The Ragged, Rugged Warriors

by Martin Caidin

  (For their “extraordinary heroism” on the first day of war, Welch and Taylor each received the Distinguished Service Cross. Welch’s four kills were confirmed; for a time Taylor was listed as having shot down two enemy aircraft confirmed, with two probables, but later confirmation of the second two kills was made. The two pilots together had accounted for eight of the enemy destroyed.)

  Obsolescent and outperformed by Zero fighters, Curtiss P-36 Mohawks nevertheless put up a strong fight at Pearl Harbor. Several kills against enemy planes were confirmed to P-36 pilots.

  At 8:50 a.m. five pilots of the 46th Squadron, 15th Pursuit Group, shot down the runway of Wheeler Field in P-36 Mohawk fighters. The danger of being shot down by their own antiaircraft fire was considered “extreme,” and the pilots were warned not to attempt the gauntlet of the heavy barrages over Pearl Harbor. Notwithstanding the warnings and the danger, the pilots climbed out through heavy smoke, reaching 8,000 feet in the area of Diamond Head. Here they encountered their first enemy aircraft—nine Zero fighters.

  The P-36s rushed into the Zero formation, catching the Japanese pilots off balance. Almost as quickly as the fight started, Lieutenants Lewis M. Sanders and Philip M. Rasmussen each flamed a Zero.

  Lieutenant Gordon H. Sterling, Jr., latched onto the tail of another Zero fighter, twisting and maneuvering wildly to keep his bullets pouring into the evading enemy plane. He scored direct hits (his fellow pilots claimed the Zero as destroyed; the official records show it only as damaged), but almost at the same time a Zero looped sharply, came around on his tail, and shot down Sterling in a mass of flames.

  Lieutenant John M. Thacker fought with the Japanese until his plane was riddled from nose to tail with cannon fire, and his guns jammed. Helpless against the Zeros, he rammed the nose of the Mohawk down and dove for his life, returning safely to his field. The last engagement was fought by Lieutenant Malcolm A. Moore who pursued a Zero, damaging the enemy fighter, until it slipped into clouds over Kaena Point.

  At Bellows Field enlisted men on duty or in their barracks responded quickly to the Japanese air strikes. Crewmen of the 86th Observation Squadron rushed to action without waiting for orders; they grabbed machine guns, ran out to the flight line where 0-47 observation planes were grounded on the field, and mounted the guns in the cockpits. From these positions they fired directly at Japanese planes as they rushed low over the field.

  Other men ran to P-40 fighters of the 44th Squadron, 18th Pursuit Group (on detached service at Bellows Field for gunnery training). The mechanics fueled the Tomahawks while armorers loaded the planes with ammunition.

  Almost as soon as the P-40s were ready, Japanese Zeros came in fast and low in a strafing run. Three pilots made an ill-fated attempt to slug it out with the Japanese.

  Lieutenant Hans C. Christiansen was killed almost immediately. (There are two versions of Christiansen’s death; one report claims he was killed “while getting into his plane.” According to Vem Haugland, in The AAF Against Japan, the Japanese Zeros “machine-gunned Lieutenant Hans C. Christiansen just as he got his P-40 under way. It plunged into underbrush at the end of the runway, its pilot dead.”)

  Lieutenant George A. Whiteman made it into the air —directly into the guns of six Zero fighters who ran at him in a pack. He barely got into the air when his Tomahawk smashed back into the ground in a tumbling ball of flame and wreckage.

  Lieutenant Samuel W. Bishop lasted only moments longer. He brought his Tomahawk off the ground into a steep climbing turn to bring his guns to bear against the Zeros. The Japanese wasted no time in hacking the P-40 into shreds, and wounding Bishop severely in a leg. Fighting every foot of the way, he ditched the battered airplane into the water off Oahu and, despite his bleeding leg, swam ashore.

  Vem Haugland compiled a report on other aerial activities of that confused morning—all of it distressingly one-sided:

  “Some of the airplanes which met the enemy over Oahu were unable to engage in combat. A few airborne civilian craft made for safe landing fields as promptly as possible. At the height of the raid, fourteen unarmed B-17s arrived from the United States on the first leg of a proposed six thousand-mile flight to the Philippines. The tremendous fuel load required that the 2,392-mile water hop from Hamilton Field, California, be made without the weight of guns and ammunition.

