A Fiery Peace in a Cold War

by Neil Sheehan

  As soon as the third bomb was away, Dougherty threw the B-17 into a series of violent, evasive maneuvers, turning, sliding from one side to another, dancing around the sky while climbing to 4,000 feet to clear the ridge on the other side of the harbor. Schriever was convinced afterward that Dougherty’s skill at aerial acrobatics was what saved them from being shot down. As they topped the ridge and were headed back out over the sea they spotted a Japanese destroyer anchored in a bay along the island’s shore. They had one 500-pounder left and Magee, crouched in his little compartment under the flight deck in the nose of the B-17 and caught up in the same frenzy of combat that possessed Dougherty, did not want to waste it. “Let’s get the son of a bitch,” he urged over the intercom. Dougherty turned, dropped to 1,000 feet, and bore down on the Japanese warship. Unfortunately, the bomb hung up in the rack—its release was delayed—and it sailed over the destroyer and exploded harmlessly on the shore.

  Back at Mareeba, Schriever and Dougherty were surprised to find only six hits on the B-17 and all by small-arms fire. They also learned they had been doubly lucky. Bennie had not been at Mareeba long enough to know the history of his aircraft. They discovered in the maintenance records that the plane they had exposed to such inordinate stress was what Dougherty called in his after-action report “an old clunk.” The main wing spar had nearly been shot away on a mission sometime before. It had been repaired in Australia, but how well was uncertain. It had been sent back to the 19th only because there was such a shortage of B-17s. To prevent the plane from coming apart in the air there was a warning in the records that it was “red-lined”—restricted—to a top speed of 200 miles per hour, clearly a perilous craft in which to undertake an aerial tango. As the pilot and aircraft commander, Dougherty was awarded a Silver Star for Gallantry. Schriever was also recommended for a Silver Star but, as the co-pilot, received an Air Medal instead. “It was a wild night. Fun though,” Dougherty concluded in his report.

  They were back over Rabaul on October 8 in the biggest raid of the war so far. Through his skill as an engineering officer and by motivating and driving his maintenance crews, Bennie managed to put fifty-one B-17s from the 19th Group into the air above the Japanese bastion that night, a record number. (Previously, one third of this number was considered a big raid.) He and Jack Dougherty and the rest of the headquarters strike crew were flying the flare plane again. Suddenly there was a big flash and one of the engines caught fire, its propeller running away out of control. They assumed they had taken a hit from the antiaircraft guns, although they later discovered that the feathering device for the propeller had ruptured and sprayed oil back on the hot engine. Schriever and Dougherty were due to get a few days of combat leave, called R&R for “rest and recreation,” down in Sydney, and Schriever’s first thought was, “Jesus Christ, we’re not going to get to Sydney.” Dougherty managed to shut off the engine, the fire went out, and the wind feathered the propeller. They should have headed back to Mareeba immediately, but they hadn’t dropped their bombs yet and hated to waste them by jettisoning them into the sea. So they stayed over Rabaul for another forty-five minutes on three engines, first dropping the rest of their flares in one bunch to light up the whole place in what Schriever remembered as “a hell of a 4th of July,” then plastering the town where the Japanese garrison was located, starting a number of large fires.

  Had they lost another engine to antiaircraft fire or mechanical failure, they probably would not have seen Sydney again. Bennie and the other pilots carried pistols (Schriever wore strapped into a holster the .22 caliber Smith & Wesson target pistol his CCC youngsters had given him in farewell), not for self-defense but to shoot themselves if they had to parachute out over Japanese territory and face capture and the horrors it entailed. As Schriever later noted, “The Japanese were different.” During the previous daylight raids on Rabaul, when the Zeros had shot down B-17s, the men in the other bombers had seen parachutes billow as the crews bailed out, but nothing was ever heard of them again. They did not show up on International Red Cross lists nor did the Japanese announce their capture. The Australian troops who repulsed a Japanese landing at Milne Bay on the eastern end of New Guinea in the latter half of August in MacArthur’s first counter-stroke had afterward found the dreadfully mutilated and tortured bodies of comrades captured during the fighting. Japanese soldiers almost invariably committed suicide or died in banzai charges rather than be captured. An unofficial policy evolved; as the Japanese took no prisoners, the Americans and the Australians took none either. When a Japanese ship was sunk, American and Australian pilots mercilessly strafed the survivors in the water.

