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Col. R. Bruce Porter - Pilot / Ace |
VMF-111, 121, 441, 511, VMF(N)542 and 544 |
A Distinguished Veteran |
| Colonel R. Bruce Porter was born on August 18, 1920, in Salina, Utah. While attending the University of Southern California (USC), he and his friend, Roy Margrave, went to the Forum to see the movie “Flight Command”. Inspired and wanting to become a pilot, a month later he and Roy drove to Long Beach, California, to the Navy Recruiting office to sign up and become “Cadets for Naval Aviation”. After filling out the paperwork, a Marine Corps Captain called them into his cramped office. He got their paperwork from the Navy Chief Petty Officer, threw it in the trashcan, and said, “Boys, you look like Marine material to me!” As Bruce Porter describes it in his best selling autobiography “Ace, A Marine Night-Fighter Pilot in World War II”, “by the time I left that cramped office, I felt like a Marine.” After receiving flight training at Pensacola Naval Air Station, and still a Marine Corps Cadet, he was transferred to Opa-Locke, Florida, for final training, flying F3Fs and old dive-bombers. On July 25, 1941, he received his Wings of Gold and commission as a Second Lieutenant while at Opa-Locke, Florida. He was assigned to VMF-121, flying the F4F-3 Wildcat (specifications), with it’s notorious 28-turn hand-cranked retractable landing gear. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, he was assigned to VMF-111 in February, 1942, and after being promoted to Captain, was assigned to VMF-441 in October, 1942. In the spring of 1943, he was re-assigned to VMF-121, flying the new Chance-Vought F4U Corsair. In February, 1944, he reported to VMF(N)-544 at Cherry Point, North Carolina, to begin night-fighter training in the F6F Hellcat (specifications). On February 2, 1945, half of VMF(N)-544 was redesignated and made part of VMF-511, and was assigned to the escort carrier Block Island II (CVE-106). By April 11, 1945, he had 43 carrier landings to his credit, with about half of them at night. He was assigned to VMF(N)-542 as the Executive Officer and became the Commanding Officer of the squadron on May 22, 1945.
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| Bruce Porter signing "Commemorative Covers" |
The following are excerpts from Bruce Porter’s book “Ace, A Marine Night-Fighter Pilot in World War II” (Used with permission). |
He stayed in the Marine Corps Reserve until 1960, reaching the rank of Colonel. He also worked in the real-estate business, and with ARCO as a Traveling Sales Supervisor in the Marketing Department. He wrote his book “ACE” and traveled a great deal with Greg “Pappy” Boyington to air shows for speaking engagements and to promote his book. He was decorated with the Navy Cross, Distinguished Flying Cross with two Gold Stars with a combat “C”, Air medal with four Gold Stars, and two Presidential Unit Citations.| Greg “Pappy” Boyington and Singing in the Rain |
| “After a few drinks, I began wondering aloud at the huge mirror that was hanging behind the bar, and I finally asked the bartender where on earth it had been dug up. ‘Hell, Captain,’ the sergeant-bartender told me, ‘they brought that over here from the Fijis in a B-24.’ I gathered that at least one of the several generals then headquartered in Espiritu Santo was behind the acquisition, but before I could ask, Major Boyington blew in out of the rain. ‘Guess what? The general has given me a chance at combat again!’ Greg had already amply celebrated his return to flight status with General Moore, but he insisted on celebrating with his good buddies, Ras, Fateye, and Bruce. The bartender poured us each a stiff drink, and we all downed them in a swallow. Greg was so excited that he gave out a great yell of joy and hurled his shot glass right through the big imported mirror. The four of us were gone from there before the last of the glass slivers had cascaded to the deck. As Ras slewed the jeep around the first corner on the way out of the headquarters compound, someone thrust a bottle he had grabbed off the bar into my hand, and I chugged a swallow, fighting to stay in the jeep as it slid all over the rain-soaked track. By the time the bottle came back to me, I was not paying any attention to the road. Suddenly, Greg leaned over beside me and delivered a sharp blow to the back of Ras’s neck. The jeep swerved off the road and lurched to a stop in a viscous mud. We all jumped out of the jeep, hooting and hollering and singing in the rain. We played in the mud until all the liquor was gone, then we pushed the mired jeep back to the roadway and pointed it in the direction of the fighter strip.” |
| Inspiration |
