The Ragged, Rugged Warriors

by Martin Caidin

  Forty-five Japanese fighters came up to intercept the CATF strike force. When the battle ended all the P-40s were still in the air, with the pilots victors over 29 Zero fighters confirmed as shot down.

  The CATF was to continue its battle against the Japanese in China until March 10, 1943, when the CATF went out of existence, replaced by the 14th Air Force.

  The CATF had fought for eight months, in a ragged and weary campaign in the air and against enemy targets on the ground. In that eight-month period the CATF hammered out a tremendous record for itself. The Mitchell bombers had flown 56 missions—and lost but one airplane.

  The P-40 fighters had their number reduced by 16 planes. They exchanged their loss for 149 enemy planes shot down—and confirmed as destroyed.

  JUNGLE RATS

  Many months before the Japanese launched their lightning strikes against Allied objectives throughout the Pacific and Asia, a young Australian fighter pilot named Gregory-Richmond Board transferred from Australia to Singapore as a member of the 453rd Squadron, Royal Air Force.1 Their mission was to defend the powerful bastion of Singapore against the Japanese strike from the sea expected by a large percentage of Australian and British officials—but by no means all of these officials: among their number were those who sneered at the talk of powerful Japanese military thrusts against entrenched British might. Thus the young Board, along with his fellow pilots, came quickly to know the frustrations of the military when he discovered that the 453rd Squadron, charged with the aerial defense of Singapore, clearly could not fulfill its assigned mission. The reason was simple enough—the squadron lacked fighter airplanes.

  After the squadron had spent many weeks chafing at the lack of flying, a ship tied up at the Singapore dock with a load of huge crates, containing within them the disassembled parts of new fighter planes—planes of a type none of the pilots had seen before. It was an American airplane known as the Brewster 339 Buffalo, a barrelshaped chunk with wings, that had all the lines of an aerial bulldog.

  The pilots hovered impatiently about the mechanics as they hauled the crates to the 453rd’s airfield. The planes were not assembled quickly, not at all. The RAF mechanics closeted themselves with the detailed instruction pamphlets before starting the complicated task of converting subassemblies and parts into fighter airplanes. For their part, the pilots fairly devoured the manuals on how to fly the bulldog-cowled beasts.

  Each airplane came with one of these manuals, and the procedure was simple enough for checking out. Whoever finished the manual first would be first to fly. While his fellow pilots slept the night through, Board burned the midnight oil and went through the manual without a stop. He explains that he was a “quick reader who raised the eyebrows of the commanding officer, who had never noticed this particular trait before.” Nonetheless the CO gave Greg Board the signal as the first man up with the Buffalo.

  In this respect the young Australian fighter pilot proved to be fortunate. As he was yet to learn, the Buffalo was a “dog” as a combat machine when eventually it would be pitted against the Japanese Zero—and those pilots with the greatest experience in the American export fighter would also have the greatest opportunity for remaining alive.

  “The Buffalo wasn’t exactly what the British might have planned for the air defense of Singapore and the surrounding area,” states Board. “The Buffalo fighters either had no radio, or were afflicted with radios that wouldn’t work. The mechanics lacked even a single page to guide them in servicing and maintenance, and for the pilots— well, the handbook stopped very far short of what was needed. We could only guess as to the limitations we were to observe in flying the airplanes. Sort of guide us to keep the wings from tearing off in the wrong maneuver. The absence of these aids certainly gave us lots of practice.”

  Fighter pilots are prone to look at the world with a sanguine view, but this attitude definitely was not shared by the high command of the RAF. They looked askance at the niggardly assembly of airpower under British control. By December 8, the total British force (with British, Australian, and New Zealand pilots and crews) available to meet any Japanese move included four squadrons of Buffalos—52 fighters. There were four squadrons of British Blenheim bombers and two squadrons with Australians flying American-built Lockheed Hudson bombers. Exactly three American-built Catalina flying boats, based at Seletar, near Singapore, were available for long-range reconnaissance. Completing the airpower roster were two squadrons of Vildebeeste torpedo bombers, archaic and rickety biplanes with fixed landing gear, masses of rigging wires and braces, and open cockpits. At a normal combat speed of just about 100 miles per hour, the Vildebeeste was slower than some British two-man ships flown during World War I. It was noted among the British crewmen after the war began that some Japanese casualties might have been caused when Japanese pilots caught sight of the Vildebeestes and laughed themselves to death.

