The Ragged, Rugged Warriors

by Martin Caidin

  His second strike of the day had even more devastating effect as his 500-pound bomb ripped directly into the largest building in Homalin, pinpointed by British Intelligence as the Japanese police station. Before the day was over—as reported later by British Intelligence—200 Japanese were dead in the shattered police station, and between 600 and 1,000 Japanese had been killed by Scott’s four bombs and his devastating strafing passes.

  By July 3, 1942—the last day of the AVG—Scott was able to tally his two months of flying with “Old Exterminator.” On the day following he would take command of the 23rd Fighter Group with the CATF, and he had prepared for his new assignment with startling effectiveness. He had flown a total of 371 hours—something over

  80,000 miles—destroyed a variety of enemy targets that included bridges, buildings, ships and barges, locomotives and trains, airfield installations, airplanes, gun emplacements, and other objectives; and he had killed so many Japanese that the official records show only “several thousand dead and wounded” at the guns and bombs of this one airplane and one pilot.

  Scott describes his new assignment:

  “. . . When I took over things at Kunming there were three fighter squadrons and one headquarters squadron. Major Tex Hill had one squadron at Hengyang, China, and with him were such deputy leaders as Maj. Gil Bright, Maj. Johnny Alison, and Capt. Ajax Baumler. Maj. Ed Rector had another squadron at Kweilin with Capt. Charlie Sawyer for his assistant in leadership. These outlying stations are about five hundred miles in the direction of Japan from our headquarters on the plateau of Yannan at Kunming. The third unit was the squadron under Maj. Frank Schiel, who was very busy training the most junior members of this new fighter group in the way of fighter aviation. I got the Group headquarters to running and stood by for orders to begin leading the fighter forces in action to the East.”

  On July 11, 1942, the 23rd Fighter Group marked the death in battle of a pilot named Johnny Petack, and it was an occasion of unusual sadness:

  “. . . Hill led eight fighters, four with wing bombs, for dive-bombing Nanchang. While these four went down with their bombs, Hill was to stay aloft with the other four to act as top-cover—just in case some Zeros tried to surprise the dive-bombers. Ajax Baumler said that he was on Petack’s wing for the bombing and that he saw the whole thing: Johnny Petack dove for his target, one of the gunboats on the lake, but as his bomb hit the boat the P-40 was seen to explode, evidently hit by ground-fire. Ajax followed the burning ship almost to the ground and saw it strike in a rice paddy near a Buddhist temple.

  “So Petack, one of the AVG who had stayed for the extra two weeks, was killed in action. It’s peculiar how a man could fight all through those last nine months and then go down from a lucky anti-aircraft shot. John Petack had remained for the purpose of training the new pilots and his job was that of airdrome defense. He was killed on this offensive mission. It was one that he could have refused with honor; instead, he had volunteered for this dive-bombing fight and had been killed in carrying it out. It was the most inspiring thing he could have done.”

  Colonel Robert L. Scott, Jr., carved his mark in the sky with even more effectiveness than he had against enemy targets on the ground. On July 31, 1942, he shot down a Japanese twin-engine bomber and an escorting Zero fighter—after diving alone into a large enemy formation. Before he left the combat theater in Asia, Scott had carved 12 enemy planes on his guns.

  During his days of flying “Old Exterminator,” Scott had received much instruction from Major Tex Hill— whom Scott was later to command in the CATF. But it was a “command” strictly on paper, as Scott had many times pointed out, for to him Tex Hill was “the greatest fighter that I ever saw, the most loyal officer, and the best friend.” Scott tells a memorable story of an incident with Tex Hill:

  “One day over Hengyang, after we had broken the Japanese wave with our assault and support and there were some fifteen Zeros burning around among the pagodas of this Hunan capital, I saw an odd sight down below. There was one lone Jap, doubtless of the suicide Samurai school, for though his buddies had either been shot down in their attempted strafing attack or had turned for home, this arrogant follower of the Shinto Shrine was strafing the field—alone. Two of us rolled to go get him, but from the end of the field towards the river I saw a P-40 pull out of a dive and head for the Jap. It was Tex Hill.

