User:Wickendoll/sandbox

Maurice Niel Wickendoll or "Wick" was a founding member or the Blue Angels navy flight exhibition team and was the one who originally conceived of the name "Blue Angels". Wick was born in Kansas in 1918 and showed his love for aviation from a very young age, consistently dawning aviation cap and goggles. His mother feared her son's passion for the dangerous vocation and secretly burned model planes he kept to try and subtly dissuade him. Wick's passion would not be stemmed, and he enrolled at the University of Kansas to eventually become an aviation officer. Like many, Wick saw war with Japan as likely and imminent by 1941, and left the university in spring to enroll as a navy pilot before he could complete his undergraduate degree.

Wick underwent the rigorous navy pilot selection process at Corpus Christi Texas from November 1941 to July 1942. It was there that he met and befriended fellow pilot trainee Butch Voris, a friendship that would later help create the Blue Angels. Butch and Wick both earned their wings as fighter pilots and in August 1942 were assigned to VF-10, the famed "Grim Reaper" squadron. Wick trained with his new squadron in Maui Hawaii for two months until their assignment to legendary carrier USS Enterprise in October.

Battle of Santa Cruz Wick would get his first taste of combat and loss during the October 26 1942 Battle of Santa Cruz. Wick's group was sent on a risky long shot mission the night before the eventual battle in an attempt to get a first strike on the Japanese carrier fleet. The extreme distance of the mission and reality that the plans would have to return to land on Enterprise at night - something most of the pilots had never trained for - made the mission an extreme risk. After being unable to locate the enemy fleet Wick and his team headed for the rendezvous. During the journey Wick lost his friend and fellow Kansas native Miller, whose sudden engine failure forced him to bail out. Wick split off to follow his friend's parachute down and mark his location. Tragically Miller would be rescued by a float plane but that plane would ben be shot down before ferrying him back.

The strike force pilots returned to the rendezvous point with fading light and low on fuel - only to discover to their horror that Enterprise and the fleet was gone. Unbeknownst to the pilots, command chose to move the fleet far from the rendezvous point out of fear they had been spotted by the Japanese, and absolute radio silence meant the pilots had almost no hope of locating Enterprise before their fuel ran out. Command deemed the loss of their squadron an acceptable risk in the context of the desperate 1942 carrier battles - where striking enemy carriers before being struck by their planes was pivotal. Wick, Butch and the whole strike force appeared doomed as darkness fell and the future Blue Angels would not have come to be, but their fried Swede Vejtasa managed to discover the Enterprises' oil trail in the water. Following the trail the the force finally discovered Enterprise 40 miles away, though several pilots would still be unable to land before their fuel ran out and they were forced to ditch in the black sea. The lack of night landing training also caused caused crashes onboard the Enterprise deck. Wick landed successfully, but his plan was damaged in the chaos, forcing him to fly a replacement F4F in storage the next day - with unfortunate consequences.

On the following day, October 26th, the US and Japanese fleets finally discovered each other and raced to be the first to strike. They scrambled their air assault groups almost simultaneously, and in a rare sequence the American and Japanese forces would pass each other in the air. Wick was assigned to fly in defense over Enterprise, where he spotted a group of Japanese dive bombers approaching their deadly strike run. He caught up to a group of Vals just as they entered their attack dive, and followed them in nearly vertical plummet toward Enterprise. As the 24-year old squeezed his trigger in combat for the first time in the most consequential minutes of his his WWII career his replacement fighter betrayed him. The guns jammed due to poor maintenance, and while he was unable to unjam his left outbound gun, the uneven fire then caused his plane to sputter and turn when fired - requiring re-alignment on his target after each burst. Undaunted Wick continued to chase his target despite heavy fire from the dive bombers rear gunner - who now had fire superiority over Wick's crippled plane. Wick's improvised fire and reposition managed to silence and presumably kill the rear gunner, but at that moment Wick encountered the second fault of his aircraft. The external drop tank had failed to detach and had caught fire from shrapnel or enemy fire. Unable to detach the flaming tank under the extreme pressure of a vertical dive Wick was forced to break off his assault around 4,000 feet and contended with the faulty drop tank to avoid a fatal explosion.

Following Santa Cruz and the loss of carrier Hornet the Enterprise was standing alone as the only remaining operational US carrier in the Pacific. While Enterprise departed the area for security and repairs the surviving pilots of VF-10 became a rare carrier fighter group to fly from land for a time. They were stationed on the newly captured Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, where they defended the field from ongoing Japanese air attacks and strafed and battered Japanese transport and resupply ships attempting to support the Japanese solders on Guadalcanal.