  All together, the British had 110 planes available in the . Malayan area to meet whatever the Japanese would offer in the way of offensive operations. (This force was to be supplemented with one squadron of AVG fighters; the Dutch also rushed nine Buffalo fighters and 22 Martin B-10 bombers—which the Japanese promptly slaughtered in battle—to the aid of the British after the opening of hostilities.)

  The conditions for modem airpower operations in Malaya and surrounding areas, including the islands of Sumatra and Java to the south and the southeast, left almost everything to be desired. As the Official historian of the Royal New Zealand Air Force noted of this situation:

  “Facilities for the repair and maintenance of these machines were sadly lacking. Such as did exist were concentrated in the workshops at Seletar on Singapore Island. These workshops, although equipped only to deal with the requirements of two squadrons at the most, were called upon to service the whole air force in Malaya; the magnitude of their task may be gauged from the fact that twenty-seven modifications had to be made in the Brewster Buffalo fighter before it could be used in battle....

  “Our squadrons were seriously short of trained and experienced pilots. Many of those serving in Malaya had come straight from flying training schools in Australia and New Zealand, where most of them had never flown anything more modem than a Hart and had no experience of retractable undercarriages, variable pitch propellers or flaps. Furthermore, when the Japanese attacked, the Buffalo fighter squadrons had only been formed a few months and half of them had not reached full operational efficiency.

  “The situation as regards airfields was also far from satisfactory although great efforts had been made to improve matters in the year before war came. Of the airfields that had been built, fifteen possessed no concrete

  runways but were surfaced with grass, a serious matter in a country where tropical rains are frequent and severe. Several, such as that at Alor Star, were out-of-date, with congested buildings close to the runways and few facilities for dispersal. Very few were camouflaged. Ground defenses were inadequate or non-existent. Because of the rugged and difficult nature of the territory in Malaya many airfields had to be built on the exposed east coast, and several were sited in places where their defense proved well-nigh impossible. For example, the landing grounds at Kuantan and Kota Bharu had been built next to long and excellent sea beaches, a fact of which the Japanese were to take full advantage.

  “Another serious feature, especially for the fighter defense, was the lack of radar units to detect the approach of hostile aircraft and ships. On the east coast of Malaya, where the first landings took place, only two were operational, the remaining five still being under construction. On the west coast one had been completed and two others were approaching completion. Only on Singapore Island itself were there three posts in working order. At some stations there was no more effective warning system than that provided by an aircraftsman standing on the perimeter and waving a white handkerchief on the approach of hostile aircraft. These were some of the handicaps under which our pilots and crews went into action against the Japanese invaders.”2


  The official histories of the weeks leading up to the Japanese attack, and of the events subsequent to repeated invasions, obscure the personal element of these times— which we are fortunate to have through the experiences of Greg Board. The Australian fighter pilot recounted to the writer that during the months prior to open combat, vague reports of powerful armies and air forces massing for an all-out strike filtered slowly down to the ranks of the fighter pilots. Board and his fellow pilots were provided with “intelligence briefings almost daily by the most learned of men, who came in from the other side of the Japanese bamboo curtain, and they told us the best of the Japanese fighters were old fabric-covered biplanes which wouldn’t stand a chance against the Buffaloes.

  “With this ringing promise of slaughtering the Japanese in the air should they get too big for their breeches, we concentrated on flying and learning different methods of drinking gin and tonic. We flew with absolute confidence in our prowess, and we drank hard, and we were on top of the heap, as far as we were concerned.”

