The Ragged, Rugged Warriors

by Martin Caidin

  There is always friction when it is necessary to dissolve an organization such as was created in the Flying Tigers. Rifts and arguments and disagreements there may have been, but the pilots grimly stuck to and defended their fellows. Several AAF officers could not have been more insulting in their conduct with the Tigers—such as one colonel (who commanded a fighter group with the 10th Air Force) who sneered at the AVG pilots as plain mercenaries. The good colonel also stated plainly that he could take on the best AVG pilot in a dogfight and whip him handily.

  Whereupon there was a blur of hands and the appearance of $5,000 American on the table before the colonel —who was invited immediately to match the bet by flying against the worst pilot in the AVG. The colonel managed to “laughingly wriggle his way out” of what had suddenly become a damnably embarrassing situation.

  The cumulative damage, however, had been done. Only five pilots elected to transfer from the AVG into the AAF (another 16 men served briefly during the transition of command; one of these pilots died in action), and no more than 15 ground crewmen accepted service with the AAF. The transfer of fighting power en masse, upon which so many hopes had been placed, was not to be.

  When the Flying Tigers closed the record books, in the first week of July, 1942, they could count a total of 286 Japanese fighters and bombers destroyed in aerial combat. This figure is important; it represents only those airplanes the Chinese government confirmed by discovering the wreckage on the ground. It does not include those Japanese airplanes that were seen crashing into deep water —for which confirmation (and the $500 bonus) was not granted. By conservative estimates, perhaps an equal number of Japanese aircraft—another 300 planes or so—had tumbled into the jungles, the waters and the mountains of Southeast Asia and parts of China without ever being confirmed as destroyed. Many times a Japanese fighter or bomber, its wings and fuselage riddled, its tanks trailing a thin plume of fuel, or smoking, would struggle away from a fight without confirmation of its loss. (Records available from the Japanese after the war established beyond question that many more airplanes were lost to the Flying Tigers than were claimed by the group; the AVG pilots carried out the strictest “confirmation required” process of any fighter-pilot organization known.)

  To accomplish its officially confirmed score of 286 enemy planes shot down in combat, the AVG lost nine pilots in battle; another four missing in action were presumed to be dead, for a total of 13 men lost to Japanese guns. Two AVG pilots were killed on the ground by Japanese bombs. Nine other AVG pilots met death in training accidents or while ferrying airplanes.

  One of the most remarkable sidelights on the AVG combat record is that never did the available combat strength of the group exceed a total of 55 fighters ready for battle at any one time.

  Despite the formidable obstacles that confronted them, the AVG carved a niche in aviation’s hall of fame. Bob Neale exceeded the triple ace status by shooting down 16 planes. David (‘Tex”) Hill racked up a score of 12; Bill Reed got 11; and George Burgard, Bill McGarry, Ken Jernstedt, John Newkirk, Bob Little, and Charles Older all were double aces with ten kills each, plus sharing other kills with fellow pilots. There were so many pilots who shot down five or more enemy planes in aerial combat that the AVG might well have been described as the Group of Aces.

  Before the AVG was disbanded, the pilots received some replacements with a fighter markedly superior to their Tomahawks—the P-40E Kittyhawk with greater power, six .50-caliber machine guns, and improved flight performance.

  On July 4, 1942, the American Volunteer Group was phased out of existence, and the China Air Task Force, under the helm of Claire Chennault, took over the job of aerial war in China.

  The story of the AVG was done, but their heritage of battle will live forever.

  THE RAGGED TENTH

  They activated the Tenth Air Force in the United States on February 12, 1942, and shipped the first echelon off to Asia. Within a month of its activation the men were cursing the heat, insects, and other hells of India and Burma, and preparing to strike at the Japanese with a bomber and fighter force so ragged and short of supplies and parts that its existence seemed to—and in reality did —depend on the whims of the long and precarious supply line that stretched all the way to the United States.