  “By means of skillful maneuvering, all pilots managed to land at scattered points on Oahu. Japanese strafers inflicted some crew casualties and damaged several Flying Fortresses.

  “Captain Richard H. Carmichael led a group of six planes from the 88th Reconnaissance Squadron, 7th Bomb Group, which arrived over Oahu about eight a.m. Other pilots in the group were Lieutenants Frank P. Bostrom, Harry N. Brandon, Robert E. Thacker, David G. Rawls and Harold N. Chaffin.

  “Lieutenant Bostrom, who three months later flew Douglas MacArthur out of the Philippines to Australia, was driven away from the island by antiaircraft fire on his original approach. He flew around for fifteen minutes, then asked permission to land at Hickam but was told to stay away. Six Japanese fighters attacked him as he circled, pursued him almost all the way around the island and shot out two of his engines.

  “Eluding the attackers, Bostrom brought the new B-17 down on a golf course with only a few minutes’ supply of gasoline remaining.

  “Lieutenants Brandon, Thacker and Rawls braved the furious antiaircraft fire and Japanese attacks, and landed successfully at Hickam Field. Hedge-hopping Japanese fighters strafed crew members as they ran from their planes to shelter.

  “Captain Carmichael and Lieutenant Chaffin, unable to land at Hickam or Wheeler because of fires on the airdromes, brought their planes down safely on the 1,200-foot Haleiwa fighter strip.

  “A formation from the 38th Reconnaissance Squadron, led by Major Truman H. Landon, landed without difficulty at Hickam and Wheeler Fields. Enemy attacks shot out the ailerons of the plane piloted by Lieutenant Robert H. Richards and seriously wounded two crew members. Richards landed downwind on the 2,600-foot fighter strip without further injury to the crew.

  “Although none of the new Flying Forts had been able to put up any resistance to the Japanese, most of them soon were armed and ready for use by the Hawaiian Air Force____”4

  In the U.S. Air Force History Office’s official history, The Army Air Forces in World War II, is found the notation that the “enemy’s victory had been perfect as few military operations are. Its early consequences were to follow closely enough Japanese hopes.”5

  The Japanese made their move against the Philippines.

  BOOK THREE

  DEFEAT IN THE PHILIPPINES

  On the first day of the war in the Pacific, Japanese military forces—

  Struck a severe blow with a large formation of bombers against Wake Island. . . .

  Attacked the island of Guam with 18 bombers and set in motion the invasion fleet which would overrun the poorly defended American base within three days. ...

  Smashed American air strength on the island of Luzon in the Philippines by wiping out a major force of fighters, bombers, and other aircraft, and devastating air defense and ground facilities....

  Struck with heavy bomber formations against British defenses on the islands of Nauru and Ocean, lying between the Solomon and Gilbert island chains....

  Bombed Hong Kong Island, and dispatched a strong force of troops against Kowloon on the mainland opposite Hong Kong to wreck carefully prepared defense plans. . . .

  Swept through the International Settlement at Shanghai, and captured the crew of HMS Petrel (but not before they sank their ship)....

  Rushed aboard the American gunboat Wake and while the crew slept, captured the warship intact; the Japanese, with a fine sense of irony, recommissioned the Wake in the Japanese Navy as the Tataru....

  Sortied an invasion fleet along the east coast of Malaya; troops poured ashore from six transports and two destroyers at Singora and Patani. Other troops were rushed across the Kra Isthmus. . ..

  Sen
t large bodies of troops across the borders of French Indo-China (already occupied by the Japanese through agreements with the French), into Thailand (Siam); resistance was light and sporadic. . . .

  Attacked Singapore with powerful formations of dive and attack bombers and escorting Zero fighters from aircraft carriers cruising offshore. ...

  In the face of sudden British resistance with bombers (of which the Japanese shot down four), invaded British defenses at Kota Bahru, Malaya. Preceding the invasion was a powerful barrage from an invasion fleet of heavy warships; 40 dive bombers also shattered installations at the Kota Bahru airfield to destroy most of the British air power in the immediate area....

