The Ragged, Rugged Warriors

by Martin Caidin

  Chennault’s problems were, of course, only a fraction of the huge load that China carried so shakily under the desperate leadership of Chiang Kai-shek. While the American captain struggled to build Chinese airpower, the Generalissimo buckled down to the task of meeting the Japanese on the ground. Chiang had one trump card above all to play—among his ground forces was one crack Army of 80,000 men, whipped into shape by a German military team.

  Against this background of international legerdemain within China, the air legions of Japan prepared to make their move

  MITSUBISHI WHIRLWIND

  By August 13, 1937, the fighting between Japanese forces and the troops directly under Chiang Kai-shek had spread across the land to Shanghai itself. Although most military observers, from the very outset of the conflict, conceded Japan a heavy advantage in the war in China, the Japanese themselves were suffering grave doubts about the safety of their field forces. Especially alarming were intelligence reports received from Japanese agents. According to Commander Masatake Okumiya, Imperial Japanese Navy, the reports stated:

  “. . . the Japanese garrison in that city [Shanghai] was completely encircled by a strong Chinese force, supported by three hundred planes based in the Nanking area. Additional reports revealed that a concerted Chinese attack could in a few days wipe out to the last man the Japanese marines who were isolated in Shanghai. The marine garrison faced overwhelming numbers of Chinese troops; since no airfield within Shanghai was usable, our men were denied local air coverage. . . . On August 14, following a series of sharp land battles, the Chinese planes opened bombing attacks against our forces in and around Shanghai.”1

  The Japanese could not know at the time that their intelligence estimate of 300 Chinese combat aircraft constituted a huge overestimate, and that Chiang actually had less than one-third that number of military planes available for combat operations. Neither did the Japanese realize the critical weaknesses of the Chinese, which the latter were soon to demonstrate in a parody of aerial maneuvers. If the initial Chinese air attacks were any indication of what was to come, then the Japanese might have done well indeed to encourage the Chinese in their tactics.

  Northrup 2E light bombers of the type used by the Chinese to attack Japanese shipping. They were fairly effective if the Japanese did not mount any fighter defenses.

  Curtiss Hawk dive bombers, well-worn biplanes purchased from the United States, were dispatched to attack Japanese cruisers in the Shanghai area. As the biplanes struck at the other enemy fleet units, Northrop light bombers (also purchased from the United States) were to concentrate their attack on the Japanese command center for the Shanghai operations—the cruiser Idzumo. This warship rode at anchor in the Whangpo near the Japanese consulate in Shanghai. Close to the Idzumo spread the International Settlement of the city.

  Heavy clouds blanketed the skies over the Japanese warship. Other pilots would prudently have returned to base, or else struck at targets of opportunity where weather conditions were better. But not the Chinese, to whom loss of face seemed worse than being lost on their mission. Not to have at least tried to bomb the Idzumo was to them the same as quitting, and they bulled their way

  through the heavy cloud cover, then dove toward where they thought the Idzumo lay ripe for their bombs.

  The planes screamed downward in a swift, shallow-angle diving attack, and at 1,500 feet they broke out of the clouds and shot for their target. But these were men poorly trained in the refinements of such attack, and the pilots neglected completely the new variables in their bombing runs—such as altered speed, angle, and height.

  The result of this neglect was appalling—a devastating bomb strike directly in the center of the International Settlement. One bomb, exploding on Nanking Road (often described as the busiest and most densely packed thoroughfare in the world), killed nearly a thousand people outright, and caused serious injuries to another 1,150 human beings.

  Adding insult to injury was the fact that the Idzumo never suffered so much as a scratch in its shiny paint, while the blast wave from the exploding bombs shattered glass throughout the United States cruiser Augusta.

  On the morning of August 15, the day after this introductory debacle of Chinese bombing, a powerful cruiser raced under full steam down the Yangtze River, its decks brilliant with flame as all guns fired freely at Chinese bombers that pursued the warship. The Chinese pilots finally had snared a target; they threw themselves furiously at the vessel. High overhead, Chennault in a Hawk fighter plane studied the scene beneath him. His own aircraft rocked sharply as bullets spanged through the wings, and Chennault pounded his fist in the cockpit in helpless frustration.