  The major targets of the Tenth—which flew its first combat mission on April 2, 1942—were enemy bases and shipping scattered across Burma, Thailand, and the Andaman Islands. The Tenth’s fighters had the unenviable task of trying to stem, with a handful of planes, Japanese air raids against India. The 7th Bombardment Group, with its heavy bombers, was a battered force long before it ever arrived at its Indian airfields. The Flying Fortresses of the 7th B.G. were actually on their way to the Far East before the war began, and they were unfortunate enough to be caught at Pearl Harbor, trying to land their unarmed planes, just as the Japanese waves of fighters and bombers struck at Oahu. During the hurried reshuffling of our forces caught en route to overseas destinations at war’s outbreak, the bomber crews received their assignment to the Tenth Air Force, with orders to expedite their movement. The ground echelons found themselves victims of a tortuous routing, through Brisbane, Melbourne, and Freemantle, then to Ceylon and finally arriving in India in March, 1942.

  When the planes of the Tenth went into action in Burma, the crews were shorthanded. They were in dire need of fresh replacements even as they began their combat tours. Their first replacements, however, were already as weary as the men they joined. Some of the earliest were veterans of the AVG. Others were wandering about, waiting for reassignment after their original outfits had been scattered to the winds or destroyed in the opening battles of the war. And there was a touch of fiction about some pilots and crewmen—men who trickled in to the bases of the Tenth after completing their famed mission against the Japanese homeland in the raid led by James Doolittle from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet, on April 18, 1942.

  The twin-engine medium (B-25 Mitchell) and four-engine heavy bombers (B-17 Fortresses and B-24 Liberators and LB-30 Liberators, the export version of the B-24) of the Tenth had to spread their operations across an area comparable to half the continental United States. The task eased somewhat when new B-24 replacements came into action, for these deep-bellied raiders had greater range and speed than their B-17 contemporaries.

  No one will ever know what the Tenth really could have done in its combat operations against the Japanese— because the Tenth provided a source of ready replacements for combat theaters considered more critical than Burma. Just as operations would get up steam in Asia, orders would come through from Washington for men and planes to rush thousands of miles to a new front for “temporary combat duty.”

  Historians bemoan this fate, especially as regards the 7th Bombardment Group. In June, 1942, for example, every heavy bomber of the 7th B.G. was flown from India to the Mediterranean, where they were hurled into a round-the-clock interdiction campaign against the supply lines of the Germans, attacking targets of Tobruk, Benghazi, Suda Bay, and other logistics centers. Not until Rommel was contained and considered “no longer to be a danger” did the heavies leave North Africa and return to their own private war against the Japanese.

  The 7th Bombardment Group flew its first combat mission on April 2, 1942, with a disastrous beginning. On a dual mission, the first strike, by two B-17s, was to be flown from Asansol in western Bengal against Rangoon. The first airplane crashed and exploded on takeoff, obliterating the Fortress and wiping out the entire crew. Shaken by the sight of their fellows’ crash, the second crew managed to get into the air and started the long flight against the Japanese-held city. They never completed the mission; engine failure forced the plane to hobble back to its base at Asansol without sighting the target. The second part of the mission went off with somewhat more success. Two B-17s and one LB-30 went in very low (3,500 feet) against enemy shipping in the Andaman Islands to release 16,000 pounds of bombs. All three planes received heavy damage from antiaircraft fire, but retur
ned safely to their base.

  The day following—April 3—six heavy bombers managed to reach Rangoon; one Fortress went down. No one ever saw the plane leave the formation and it was never learned how the bomber was lost. After the “heavy raid” of the six bombers, the group settled back into the pattern that was to reflect its missions—putting the airplanes back into shape to go out again. For 13 days the bombers accepted the servicing of mechanics who patched and repaired with inadequate tools and spares. Finally on April 16, six heavy bombers took off again to hit Rangoon, and dumped a meaningful pattern of 42 bombs (250- and 300-pounders) against shipping clustered in the harbor.

  Thirteen days again passed before another mission could be flown; on April 29 the Rangoon docks suffered very heavy damage from an effective strike with rows of 500-pound bombs.

