The Ragged, Rugged Warriors

by Martin Caidin

  “We were told January 3 that a last fighter mission from Luzon would be flown, to bolster the morale of troops, and then all planes would be evacuated to Mindanao. We had nine P-40s left at Pilar, and nine at Bataan. Led by Lieutenant Edward Dyess, the planes would assemble over Del Carmen at 1100 hours January 4, go up to 20,000 feet, shoot down an entire formation of attacking bombers, then land, immediately refuel and take off for Del Monte, 520 miles to the south.

  “The nine Pilar pilots circled Del Carmen for an hour January 4, then returned to find that the mission had been cancelled. At Pilar, they immediately refueled and took off for Del Monte, only to become separated by bad weather.

  “I landed at Del Monte with the help of automobile lights and a dim line of runway lights. Four of the other pilots had preceded me there, and a fifth had landed his P-40 in a pineapple field near by. Lieutenant Wilcox crashed on Bohol Island and was killed. Lieutenant Cole landed on a barricaded airfield on Negros, was seriously injured, but later made his way to Del Monte by boat.

  “At Del Monte, no one knew we were coming or why. We were received as outcasts. Brigadier General Sharp, who commanded the ground forces, went out of his way to be antagonistic, and Major Elsmore, the senior air officer, treated us more as truant schoolboys than as combat pilots.

  “We spent the next fourteen days at Del Monte working on our planes and taking turns flying reconnaissance missions.

  “General MacArthur’s headquarters on Corregidor radioed January 18: ‘Send four P-40s back to Bataan immediately.’ General Sharp was shocked and we, the pilots, were shocked. The general was losing his, until now, seemingly unwelcome air force, and we were going on what seemed to be an uncalled-for, foolish mission. Our guess was, ‘Bataan is falling and some Air Force brass hats want to get away.’ There were now eight pilots available. We drew cards: Lieutenant Woolery, Lieutenant Ibold, Lieutenant Benson and I won the assignment from which everyone agreed there was no return. Actually, they were almost right. I was the only one to return, months later.

  “We started back January 19. We were out over water when Benson’s engine quit. He had ridden two planes safely into the water; but this time because of the solid overcast below him, he bailed out. Low on gas near Mindoro, we buzzed San Jose airfield and were surprised to see American troops come running out. A Lieutenant Baggett met us and said his detachment of sixty men had been out of touch with the rest of the world since early in the war when they had proceeded to Mindoro by boat on orders from some Air Force colonel.

  “At Bataan, Colonel George, now the Air Force commander in the Philippines, said he did not ask for us and did not know we were coming until we were on our way. The Air Force there, by January 20, had all but disappeared except for the nine P-40 pilots forming the Bataan Field Flying Detachment. The field itself was a perfect example of what can be accomplished by painstaking camouflage and aircraft revetment. Although it was often bombed and strafed, no planes were damaged on the ground by enemy action.

  “From January 4 to January 20, the Bataan planes made numerous reconnaissance flights. On January 20, Lieutenant Marshall J. Anderson bailed out of his damaged plane and the Japanese pilots began to shoot at him in the air, causing his parachute to collapse several thousand feet above the ground. We had our first taste of this Japanese tactic on the first day of the war, when Lieutenant George Elstrom of the 3rd Squadron was shot and killed after bailing out.

  “All of the Bataan pilots were picked men, and Colonel George told us we could quit flying whenever we wished. Food was becoming very scarce. Everyone went around feeling hungry most of the time. Three of us flew to Mindoro February 3 to check a report that the Japs had captured Waterous Field, near San Jose. Finding no sign of enemy activity, Lieutenant Woolery, Lieutenant Hall and I landed at San Jose and had breakfast with Lieutenant Baggett. We each loaded a 100-pound sack of sugar into our P-40s to ferry back to Bataan, and since Woolery and Hall still had their bombs, they decided to bomb the Japs on the Bataan front line, on the way back, while I provided protection from enemy fighters.