  Bennie and Dougherty were both awarded Purple Hearts for their valor over Rabaul on the night of October 8, a medal later given only for wounds, but which in 1942 could also be awarded for acts of courage under fire. After they returned to Mareeba that night, Schriever had only a wink of sleep. He was up at first light, inspecting damaged planes and driving his mechanics through the day so that a record-tying fifty-one B-17s from the 19th Group hammered Rabaul for a second night on October 9.

  Kenney called Schriever down to his new Fifth Air Force headquarters in Brisbane late that month. (In September, to better utilize his growing American air strength, Kenney had organized the U.S. units into a separate air force, which he commanded. He retained control over the Royal Australian Air Force and Royal New Zealand Air Force elements, however, by keeping his second hat as commanding general, Allied Air Forces.) The 19th was being sent home and replaced, Kenney informed him, because too many of its men had seen their share of comrades falling to an airman’s end and the bomber group had become war-weary. Bennie was not going with them, Kenney explained, because he needed all the engineering talent he could get and Schriever had also not flown enough combat missions to qualify, up to that point only ten. Instead, Kenney said, he was transferring Schriever to the Fifth Air Force Service Command as chief of the Maintenance and Engineering Division.

  10.

  THE TEST OF WAR

  War, with its victory-or-defeat, life-or-death dynamic in which there is no excuse for failure or mediocrity, rapidly sets the outstanding officer apart from the ordinary one. This was what was happening to Bennie Schriever. He was starting to move to a level of recognition and responsibility that would distinguish him from his former peers for the rest of his career. On the one hand, his interest in aeronautical engineering was now, in fact, taking him out of a combat cockpit and the ascendancy through regular line positions that most professional aviators craved. He would not become a bomber group commander. On the other hand, in tribute to his performance with the 19th, the commanding general, a man with an eye for talent, was reaching down to pick up a thirty-two-year-old major of barely four months and promote him into one of the most important positions in the organization, in effect chief of maintenance and engineering for the entire Fifth Air Force. Schriever did not mind being taken off the combat cockpit track. He had as much courage as the next man and knew it, feeling no need to prove it to himself or anyone else. He was being given work for which he had a talent and interest and that carried with it great responsibility and meaning. What could be more crucial for an air force than to keep its aircraft battle-worthy and ready to fly? The job also held the promise of promotion. If he did not make a hash of things he would soon be exchanging the gold oak leaves of a major for the silver ones of a lieutenant colonel. He sallied into the work with his usual self-starter attitude. His initiative almost immediately got him into trouble with a terror of an aviator whom no one crossed with impunity—Brigadier General Ennis Whitehead.

  Ennis Whitehead was Kenney’s right-hand man and deputy for combat operations, which Whitehead ran out of a separate headquarters at Port Moresby. Prior to the appearance of the comic strip Dennis the Menace, someone had dubbed Whitehead “Ennis the Menace,” and the moniker had taken hold. Whitehead relished it, although no one, of course, dared to repeat it in his presence. A pugnacious man with a ruthlessly for
ceful nature, which was why Kenney had chosen him as his combat operations deputy, Whitehead even looked the part. He had played professional baseball for a while before joining the Army Air Service, the First World War predecessor of the Air Corps, and had a badly smashed nose from an encounter with a ball. In those days before sophisticated reconstructive nasal surgery, he had to live with the result and tended to snort when he got agitated.