  “As the two fighters drew together in this breath-taking, head-on attack, I saw their tracers meeting and for a second I didn’t know whether the ships ran together or both exploded in the air. As the smoke thinned I saw the

  P-40 flash on through and out into the clear, but the Jap crashed and burned on the field of Hengyang. Hill and the Jap had shot it out nose to nose, and once again I thought of the days of Western gunplay.

  “We landed and waited for Tex to come over. As we stood around the burning enemy ship, I saw Hill striding across the field from his fighter. Hanging low on his right leg was his army forty-five. Subconsciously I looked at his other leg as if I expected to find the mate hanging there.

  “Tex’s blond hair was blowing in the wind, his eyes were looking with venomous hate at the Jap, his jaw was set. I had opened my mouth to congratulate him, for he had shot down two enemy ships that day, when I had a closer look at his eyes. . . . Tex strode over close to the fire and looked at the mutilated Jap where he had been thrown from the cockpit. Then, without a change of expression, he kicked the largest piece of Jap—the head and one shoulder—into the fire. I heard his slow drawl: ‘All right, you sonofabitch—if that’s the way you want to fight it’s all right with me!"

  Tex calmly left the group and walked back to his ship and into the alert shed for his cup of tea. None of us said anything. The Chinese coolies who usually yelled ‘Ding-hao—ding-hao’ saw his eyes and the set of his jaw, too—and just waited until later to congratulate him.”

  Bob Scott (during a long fireside get-together one night) told the writer about a man he considered to be one of the greatest fighters of all time. He didn’t specify fighter pilot—just a fighter. He was Lieutenant Dallas Clinger from Wyoming. “Clinger was another man who in years gone by in the West would have been a great gunman like Tex Hill,” Scott told me. “Only Clinger wouldn’t have cared whether he was on the side of the Law, the Mormons, the Church, or Jesse James. He just wanted to fight.”

  One of Clinger’s brief combat reports of a fight he had over Hengyang, while flying with two other P-40s, put things right to the point:

  “I was flying on my leader’s wing—Lieutenant Lombard—at 23,000 feet when we saw three enemy planes down below circling. There were larger formations reported around. Just then I heard my flight leader say: ‘There are three stragglers—let’s attack ’em.’ So we dove into them like mad. As I shot into the Zero on the right of the formation I saw that we were in the midst of twenty-four other Zeros, all shooting at us. I got mad and shot at every plane that I could get my sights on. I think I shot one down but I was so busy I didn’t see it crash.”

  The combat report was signed: “Dallas Clinger—2nd Lieutenant—Almost Unemployed.”

  Bob Scott continues with his story of what Clinger didn't say in his combat report:

  “What Clinger had really done was the greatest piece of daredevil flying that any of us had ever seen. Instead of diving away from the twenty-seven ship circus as the others had done, he had stayed and fought the old-fashioned *dog-fight’ until the Japs just about took him to pieces from sheer weight of numbers. When they straggled home they must have been the most surprised bunch of pilots in all Japan, for this crazy American with his heavy P-40 had done everything in or out of the book. He fought right side up and upside down, from 23,000 feet down to less than one thousand. As many Japs as could fill the air behind Clinger would get there and hang on while they shot; but Clinger wouldn’t fight fair and stay there. In the end, he came right over the field, diving from the enemy until he had outdistanced them enough to turn; then he’d pull into an Tmmelma
nn’ and come back shooting at them head-on.

  He was last seen after the unequal fight skimming out across the rice paddies, making just about 500 miles an hour, with some ten to twelve Zeros following. For some reason they seemed reluctant, as though they didn’t know whether to run after Clinger or leave him alone. He came in for lunch with his ship badly shot up by their cannon. But he had shot down one of them ..

  Despite the brilliant flying of its fighter pilots, and their effectiveness in battle against the Japanese, the CATF never was able to emerge the victor in the ceaseless struggle of scrabbling for supplies and weapons. Major campaigns—which meant a short series of bombing raids and fighter missions, one coming quickly after the other— invariably exhausted the CATF. After such periods of combat flying virtually every plane needed extensive repair work, and many of them were in need of complete overhaul. Planes were so precious that pilots chose not to bail out of crippled fighters, but to ride them down to the ground in the hope that they could save the ship for future use. Fighters were dragged up from the bottoms of rivers, hauled across paddies, carried down mountain slopes—and more than one pilot landed his fighter plane with bombs still jammed under the wings. But not in normal landings—these were emergencies with the gear jammed or the airplane crippled. Save the fighters—that was the word.