  The Japanese also sank a crippling percentage of Allied merchantmen discovered by their aircraft and fleet units, including three American, 41 British, one Greek, and seven Panamanian cargo vessels (200,000 tons of shipping slipped away from the Philippines to escape the Japanese).... '

  And, as the initial blow, the Japanese eliminated the Hawaiian Islands as a source of danger or interference to Japanese operations elsewhere in the Pacific and in Asia.

  On the opening day of the Pacific War, the Far East Air Force in the Philippine Islands counted its military air strength at approximately 150 assorted fighters, bombers, and miscellaneous types of aircraft.

  Seventeen Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers (of the early B-17C and B-17D models, which lacked tail guns and power turrets) were based at Clark Field, on Luzon, northwest of Manila.

  At Iba airfield, on the west coast of Luzon almost due west of Clark, was the 3rd Pursuit Squadron with 18 Curtiss P-40E Kittyhawk fighters. (Greatly improved over the P-40B Tomahawk, the P-40E was more powerful, faster, and mounted six .50-caliber machine guns in its wings.) The 17th Pursuit Squadron and 21st Pursuit Squadron, based at Nichols Field, southeast of Manila, each had 18 of the new Kittyhawk fighters. Sharing Clark Field with the force of heavy bombers was the 20th Pursuit Squadron with 18 of the older P-40B Tomahawks. Approximately a dozen Seversky P-35 fighters, old, slow, and seriously underarmed, operated with the 34th Pursuit Squadron from Del Carmen, 15 miles southwest of Clark Field. Completing the fighter strength was a rickety force of 12 Boeing P-26s (open cockpits and fixed landing gear) flown by the Philippines Air Force from Batangas, on the south coast of Luzon.

  Map of The Philippines

  (N.B. The original scan was poor for this map)

  The airpower defense of the Philippines was completed with a miscellaneous assortment of 21 other aircraft, some of which were fabric-covered biplanes and considered useless for combat.

  Against this defensive array the Japanese mounted a modem striking force that operated from five bases on Formosa (Kaohsung, Tainan, Taichung, Chiai, and Tungkan). Assembled at these five fields were a total of 184 Zero fighters, 192 twin-engine bombers, and 24 long-range flying boats. Not all of these aircraft were able to operate over the long distances to and from the Philippines; the Japanese considered their effective strike force to consist of 108 Zeros and 144 twin-engine bombers, plus the flying boats for long-range reconnaissance at sea.

  Until two weeks before combat operations got under way, the Japanese judged their striking force to be seriously deficient, as their best intelligence estimates placed American airpower in the Philippines at some 900 military aircraft. The extensive use of twin-engine reconnaissance planes operating at heights up to 30,000 feet, however, enabled the Japanese drastically to reduce this estimate to some 300 machines, a force they considered well within their means to eliminate.

  Monday morning, December 8, local Philippines time, military installations went on combat alert It was then three o’clock in the morning in the Philippines (8:30 a.m. Hawaiian time), and the first warnings of imminent attack came not through military channels, but from commercial stations that broke into their regular scheduled broadcasts with news flashes of the attack against Pearl Harbor. Despite a lack of official confirmation of this news, its consequences were potentially so great that the Philippines command alerted all units to be ready for immediate takeoff.

  Within 30 minutes of the alert, the Iba radar station, halfway up the west coast of Luzon, reported unidentified aircraft approaching the islands, with their present positions some 75 miles offshore. Several minutes later they were reported on a bearing that would take them directly over Corregidor.

  Several P-40 fighters of the 3rd Pursuit Squadron scrambled from their runway and roared into the darkness, climbing rapidly under ground radar control. For a while it appeared that the first air battle over the Philippines was about to be joined; the P-40 pilots, however, passed well beneath the unidentified aircraft and never sighted their quarry in the darkness. (The aircraft were Japanese Mitsubishi Type 96 Nell bombers on reconnaissance; they broke off to the west, unaware of the American fighters attempting the intercept)

  Later that morning, at approximately 9:00 a.m., the “delayed” opening of active hostilities caught up swiftly with the Philippines. Spotters and radar stations flashed warnings that enemy aircraft were over Lingayen Gulf, bearing south toward the city of Manila. Immediately all the B-17 Flying Fortresses stationed at Clark Field were ordered into the air (sans bombs) to prevent their being destroyed on the ground, and also to carry out long-distance reconnaissance flights against an expected Japanese invasion fleet. As the bombers sped out to sea, the Tomahawks of the 20th Pursuit Squadron climbed under full throttle to intercept the oncoming enemy.

