of 8 December 1941, local time (7 December in Hawaii and the United States), a radio operator on Wake learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The Marine defense garrison, only up to about half its intended strength, rushed to what defensive positions existed. The lone aircraft squadron on the atoll, VMF-211, was also not up to full strength or equipment, but it scrambled to get its 12 brand-new Grumman F4F-3 Wildcat fighters ready for combat. The squadron had just switched over to Wildcats from the older Brewster F2A Buffalo fighters, and the pilots were scheduled for their first gunnery practice later that day. Four planes had taken off for the dawn patrol and were airborne when news of the Pearl Harbor attack came in. They landed at 0900 and took off again after refueling. Captain Henry Talmadge Elrod, the squadron’s executive officer, led one of the two 2-plane sections in this second flight.[5]
Capt Henry T. Elrod.
National Archives and Records Administration.
At about 1200, 34 Japanese Mitsubishi G3M2 twin-engine bombers, later to be codenamed “Nells” by the Allied forces, bombed and strafed the atoll, destroying seven of VMF-211’s Wildcats on the ground and damaging an eighth, damaging the squadron’s air-ground radio, destroying the already limited supply of spare parts along with the repair manuals for the planes, and setting fire to the aviation gas tanks. In addition to this, the strike ultimately killed close to one-half of the squadron’s 55 personnel, while another 11 were injured. Unfortunately for the Marine defenders, the Japanese bombers were able to approach and depart the atoll while hidden by storm clouds, and the noise of their approach was masked by the booming surf. The U.S. naval base lacked radar to detect the incoming raid, and damage to the radios meant that the base was unable to vector the combat air patrols (two sections of two Wildcats each) to the targets. The attacking Japanese bombers escaped without being engaged by the Wildcats. The Marine planes landed shortly after the attack, and Elrod’s plane, number 9, struck some bomb debris, bending its propeller and damaging the engine.[6]
A Japanese photograph shows a formation of Mitsubishi G3M bombers in flight.
San Diego Air and Space Museum.
During the next several days, the surviving squadron personnel did their best to keep as many of their five surviving aircraft, including Elrod’s repaired number 9, in the air as possible. Using only hand tools that had survived the attack, the severely reduced squadron cannibalized their nonflying aircraft for parts and made other repairs as best they could.[7]
Cat and Mouse over Wake by Marcus W. Stewart Jr. This painting depicts a VMF-211 Wildcat trying to shoot down a Japanese bomber.
National Museum of the Marine Corps.
A Japanese landing force arrived at Wake on 11 December. Expecting minimal resistance, this force was quite small—just 450 troops—and supported by three light cruisers and six destroyers with no air cover. Marines crewing the surviving coastal defense guns on the atoll were able to turn back this force, sinking an enemy destroyer and inflicting damage on other ships. VMF-211 put four Wildcats in the air, each carrying two 100-pound bombs. These aircraft hit and damaged two of the Japanese light cruisers as well as one transport and one destroyer, while Elrod was credited with sinking the destroyer Kisaragi (no. 21) when his bombs detonated the ship’s depth charges. VMF-211 was able to fly six more sorties before the Japanese were out of range, with the Wildcats bombing and strafing damaging another three ships. But Elrod’s plane (number 11) had been damaged by antiaircraft fire, and he wrecked just short of the airfield on his return. Only two Wildcats were available to oppose the Japanese bombers that arrived over Wake four hours later. The next day, 12 December, Elrod shot down 2 of the 22 Nells that bombed the atoll.[8]
The remains of VMF-211’s Wildcats on Wake.
National Archives and Records Administration.
In the face of the failure of the first landing attempt at Wake, the Japanese reinforced their landing forces and added two aircraft carriers (and their escorts) from the force that had carried out the Pearl Harbor attack. The first Japanese carrier strikes, involving bombers escorted by fighters, hit Wake on 20 December, opposed in the air by only two Marine Wildcats. Two days later, the Japanese carrier planes struck again. During this raid, the last two flyable Wildcats were lost, and the 20 remaining able-bodied Marines of VMF-211 took their place in the line of defenses, truly embodying the idea that every Marine is a rifleman.