  At times fuel was so desperately short that victory rolls over the home field were forbidden. If the Japanese came over in strength, as they did unpredictably, one maximum-effort mission to intercept the attackers would literally drain the available fuel so that a second mission with full strength could not be flown until the transport planes ferried in additional fuel.

  Mechanics had to clean spark plugs again and again when normally the plugs would have been thrown into the nearest trash bin. The men lacked even hard wire with which to safety removable parts and units of the different planes. Engine oil was long overdue; mechanics tried to strain old oil to keep it usable. On their off time the men would scour the countryside for wrecked airplanes—for the Japanese fighters and bombers that had been shot down proved to be a valuable source of parts: they contained sheet metal, wires, screws, bolts, and a variety of precious materials with which to patch and repair the P-40s of the CATF. More than once the mechanics ran out of Prestone coolant for the liquid-cooled Allison engines, and pilots flew their airplanes with temperature readings at dangerously high figures. There were no new carburetors, and even tail wheels, wom bald and thin, could not be replaced for long periods.

  The month of August, 1942, ended with the CATF badly battered and reeling from all its woes. The Japanese had executed some of this punishment, but they actually inflicted only a minor portion of the problems plaguing the American force. During the month only three P-40s and no bombers had gone down in battle; the real enemies were distance, lack of supplies, disease....

  The CATF wearily abandoned its bases in eastern China, and the men began the disheartening move back to the long shadows of the Himalayan mountains, closer to the sources of supply. Fifty attacks against enemy targets, plus the interceptions of massed waves of Japanese planes, had drained the CATF of strength in its opening months of life.

  Not until the first weeks of September did the CATF begin to stir back into life. Some of the new P-40K War-hawk fighters slipped into Chennault’s hands. The Caribbean Command released some of its veteran P-40 pilots, so desperately needed as replacements. With supplies accumulating, with new men coming in, the Tomahawks, Kittyhawks, and new Warhawks—a complete lineage of p_40s—went back to striking at the Japanese on the ground.

  In October, Chennault was in Kweilin (operating his headquarters from within a huge limestone cave) and preparing to send the CATF out on its biggest missions to date. October 25 proved to be one of the most memorable combat missions ever flown, when ten Mitchell bombers were escorted by seven P-40 fighters in a raid against shipping and port facilities at Hong Kong. The American planes first had to fly 500 miles to the east from Kunming to Kweilin, where they refueled, and then staged another 350 miles on to Hong Kong, where they carried out a pinpoint-accuracy strike against their targets. The American fighters and bombers shot down 19 intercepting Japanese fighters, while losing one bomber and one fighter. But the scorecard for the day rose when the results of fighting at Kunming came in. The same day that our mixed force hit Hong Kong, a large Japanese formation tried to wipe out Kunming—where the P-40s shot down eight of the enemy without loss to themselves, making the day’s tally 27 Japanese fighters shot down.

  Bob Scott recalls the battle over Hong Kong:

  “. . . ‘Bandits ahead—Zerooooos! At eleven o’clock.’ Fumbling again for the throttle quadrant, shoving everything as far forward as I could, I marvelled at the steepness of the climb the enemy ships were maintaining. I called: ‘Zeros at twelve o’clock. . . .’ I heard Tex Hill reply: ‘Hell, I see ’em.’ I could hear the jabber of the Japs still trying to block our frequency.

  “I was diving now, aiming for the lead Zero, turning my gunsight on and off, a little nervously checking again and again to see that the gun-switch was at ‘on.’ I jerked the belly-tank release and felt the underslung fifty-gallon bamboo tank drop off. We rolled to our backs to gain speed for the attack and went hell-bent for the Zeros. I kept the first Zero right in the lighted sight and began to fire from over a thousand yards, for he was too close to the bombers. Orange tracers were coming from the B-25s too, as the turret gunners went to work.