  “Over Manila, they started to dive for an attack. I took my eyes off them for a second to look for possible enemy fighters. When I looked back, I saw nothing at first, and then, off to one side, a large mid-air explosion. Woolery and Hall were never seen again, two of the best pilots in the Philippines. Lieutenant Woolery had received no decorations or awards, although few persons were more entitled to them. (Later awarded, posthumously, the Distinguished Flying Cross.)

  “On the afternoon of February 3, while I was still bewildered from the events of the morning, General George said some pilot who knew the way to Mindanao would have to make an urgent courier flight to Del Monte. Lieutenant Earl Stone and I were the only two who had flown that mission, so again the cards were brought out. I drew first and won the ace of spades. General George told me, ‘If you succeed, your mission will be of more value than if you shot down twenty bombers.’

  “At Del Monte, General Sharp barked, ‘What are you doing here? Did you steal one of the P-40s from Bataan and run away?’ I fumbled in my cockpit and brought out the written orders, and after a few more questions, left hoping that the Japs would come over and give the general in his underground office a good bombing.

  “On the return flight, I was given a sealed bag and told that it contained Allied codes, for Corregidor. ‘If anything should happen that you can’t get through, eat or destroy every bit of the contents,’ the officer said. It would have made quite a large meal.

  “I stopped overnight at Cebu and loaded up with Cognac, chocolate and candy from the quartermaster. There was a detachment of Filipino cadets at Cebu with three planes—two PT-13s with two wing-mounted .30 caliber machine guns, and a P-12 without guns. My return in the heavily overloaded P-40 marked the first of many resupply flights from the southern islands to Bataan—the maiden voyage of the much-famed ‘Bamboo Fleet.’

  “Big guns from the Cavite shore had been making life miserable on Corregidor. Jesus Villamor, a Filipino captain, went up in an old Filipino trainer to photograph the gun positions, and four of us went along in P-40s as escort. Eight Japanese fighters attacked. We shot down six of them; one P-40, piloted by Lieutenant Stone, was lost.

  “The P-40s made a number of flights to drop supplies and ammunition to an isolated force northeast of Baguio. One day Corregidor ordered two P-40s to go out and search south and west of Corregidor for submerged friendly submarines. This seemed sort of a foolish mission, but General George said run it, he didn’t know how we were going to find submerged submarines, much less identify them as friendly. We searched for two hours without finding any submerged friendly submarines.

  “Late in February the 21st Squadron was withdrawn from its infantry role and placed at Bataan Field, and the 20th Squadron was placed at newly completed Marinoles Field. The 17th and 34th were left on the beaches as infantry.

  “We flew reconaissance, interception, resupply, dive-bombing, and leaflet dropping missions to Luzon cities. By the end of February, we were getting only two meals a day. Everyone was weak and starved, and many had malaria. But rumor had it that P-38s and P-39s were on the way.

  “In mid-March, Captain Dyess led the six remaining P-40s on a highly successful attack against shipping in Subic Bay. One plane, piloted by Lieutenant Crelle, was lost, and three cracked up on landing. This mission was flown without the approval of Corregidor headquarters, which became extremely unhappy over the loss of four planes until it was learned that several ships were sunk. Then all was forgiven.

  “General George bade us all goodby one afternoon, and we later learned he had gone with General MacArthur to Australia. We felt like orphans after he left, but everyone said, ‘He knows what we’re up against. He will send help soon.’

  “Lieutenant Hughes, Lieutenant White, and several mechanics of the 20th Squadron raised a Navy ‘duck’— an amphibian plane—from the water near Mariveles, where it had been sunk early in the war, and after days of work,
finally had it in operating condition. They figured on using it to escape if Bataan should fall. When the time came, however, they were left to the Japanese while higher ranking officers escaped in their plane.

