The Ragged, Rugged Warriors

by Martin Caidin

  On December 14 three other Buffalo pilots of the 453rd Squadron found their day a busy one; they started off by attacking nine Japanese bombers. Pilot Vanderfield cursed a balky landing gear that refused to retract;’his airplane shuddering and groaning from the unexpected drag, he nevertheless roared into the enemy formation, and shot down two of his targets! The other pilots—Read and Collyer—shared three kills between them. These two landed, refueled and rearmed quickly, and rushed into the air to make strafing runs against Japanese soldiers and trucks north of Alor Star.

  As they came back to land, a new flight of Buffaloes arrived at Ipoh, their operational strip. The new pilots were greeted with an attack by more than 40 Japanese fighters. The intercept mission by the Buffaloes turned into a mad scramble. Pilot Vigors had his Buffalo explode into huge flaming chunks; by a miracle he escaped from the careening wreckage and took to his parachute. As he dropped through the air a Japanese fighter made run after run at him with guns firing. Vigors was already in agony from severe bums on his legs, arms, and hands—and a bullet in one thigh. Each time the Japanese fighter roared in against him, the badly wounded Australian reached up to grasp his shroud lines, and deliberately collapsed his parachute so that he fell like a rock. As soon as the fighter swept by, he released the lines and reinflated his canopy. Four times he was forced to go through this terrifying experience—but survived to land on Penang Mountain (from which he was later rescued). Vigors was so badly wounded that he could not recall more than scanty details of his battle—and only the fact that men on the ground observed the crashes of three Japanese planes enabled him to receive confirmation for the kills.

  The courage of the Japanese pilots was demonstrated in dramatic fashion on December 15 when three Japanese dive bombers attacked five Buffalo fighters! One Australian pilot was shot down immediately and killed. Another died in the crash of his fighter immediately afterward. A third pilot flew in agony with one shoulder shattered by an explosive bullet, but was escorted home by the other two pilots.

  The official history notes, regarding Australian fighter operations:

  “By 15th December the two fighter squadrons could put only three aircraft fit for combat into the air, a state for which enemy action was not solely responsible. The whole burden of maintenance had been placed on the already overworked and understaffed ground crews of No. 21 Squadron, who also had to cope with increased trouble with the Buffaloes’ guns. For example, when three Buffaloes intercepted three unescorted enemy bombers over Ipoh, only four of the total twelve guns would fire. One bomber was shot down but there was little doubt that had all their guns been serviceable, the Buffalo pilots would have brought the score to three.”5

  It was also painfully evident that the Japanese were masters at the art of luring their enemy into old but still effective traps. On December 17 a scramble alert at Ipoh sent eight Buffaloes to 20,000 feet to intercept an approaching Japanese force. The Australian fighters ran into ten Zeros which “immediately wheeled and made off. With their superior speed the enemy pilots kept just out of range of their pursuers who followed them until it was obvious that the chase was hopeless. They then turned back to base and came over the airfield to see clouds of smoke rising from burning aircraft on the ground and ruined station buildings. Too eagerly they had taken the enemy’s bait. In their absence ten bombers had flown over in complete safety to make an attack in which they destroyed three grounded Buffaloes and several buildings. It was not a new trick but it had succeeded. Even so, it had been only half played. The Buffaloes came in to land, and just as the last of them were taxiing across the airfield a second bombing raid began. One of the fighters swerved into a deep drain and was wrecked. Another was caught by the blast of an exploding bomb and flung onto its side with one wing ripped off. A small transport plane used as a mail carrier, that had already narrowly escaped when two Buffalo pilots had mistaken it for an enemy aircraft, received a direct hit. It was blown to pieces and its crew of two and two passengers were killed.

  “. . . at Ipoh the next morning part two of the enemy’s trick was tried again. Immediately the raid warning was received six Buffaloes took off, failed to intercept the enemy, and returned and landed. Two of the aircraft were still making their final taxi run when fifteen bombers attacked. Both aircraft were caught in the bomb line and destroyed, though both pilots had time to leap from their cockpits and tumble into slit trenches and safety. The squadron equipment officer . . . was mortally wounded when a bomb burst beside a motor car in which he had just driven onto the airfield. At midday three Zeros again swept in on a low-level gunnery attack... .”6

  The New Zealand fighter squadrons fared little better than did the Australians. The official combat diary of No. 488 Squadron for January 13, 1942, is typical of operations:

  “At 0630 hours Pilot Officer Hesketh led four aircraft of A Flight on a security patrol, but no contact was made with the enemy. At 1100 hours Right Lieutenant Hutcheson took off with eight aircraft, some being from a Dutch squadron, to intercept thirty Type 96 bombers, making contact with them and attacking from astern. The speed of the bombers was such that the Buffalo aircraft could only just overhaul them but could not get into position for beam or overhead attacks. Flight Lieutenant Hutcheson was shot up by rear-gun fire and crash-landed at base. Pilot Officer Greenhalgh attacked an Army 96 bomber. Although only two guns fired, he managed to get smoke from one engine. Pilot Officer Oakden was shot down into the sea by rear-gun fire from a bomber, and was rescued by a Chinese sampan, sustaining slight injuries to his face. Sergeant Clow was shot down in the sea, swam four hundred yards to a small island, and was picked up by some Chinese in a sampan and returned to Kallang two days later. Pilot Officers Hesketh and Gifford were unable to get sufficient height to attack. Pilot Officer McAneny had to break off his attack through gun failure. Sergeant de Maus was hit before he got within range. [A] Dutch pilot went missing. Casualties: five aircraft written off and one damaged with no loss to the enemy.