  During May the bombers divided their attention between shipping, dock facilities, and Japanese airfields. The Myitkyina air base, in northern Burma near the Chinese frontier, especially came in for special attention, and there was much to say for the accuracy of the 7th’s bombardiers—a series of raids with the small bomber force completely neutralized the Japanese field by destroying every building in sight and chewing the runways into cratered mudpies. On May 25 five Fortresses reminded Rangoon that we were still in the war. For the next 11 days the Fortresses flew several other missions—and then abruptly ended their combat role in Asia.

  First the monsoon season thundered in, drenching the fields, turning runways into quagmires, and making life miserable for all concerned. In one respect, however, the torrential rains were a blessing, for the mechanics could devote extra time to repairing the heavy bombers. Or so they thought....

  In mid-June the hopes for some extra maintenance time vanished with the urgent call to rush every bomber immediately to Africa.

  In the spring of 1942 the Japanese swept virtually with impunity through northern Burma, while their fighters and bombers raised havoc with the defenders both on the ground and in the air. The Japanese were in a position to mete out devastating punishment, and they made the most of their advantage. In the air they harried our planes at every turn. It was a hard, slogging aerial fight in which our men fought desperately to change the one-sided odds. For the Burma campaign the Japanese were so disdainful of Allied airpower that they never assigned more than 200 fighter planes to the campaign at any one time. But they followed the pattern that, in that theater, proved so effective for them: they kept their aircraft where they were needed, and obtained excellent dispersal against attack by the Allies by basing their planes on many small fields scattered throughout the jungle country.

  No better proof of the Japanese superiority was to be found than their program of using Burma as a training ground for green pilots. Replacements were sent to Burma to fight the Americans and the British and, when the new pilots were blooded and considered to have a minimum of combat experience, they were shifted to other theaters where the Japanese considered the opposition to be more demanding. Not until we began to build up numerical strength in the CBI (China-Burma-India) Theater did the Japanese react with what could be called “serious attention” to Allied airpower.

  The history of the Tenth Air Force is one in which transport- and cargo-flying runs through every vein of activity. Some of the wildest flying done in any theater in the world was performed by the few transport aircraft—and the bombers—of the Tenth in the dark days of 1942. In March of that year, Burma was crumbling under the steady pounding of the Japanese. Defeat threatened, and it was recognized that we needed a twofold effort to stem the tide—military air operations combined with air transport of supplies into China. The cost would be staggering, but it would be far worse if supplies were not pushed across the towering mountain barriers into China. The day of flying the Hump, crossing the rugged mountain wall of the Himalayas, loaded with such quantities of supplies that records were broken daily, lay in the distant future. The fleets of transports that would defy weather, altitude, and the Japanese still had to be built. In the months of 1942 the tonnage was literally a thin trickle, and every pound that could be dragged across the mountains through skies ruled haughtily by the Japanese was precious beyond any monetary value.

  The Tenth came into being in India in a surreptitious fashion. During the final days of February, 1942, Major General Lewis H. Brereton (then commander of the Far East Air Force) and a small group of officers were working their way to India. It was a flight of tremendous distance; the men flew in a B-17 and an LB-30 from Java to Ceylon, and staged on to Dumdum airfield near Calcutta, India. Their secret cargo, wrapped in a blanket, was $250,000 in cash, with which to purchase local labor and supplies to get the Tenth into action. Brereton was given the dubious honor of becoming the Commanding General of an Air Force in a country that boasted a total of ten airfields, not one of which was suited for military operations. Every thing was a matter of borrowing, buying, or simply stealing. The British made desk space available in their military center at New Delhi, India, for Brereton and his staff. The logistics problem for their fledgling air force would have made a strong man weep—the shortest distance to the United States (around Japanese bases) was 13,000 miles, and transit time was guaranteed to be at least two months.

  The chief port of American entry for supplies was Karachi, which lay a thousand 'miles from the center of combat operations. The Indian railroads boasted a weird array of Toonerville trolleys as rolling stock, and four different rail gauges. There were some highways, but even the most hardened truck driver shuddered at the sight of their rough and narrow surfaces, which became impassable during the torrential rains of the country.