  Royal Air Force headquarters reassigned the Buffalo fighters to Sambawang, placing them in a position from which they might counter more effectively a Japanese thrust which now seemed more likely than ever before. “In mid-November,” explained Board, “all fighter pilots were given emergency briefings by Intelligence. We were warned that a Japanese surprise attack could be thrown against us ‘at any moment.’ We went on combat readiness alert, with several fighter planes always ready for immediate takeoff.”

  At the Sambawang airfield, mechanics installed sirens and other devices with which to alert all pilots—while they were on duty at the field and when they were off duty, and in the surrounding area. Board and the other fighter pilots practiced combat intercept takeoffs—getting into the air within the shortest possible time. The practice alerts came without warning by day and night, with pilots dashing madly from their bamboo huts at the first wail of the sirens, and running to their fighters.

  “This went on for some three weeks or so,” Board said, “and it didn’t take long for all the pilots to regard with great distaste those bloody practice alerts. They were a damned nuisance after a while. The natives were jumpy; they were scared out of their wits at the possibility of a Japanese attack, and every time a flock of birds appeared near the border, they would become hysterical and sound the alarm and set off every siren within ten miles. You couldn’t get any sleep or any rest while all this commotion was going on. Things got so bad we had a tendency to ignore the alarms...

  One night—as had happened on previous evenings— the alarms again shattered the quiet of sleeping men; sirens screeched, bullhorns blasted, and natives howled. Cursing, the pilots clumsily donned clothes and set out on foot and bicycle from their bamboo barracks to reach their planes. Except Greg Board; as fighter pilots are wont to do after much commotion and little action, he had adjudged the constant alerts as so much native hysteria. This conviction, abetted by an evening’s consumption of gin and an overwhelming desire to sleep, left him less than eager to leap from his bed. Board cursed the pilot who shook him furiously; he rolled over and ignored the din by going back to sleep.

  Until a distant crump! crump! crump! brought him bolt upright and wide awake. This was not an alert. This time the distant sounds were very real, and the sounds that knifed into his sleep were faraway antiaircraft guns blasting at some unseen enemy. He slipped into his clothes, glanced at his watch (2:30 a.m.) slapped a pith helmet on his head (he still doesn’t know why he did that), and tore off on a bicycle to reach his fighter.

  In the Stygian blackness Board pedaled furiously down the dirt road that led from his barracks shack to the airstrip. Dazzling flashes of light suddenly split wide the darkness, and Board blinked stupidly as the savage glare stabbed into his eyes. Then searchlights flashed on. Board looked up to stare at a giant V of bombers thundering in his direction.

  “Then,” he recalled with a wince, “I thought my ears were going to come right off my head. Every goddamned gun on that island started firing at the same time and they kept right on firing. I seemed to be in the middle of the concussion waves. On top of that I saw the bombers heading for the airstrip and I decided—very quickly —that this was no place for me....”

  Board spun around on the bicycle and pedaled wildly to reach a slit trench atop a nearby hill. It turned into a sharp race between Board on the bicycle and the Japanese planes, and the bombers had it all over the bicycle. Greg Board went clean over the handlebars and hit the ground with his feet moving in a blur. What spurred him on to such Olympic speed was a knifelike whistling sound, a keening cry in the night that heralded the bombs even at that moment pouring earthward. Board never did make the slit trench, but managed to hurl himself bodily into a ditch as the earth heaved wildly from the exploding bombs.

  Later, when the earth settled back to normal and the screams of jagged steel whipping overhead were gone, an amazed pilot strode through the shambles that had been a fighter airstrip. By some miracle no one had been killed, but the field was pitted with craters and several Buffaloes remained only as smoking junk.

  That was the opening play of the war for Board and his fellow pilots from England, Canada, Australia, and

  New Zealand. The Japanese came over again and again in their massed waves of bombers and fighters, and the RAF planes went up again and again, but with decreasing frequency, in attempts to stem the aerial tide. The Buffalo fighters of the 453rd and 21st Squadrons did their best to hammer down the Japanese bombers—but too many Japanese fighter planes, of far greater performance than the RAF Brewsters, snuffed out hopes that the RAF might push back the Japanese from British skies....

