A Plane Went Down

 

From the U.S.S. Nevada's Navy Cruise Book

© Tim Peeler, 2020

NOTE: If you enjoy reading "One Brick Back" and would like to help offset research expenses for stories such as this, please make a small donation to the cause and help keep these posts free of ads. Tim’s grandfather, Millard Griffin Peeler, was a member of the 4^th Marine Division in World War II.

In between the two flag raisings on top of Mount Suribachi, a reconnaissance plane fell behind the brutal enemy lines of Iwo Jima, brought down by Japanese anti-aircraft fire on the pork-chop shaped piece of land.

That Friday morning 75 years ago today, the most important speck of land to the Allied effort was little more than flying mortar shells, black volcanic ash and the bodies of thousands of U.S. Marines and hunkered-down Japanese soldiers.

In the cockpit of the Kingfisher floatplane was a 24-year-old U.S. Naval Reserve pilot, a senior officer of the 4^th Marine Division in the bloodiest battle of the Pacific Theater. He had been catapulted, along with his flight observer, U.S. Army Capt. John A. Friday, off the deck of the U.S.S. Nevada (BB-36), which was sitting 1,000 yards off the beach at Iwo Jima.

There were 6,821 stories of American deaths during the 36-day battle for the now-worthless little rock.

This is just one.

An NC State Family

The pilot’s name was Lt. Hugh Winfield Shelden, a senior aviator from Raleigh who left NC State in 1941 following his junior year as a student in dairy manufacturing. Not to be confused with NC State graduate, Gen. Hugh Shelton, the future chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Shelden came from a nouveau Raleigh family that gave just about everything it had to offer to save the world from the threat of the Axis powers.

The Shelden family: Col. Howard Shelden, James Shelden,
twins Robert E.H. Shelden and John R. Shelden.
(From NC State Alumni Association archives)

Five of Shelden’s siblings and his father – Col. Howard Winfield Shelden, a Michigan State-trained engineer who relocated to Raleigh to work for the North Carolina Highway and Public Works Commission – were in military service during the war. Hugh Shelden is the only one who did not return to home from combat duty.

Though the family was originally from Michigan, the Shelden children grew up near downtown Raleigh on Bloodworth Avenue, on the other side of Person Street from the famous Krispy Kreme doughnut shop. They were members of downtown’s First Presbyterian Church who later moved to 123 Park Drive.

Older brother John R. Shelden preceded Hugh to NC State. Twins Robert Edwin High and Rebecca E.J. Shelden followed. (“Becky” Shelden, a transfer from Peace Junior College, was one of two original female undergraduate students in NC State’s School of Textiles, who, like her brothers, volunteered for military service through the Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service [WAVES] and the Women’s Air Force [WAC] in 1944.) Howard Jr., a member of the Army Corps of Engineers, and James, a Pacific submariner, also served in combat in the military.

Hugh Shelden enlisted in the Naval Reserves on April 17, 1941 in Atlanta, after three years in NC State’s ROTC program and, according to the 1941 Agromeck, a part-time member of the varsity swimming team. After basic training, he was sent to Jacksonville, Florida, for intensive flight training. Following a lightning courtship and hasty marriage to Helen Pollock Allan of Wollaston, Massachusetts, he was deployed on the U.S.S. Nevada in Boston for its transport escort missions across the Atlantic.

Two more generations of Sheldens followed in their footsteps at NC State.

In the North Pacific

The Nevada, built in 1914, served with distinction in both world wars and was one of the most engaged battleships in WWII. It was the only American battleship capable of getting underway on Dec. 7, 1941, during the surprise attack that forced the United States into World War II. It served in the Aleutians, ran convoy missions in the Atlantic, bombarded Utah Beach in Normandy on D-Day (June 6, 1944) and served with distinction in the Mediterranean.

Hugh Shelden was aboard the Nevada at Normandy as his brother and fellow NC State alumnus Robert Edwin High Shelden took part in the invasion of Utah Beach. (Robert, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers captain, survived the Battle of the Bulge, returned to NC State to earn his civil engineering degree, went to work for former NC State professor L.E. Wooten at his Raleigh engineering firm.)

