Twenty-year-old Ens. Darrell C. “Smoke” Bennett, USNR, stands beside “Smokey’s Lucky Witch”, his FM-2 Wildcat, onboard the ill-fated Casablanca class escort carrier USS Gambier Bay (CVE-73), August 1944. The young aviator strikes a jaunty pose carrying an M1911A1 pistol in a shoulder holster, along with a mag pouch and survival knife on his gun belt, as he leans on the fuselage and exhaust-frosted engine cowling, a Composite Squadron Ten (VC-10) insignia painted below the cockpit windshield, and his plane number (White 27) on the starboard wing.
Note the exhaust-streaked cowling and nose art. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-243864
Just three months after the above image was snapped, Gambier Bay was lost during the “Sacrifice of Taffy 3” in the Battle off Samar on 25 October 1944– the only American aircraft carrier sunk by enemy surface gunfire during WW II.
Bennett was in the air at the time and was able to divert to nearby Tacloban Field, where the Army was setting up a base for P-61s and P-38s. The field, only partially constructed and very recently liberated from the Japanese, turned into muddy chaos as dozens of homeless Wildcats and Avengers were forced to land there throughout 25 October. Not to be deterred, pilots helped Army aerodrome personnel refuel and reload with anything available, then took back off to try and chase away the Japanese surface group.
After continuing to operate from fields around Leyte, VC-10, which had lost 10 men on 25 October as well as most of its planes, was shipped back home to be reconstituted at NAAS Ventura and would end the war on one of Gambier Bay’s sisters, USS Fanshaw Bay (CVE-70).
Bennett would survive WWII as well as later service in Korea, continue his Navy career as a pilot, a flight instructor, and as Commander Fleet Air Miramar, retiring in 1965. CDR Bennett received the following decorations: Air Medal (5), Presidential Unit Citation, Navy Unit Citation, Korean Presidential Unit Citation, WWII Victory Medal, Navy Occupation Service Medal (Europe), National Defense Service Medal, Asiatic Pacific Campaign Medal, Korean Service Medal, and the United Nations Service Medal.
Retiring to the Florida panhandle after a second career as a corporate and personal pilot to Hollywood types, CDR Bennett was a well-known supporter of the Pensacola National Naval Aviation Museum, where one of his former airframes was on display, and the USS Gambier Bay Association.
CDR Bennett passed in 2020, aged 96, and is interred at Barrancas National Cemetery, Pensacola, leaving behind “two sons, seven grandchildren, and 15 great-grandchildren.”.
For more on Taffy 3, be sure to check out “The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors” by James D. Hornfischer.