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like the Reapers was the same as breaking up a family. It didn’t seem right. Despite the hoopla about bombers and fighters, weren’t the airplanes and the missions the same?
    Not exactly. What they didn’t yet know was that the experimentalnew bomber-fighting squadron had been selected to fire an experimental new weapon, a rocket called the Tiny Tim. And as the pilots would find out, there was nothing tiny about it.
    L ike most of the Tail End Charlies, Erickson was in awe of his senior officers. Within the squadron, the skipper, Will Rawie, occupied the top rung on the ladder of official respect. Just beneath him came the executive officer, Lt. Timmy Gile, architect of the famous Atlantic City party and an ace with eight kills. Close behind were guys such as Paul Cordray and William “Country” Landreth, old hands with combat time on their records.
    One figure stood out above all others. With the possible exception of God Himself, no one received greater deference than Cmdr. Johnny Hyland, who went by “CAG,” the acronym for air group commander. Hyland was one of those rare commanders who seemed to have it all—good looks, a quick, focused intelligence, a charismatic personality, and the skills of a natural leader. The son of a naval officer, Hyland was a 1934 graduate of the Naval Academy. He’d put in a year as a surface officer aboard USS
Lexington
and then the four-stack destroyer
Elliot
before going to Pensacola for flight training. His first assignment after earning his wings was a made-in-heaven job—flying with the Navy’s most prestigious fighting squadron, VF-6, aboard
Enterprise
. He should have been in the sweet spot for quick advancement when war came.
    But Hyland’s timing was off. On the day Pearl Harbor was attacked, December 7, 1941, Hyland was in the cockpit of a lumbering PBY patrol plane attached to Patrol Wing 10 at Olongapo in the Philippines. He flew the last patrol plane from the Dutch naval base at Ambon before the Japanese swarmed over the Dutch East Indies. Of the wing’s original forty-six patrol planes, only three escaped.
    Sent to Washington, D.C., Hyland became the operations officer, then the executive officer at Anacostia Naval Air Station.Instead of rotating to a combat billet in the Pacific, he was chosen as the personal pilot for the chief of naval operations, Adm. Ernest King. Hyland was missing the war, a victim of his own competence.
    He pulled every string, including a request to King himself. Finally, in the summer of 1944, came the orders Hyland had been praying for. A new air group was being formed aboard USS
Intrepid
. John Hyland would take command.
    The assignment came just in time. If Hyland was to have any chance at ascending to high rank in the postwar Navy, he had to collect his share of combat ribbons. He’d come dangerously close to missing out.
    B y now the new bomber-fighting squadron had been sorted into four-pilot divisions. Each division was split into a pair of two-plane sections, with a senior pilot leading each division and section. The junior pilots—the Tail End Charlies—were assigned as their wingmen.
    Erickson learned that he would be the wingman of a veteran of the Solomons campaign, Lt. (jg) Robert “Windy” Hill. Hill had been in VF-17, a famous squadron called the Jolly Rogers. He was one of the more flamboyant pilots in the squadron, earning the nickname “Windy” for his fondness for over-the-top storytelling. Hill was the epitome of the World War II fighter pilot—cocky, aggressive in the air and on the ground, with movie-star good looks.
    “If there were two good-looking women in the room,” remembered one of the Tail End Charlies, “you could count on them both going for Windy. The smart thing was to stay close and grab the one he didn’t take.”
    Being Hill’s wingman suited Erickson just fine. Then he learned the rest of his assignment. The leader of their four-plane division was none other than the air group commander