Sea – Wake Island by E. Franklin Wittmack. Wittmack painted the scene in 1943, when few details of the battle were known in the United States. It does not accurately depict any of the action on the atoll but does convey the sense that most Americans had of the battle.
National Museum of the Marine Corps.
The second Japanese invasion force struck on 23 December, with the first troops landing on Wake shortly after 0230. Elrod was leading the defense of a 3-inch antiaircraft gun when his unit was surrounded. At one point, he stood up with an M1928 Thompson submachine gun to successfully break a Japanese charge. He died later when he was shot in the head while standing up to throw a grenade. He was buried near where he fell along with other U.S. casualties of the battle.[9] The Marine Corps posthumously promoted Elrod to major and awarded him the Medal of Honor for his defense of Wake against overwhelming odds both in the air and on the ground.
The garrison commander on Wake, U.S. Navy commander Winfield S. Cunningham, reported the successful Japanese landing to his superiors in Hawaii at about 0500 on 23 December with the famous message: “ENEMY ON ISLAND—ISSUE IN DOUBT.” At about 0800, facing dwindling ammunition supplies, sustaining increasing casualties, and knowing that the naval relief force sailing from Pearl Harbor to reinforce Wake had been ordered back to Hawaii, Cunningham made the difficult decision to surrender the atoll. The surviving defenders, along with about 1,100 civilians—mostly contractors working to establish the Navy seaplane base along with a handful of Pan Am staff—were taken prisoner by the Japanese.[10]
Wake remained under Japanese control until the end of the war, finally surrendering to a detachment of Marines on 4 September 1945. Construction forces soon moved in to restore the airfield and extend it for commercial use. In 1955, a Coast Guardsman in charge of the atoll’s LORAN (long-range navigation) station created a makeshift memorial from the engine cowling, bent propeller, and tailhook of a damaged Marine Wildcat, reportedly from Elrod’s damaged number 9 plane but more likely from the crashed number 11 since number 9 went missing in action on 22 December.[11] In 1964, this was replaced by a permanent memorial to the defenders of Wake, and the airplane parts were removed and delivered to the collection of what is now the National Museum of the Marine Corps. The cowling was restored to like-new condition for installation on the FM-1 Wildcat (a wartime copy of the F4F-4 that was built in idled General Motors automotive factories) at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, where it remained for many years.[12] But the propeller and tailhook remain in their damaged state, attesting to the difficulties faced by VMF-211 and the heroic Major Elrod.
The first Wake Island memorial built by Lt Marshall K. Phillips, USCG, in 1955.
National Archives and Records Administration.
Endnotes
[1] LtCol Robert D. Heinl Jr., The Defense of Wake (Washington, DC: Historical Section, Division of Public Information, Headquarters Marine Corps, 1947), 65–66.
[2] John Wukovits, Pacific Alamo: The Battle for Wake Island (New York: New American Library, 2003), 18.
[3] Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, vol. 3, The Rising Sun in the Pacific, 1931–April 1942 (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1948), 225, 227; and Building the Navy’s Bases in World War II: History of the Bureau of Yards and Docks and the Civil Engineer Corps, 1940–1946, vol. 2 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1947), 157–58.
[4] S. E. Smith, ed., The United States Marine Corps in World War II (New York: Random House, 1969) 2–3; and Alan R. Millett, Semper Fidelis: The History of the United States Marine Corps (New York: Macmillan, 1980), 354–55.
[5] BGen John F. Kinney, Wake Island Pilot: A World War II Memoir (Sterling, VA: Potomac Books, 2005), 55, 57–58.
[6] Robert Sherrod, History of Marine Corps Aviation in World War II (Washington, DC: Combat Forces Press, 1952), 37–38.
[7] Millett, Semper Fidelis, 42; and Kinney, Wake Island Pilot, 59–60.
[8] Millett, Semper Fidelis, 40–41; Morison, The Rising Sun in the Pacific, 234; and Wukovits, Pacific Alamo, 91–92.
[9] Wukovits, Pacific Alamo, 171, 189–90.
[10] Morison, The Rising Sun in the Pacific, 248, 252–53.
[11] Caption to U.S. Department of Defense photo A420788; and Gregory J. W. Urwin, Facing Fearful Odds: The Siege of Wake Island (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 434–36.
[12] National Museum of the Marine Corps, catalog file 1995.84.