Last living member of Marine aviation legend Joe Foss’ ‘Flying Circus’ recalls Guadalcanal
Sam Folsom had never flown an airplane above 10,000 feet, or fired the weapons on the F4F Wildcat he would soon fly into combat, when he arrived on Guadalcanal in September 1942.
The battle for the strategic Pacific island was raging, as Folsom and most of his green fighter pilots joined squadron VMF-121.
They were tasked with finding and destroying Japanese G4M medium bombers – nicknamed “Bettys” – that had been wreaking havoc on American Marines on their first major offensive in the Pacific theater during World War II.
“We were in combat immediately with no experience,” Folsom, 98, recently told Stars and Stripes. “Green as can be – very few of us had any real flight experience. I guess I had 12 or 14 hours in the F4F when I got into combat.”
It showed from the outset, he recalled.
Stars and Stripes reports just days after reaching Guadalcanal, Folsom found himself piloting his Wildcat upward of 25,000 feet when a formation of Japanese A6M Zero fighters and Betty Bombers approached.
For the first time, Folsom maneuvered his fighter into position, moving onto the tail of an enemy plane to line up the sights for the six M2 .50-caliber machine guns mounted on his Wildcat’s wings. He pulled the trigger.
“Nothing happened,” Folsom recalled.
Folsom’s squadron had covered its guns in lubricant before he took off, but at altitude the coating froze, rendering the machine guns useless.
“I don’t remember anything except thinking, ‘Jesus, are these damn guns going to fire?’ ” Folsom said. “Very frustrating. Causes bad words to come from your mouth.”
It would happen twice more to Folsom – and dozens of additional times to his squadron mates – before the unit realized the cause.
Folsom would leave Guadalcanal with three air-to-air kills – after downing a pair of Betty Bombers and a D3A Type 99 “Val,” a carrier-based Japanese dive bomber.
To the best of his knowledge, Folsom said, he is the only living member of his fighter squadron.
In honor of his 98th birthday, Folsom took the field Aug. 14 at Los Angeles’ Dodger Stadium, where the Major League Baseball team celebrated him as its Hero of the Game.
It was a moment, like so many others in his life, he said he would treasure.
Talk about on the job training. Bravo Zulu, Mr. Folson, one of America’s Greatest Generation.
Category: Blue Skies, Marine Corps
I met a Navy WW2 vet that used to calibrate the fighter planes wing guns so that the 4 guns, 2 on each wing would merge at a known distance. The term give them the whole nine yards was the length of the belts which were 27 feet. (9 yds.)
Not quite right on the “whole nine yards”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_whole_nine_yards
May God Bless you Sir! You are truly a hero of the greatest generation! I hope you live to 192!
I hope you don’t wake the neighbors at night with the clanging of those massive balls when you walk down the hall?
Damn! He’s 98, still has his wits about him, and gets around just fine. And he’s cute, too. We should all reach for that goal.
The article is a must read. It’s a dandy. And you know he was a light colonel because he bad-mouthed Pappy Boyington.
Boyington smoke and drank heavily and lived to be 75. He was a POW for some 20 mos and every bit the hard ass SOB that he is described. He’s another of the type from bygone eras that either would not join today’s pussified services or, if he did, would be booted before he could finish BCT.
Do not forget that Folsom and his fellow aviators were flying a fighter (F4F-3 Wildcat) that was basically outclassed by the Japanese A6M Zero that could fly higher, fly faster, fly further, and drastically out-maneuver the Wildcat. The only major advantages of the Wildcat were its ruggedness and self-sealing gas tanks. It is a tribute to LtCol Folsom and his fellow Cactus aviators that they were able to not only learn to fight the Zero on more-or-less even terms, but USN and USMC Wildcats during the war actually “resulted in a claimed air combat kill-to-loss ratio of 5.9:1 in 1942 and 6.9:1 for the entire war.”*
The Cactus aviators were indeed an amazing group of fighting pilots…
*Polmar, Norman. Historic Naval Aircraft. Dulles, Virginia: Potomac Books Inc., 2004. ISBN 978-1-57488-572-9.
His Military picture and the transcript of the interview conducted on him reference his Service are on this site:
https://memory.loc.gov/diglib/vhp/story/loc.natlib.afc2001001.79380/
A Salute to Lieutenant Colonel Folsom…🤗
Thank You for sharing this, AW1Ed.
Semper Fi and Bravo Zulu LTC Folsom. Here, let’s just jump in this here ol’ airplane that we’ve only got 14 hours flying time in, go up higher than we’ve ever gone, take on a gang of aircraft that are technically better than ours, and while we’re at it, have our guns freeze up. No problem, we got this! Clang, clang! Good post AW1Ed & AP for the other linky thingys. Had an ex FnL (damn good man, knew & told me his child was a bitch) was a Navy Hell Diver driver. He felt the same about “Pappy”.