  On the third day of the attacks the Zero fighters were present in great numbers. The 21st Squadron, sharing the airstrip with the 453rd (to which, it will be recalled, Board was attached), went up in force to “take on” the Japanese fighter pilots. No one yet knew what the Zero fighters were, except that they were not ancient, slow, fabric-covered biplanes. As it became shockingly evident that the Zero was not merely good, but a superb fighter, the RAF pilots learned to their dismay that the enemy pilots could also be quite brilliant at their work.

  “The entire 21st Squadron was wiped out to a man,** explained Board. “Suddenly we realized what we really had in the Buffalo—a barrel which the Zeros could outfly, outclimb, outgun, outmaneuver and outdo almost everything else that was in the book for a fighting airplane. And all this time, / hadn’t yet fired my guns at a Japanese machine. Every time we went up, the Nips came through another sector. The boys were taking a beating almost everywhere they tangled with the Zeros... .**

  Two Buffalo pilots who attempted to intercept a Japanese bomber formation striking at Singapore came back to their airfield in mingled rage and frustration. The Buffalo fighters heated up dangerously in the maximum-power climb. The pilots approached the Japanese bombers but were never able to close with them, and found to their dismay they could have done nothing to stop the enemy even had they made an attack—in neither aircraft would the guns fire!

  Later on that same day (December 8), J. B. Hooper sighted seven twin-engine bombers 2,000 feet above him. Repeated calls to his command unit on the ground failed to bring any response (his radios proved to be dead), so the pilot rammed his throttle forward and climbed to attack position. Before Hooper realized what was happening, six Zero fighters bounced him. Hooper flipped the

  Buffalo onto Its back, pulled hard on the stick, and plummeted earthward. The Japanese fighter pilots broke off pursuit and returned to their escort positions, while Hooper ran gratefully for home.

  Two other Buffalo pilots—Kinninmont and Chapman —near Singora, were bounced by 12 Mitsubishi Type 96 Claude fighters. The open-cockpit, fixed-gear Mitsubishi* turned the fight into one of desperate attempts to escape on the part of the Buffalo pilots. Kinninmont found his Buffalo being chewed to ribbons by the Japanese fighters; he watched Chapman struggling with four Mitsubishis. Kinninmont yelled over his radi
o for Chapman to return to base, and slammed his own Buffalo into a vertical power dive. He caught a glimpse of Chapman streaking earthward with three fighters on his tail, snapping out bursts at the diving Buffalo. Kinninmont reported later that three Mitsubishis also followed him down and that “one stuck and he stuck like a leech. ... As I watched him, my neck screwed around, I saw his guns smoke and whipped into a tight turn to the left. It was too late and a burst of bullets splattered into the Buffalo. ... It was then that I felt the first real fear in my life. ... It struck me in a flash. This Jap was out to kill me. I broke into a cold sweat and it ran down into my eyes. . . . My feet kept jumping on the pedals. My mouth was open and I was panting. . . . My feet were still jumping on the pedals. ... I couldn’t control them. Then I saw his attacks were missing me. I was watching his guns. Each time they smoked I slammed into a tight turn. And then my whole body tightened and I could think. I flew low and straight, only turning in when he attacked. The Jap couldn’t hit me again. We raced down a valley to the Thai border and the Jap quit... .”3

  Buffalo vs. Zero—and with rare exception it was the Buffalo, too heavy, too slow, too clumsy, that went down before the guns of its opponent

  Later that day Kinninmont, on a reconnaissance flight, was jumped again—this time by five Zeros. This time he fought it out with them, maneuvering desperately to stay alive; the Japanese failed to co-ordinate their attacks and Kinninmont escaped finally—after studying Japanese invasion ships massed in Singora harbor.

  R. S. Shields, with one other pilot, after flying several patrol missions, made several strafing runs on Japanese troop barges on the Kelantan River and, later in the day, also participated in an attempt to intercept nine Japanese bombers. The debriefing given by Shields illustrates the frustrations of the Buffalo pilots: