What's in a Name?

    When the cruiser Houston took a Jap aerial torpedo that came within an eyelash of breaking her back and putting her under, one of the ships that came to her aid was the carrier Cabot, CVL28.  The Cabot spread an umbrella of planes above the stricken Houston, and for several days following the 13th of October, shielded the cruiser from the pressing attempts of the Japs to put her under.

    The Cabot's airmen were glad to return-with interest-a favor the Houston had done one of their number exactly a month earlier.  On that day, as the Cabot, a member of Task Group 38.2, under Rear Admiral G. F. Bogan, was participating in the pre-invasion softening-up of the Philippines, two of her fighter planes of Air Group 31 had failed to return from their strike.  One of the pilots, Ensign G. G. Bardin, was seen to crash.  But the other, forced down by a gas tank puncture, was fished up by the Houston's seaplanes.

    Nor was the juxtaposition of the two ships off Formosa that October day of 1944 the first time Fate had shuffled them into the same deal.  The battle careers of the two ships had run more or less parallel courses ever since the Cabot had appeared in the Pacific to join Task Group 58.2 in January, 1944.  Both had been a part of the January bombardment force that hed struck at Kwajalein, soon after the Cabot's debut, and they subsequently wrote the names of such places as Truk, Carolines, Palaus, and Hollandia into their logs while on the same missions with Task Force 58.  They had both been at Saipan, where the Cabot first distinguished herself in the manner that was to eventually win her the Presidential Unit Citation.  Following the famous "Marianas Turkey Shoot," Admiral Montgomery had sent the complimentary message to the Cabot: "You're tops in the league today."

    When Task Force 58 became Task Force 38, with the return of Bull Halsey to the combat theater, the Houston and the Cabot became part of the force with which dashing Halsey began to smash the inner ring of Japanese defenses-the Bonins, Ryukus, the Philippines, and finally, towards the middle of October, 1944, Formosa.

    That Formosa sweep was the preface Bull Halsey wrote to MacArthur's epic "I have returned."  Formosa bristled with airfields from which Jap planes could hop down to the Philippines to smash at any invasion attempt.  The Third Fleet set out to neutralize as many of those fields as possible, to neutralize as many of those fields as possible, to down as many aircraft as they could, and-they hoped-to tempt the Jap fleet out of hiding for the long sought-after showdown.

    The first two operations were completely successful.  The third, not so.  The Jap fleet failed to put in an appearance.

    It was to be expected that the Japs would strike at the Fleet with every available plane at their command, and losses were anticipated.  The first success scored by the Nip airmen was a hit on the cruiser Canberra.  She was taken in tow by the Wichita.  Then the cruiser Houston caught a torpedo, and a towline was passed to the Boston.

    That set the stage for the affair of "The Streamlined Bait Group," and a busy time for the Air Group 29 of the Cabot-a unit that had come aboard the "Iron Woman" at Ulithi not many days earlier.  The Cabot fly-boys had already done a good job during the Formosa strike while flying CAP.  They had brought down five heavy bombers and a fighter, and had strafed and forced aground five luggers.  And while the Air Group had been busy overhead, the Cabot shipboard gunners had not been idle.  At one time during the operation a Jap Betty had evaded the CAP and had made a run on the light carrier.  For a few moments it looked as though he were going to get through the hail of AA that went up to meet him.  But the Cabot gunners finally nailed him with their tracers, and set him afire.  He swished past the flight deck and crashed into the sea some three hundred yards from ship.

    Now, with the Houston and Canberra trailing towlines, and slowly converging in order that they could be better protected as a single unit, the Cabot was ordered to supply aerial cover.

    As the ships made their slow way toward safe waters beyond range of Jap landbased bombers, the crews heard Tokyo Rose announce to the world that Halsey's Third Fleet had been annihilated, and that the cripples were seeking to make their escape under continuous attacks by the valorous Jap airforce.

