If an experienced pilot like the lieutenant could lose his life in a training accident within sight of the California coast, what chance did they stand when the shooting started? As fate would have it, not much of a chance at all. “I had seen him kiss his wife and child goodbye on the dock in San Diego.”Ĭastello’s fellow Wildcat and TBF Avenger torpedo bomber pilots in Composite Squadron 39 (VC-39) were horrified. “It left an unforgettable imprint on my mind,” Beasley wrote in an unpublished memoir 50 years later. Castello’s death on October 16 marked the Liscome Bay’s first casualty. Before the pilot could squirm free, his Wildcat nosed over into the foaming water. With a screech of metal, the mangled fighter disappeared over the starboard side and into the Pacific Ocean.īeasley ran to the ship’s edge and saw Castello struggling in the cockpit. Its left landing gear was sheared off as the aircraft skidded across the deck. For a moment, the Wildcat tried to keep flying. Beasley was no aviator, but he knew a bolter coming when he saw one.Ĭastello hit the flight deck fast and hard, bouncing over the arresting wires. He’s coming in a bit too high, thought Jim Beasley, one of the ship’s quartermasters. Everyone on the Liscome Bay’s flight deck and bridge tensely watched the fighter’s approach. Even the best landing was little more than a controlled crash on the largest fleet attack carriers, but on the much smaller deck of an escort carrier, the feat was even dicier. Perched on a platform off the stern, the landing signal officer raised his paddles and guided Castello in. Forces in trying to dislodge the Japanese from strongholds in the Solomon Islands. One of 36 pilots practicing landings that October day in 1943, Castello was preparing to join U.S. LIEUTENANT JOSEPH CASTELLO DROPPED HIS FM-1 WILDCAT out of the morning sky and, with a waggle of his wings, lined up on the U.S.
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