By Dick Camp

Shoot Down
Intense antiaircraft fire spewed ugly black clouds of steel at the F4U Corsair as it bored in toward the target. Japanese 75 mm and 25 mm gun emplacements on Mount Yoake found the range and followed the gull-wing fighter, called “Whistling Death,” as it plunged from the sky.

Marine Second Lieutenant Warren Earl Vaughn tried to ignore the glowing golf-ball-size projectiles that hurtled past the cockpit. He concentrated on the gun sight, intent on keeping the reticule on the target. Suddenly, the aircraft shuddered violently—a mortal strike—and he lost control. Instinctively, he released the seat restraints, pushed open the canopy and bailed out at 500 feet.

Wingman 2dLt Archie Clapp (Colonel Archie J. Clapp—a decorated carrier-based fighter pilot in World War II, one of the earliest Marine jet fighter pilots, one of the initial Marine helicopter pilots and one of the first to fly missions in Vietnam—passed away in 2004 at age 80) saw the shoot down. “Vaughn’s plane got hit. His wing was clipped off. When I flew over the target, I could see him going down in a chute. When he hit the water, he swam toward shore.”

Second Lt Warren Earl Vaughn was shot down on his first mission over Chi Chi Jima, captured, interrogated and eventually executed by his Japanese captors. Just before being killed, he yelled, “Semper Fi!” (Courtesy of National Archives)

“Tex”
Warren Earl, as Vaughn was called by his mother, grew up in a small hardscrabble town in West Texas during the Depression. He was raised by his mother, Evi, after the man of the family abandoned them. Mother and son were very close. A relative described the relationship: “Evi worshipped him, and Warren Earl worshipped his mother.” Times were hard, and money scarce, but the Vaughns were no different from many families during the ’30s. They scraped by on what Mrs. Vaughn could make doing part-time work. When Warren Earl came of age, he earned spending money at the local ice plant and grocery store.

Warren Earl developed into a “very tall, very dark, and very handsome” man. He gained the dark complexion from a distant Cherokee Indian relative, who also passed on high cheekbones and coal-black hair. Friends described him as a fun-loving daredevil, who pushed the envelope.

A friend told how Vaughn played chick that earned him the respect of his circle of friends, much to the dismay of his high school principal, who had to administer occasional corporal punishment.

Despite this “friction,” Warren Earl Vaughn graduated in the summer of 1941 and entered Southwest Texas State University. To pay his way, he took a part-time job repairing airplane parts at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi.

Call to the Colors
Ten months after Pearl Harbor, Vaughn signed up to be a Marine pilot, just a few weeks before his 21st birthday. Madeline Riley, Vaughn’s sister, remembered: “My last memory of Warren Earl is of a fit young man, so very handsome in his Marine uniform, filled with excitement and mentally bracing himself for the dangerous missions ahead. Our whole family was very proud of him.”

Vaughn was assigned to Marine Corps Air Station Mojave, Calif., where he learned to fly the Chance Vought F4U Cor However, the F4U had its idiosyncrasies. The biggest problems were its long nose, which blocked the pilot’s vision when landing, and the real “attention grabber”—at stall speed, the left wing “tended to drop like a rock.”

At advanced training, Vaughn grew cocky and paid the price for his folly. He watched an experienced pilot retract his wheels at the moment of takeoff. Archie Clapp commented, “It’s a stupid thing to do. You can’t beat the odds in that maneuver. There’s something called ‘ground effect.’ There’s greater lift closer to the ground than there is a few feet up. So you might have enough ground speed to lift off a bit, but there are too many variables … that could cause you to drop down again.”

Vaughn failed the dangerous maneuver and plowed into the ground, injuring himself. The medical report noted, “Received first and second degree burns on his hand and neck and flesh burns to face as the result of an aviation accident while on authorized flight.” He explained in his Texas drawl to his commander, “I couldn’t hep it.”

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