    Rose seemed to believe her propaganda, and if she did, perhaps the Jap high command also were gullible enough to swallow the exaggerated accounts of their Army fliers who had counted every flash of an exploding Jap plane as another American vessel sunk.  If they were ignorant of the fact that the bulk of the Third Fleet was hovering just over the horizon, the Japs might be tempted to send out a major portion of their surface fleet in an attempt to clean up what they believed to be the remnants of Halsey's force.

    Therefore it was decided to keep the Third Fleet out of snooper range, and allow the Houston and Canberra and their escorts to serve as "live bait."  It would be no fun for the ships involved, since they would be certain to have a sky full of Nip planes buzzing around them night and day as long as they were in flying range of Formosa.

    Thus Task Group 30.3 was formed-the "Streamlined Bait Group."  The summary of ships involved is not complete, even now, but in addition to the Houston and Canberra, there were the cruisers Wichita, Sante Fe, Mobile, Birmingham and Boston-circling the damaged vessels like Indians around a wagon train.  Screening this nucleus were the destroyers Bell, Burns, Caperton, Cogswell, Ingersoll, Knapp and the Sullivans.  And on the towlines were the tugs Pawnee and Munsee, stouthearted little vessels that had come out from Ulithi without escort to help haul the cripples to safety.  There was not a ship in the group that did not cover itself with glory in the hours that followed.  "Sitting ducks," they were reduced to the tow speed of the cripples in their advance to safer waters, and dependent on their AA and the planes of the carriers Cabot and Cowpens to repulse air attacks.

    The Jap fleet did not come out of hiding, although it poked its nose from the Ryukus for a brief look-see at one time.    But the Jap airforce was out-in numbers.

    There were two groups in the attacking force, each numbering from 60 to 75 planes.  Both groups were first discovered by the Cabot's SK radar about 70 miles from TG 30.3 and about 75 miles off Formosa.  Though the Japs continued to drop "window" in an attempt to jam up radar detection, the reception remained clear and it was obvious that both groups were advancing on parallel collision courses, one to the north of 30.3, the other to the south.  The Cabot had two divisions of fighter planes up on CAP.  While the Cowpen's air group took on the southern attacking force, Cabot's pilots climbed to 10,000 feet to intercept the northern group.  The Jap bombers and torp planes were bunched below, with their fighters above them.  The Cabot's fighters were badly outnumbered.  "Many, many bogeys," one of the pilots groaned into his mike when he saw the whole air armada spread out before him.  But Lieut. A. J. Focke, the flight leader, did not hesitate a moment.  Over his mike he told Lieut. M. H. Burns, "OK, Max, you and your boys stay down and take the twin-engined stuff.  We'll take on the fighters."

    Burns' pilots peeled off.  Focke's fliers stayed upstairs.  The odds were overwhelming for both divisions, but they found the Japs strangely reluctant to accept the fight.  At any rate, those Yanks here didn't fight like the dire remnants of a defeated fleet.  They came in blasting, and before the bulldog tenacity of the Cabot's fighters, the Japs scattered and made for home, with the Cabot-men riding on their tails to splash one after the other.  The total count of Jap planes shot down during that short and furious fight was 31.  The only casualty suffered among the Cabot's men was Focke's own wingman, Ensign R. B. Williams, who was shot down but was later picked up by one of the Wichita's seaplanes.

    The rear-guard air action had been a great success for the Cabot and her Air Group, as well as the whole "Bait Group."  There was some official regret that, inasmuch as the Jap fleet had failed to come out, "the fishing was poor, considering the quality of the bait," but Admiral Halsey radioed 30.3 his appreciation: "Your courage, skill and cheerful determination in a tough spot has been a credit to you and your command.  Well done.  Keep going."  And Admiral Nimitz radioed: "The fleet is proud of the determined progress and courage of your Task Group."  But perhaps best of all, because coming from an equal, was the message with which the cruiser-carrier Independence (CVL 22) welcomed the Cabot back to her original Task Group 38.2 several days later: "Salutations to the return of the wandering hero."