John William Ruhsam

John William Ruhsam was a United States Marine Corps pilot during WWII. He was part of VMF-323.

Adulthood

1 June 2019 - Article on experiences in VMF-323

On 1 June 2019 an article was published in the Flight Journal about VMF-323 during WWII. In it John recounted his experiences on 4 May 1945:

On May 4, 1945, we took off in the morning on a four-plane flight and arrived over and near Ie Shima. When we got over the picket ships, our main job was to protect them from any incoming kamikazes. Mostly, we would sit there and circle at between 20,000 and 30,000 feet or wherever they stuck us, usually circling there for maybe three hours. But on that particular day, as we arrived and began our initial climb up, the next thing I knew was that there was a Val coming, head-on, at us.

I spied him about the same time that everybody else did. It was one of the few times that I didn't tell my wingman, Bob Wade, that he was coming right at us, and I made a hard right turn. But I was too close and too fast, and I overshot him. I got a few rounds off at him but overran him too quickly. The flight leader came over the radio and told me I had gotten good hits, and he burst into flames. We continued climbing on up, and we had gotten up to our perch overlooking our area of responsibility when, all of a sudden, Warren Beswick’s Corsair started smoking. There was thick black smoke coming out from the cowling etching, a long black line behind the Corsair. It was Capt.

Joe McPhail’s responsibility to escort his wounded wingman to safety as both Corsairs headed for home. That left Wade and me sitting up there under control of the radar as we continued to climb up and circle. Nothing was showing on the screen of the radar operator, but we could see what looked like a destroyer, off to the west of us. It was burning as it had been under attack. It wasn't unusual to see a ship burning or something.

We decided to swing our Corsairs out toward the ship to see what we could do. We dropped down a few thousand feet and began circling when all of a sudden there’s a Japanese Val in front of me. I slowed down as I began to tail it and then squeezed the trigger as I shot at his tail. Still moving too fast, I overran him the first time. That was a problem in a Corsair as we had the speed, which was a good thing, but you had to compensate for the slow speed of the Vals. From that moment on, I don’t have any idea how much time or how long I was in this running battle. I know we overran him and then suddenly Wade wasn’t there. The next thing I know, there’s another Val right in front of me as I began to fire. I know that I was sitting on the tail of that Val when Capt. McPhail came back up on the radio and said he was back in the original position, asking where we were.

There were a lot of little clouds around, and he kept saying, ‘Where are you?’ We kept saying that we were over where the little clouds were. The problem was that I was a little busy trying to shoot this Val down as he’s asking me, ‘Where are you?’ I replied,

‘I’m over here on the tail of this Jap!’ Capt. McPhail told me later that all he could hear was my darn guns going off.

Then Wade came up alongside me and joined up, and another Val flew right across in front of me; all I had to do was pull the trigger and he was gone.

Although they were kamikazes, they were all split up. I guess they’d done the attack on the destroyer, and after they got it burning, some of them must have gotten indecisive and didn’t know what they were doing and were just wandering around up there. We managed to get in the middle of them and create a bit of havoc.

Most of the Vals I shot down had rear gunners in them. That was another thing that kind of amazed me with the kamikazes: They all had a rear gunner. I don’t remember any two-seater that didn’t have a gunner in the rear seat. Whether they went on as kamikazes I don’t know, but these guys were all in Vals, army types. They were all camouflage green. I remember vividly, when I finally ran out of ammunition chasing them, that there was just one more down low. I had hit the rearseat gunner, and he was slumped in his seat, so at least he wasn’t shooting at me.

That Val was right in front of me; I had him right down onto the water. And the next thing I realized, as I squeezed the trigger, was that I had no ammo. It’s a hell of a feeling. I wanted to get the guy so badly, and I thought, ‘Well, I’ll sneak under and cut his tail off.’ Well, I couldn’t; he was right on top of the water. I thought, ‘Well, you do that, John, you’re gonna go in the water too, so don’t be an idiot.’ So I pulled up right next to him. I thought, ‘I’ll just take my .38 revolver out and shoot him—open the canopy and squeeze a couple of rounds off.’

I didn’t think that was too good of an idea either, so I didn’t really know quite what to do. But I could see he was panicked as I continued to run with him. He had a pilot helmet on, and I remember it was fur-lined all the way around, which was typical Japanese.

As I am focusing on his headwear, a couple of tracer rounds went zooming by me. I jerked my head to the left, and I looked back and saw my wingman, Bob Wade, coming in. I’m right on the Val’s right wing, and I could have just reached out and spat at him if I had been on the ground; we were that close together. Then what I thought he might do and hoped he would do is take a quick left turn. He could have got us both if he had just pulled up; we’d have both run right into him.

But that guy made a mistake, and did the drastic thing and turned away. The minute he turned away, he stuck his left wing into the water. That wing dug into the water, and that was the end of that airplane. It just disintegrated in front of me. With no more enemy airplanes around, we formed up and headed for home. Seeing as I was a flight leader, I ended up earning the Navy Cross, then they gave Wade credit for the one that we ran into the water. We’d flown together in combat for almost two years, and we had made a little deal there that if we had the chance to fly together in combat, then we would split our kills. Unfortunately, there were plenty of kamikazes to pick from.