The invasion of Iwo Jima was supposed to be a 72-hour operation, but it didn’t turn out that way. The scrub piece of land became just as important for the Japanese Imperial Army to defend as it was for the U.S. Marines to conquer.

For the U.S., the little volcanic rock with about five miles of flat surface for three landing strips was about halfway between Tokyo and the U.S.-held Mariana Islands of Guam, Saipan and Tinian. It was a critical location for damaged long-range B-29 bombers to land for repair as they returned from bombing the Japanese mainland.

The U.S. Marine invasion, supported by more than 450 ships off the coast, began on Feb. 19, with a mission to overtake 554-feet-tall Mount Suribachi and claim the three landing strips in the middle of the seven-square-mile island.

It was a scrub piece of land the Japanese Imperial Army did not want to lose. It garrisoned 23,000 soldiers in caves, intricate man-made tunnels and deadly pillboxes on the island. They were ordered to defend it to the death. When finally conquered in March, only 217 Japanese soldiers and a similar number of Korean captives survived.

The initial wave of Marines landed on the island on Feb. 19 with little resistance. They set up on the beach, behind a 15-foot ridge of soft volcanic ash just off the surf and waited for reinforcements. About an hour after the eerily quiet landing, the Japanese forces let loose a barrage from their hidden locations.

The Marines were mired in the black ash, unable to dig in for protection.

The next four days were indescribably hellish for all participants. The Marines moved forward, not with small arms, but with individual flame-throwers and flame-throwing tanks. Japanese soldiers would shoot from their hidden locations, retreat to the tunnels when Marines approached them, then return to their positions afterwards to continue their assaults on the invaders on the beach. Success was measured by feet and yards taken.

In three days, more than 70,000 Marines landed on the soft beaches, while the Japanese soldiers scurried among the tunnels, stepping over the burned bodies in their way.

A Surveillance Death

On D-Day+4, U.S. Marines advanced to the summit of Suribachi, raising an American flag attached to a piece of pipe found in the rubble. It was the first, less famous, flag to fly on the island.

AP photographer Joe Rosenthal's Pultizer Prize-winning photo.

At about that time, Lt. Shelden and Capt. Friday were launched from the Nevada’s catapult. They flew over Suribachi and headed behind enemy lines to help determine where to reposition the ship’s gun turrets. Somewhere near the landing strips in the middle of the island, Japanese anti-craft guns brought down Shelden’s plane.

He died instantly. Friday survived, but was mortally wounded and died later that day. Both were buried in the mass graves that were thought to be the final resting place of nearly the 7,000 dead Americans.

Shortly afterwards, seven Marines participated in the staged second raising of the flag on Mount Suribachi, the subject of photographer Joe Rosenthal's Pulitzer Prize-winning picture that became the enduring image of Marine bravery during the Pacific island-hoping campaign.

After the war, Shelden was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for valor in combat at Iwo Jima. He is listed as one of just six U.S.S. Nevada officers who died in action during World War II.

Returning to American Soil

Late in 1948, the U.S. military began an effort to return its war dead to American soil.

In early January 1949, Shelden was among the bodies of 5,805 dead Marines, soldiers, seamen, pilots and officers from the Pacific Theater that were removed from their original burial places in Okinawa, Iwo Jima, Tinian, Guam and Saipan and sent home on the Army transport S.S. Dalton Victory.

Just after New Year’s, three-and-a-half years after Japan had unconditionally surrendered aboard the U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Harbor following the detonation of atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the final two Japanese soldiers hidden in the Iwo Jima tunnels were captured by occupying Marines.

While many of the dead were returned to their hometowns, thousands of others were sent to national cemeteries.

On Feb. 23, 1949, four years to the day after Shelden’s plane went down and the flag went up on Mount Suribachi, his body was interred in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, along with Capt. Friday.