Attack on Chicago At 4:10 P.M. the CAP over Chicago, led by Lieutenant Commander William R. "Killer" Kane, exec of the Reapers, made out the unmistakable silhouette of a twin-engine land-based Japanese bomber approaching high and alone from north of Rennell Island. Kane detached Wickendoll, Boren, Leder and Donahoe and they peeled oft in pursuit. The enemy plane, a Mitsubishi Type 1, or Betty, swung south and then southwest around the eastern end of Rennell getting a good look at Chicago, the withdrawing cruisers and probably Enterprise and her task force. The four ensigns hi their F4Fs shoved throttles into the stops and pulled up the charging handles of their guns, three to the right of the seat and three to the left. The Betty increased speed and turned away. The Wildcats closed very slowly from astern. At maximum range with their engines roaring under full power, each of the fighter pilots pulled his nose up a little and tried a long shot. The tracers smoked out, in long, shallow trajectories, converging gradually and then separating slightly again. Some seemed to be hitting. Again each pilot tried a burst with the range very slightly shorter. A piece of metal broke off the Betty and tumbled back and down but the bomber kept going and fast. Once again. This time the starboard engine trailed a wisp of smoke which quickly became a pouring, and from astern they could see the prop falter and the bomber swerve and slow as it lost power oa that side. The Wildcats came up fast now, firing in short careful bursts and the enemy tail gunner returned the fire with the slow Roman candle balls of a 20-millimeter. Hank Leder was ahead and he ignored the 20-millimeter and bored in, his six .50-calibers chewing into the wings and fuselage of the Betty. Gasoline in a white ribbon sprayed from punctured wing tanks and then a flame flickered across the wing behind the smoking engine and caught the fuel. In another second the Betty was a ball of orange fire tumbling for the sea two miles below. The four ensigns reduced power, leaned out mixture and reversed course to return to Chicago.

In May 1943 Wick completed his combat tour with VF-10. He was assigned to VF-32 and returned to the states to train on the new navy fighter aircraft - the F6F Hellcat. By October 1943 Wick's new flight group was assigned to the carrier USS Langley and Wick returned to the Pacific war for his second tour. Wick's combat missions with Langley spanned some of the most famous assults of the Pacific theater, including Saipan, Iwo Jima, Guam and the Philippines. After completing 45 combat missions Wick was reassigned to the states in December 1944 where he would train new pilots through the remainder of WWII.

17 June 1944: The past six days have been very odd. On June 11 Wick bombed Saipan and Pagan. Our fighter sweep ad eliminated virtually all air opposition, but anti-aircraft fire was intense, particularly the 40mm, and larger ack ack. It took a heavy toll on the task force's bombers. We had no losses except for Dagwood Reeves on the initial fighter sweep, and for Wickendoll, that same day, whose fuel system was shot out by antiaircraft fire. Wickendoll made it back to the force, however, and landed safely near one of our picket destroyers which picked him up and returned him to us a few days later.

Later Service Lieutenant Commander Maurice N. Wickendoll receives congratulations from Vice Admiral Felix B. Stump and Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Air John F. Floberg, after making Coral Sea's 20,000th landing, 31 August 1950.

Death March 6, 1951 when an AJ-1 he was in, piloted by LTCMDR Wickendoll "Wick" crashed during an exercise in the Mediterranean off the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt (near Palermo, Italy). cause of the accident could not be positively confirmed but was probably the result of a failure in the jet engine

Gun jam - https://books.google.co.in/books?id=AT8QEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA328&lpg=PA328&dq=feightner+Wickendoll&source=bl&ots=3dn0u86fM3&sig=ACfU3U2H833mOMy-nFjT07BPz9i2nAqwVQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiDyIrBsIL6AhWK3GEKHQMXDwcQ6AF6BAgVEAM#v=onepage&q=feightner%20Wickendoll&f=false Chicago - https://ebin.pub/the-big-e-the-story-of-the-uss-enterprise.html cake - https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/OnlineLibrary/photos/images/g420000/g423640c.htm Saipan - https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1986/april-supplement/langley-legacy Death - http://www.aviastar.org/air/usa/na_savage.php, http://cv41.org/vc5history.html Aviation Hall of Fame https://kansasaviationmuseum.org/events/kansas-aviation-honor-awards