  Thus the first task of the heavy bombers arriving in India was not to drop bombs, as one might suppose, but to transport supplies. From March 8 through 13, the initial force of seven B-17 Fortresses and the one LB-30 Liberator hauled 58,000 pounds of supplies, and a battalion of 465 native troops, from Asansol to Magwe, Burma. On the return flights, 423 frightened civilians clambered gratefully into the bombers for an unexpected evacuation.

  Nearly three weeks after this emergency transport operation with bombers, on April 2, the Tenth flew its initial missions carrying bombs, as already described. The extent of American bombing operations, with this small and ill-equipped force, cannot escape comparison with the actions of the Japanese in the area. On two separate missions on April 4 and 9, Japanese carriers launched swarms of planes against British forces at Trincomalee and Colombo, Ceylon, and shattered British resistance in the attacks. Besides inflicting extensive damage on vital installations, the Japanese sank two British heavy cruisers and struck their most telling blow when Japanese bombers ripped the aircraft carrier Hermes into a blazing hulk and sent her to the bottom.

  By April of 1942, Colonel Caleb V. Haynes (with the assistance of Colonel Robert L. Scott, Jr., who had flown with Haynes from the United States to eastern Assam), was trying to whip an aerial logistics force into being. His organization was impressive in title as the Assam-Burma-China Ferry Command—the ABC Ferry Command, as it became known—but as rudimentary in performance as were its initials. The ABC had great hopes and monumental goals, but it started out with the debilitating weaknesses of having insufficient airplanes, spare pilots, crews, and just about everything else needed to create a working ferry organization.

  The transports consisted of several weary and battered C-47s, which after several weeks in operation might have been condemned in other theaters; in the CBI, however, the venerable Gooney Birds were kept in the air despite the abuse to which they had been subjected. Alongside the Army planes flew their civilian cousins, the commercial DC-3s, manned by American, Chinese, and Pan American Airways pilots. The promise of more airplanes was a bitter mockery, and the German hell-raising in Africa not only prevented the arrival of replacement aircraft for the ABC, but actually reduced our strength there. A Tenth Air Force officer noted in his diary: “Brereton assigned our most experienced ferry pilots to the transport of supplies to the M
iddle East and took twelve of our transport planes—fifty percent of our operational transport strength. We were months getting them back.

  One was shot down by British fighters or antiaircraft near Cairo. We only got five planes back, finally.”

  When some of the Doolittle Raid survivors showed up in Assam, their plans for continuing back to the United States went up in smoke as the local command virtually “pressed them into service in the finest traditions of shanghaied seamen.” Any ideas that the newcomers held that they might be participating in a massive supply operation to China disappeared when they saw the one airport at Dinjan from which the supply flights took off on their hazardous runs. Into this single airfield crowded the few C-47s and the mixture of Chinese and commercial DC-3s, some British transports, and the special fighter force assigned to protect the aerial trucks. The “special fighter force” was especially a bitter joke in the theater, since it consisted of two wheezing P-40B Tomahawks handed down from the AVG, and two Republic P-43 Lancers which suffered so badly from leaking fuel tanks that they were looked upon as flying firebombs, and were disdained even by the Chinese fighter pilots. The men crowded into wretched quarters, ignored military rank as a ridiculous leftover from a world they could remember only dimly, and worked 16 to 20 hours a day, while the pilots tried to thread their way through mountain passes, storms, and marauding Japanese fighters.

  The crews operating out of Dinjan performed nearmiracles in their operations. The Britsh and American forces defending Burma were retreating before the Japanese tide, and ferry plane pilots thundered low over jungle trees to drop food and supplies to the men hacking their way out of the thick growth—as the Japanese pounded along after them. The transports during the period from April 22 to June 15, 1942, managed to ferry 465 combat troops and 733 tons of supplies into Burma bases—and carry out 4,499 evacuees who had despaired of fleeing the Japanese. In this same period the British transport crews, working with the men of the ABC, dropped 55 tons of supplies to the jungle-surrounded troops, and evacuated 4,117 people from Burma.