  By 0910 hours, there were 54 American planes in the air, with 36 fighters being maintained on instant reserve to join in interceptions. Still there was no contact with the Japanese.

  Then at 0923 hours, Colonel Harold H. George flashed the alert that there were “approximately twenty-four bimotored enemy bombers near Tuguegarao and seventeen near Baguio...

  Approximately seven minutes later men on the ground heard for the first time a sound that would become terrifyingly familiar to them—the increasing shriek of Japanese bombs spilling from high altitude, arrowing toward their targets with an accuracy that was to become both hated and feared. The first bombing strike, without interferance to the Japanese formations, tore up military installations at Baguio, the summer capital in the mountains lying to the north of Manila. Air fields south of Baguio, at Cabanatuan, also received a major attack.

  Two hours later the radar stations flashed the word of a second attack on its way, with the enemy formations approaching from over the China Sea. Still at Iba, the 3rd Pursuit Squadron scrambled all operational Kittyhawk fighters to intercept the Japanese. At Nichols, cursing and sweating mechanics were still trying to refuel the fighters of the 17th Pursuit Squadron; with the aircraft still not fully fueled, the pilots were ordered into the air immediately to set up patrols over the Bataan Peninsula. The 34th Pursuit Squadron, almost at the same time, received its assignment to set up aerial cover over the city of Manila.

  At Clark Field were the P-40s of the 20th Pursuit Squadron and the B-17 bombers of the 28th and 30th Bombardment Squadrons. One Flying Fortress was still in the air at the tail end of a reconnaissance flight, and armorers were preparing those planes on the ground for a strike against the Japanese airfields on Formosa.

  Then, in the traditional sense of the phrase, all hell broke loose. The Kittyhawks of the 3rd Pursuit Squadron were circling the Iba airfield, preparing to swing into their landing patterns; the fighters were low on fuel and the pilots angry and frustrated with their failing to come to grips with the enemy. At that moment the Japanese caught the Americans with a shattering surprise attack. Once again that day the air seemed to split with the growing scream of the Japanese bombs hurtling earthward.

  The P-40E pilots slammed home throttles and climbed desperately to turn into the enemy, but they could hardly have been caught at a greater disadvantage. Zero fighters swarmed into the American formations with deadly effect. Lieutenant Jack Donalson threw his fighter into the midst of the Japanese planes, and not even the agile Zeros could catch the wildly flying America
n pilot long enough to shoot him out of the sky. Donalson poured bullets into aged), providing the main resistance to the Japanese. The Mitsubishi pilots made the most of their superior advantages of altitude and diving speed; before the one-sided dead pilots. Three other P-40Es were forced to crashland on nearby beaches when the pilots exhausted their fuel, two fighters (and claimed—correctly—two aircraft dam-fight ended, five Kittyhawks went down in flames or with.

  The Kittyhawks, while failing to down any of their opponents, had actually achieved a precious advantage for Iba. By turning into the diving Japanese fighters, they forced the enemy into a swirling battle, and prevented them from carrying out a slow and methodical strafing of the airfield, upon which the Japanese were counting heavily.

  Clark Field failed to receive this reprieve. The wheezing, obsolete Seversky P-35s of the 21st Pursuit Squadron were ordered into the air from Del Carmen to protect Clark Field (where bombers and fighters were still being refueled); unfortunately, thick dust at Del Carmen so obscured the runways that the fighters were delayed in their takeoff rolls. By 12:15 p.m. the delays had become so serious in establishing air cover over Clark that the pilots of the 20th Pursuit Squadron—their planes still not fully fueled—were rushed into the air to protect their own field.

  Once again the Japanese struck with superb—and unplanned—timing. Four Tomahawks had barely made it into the air when the first barrage of hundreds of bombs from 60 twin-engine bombers began chewing up the runways and airfield installations. Flame geysered through the swiftly thickening dust and smoke in a terrifying procession of bombs; the Japanese wheeled slowly over Clark, contemptuous in their precision formations, raining bombs for 15 minutes upon the American field.