  New on the job as chief of maintenance, Schriever inspected a B-17 at Port Moresby that was shot up badly enough to warrant major repairs in Australia. Three of the bomber’s four engines were still in working order, however, which made it flyable under the safety rules. The matter seemed simple to Schriever. He issued instructions to fly the bomber over to Townsville, up toward the northern end of the Australian east coast across from New Guinea, where the Fifth Air Force’s main supply and maintenance depot was located. What Schriever did not know was that no one ordered aircraft about in General Whitehead’s domain without his permission. Someone told Whitehead right away, before the plane had been moved. Bennie was invited to lunch at the general’s mess, in this case a grass hut with a table and chairs. “Get that son of a bitch in line and bring him in here for lunch,” was the way Whitehead’s invitation was extended to him by a staff officer. Whitehead’s staff sat around the table having their meal with their chief while Schriever became the source of the luncheon entertainment, receiving one of the worst ass chewings of his career. “Goddamn it, I’m the only one who orders airplanes around and I want you to know it,” Whitehead said, snorting and firing his words at Schriever machine-gun fashion. “Yes, sir,” Schriever said. “Yes, sir,” “No, sir,” “Yes, sir” remained the totality of Bennie’s end of the conversation as Whitehead continued to chew on more than his food. Schriever could see that he had provoked the general into one of his legendary rages and that it was useless to try to explain himself. He also was in the wrong. He should have asked permission from Whitehead or his staff as a matter of courtesy. The B-17 was flown to Townsville, later, and with Whitehead’s nod.

  It was not long before Whitehead was after Schriever again. The P-40 fighters were fitted with an Allison engine that was subject to failure of its bearings. When this occurred, the engine would be removed and flown down to Australia, where Bennie had arranged with Australian machine shops to have the engines overhauled. The rub was that the engines were suffering bearings failures again after only a couple of hours of flying time. Before Schriever could discover the source of the problem, Whitehead flew down to Townsville to complain personally. “God damn it,” he berated Schriever, “can’t you do a decent job down here in Australia? Your God damn engines are flying two or three hours and failing again.” Bennie said he would investigate the problem and fix it.

  He did, but before he could report to Whitehead, the general sought him out at the Service Command headquarters in Brisbane to berate him once more. This time Schriever let him rage on for a while and then said calmly, “Well, I’ve found out exactly what is happening.” He explained to Whitehead that when the initial bearings failure occurred, the bearings disintegrated and spewed shards of metal into the P-40’s oil cooler, which was separate from the engine itself. The shards of metal from the old bearings thus flowed back into the rebuilt engines and ruined them again. The maintenance crews at Port Moresby had not realized they needed to flush and clean the oil coolers before reinstalling the engines. The oil coolers were now being flushed, Schriever said, and the reinstalled engines would last their allotted time. Whitehead snorted and left. When he returned to Port Moresby, however, he checked and learned that Schriever was telling him the truth. From that day onward Bennie, who never let Whitehead down when other obstacles arose to keep planes from flying, was one of the favored people of Ennis the Menace. Whenever he happened to be in Port Moresby, and later at subsequent headquarters Whitehead established as MacArthur progressively drove the Japanese from New Guinea, Schriever would always be invited to lunch or dinner at the general’s mess, and Whitehead, who was keenly loyal to those who excelled for him, would always seat Bennie at his right, regardless of the rank of any other guest at the table.

  In March 1943, after a little over eight months as a major, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel, and at the end of August he moved up again to become chief of staff of the Fifth Air Force Service Command. In effect, Schriever was now the deputy and chief operating officer of the Fifth Air Force’s entire maintenance and supply organization. He was given the job just as MacArthur was unleashing an offensive to seize Lae and nearby Japanese bases about a third of the way up the north coast of New Guinea. More than a hundred new fighter planes were still in crates or various stages of assembly at a depot in Brisbane. Kenney wanted them in the fight—now. Schriever got them assembled and flown to New Guinea at a pace faster than anyone had ever achieved before. The general thanked him with a letter of commendation in September. When his boss, Colonel Ralph Brownfield, who was temporarily heading the Service Command, recommended him that same month for accelerated promotion to full colonel as “the most capable officer known to me,” Kenney initialed the request “OK.” On December 21, 1943, Bernard Schriever, three months and a week after his thirty-third birthday, received the eagles of a full colonel.

