FIRST BLOOD

Medal of Honor Recipient “Zeke” Swett’s fight for survival

COL. JAMES E. “ZEKE” SWETT, JAMES P. BUSHA

IN NOVEMBER 1942, I had been assigned to VMF-221, not as an original member of the squadron but as a replacement pilot for all the men who had gone through holy hell at Midway. The group had lost a tremendous amount of pilots and planes on the tiny Pacific island, as they stood and fought the Japanese onslaught. After my advanced fighter training in Hawaii, I was sent to a place in the south Pacific called Guadalcanal and became a member of the “Cactus Air Force”—cactus being the codename for Guadalcanal. Our living conditions were very basic; we lived in tents next to slit trenches. When the Zeros strafed us on a daily basis, we simply rolled out of our tents into a trench and waited for them to leave.…

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Flight Journal (Digital) - 1 Issue, November/December 2024

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