  “Several pilots escaped from Bataan at the last minute. Lieutenant Donaldson flew to Panay and crash-landed his P-40. Captain Lunde and Lieutenant Keator headed for Cebu in a P-35 and made a water landing near Samar. Lieutenant Raymond Gehrig and Captain Randolph escaped to Corregidor at night in PT-13s and later flew to Del Monte. Someone at Corregidor said they had taken off without permission, so they were both ordered to return to Corregidor the following night. Although it was thought to be an impossible flight, they made their way back to Corregidor and landed on a very short, narrow runway without lights. In a stormy session, they finally proved they had been ordered to make the previous flight by the ranking air force officer on Corregidor, so they were permitted to take off again for Del Monte, each with an important passenger and important records. The Japanese by that time had captured the intermediate refueling point at Santa Barbara, so the men had to land when they ran out of fuel, and finish their journey by boat.

  “On April 12, four of us were ordered to destroy all fighters on the ground at Davao Airfield. We found only three Jap planes there, but destroyed them. On April 13, our P-40s covered the landings and takeoffs of B-25s which had arrived from Australia for a hit-run raid. It was the last fighter mission ordered by the 24th Pursuit Group. Lieutenant Bums was killed on takeoff.

  “The bombers went back to Australia that night, and all of the men participating were decorated at Melbourne, some with the Silver Star. The fighter pilots, who felt that they had flown much more dangerous and difficult missions than the bombers on those two days, received no recognition. The crowning blow was that the bombers received credit for destroying the three airplanes knocked out by the P-40s at Davao.

  “A few days later, Corregidor ordered a plane at Del Monte returned to Corregidor. All pilots physically able to fly cut cards for their mission back to what was almost certain capture, at best. Captain Bill Bradford, who had been flying the plane regularly between Del Monte and Bataan, drew the low card. Everyone later thought that he had stacked the cards and drew the low one purposely, because he was the most likely one to complete the flight successfully. He reached Corregidor, but crashed on takeoff to return to Del Monte.

  “On April 23, a B-24 arrived at Del Monte. General George evidently had sent it, because at the top of the list of personnel to be returned to Australia were the names of the survivors of his Bataan Field Flying Detachment. In Australia, we joined the air force organization being taken over by General George. His death in an airplane accident a few days later was the saddest incident of the war for the pilots who had flown for him and who had been so close to him on Bataan.

  “One point deeply impressed by the air war in the Philippines: Complete air superiority is extremely difficult if not impossible to achieve. Under the most adverse conditions and in the face of almost unlimited numbers of enemy aircraft, remnants of the 24th Fighter Group were able to operate on a limited scale and present a threat to the enemy almost indefinitely.”1

  The Americans in the Philippines were to fight to the last airplane and the last pilot. Scattered bombing missions sank some Japanese ships and damaged perhaps several dozen. Fighter missions carried out with the rapidly shrinking force of P-40s and a few P-35s contributed to the damage of invasion forces. But against the mass of Japanese military power, these were little more than gnat bites in the hide of a lumbering elephant.

  The Philippines fell before the onrushing tide.

  THE TIGERS

  There are few combat organizations that fought a war with such devastating one-sided effect as the American Volunteer Group—the Flying Tigers—and about which there are so many misconceptions. The author has yet to meet one person, be he average citizen or a man who has worn the Air Force blue and has been a fighter pilot for some 20 years or more, who knew when the Flying Tigers embarked on their spectacular combat career.

  With rare exception, the belief is held that the Flying Tigers were locked in mortal combat with the Japanese for a long time (usually estimated at “several years”) prior to the attack against Pearl Harbor and our entry into the war. People are convinced that the AVG long constituted the only bulwark of the United States against the Japanese, showing the American flag during a time when our country was doing its best to stay out of war.

  The truth is that the Flying Tigers fought their first battle—a smashing victory—against a Japanese force attacking Kunming, China, on December 20, 1941, (13 days after the strike against Oahu). Three days later the AVG’s P-40B Tomahawks flying out of Mingaladon, Burma, with the Royal Air Force dove into a formation of Japanese bombers raiding Rangoon, the Burmese capital. With those two battles, each over a different nation but against the same enemy, the American Volunteer Group was launched on its brief but spectacular career.

