James Swett, Who Downed 7 Planes in Attack, Dies at 88

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James Swett, Who Downed 7 Planes in Attack, Dies at 88
James E. Swett, a Marine fighter pilot who received the Medal of Honor for shooting down seven Japanese planes in the Solomon Islands during his first combat mission of World War II, died Jan. 18 in Redding, Calif. He was 88.

His death was announced by his family.

On April 7, 1943, Lieutenant Swett had returned from a routine patrol off Guadalcanal when word came that 150 Japanese dive bombers and fighter planes were heading there from the north.

Lieutenant Swett took to the air again in his Wildcat fighter. He shot down three Japanese dive bombers attacking American ships in the harbor at Tulagi, near Guadalcanal, and then, after becoming separated from three fellow pilots, sent four more Japanese bombers into the sea.

By then his left wing had been hit, evidently by friendly antiaircraft fire. He attacked an eighth Japanese bomber, but its tail gunner fired on Lieutenant Swett’s plane, shattering his windshield and damaging his engine.

“It was all over in about 15 minutes,” he would recall.

Lieutenant Swett ditched in the sea, and then came another harrowing experience.

“I was cut up around the face by flying glass,” he told The Oregonian, the newspaper in Portland, in 1991. “I made a good water landing, but my shoulder straps were too loose and I hit my head on the instrument panel and broke my nose. I struggled to get out of the cockpit as the plane sank, but my parachute straps got caught and dragged me under. I don’t know how deep I was before my life raft inflated and popped me to the surface.”

A Coast Guard boat approached.

As Edward H. Sims told it in “Greatest Fighter Missions,” one of the crewmen shouted, “Are you an American?”

Lieutenant Swett replied, “Damn right I am.”

He was taken to a nearby harbor, and given Scotch and morphine to ease his pain.

In July 1943, flying a Corsair fighter, Lieutenant Swett was shot down by a Japanese Zero near the island of New Georgia and was rescued by two natives in a canoe.

He was awarded the Medal of Honor in October 1943 for his “superb airmanship and tenacious fighting spirit” in downing the seven Japanese bombers.

He later flew from the aircraft carrier Bunker Hill and carried out strikes supporting the Iwo Jima and Okinawa invasions in 1945.

According to Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., he flew 103 missions, was credited with downing 16 Japanese planes and sharing in the destruction of one more, and probably shot down nine others by war’s end.

James Elms Swett, a native of Seattle, entered military service after attending junior college in San Mateo, Calif. He remained on active duty until 1950 and retired from the Marine Corps reserve as a colonel in 1970. He operated a family company manufacturing industrial equipment.

His survivors include his wife, Verna, and his sons, James Jr. and John, from his marriage to his first wife, Lois, who died in 1998.

For all his officially proclaimed heroics, Mr. Swett contended that he had also downed the Japanese bomber that heavily damaged his fighter back in April 1943.

“Actually I shot down eight of those Japanese dive bombers,” he told The Oregonian. “I’m still mad at the Marine Corps for confirming only seven.”

http://beeqube.com/article/jam