Good morning from Virginia. 🇺🇸 On the morning of October 24, 1944, the Battle of Leyte Gulf was already under way, the largest naval engagement in history, and radar aboard the carriers of Task Force 38 showed a large Japanese formation—roughly sixty aircraft—closing from the direction of Luzon. Commander David McCampbell, thirty-four years old, air group commander of USS Essex, had been ordered not to fly. He was too senior, already the Navy’s leading living ace, and the admiral wanted him held in reserve. His F6F-5 Hellcat, Minsi III, stood on the flight deck with its tanks only partly filled. When the scramble came, he went anyway, joined only by his wingman, Ensign Roy Rushing. They climbed above the enemy force and held their altitude. From roughly three thousand feet above the Japanese fighters and bombers they watched the formation stream along, then began. McCampbell would call a target—left or right—and the two Hellcats would dive together, open fire at close range with their six .50-caliber guns, and pull up again before the enemy could answer. They repeated the maneuver again and again, some twenty times in all. Most of the Japanese planes were lightly built, without self-sealing tanks or armor, and they came apart under the concentrated fire. McCampbell shot down nine—seven Zeros and two Oscars. Rushing accounted for six more. The formation broke and scattered. What remained turned back toward land. Not a single Japanese aircraft reached the American ships below. When the two Hellcats finally turned for home, McCampbell’s fuel was nearly gone. Essex’s deck was fouled with aircraft being spotted for the next strike, so he diverted to the light carrier Langley and caught the wire. As he tried to taxi clear, the engine died. There was no fuel left to restart it. Deck crews had to push the fighter out of the landing area by hand. When the armorers later opened the guns, they found only a handful of rounds remaining in one of them, and those were jammed. Months earlier, over the Marianas, McCampbell had become an ace in a single day; on this morning he did it again—the only American pilot ever to achieve the distinction twice. He would finish the war as the Navy’s all-time leading ace with thirty-four confirmed victories and receive the Medal of Honor for his actions in both battles. But on that October morning the numbers and the medal were still ahead of him. What mattered, in the clear air above the fleet, was that two Hellcats, one of them flying on partial fuel, had met an overwhelming force and turned it back before it could harm the ships below. America 250 🇺🇸