I read some time ago about a U.S. Navy dive bomber pilot from World War II, his name was Vernon "Mike" Micheel, who would retire as a captain in 1972. During the war Micheel served to combat cruises, first aboard with Scouting Squadron Six aboard USS Enterprise (CV-6) in 1942, and later with Bombing Squadron Two aboard USS Hornet (CV-12) in 1944.
A dive bomber, of course, attacks its target by making a steep dive and dropping its bomb between 1,000 and 2,000 feet; this has the affect of turning an ordinary dumb bomb into a smart bomb as the pilot can place his bomb on the target with great accuracy. The two bombers Micheel flew were the Douglas SBD Dauntless and the Curtiss SB2C Helldiver.
On one particular mission, Micheel was attacking an airfield when his wing was hit by antiaircraft fire. The pilot held his dive and hit his target, and when he pulled up the fire in his wing was out. Concerned that he might not make it back to his aircraft carrier, he considered ditching in the ocean to be picked up by a friendly submarine, but his rear gunner said he was injured and that he didn’t think he could deploy the raft after ditching. So the pilot flew his SB2C back to Hornet.
Since his plane was damaged, Vernon was forced to circle the ship until all the planes from the strike had landed. If he had crashed on the deck during his landing, he would have fouled the deck preventing other planes from landing, so he had to wait. Finally it was his turn.
Carrier landings during the pre-jet age were accomplished by flying around the ship and taking directions from a man with paddles standing near the stern of the ship, the Landing Signal Officer (LSO). This was done to allow the pilot to see the LSO and his signals which would have been blocked from the pilot’s vision by the nose and wings of the aircraft in a longer, straighter approach. While flying down the port (left) side of the carrier, the pilot is reading the signals from the LSO before making the final turn. At the proper moment the LSO gives the cut signal, the pilot chops power and the plane falls to the deck where its hook catches a cable.
However, Micheel, instead of getting the cut signal, got the wave off signal, meaning come back around and do it again. After getting waved off a second time, the ship radioed that he should make a bigger circle and turn in from farther out, because he was approaching too fast for the normal procedure. The pilot had to approach at a faster speed because of the damage to his wing. A big hole in the wing meant less lift, which meant a faster stall speed. Go too slow and the plane stalls and falls into the sea.
Around he comes, this time making the turn from farther out, and the LSO gives him the cut signal while he is farther from the deck than in a normal approach. “Normally,” Vernon would write later, “when you come aboard, you’re almost over the end of the carrier deck and he gives you the cut . . . you’re right there: bang, bang! But this time he gave me a cut way out, and I could see the stern of the ship!” The danger here was that if he cut too soon, he would slam into the stern.
Still, when the LSO gave the cut signal, the pilot pulled the throttle back to zero and the roar of the engine faded. “Oh, I had to trust him,” he said -- in other words, he had to have faith in the LSO – “I can’t do anything else. I just got to do what he tells me. He knows what he’s doing, that's what he’s there for.” The aircraft, with its damaged wing, glided in and the hook caught an arresting gear cable. The cut had been timed perfectly.
We are the pilot and God is the LSO. It is His work and He knows what he is doing. He knows where His sheep are, and where we need to go to find them. We have to trust Him and exercise faith. If we have faith, then we must have hope, and what is it that we should hope for? Eternal Life through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. If we have faith and hope, then we must have charity. If we do not have one, then we don’t have the other two. So pray to be filled with charity. One of the things that charity is is being humble.
President Dieter F. Uchtdorf echoed President Ezra Taft Benson in General Conference a few years ago in warning against pride. Believing that we are better than others because we are working harder than others -- or doing whatever it is that lead us to think we are better -- is fraught with danger. Believing that we are better than anyone for any reason is to place ourselves in the hands of the devil as he seeks to lead us carefully down to hell through flattery and deceit. We need to avoid these dangers at all costs by humbling ourselves and praying to be filled with charity.
Missionaries should always be striving to humble themselves and exercise faith in the Father, whose work this is. On one particular morning while on my mission I tired to do just that; I prayed to God that He would guide me and my companion in what streets we should tract that day. After praying we looked at the map of our area and focused on a few streets. We then prayed again, saying that we felt directed to these streets by the spirit and asking if we were right, and we felt a confirming spirit. We went and tracted those streets, and found a woman who was baptized within two months.
This woman said she had been baptized in Hawaii when she was much younger, but a diligent search could not find her records. While the search for her records was ongoing I prayed that they would be found, even though that would cost me a baptism. I wanted to put the will of the Lord ahead of my own desires; I wanted to be humble, meek and submissive.
As it turned out, her records were not found (back in the day some wards did not always do a good job of sending records of new members to Salt Lake City) and we had a baptism. But more importantly, this woman was one of the Lord's sheep, He always knew where she was, and she was found by us because we humbled ourselves and asked for His direction. Oh, we had to trust Him, we could not do anything else.
Source: Ambrose, H. (2010). The Pacific. New York: Penguin Group (USA).
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