title: 49th Fighter Group: Aces of the Pacific (Aviation Elite Units)
author: William N Hess
description: Looking at elite fighter and bomber units in action, these books draw on profile artworks, black and white photographs, fully detailed appendices and breathtaking first hand accounts.
zlib_text:  
  Honor Bound 1 
  Honor Bound 
   
   
   
  Chapter One  
  [ONE]  
  Henderson Field  
  Guadalcanal. Solomon Islands  
  0645 1 October 1942  
  Three Grumman F4F Wildcats approached Henderson Field from the west in a 
  shallow descent from 15,000 feet.  
  These three single-engine fighters represented one hundred per-cent of the 
  aircraft available to Marine Fighter Squadron VMF-221-which put them at thirteen 
  planes short of the sixteen they were authorized. The Cactus Air Force, and 
  ultimately the United States Marine Corps, obviously had to do something.  
  The remaining pilots of VMF-221 had heard two fairly credible rumors about what 
  they would do.  
  According to the most pleasant rumor, any day now they would return to 
  Henderson and find the taxiways and sandbag revetments crowded with sixteen 
  glistening, new, well-maintained Wildcats of a Marine fighter squadron flown in 
  from an aircraft carrier to replace VMF-221.  
  To those who desperately wished to believe this rumor, it didn't make much 