  The sporadic and largely inadequate reporting of combat events in China that reached the outside world lent itself to the creation of certain “facts” contrary to the true course of events. Thus there arose the conviction that when the Tigers fought for China and devastated their opposition, the Chinese for the first time were to know the pleasures of one-sided victories in the air against the Japanese. While the record of the Tigers requires nothing in the way of excuses or explanations, it is simply not true that they were the first to create massive aerial victories in Chinese skies—as our preceding pages have established with specific incidents and facts.

  Let us review the chain of events that brought the Flying Tigers into existence. .. .

  The United States since early 1941 had evinced the closest interest in the requirements for military air operations in China; the sale for years of American aircraft to the Chinese government had certainly been carried out with the tacit consent of the Roosevelt administration. Lauchlin Currie, in the first months of 1941, was traveling throughout China as an adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, accumulating much information on the economic requirements of China, and estimating its needs, in terms of American aid, for continuing to resist the military pressure of Japan. In the spring of 1941, Brigadier General Henry B. Clagett received orders to transfer from the Philippines to China, to function as an Army Air Corps representative who would determine military air requirements of the Chinese; Clagett was also to evaluate the true potentialities of major military air operations in China for containing the powerful Japanese air units operating in that country. American aid to China was already substantial, and the Burma Road was covered with an increasing number of American trucks and supplies. But the crying need of the battered Chinese nation was for the aircraft and the machinery that would establish a true airpower force that could achieve a steady success against the Japanese.

  The needs of China, as finally recognized by the United States government, could hardly have come at a more inauspicious time. We were striving to build up our own Army and Navy air elements. Russia staggered before the massive assault of German armies, and American planes were needed desperately to stem the tidal wave of the victorious Wehrmacht. The British had flooded the American aircraft industry with huge backlog orders for fighters, bombers, transports, trainers, and other aircraft types.

  Yet China—in terms of our own interests—could not be denied. The United States government concluded an arrangement wherein we agreed to provide China with approximately 300 training and combat aircraft (most of which were considered outmoded for the needs of the Army Air Forces and the Royal Air Force), as well as the means for transforming this numerical strength into an operational force. We agreed further to train pilots, crews, and ground personnel which would form the nucleus for the “new” Chinese Air Force. By October 1, 1941, training was to commence in the United States for 500 Chinese fighter pilots, 25 bomber crews (approximately 125 men), and 25 specialists in armament and radio. In direct support of this new program, Briga
dier General John Magruder led a military mission to China to complete the study of airpower requirements and the best means of implementing the forthcoming American assistance.

  The agreements concluded by both nations thus created a program on a long-range basis that would, specifically, rebuild the Chinese Air Force into a fairly modern airpower organization that could make the Japanese pay careful attention to its new strength. Such programs, however, require much time for their realization, and in the interval between getting the program under way and realizing the actual airpower force in China, the Chinese cities would be naked to attack at the whim of the Japanese. Not only would the cities suffer, but the Burma Road and vital supply arteries could be severed. Something in the way of an interim airpower force was needed to fill the gap.

  That “something” arrived in the United States early in 1941 in the form of Claire Chennault and General P. T. Mow of the Chinese Air Force; Chennault and Mow came to this country to create an immediate organization that could stop the Japanese in the air. The long and short of many proposals and counterproposals was an agreement that would create the American Volunteer Group.

  That agreement called for volunteer pilots—from the Air Force, Navy, and Marines—as well as ground crews and supporting personnel who also would serve as volunteers. Initially there was anything but a stampede to join the cause advanced by Chennault; the American pilots were loath to risk losing their commissioned status and especially seniority toward higher rank. Not even the attractions of combat flying and the financial rewards could overcome such disadvantages to the pilots who were queried. However, the confirmation that Washington had given its official—albeit under-the-table—blessings to the program persuaded many of the men to sign up with Chennault.

  By early summer of 1941, Chennault had the signatures of the 100 pilots he required, as well as approximately 200 other men who would function to support the flight operations. Early in July the advance elements were on their way to China.