  The warship under violent attack was the British cruiser Cumberland. . . .

  Even the long series of aerial combats which were soon to flare through China on a massive scale began in odd fashion. The. only fighting in the air to mark the outbreak of the full-scale Sino-Japanese War took place when a slow seaplane from the Idzumo shot down a Chinese fighter.

  On the evening of August 14, the Japanese struck their first heavy blow from the air. Mitsubishi Type 96 twin-engine bombers* of the Kanoya Air Corps made military history when they flew a mission that totaled 1,250 miles range; they took off from Taipei (Formosa) to strike at Chinese positions in the Shanghai area and returned nonstop to their home fields. The next day additional bombers of this type from the Kisarazu Air Corps lifted from Oh-mura Base on Kyushu Island to add their weight to the attacks. Beginning on the third day of the strikes—August 16—carrier-based fighters and bombers also struck at the Chinese.

  *During World War II, these bombers received the identification code of Nell.

  Mitsubishi Type 96 Nell bombers carried out a major load of the attack against Chinese cities; same type of plane was used extensively throughout early years of World War II.

  No one could have forseen the devastating effect of Chennault’s hand prior to these heavy Japanese air attacks. Thanks to the hard-driving leadership of the American Army captain and his dedicated staff, a selected group of Chinese fighter pilots had been whipped into a semblance of a combat interceptor force. Playing his strength cautiously—with absolute command over the Chinese fighters vested in him—Chennault rocked the Japanese back on their heels, and stunned the Chinese themselves with the murderous effect of his tactics.

  The Japanese made their initial bombing strike against Nanking without any interference from Chinese fighter planes. Indeed, not a single Chinese interceptor was to be seen in the skies; only a select group were aware that this constituted part of Chennault’s defensive plan. The twin-engined bombers slid into their bombing runs over the city at a height of 5,000 feet. Having dropped their bombs with precision, and with the skies empty of the enemy, the Japanese pilots whooped with the excitement of battle and pushed their sleek airplanes into long, swift dives toward open targets. The gunners aboard the Mitsubishis trained their machineguns on buildings, vehicles, trains, and any hapless Chinese exposed to their sights. Back and forth thundered the Japanese planes, incendiaries spitting into the city and starting numerous small fires. Finally, their ammunition expended and their spirits soaring, the Japanese pilots rose toward the clouds and slipped into the white mists, beginning the slow climb to where they would emerge above the clouds and re-form into position for the flight home.

  This was the precise moment Chennault had been waiting for—when the Japanese were relaxed, overconfident, and either short of ammunition or out of it entirely. At 10,000 feet a pack of Chinese fighters circled slowly, conserving fuel, poised on the brink of steep dives . . . poised until the command to attack came from far below the swirling white clouds. The bombers broke upward through the rolling cloud tops; one moment there was only white to be seen, and then sunlight glistened brilliantly from silver wings and flashing propellers.

  Shouting into the wind of their open cockpits, the Chinese pilots pushed their control sticks forward and eased rudder pedals to bring their fighters around in curvin
g dives. Like a swarm of maddened hornets they plunged into the midst of the Japanese formations with totally unexpected—and spectacular—effect. The Japanese planes were ripe for the aerial onslaught, and streams of bullets ripped open and exploded fuel tanks, smashed pilots into bleeding hulks over their control columns, and tore the Mitsubishis into wreckage. Within the space of several minutes the Japanese formation had been shredded —and of the 18 bombers, no less than eight plunged blazing from the sky.

  Chennault and his team had performed the impossible. By teaching the poorly trained Chinese fighter pilots to fly in a combat element of pairs—no matter what might ensue in the battles—they whipped their students into effective combat teams. Whenever a pilot found himself alone, he was immediately to “latch on” to the nearest two-man team in the sky, and act as a seesawing tail cover for the other two pilots.