  “Five hundred yards before I got to the Zero, I saw another P-40 bearing the number 151 speed in and take it. That was Tex Hill. He followed the Zero down as it tried to turn sharply into the bombers and shot it down. Tex spun from his tight turn as the Jap burst into flames. I took the next Zero—they seemed to be all over the sky now. I went so close that I could see the pilot’s head through the glass canopy. . . . My tracers entered the cockpit and smoke poured back, hiding the canopy, and I went by.

  “As I turned to take another ship below me, I saw four airplanes falling in flames toward the waters of Victoria Harbor. I half rolled again and skidded in my dive to shake any Zero that might be on my tail. I saw another P-40 shooting at a Jap, but there was a Zero right on his tail. I dove for this one. He grew in my sights, and as my tracers crossed in front of him he turned into me. I shot him down as his ship seemed to stand still in the vertical bank. The ship was three or four hundred yards from me, and it fell towards the water for a time that seemed ages. An explosion came, and there was only black smoke; then I could see the ship again, falling, turning in a slow spin, down—down—down.

  “I shot at everything I saw. Sometimes it was just a short burst as the Jap went in for our bombers. Sometimes I fired at one that was turning, and as I’d keep reefing back on my stick, my ship would spin, and I’d recover far below. I shot down another ship that didn’t see me. I got it with one short burst from directly astern, a no-deflection shot. In this attack I could see the Japanese ship vibrate as my burst of six fifty-calibre guns hit it. First it just shook, then one wing went up. I saw the canopy shot completely off; then I went across it. Turning back in a dive to keep my speed, I watched the enemy ship, as it dove straight down, stream flames for a distance the length of the airplane behind.

  “As I looked around now the bombers were gone, but climbing up from the south I saw four twin-engine ships.

  . . . I had plenty of altitude on the leader, and started shooting at him from long range, concentrating on his right engine. He turned to dive, and I followed him straight for the water. I remember grinning, for he had made the usual mistake of diving instead of climbing. But as I drew up on the twin-engine ship, I began to believe that I had hit him from the long range. His ship was losing altitude rapidly in a power glide, but he was making no effort to turn. I came up to within fifty yards and fired into him until he burned. I saw the ship hit the water and continue to bum. We had been going towards the fog bank in the direction of the Philippines, and I wondered if the Jap had been running
for Manila.

  “I shot at two of the other twin-engine ships from long range but couldn’t climb up to them. Then I passed over Hong Kong Island, flying at a thousand feet; I was too low but didn’t want to waste any time climbing. . . . Then I saw above me the criss-crossing vapor trails of an area where fighter ships have sped through an air attack. They almost covered the sky in a cloud. Here and there were darker lines that could have been smoke paths where ships had burned and gone down to destruction.

  “I was rudely jerked back to attention by a slow voice that yet was sharp: ‘If that’s a P-40 in front of me, waggle your wings.’ I rocked my wings before I looked. Then I saw the other ship, a P-40 nearly a mile away. I think from the voice it was Tex Hill. I went over towards him and together we dove towards home.

  “The presence of the other P-40 made me feel very arrogant and egotistical, for I had shot down four enemy ships and had damaged others. So I looped above Victoria Harbor and dove for the Peninsular Hotel. My tracers ripped into the shining plateglass of the penthouses on its top, and I saw the broken windows cascade like snow to the streets, many floors below. I laughed, for I knew that behind those windows were Japanese high officers, enjoying that modem hotel. When I got closer I could see uniformed figures going down the fire escapes, and I shot at them. In the smoke of Kowloon I could smell oil and rubber. I turned for one more run on the packed fire escapes filled with Jap soldiers, but my next burst ended very suddenly. I was out of ammunition. Then, right into the smoke and through it right down to the tree-top levels, I headed northwest to get out of Japanese territory sooner, and went as fast as I could for Kweilin.”

  One month later the fighters of the 23rd were over Canton on another escort mission. It was the biggest strike of the CATF to date, with 14 bombers escorted by 22 P-40 fighters.