Freuler engaged six carrier attack planes and dropped one, trailing smoke, out of formation on his first pass. As the group of Nakajimas broke up, he made an opposite approach and fired, flaming one Kate, which exploded in an expanding ball of fire about 50 feet beneath him. As his controls responded sluggishly, and his badly scorched F4F’s manifold pressure dropped, he glanced back toward Wake and saw Davidson engaging several enemy planes. An instant later, a _Hiryu_ Zero got on Freuler’s tail and opened fire. Bullets penetrated Freuler’s fuselage, both sides of his vacuum tank, the bulkhead, seat, and parachute. After his plane was hit, Freuler threw his F4F into a steep dive--the Japanese pilot did not follow him--nursed it home, and landed with the canopy stuck in the closed position. Ground crews extricated him and took him to the hospital. Carl Davidson, unfortunately, did not return. The pilot who had knocked Freuler out of the fight went to the rescue of his shipmates and shot down Davidson. Rear Admiral Abe later paid homage to the two Marine pilots who had challenged his carrier planes, lauding them as having resisted fiercely and bravely. The _Soryu_ lost two planes and their three-man crews. Damage suffered in the aerial action compelled a third to ditch, but one of the screening ships recovered its crew. That afternoon, at 1320, Cunningham radioed Pye that a “combined land- and carrier-based plane attack” had occurred and that his fighters had engaged the attackers. He reported Davidson’s loss and the wounding of Freuler, but noted that they had shot down “several” planes. The atoll had suffered “no further damage.” As “Barney” Barninger later recounted: “Dive bombers again--the carriers must still be in the vicinity.... Things are getting tense. Rumor continues to fly about relief, but the dive bombers [are] also present. Things go on in the same manner as before. All that can be done is being done, but there is so little to do [it] with.” Heavy seas bedevilled Frank Jack Fletcher’s Task Force 14 as it pressed westward. Having been ordered to fuel to capacity before fighting, Fletcher began fueling his ships from _Neches_ in the turbulent seas. Rolling swells and gusty winds slowed that process considerably and permitted the fueling of only four of his destroyers. If Fletcher was expected to fight, his ships would require more fuel to be able to maneuver at high speed, if necessary. He resolved to top off the rest the following day (23 December). [Illustration: _Wreckage of what is probably Capt Freuler’s plane, on the beach where he crash-landed it on 22 December, after he had destroyed a Kate in aerial combat. Bullets penetrated his fuselage, vacuum tank, bulkhead, seat, and parachute._ National Archives Photo 80-G-413519 ]