  Whatever had happened that day over Nanking, the results were no less than incredible. Nearly half of the entire attacking force had literally been blasted from the air. And this was only the beginning, as the incredulous Japanese learned to their sorrow. Chennault was a hero in Chinese government circles as his students three times in succession demonstrated in bloody, slashing fashion the value of his instruction. In three heavy raids carried out over a period of only five days, the Japanese suffered crippling losses.

  The records kept by the American advisors in China at the time show that Chinese fighter planes intercepting the enemy in these first three daylight raids shot down 54 Japanese bombers, with the loss of all their crews. The Chinese pilots, who had never expected anything remotely like these results, almost went mad in their joy.

  The effect of the Chinese defense system has been held up to serious question in the years following. The claims of 54 Japanese bombers shot down with virtually no losses to the Chinese appear to beggar credulity. But there is no question of what happened in Chinese skies over Shanghai, Nanking, Hangchow, and other cities, for the Japanese themselves have provided us with full confirmation of the aerial debacle as the air war opened in China.

  The primary lesson learned by the Japanese, in the words of an official study of the serious losses in the early China fighting, was that “bombers are no match for enemy fighter planes. Japan lost many men as this lesson was administered, including Lieutenant Commander Nitta, Air Group Commander, Lieutenant (JG) Umebayashi, and Ensign Yamanouchi of the. land-based attack-bomber groups, and other pilots .. .”

  Commander Masatake Okumiya, who at the time was in the command staff headquarters of the Japanese Navy, sheds more light on the strategic lessons learned in such painful manner at the hands of the Chinese defenders:

  “The planes of the aircraft carrier Kaga suffered disastrously. The twelve Type 89 carrier-based attack bombers, led by Group Commander Lieutenant Commander Iwai, left the Kaga on August 17 for a raid against

  Hangchow. Bad weather prevented a rendezvous with an expected fighter escort, and near their target the bombers were attacked by a group of Chinese fighter planes. Eleven bombers, including the commander’s, were shot down. Lieutenant (JG) Tanaka managed to bring his bullet-riddled and crippled bomber back to the carrier; otherwise, the fate of the attacking group would never have been known, and another bomber formation might have suffered a similar fate. Tanaka’s report astonished the officers of the fleet, and immediate warnings were issued to all bomber groups to take special precautions against the defending Chinese fighters.

  “We discovered that when our fighter planes provided escort to, over, and from the target such incidents did not occur. Comparing the shattered unescorted bomber groups with the relatively unharmed formations which were protected by fighters, the Navy reacted quickly. The Kaga was ordered to return immediately to Sasebo and to receive a full complement of the new Type 96* carrier-based fighters.”2

  The Japanese—reputed to be slow in understanding the strategy of such situations—reacted with a swift vengeance.

  While Navy headquarters in Japan rushed to get fighter planes into China, the theater commander ordered the end of unescorted daylight attacks against Nanking. For three days the Japanese remained absent from the city. Then, with a full moon bathing the Chinese countryside, a trickle of raiders appeared over the city. There were no mass formations, no spectacular V-upon-V waves of the twin-engine bombers. Sometimes the Mitsubishis came in alone, sometimes in pairs. But they came, all through the night, and the moon-washed city rocked for nearly eight hours with bombs spilling into its innards. The bombardiers took their time; their pilots set up bombing runs with perfection. There was no rush, for there were no fighters to interfere with their operations.

  Once again, Chennault had lulled the Japanese into a sense of confidence. What the Japanese did not realize was that Claire Chennault was putting into practice in China the tactics he had developed for years as a tactician with the U.S. Army Air Corps. He had ordered the searchlights normally concentrated on the edges of Nanking removed, and set up in a grid pattern throughout the city. On the second night of the attacks, the searchlights locked onto a bomber and remained with that bomber until, with the slant range increasing, another searchlight in the grid could pick up the aircraft and keep tracking it with a brilliant light beam.

  * The Mitsubishi Type 96 Claude single-engine fighter.