  Although his responsibilities would continue to increase, he had gone as far as he could hope for in rank during the war. With the exception of a few who did win a star, the best of the second lieutenants from the Flying School classes of the 1930s became the colonels of the Second World War and saw that the orders of the generals were carried out. The men who won the stars and issued the orders came from the classes of the 1920s and earlier, men like Curtis LeMay, awarded his wings in 1929. LeMay, who was to create and lead the Strategic Air Command at the height of the Cold War, was a first lieutenant as late as 1938 but a major general only six years later.

  Kenney’s command was doubled in strength in June of 1944, as the destruction of the Japanese empire in the Pacific gathered momentum. He was given a second air force, the Thirteenth. Its deputy commander, Brigadier General Thomas “Tommy” White, became another of Bennie Schriever’s mentors in the postwar years, first as vice chief and then as chief of staff of the independent U.S. Air Force, which was to be created in 1947. Ennis Whitehead received his second star as commanding general of the Fifth Air Force, while Kenney, who would gain the fourth star of a full general the following spring, established a higher headquarters, U.S. Far East Air Forces, to control both the Fifth and the Thirteenth. Schriever became chief of staff of the Far East Air Service Command, which supported the combined air forces. Late in the war a third air force, the Seventh, was added to Kenney’s sphere and White was given command of it.

  MacArthur had devised a strategy of leap-frogging past heavily defended enemy bases to gain time and avoid American and Australian casualties. The bypassed Japanese troops were left to wither. That April he had leapt 400 miles to seize lightly garrisoned Hollandia, more than two thirds of the way up New Guinea’s north coast, bypassing heavily garrisoned Wewak farther south, where the Japanese had expected him to attack and concentrated more than 200,000 troops. Hollandia became the new main base. Kenney had a compound built there for himself and his staff. It was as comfortable as one could expect under the circumstances. The bedrooms were located around the outside edges to catch what breezes came off the sea. He invited Bennie to move in with them. Kenney was a rarity among military men in his working and sleeping habits, an owl who liked to work until 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning and then catnap during the day. He did his best brainstorming in the clarity of the predawn hours. He hated staying up alone and so Bennie and the staff took turns staying up with him. For Schriever it was also an opportunity to observe how to run an enterprise on the vast scale in which Kenney operated.

  At the beginning of September 1944, as MacArthur was preparing to take Morotai, the northeasternmost island in the Moluccas chain and the stepping-stone to the Philippines, Schriever was given a
job that would demand all the energy and improvising skills he could muster. He was put in charge of a new Advance Echelon of the Far East Air Service Command. His task was to solve instantly any supply problems that arose and to oversee the building of new airfields and depots for Kenney’s two air forces as fast as MacArthur advanced. When, for example, Whitehead was preparing to launch strikes but was low on aviation gasoline, Bennie had to locate the tankers still at sea with the fuel and get them to the offshore pumping stations to send the fuel in through the lines and fill the tanks at the bases in time for the planes to gas up and take off. There were always shortages, despite the fact that American industry was now producing all-out. The war in Europe continued to receive priority and MacArthur’s command, the Southwest Pacific Area, was at the end of the Pacific supply chain. The Navy’s zone farther up in the Pacific under Admiral Chester Nimitz and his two fleet commanders, Admirals Raymond Spruance and William “Bull” Halsey, first skimmed off whatever it could. As Schriever put it in a bomber formation metaphor, “We were the tail-end Charlies.”