| “On this night, I had been told, several Army Air Corps P-38 pilots had volunteered to go aloft early and try to intercept the raiders. I was wondering where the Air Corps pilots could be – and what would happen to them if they were found in the searchlights or the gunnery radar. Suddenly, a stream of red tracers burst out of the darkness overhead, and I could hear the distinctive steady thrum of the P-38’s powerful twin high-performance engines. Before I could open my mouth to cheer my brother pilot on, the sky right over my head erupted in a great ball of red-gold flame, which slowly dropped behind the tops of intervening trees, and, I suppose, into the Lengo Channel. The P-38 had made a night kill!… I was utterly transfixed by the sheer complexity of what that P-38 pilot had done, and I made up my mind right then and there to sign up for night-fighter training if the Marine Corps ever announced the formation of a night-fighter program.” |
| Night Cats and Traps on the Block Island II |
 “My stomach was doing flip flops… And that is precisely what I felt as I put myself in position to become the first of the night-fighter pilots to land on tiny, bobbing, pitching Block Island II. I well realized that there was no way I could take a wave-off and retain my hitherto unassailable reputation as a red-hot combat fighter pilot… A catapult launch is never a pleasant experience; it goes too quickly, and the pilot takes control of his airplane only after he and it have been hurtled out into space. A catapult launch this night was like adding injury to insult… I had spent a full year training myself to find dim objects with my peripheral vision, which was the preferred method. Thus, I was able to dimly perceive the huge bulk of the totally darkened carrier as I floated up her wake. Then I was committed to the approach; all my attention was aimed at visually acquiring the LSO’s luminous paddles. I momentarily panicked and said, or thought I might have said, ‘Where the hell are you?’ First I sensed the colored paddles, then I knew I saw them. Both of the LSO’s arms were straight out. Roger! My ragged confidence was totally restored, though I yet remained a good deal less than cocky. I checked my airspeed, which was down to the required 90 knots. Before I knew it, I saw the Cut! Then, bango, my tail hook caught a wire and I was stopped on a dime. I taxied up past the barrier, came to rest beside the island, and cut my engine. As had been the case after my first live combat mission, my flight suit was reeking of sweat.”“Medal of Honor winner Joe Foss said out of his fantastic career he could not claim what I did flying at night off a Jeep Carrier.” |
| Becoming an Ace |
 “My quarry was definitely a Betty medium bomber, a fast, maneuverable thoroughbred. It had a stinger all right! Something at the corner of my attention noted that the Betty was carrying an external load on its belly. I thought it might be a so-called Baka bomb, a manned rocket-propelled suicide missile typically hauled to the target by a mother plane – the Betty – and dropped. (The Japanese called it an ‘Oke’ which means cherry blossom, but we called it ‘Baka’, which means stupid.) There was no time to dwell on the accuracy of my surmise. Someone might see me and the Betty might get away. I drifted upward a bit to get a good belly shot. By the time I reached a comfortable height, I had closed to within 250 feet. I put the illuminated gunsight pipper right between the body of the aircraft, right beneath the flight deck and the right engine. Then I slowly squeezed both triggers. For the second time that night, Black Death’s .50-calibers roared, and the 20mm cannon slowly spit its flaming popcorn-ball rounds. The tracers and popcorn balls fell right into the target area. After only a second or two, the wing fuel tank ignited in a garish explosion, and the sky in front of my windscreen was filled with an expanding ball of flaming fuel. I instinctively ducked as pieces of the Betty scraped along Black Death’s wings and fuselage. Then I dived away as the first fingers of friendly tracers reached up around me from the darkened fleet beneath Black Death’s wings. I caught a momentary flash as the Betty’s cargo – the Baka bomb – blew up. I supposed, if it was a Baka bomb, the flames had reached its volatile propellant. Burning sections of the bomber and the bomb floated down to the surface of the sea, where they were quenched.” Bruce Porter adds, “Our Ground Control officer that night was Bill Balance. He and his crew were in the van watching the radar screen when the Betty Bomber exploded. He stated there was a tremendous flare of the radar screen, several times more intense than the prior explosion of the “Nick” I had intercepted and blown up earlier in the night. He and the radar crew in the van confirmed the explosion of the Baka Bomb.” “Among my proudest of all my possessions are two: my Navy Wings of Gold and my title of Ace.” |
| Bruce Porter is one of our Rogue's Gallery members. |
| (Thanks are due Bruce for providing photos and stories) |
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