  A Chinese fighter pilot slid into one of the beams, keeping the Japanese bomber crew of one plane blind to his steeply climbing fighter. At pointblank range the Chinese pilot squeezed out a long burst into the vitals of the Mitsubishi; then, working with all the speed at his control, the fighter pilot rolled onto his back and sucked the control stick into his stomach, arcing away beneath the bomber. Behind and above him, flames blossomed in the sky, marking the effectiveness of the attack.

  On the third night of bombing a swarm of Chinese fighters rose to do battle. The same pilot who had scored the night before blew another two bombers out of the darkened skies, and the other pilots managed to shoot down five more planes.

  Once again the tactics of Chennault had paid tremendous dividends for the Chinese, and a staggering blow to the Japanese.

  But the brief victories of the Chinese had come to their end, and now they were to reap the whirlwind of the Mitsubishis. In early September of 1937 the Japanese began their grimly determined effort to wipe Chinese air opposition clear out of the skies, and they began their campaign with the Second Combined Air Flotilla, equipped with the deadly new Type 96 fighters. Among the factors on which the Japanese relied was the quality of their pilot leadership—Lieutenant Commanders Okamura and Genda, and Lieutenants Nomura and Nango, famous through the Japanese Navy as men of superb skill.

  On September 18 the Japanese struck at Nanking. Flushed with their victories of previous weeks, the Chinese fighter pilots rose with a shout to meet the invaders. The cries of battle changed all too quickly into the sounds of blood bubbling from dying lips. The Japanese had come to kill—and they went at their task with a terrible efficiency.

  The pilots of the Chinese fighters—Boeing P-26 monoplanes and Curtiss Hawk II, Curtiss Hawk III, and Italian Fiat biplanes—found themselves almost helpless before the slashing performance of the new Mitsubishi Type 96 fighters. The Japanese pilots flew a lithe killer that was faster in level flight, could outclimb the Chinese collection of fighters, and whirled through maneuvers that seemed impossible in their agility. Added to the brilliant performance of the Mitsubishis was the caliber of the pilots— these were the best of the Imperial Navy, and this fact, too, the Chinese learned to their dismay.

  Mitsubishi Type 96 Claude was the first monoplane fighter introduced by Japanese to air fighting in China—and devastated the opposition.

  In the weeks following, the Japanese struck again and again. The twin-engine bombers were withdrawn from the scene so that the attacks could be made with dive bombers and their protecting swarms of Mitsubishi fighters. In desperate straits, the Chinese gathered every fighter plane available to them. They added to the Boeing, Curtiss, and
Fiat fighters Gloster Gladiators (British) and Russian biplane and monoplane fighters (which had seen such excellent service in Spain). The Japanese could not have cared less. Each night the briefing rooms and mess halls of the Japanese rang with shouted announcements of the victories, and the grouped pilots laughingly added up the growing numbers of aces (pilots with five or more air kills) in their midst.

  It took the Japanese less than two months not simply to gain air superiority over the contested city of Nanking, but to assert absolute supremacy. In the first battle of the renewed air war—on September 18—16 Chinese fighter planes had gone aloft to intercept nine bombers. The 27 Mitsubishi fighters that ripped into the defenders quickly decimated their ranks—11 out of the 16 Chinese fighter planes fell in flames.

  During the next two months the Mitsubishi fighter pilots carried on a beat-the-bushes hunt for their enemy. They searched out Chinese bases and roared up and down the runways in strafing attacks; at times they cruised high overhead, taunting the Chinese with their presence to come up and fight. Japanese bombers stopped at nothing to attack targets, and the fighters trailed along, hoping that the bombings would rouse the depleted ranks of the enemy to combat. .

  The campaign was not simply to assure that the Japanese Navy could carry out its assigned attack missions against the enemy. It was a deliberate move to wipe out the remaining elements of Chinese airpower, and the Japanese left nothing undone to achieve this goal. It appeared incredible then—and no less so today—that in many respects the Chinese helped them to achieve their hopes.