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A sleepy deuce on a green island

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A crewman finds the only shade there is on the airstrip on Green Island (now Nissan Island), Northern Solomons, beneath an F4U-1D Corsair fighter, No.974 of Marine Squadron 222, 1943-44. Source United States National Archives via the Bobby Rocker Collection via Library of Congress.

VMF-222, “The Flying Deuces,” was stood up at Midway in March 1942 and stormed ashore at Nissan in 1944.

Nissan is in the Green Islands of Papua New Guinea, exactly midway between Rabaul and Bougainville. The place had just been secured a month before by Kiwi’s of the 3rd New Zealand Infantry and at the time a young Richard Millhouse Nixon was a Navy supply officer at the base.

It was a home to no less than 9 RNZAF Corsair squadrons, several Navy Black Cat units, a PT-boat flotilla (Higgins and Elco boats with nicknames like Bed Bug, Dracula, and Knight Rider), and others. However as the war wound down it was swiftly abandoned to the jungle– although some Japanese soldiers remained in the mountains around the base into the 1970s.

As for VMF-222, they only flew Corsairs and were deactivated at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, North Carolina on December 31, 1949.

A Jolly Roger Corsair, a tricky Dick and an near Ace golfer.

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Here we see a Vought  F4U-1A Corsair being serviced in the Pacific after a forced landing on Nissan Island in March, 1944. Nissan is in the Green Islands of Papua New Guinea, exactly midway between Rabaul and Bougainville. The place had just been secured a month before by Kiwi’s of the 3rd New Zealand Infantry and at the time a young Richard Millhouse Nixon was a Navy supply officer at the base.

The plane belongs to one Lt (JG) Tom ‘TK’ Killefer of U.S. Navy fighter squadron VF-17 (the original Jolly Rogers). The unit flew Corsairs from island strips in the Solomons until late 1944 when they transitioned to Hellcats and moved to the USS Hornet. Although the squadron was near-legendary, counting among their number no less than 12 aces and 161 Japanese victories, they were redesignated after the war and then disestablished. Today, VFA-103 flies an almost identical Jolly Roger unit emblem on their F-18s, although the two squadrons are not related.

Lt (JG) Killefer himself earned 4.5 victories, just escaping being an ace by the skin of his teeth. He passed at a ripe old age of 79, while dressing for a Father’s Day dinner and after having played 18 holes of golf.