  ‘Today, although we did not meet up with the fighters because we did not attack from above, we were badly shot up from rear-gun fire. The Japanese bomber formations of twenty-seven packed aircraft throw out such an accurate and heavy rear-gun barrage that they are very difficult to attack. Some way must be found to break up these mass formations and attack bombers independently. No doubt there was fighter escort in the near vicinity, but it did not pick up our fighters owing to cloudy conditions and also because we attacked from astern.

  “In the last two days 488 Squadron has lost seven aircraft and had many others damaged, with no loss to the enemy. No blame can be attached to the pilots, who have done their best with Buffaloes. Until we fly as Wings of thirty-six aircraft we will be unable to inflict heavy damage on the enemy.”

  One of the rare fighter victories came on January 18, when New Zealand and British pilots shot down two out of nine Zeros without loss to their own ranks. Later that day another fight resulted in one more Zero being shot down—but the loss of two Buffaloes.

  The arrival of more than 50 Hurricane fighters as replacements sent spirits soaring. One squadron received nine of the Hawker fighters, but fell into the same disastrous routine as in previous action. A surprise Japanese air raid destroyed two of the Hurricanes and heavily damaged another six—before they were committed to their first battle. While the men were still clearing up the wreckage from the attack (which also smashed up several Buffaloes, burned some bombers to slag heaps, consumed fuel stores, set off a munitions dump, and incinerated most of the vehicles at the field), a second Japanese attack destroyed two more fighters “and pitted the aerodrome with craters, making it completely unserviceable.”

  Over Burma a New Zealander demonstrated the lengths to which the fighter pilots went in order to combat the enemy. Sergeant Bargh of No. 67 Squadron singlehandedly mixed it up in a furious dogfight with a swarm of Japanese fighters, and barely managed to escape with his life from the scrap. But he succeeded in his mission of drawing away the
Japanese fighters from their bomber formations, which were hit by other Buffaloes.

  Bargh dove for his life in a fighter screaming from wind rushing past hundreds of bullet holes. Safe from his pursuers, he climbed steadily until he reached 17,000 feet, where he calmly awaited the Japanese bombers—which would have to cross his path on their return from their bombing run. By now (as usual) the windscreen of his Buffalo was thickly smeared with oil.

  Nothing seemed to daunt Bargh. Slowing down his airplane, he took off one of his flying boots and removed his thick woolen sock. He placed his hand within the sock, released his belt, and stood up in the howling wind. He leaned as far forward as he could against the wind-blast and wiped his windscreen free of oil. He had just enough time to turn and dive at the approaching Japanese formation, shooting down one bomber and a fighter in the brief but wild fight before he roared earthward to escape a hornets’ nest of Japanese fighters!

  The end was clearly in sight. Despite the bitter efforts to hold back the Japanese, the Zeros reigned supreme on almost all occasions. Even the Hurricane fighters, far superior to the obsolescent Buffaloes, could not stem the tide. On their first battle engagement, the Hurricanes shot down eight Japanese bombers without loss to themselves. The burst of enthusiasm that resulted was dissipated the day following when a Zero fighter escort appeared—and without losing a single fighter shot down five Hurricanes, heavily damaged an equal number, and destroyed any hopes that the newer British fighters could whip the Mitsubishis.

  On February 10 the last British combat airplane evacuated Singapore; five days later the “impregnable fortress” went down to Japanese arms. Just before its surrender, RAAF headquarters ordered seven surviving pilots without planes—among them Gregory Board—to the Singapore dock area. The men drove through streets splashed with bodies and stained with drying and caked blood, through which scurried human scavengers as well as huge rats which feasted boldly in the open on the shattered bodies. The pilots were to board an Australian cruiser; the warship’s captain, realizing the danger of imminent bomber attack, slid neatly against the dock, never stopping. The pilots leaped in mad dashes onto the deck and the warship immediately picked up speed. All about the cruiser, ships burned brightly on the water, and hundreds of corpses bobbed in the oily waves. Engines driving at maximum speed, the cruiser raced for Java, where American, Dutch, British, Australian, and New Zealand aircrews were putting up a desperate but hopeless attempt to stem the Japanese advance.

  “It didn’t last long,” Board recalled. “The Zeros just tore us apart. Everything sort of melts into a blur after that. We got out of Java one step ahead of the Japanese and made it to India. Here we tried to get back into fighters, but there weren’t any. We managed to get aboard another Australian cruiser, and we were on our way back home. We weren’t too happy about things. No one knew where or when we would stop the Japanese...

  DISASTER IN JAVA

  The aerial campaign of the British forces throughout Malaya aud Sumatra, which was to be repeated in Java, as well as along the northern coastline of Australia, followed a pattern that was all too distressingly familiar to the one man who had consistently whipped the Japanese —and had done this with numerically inferior forces® Claire L. Chennault could do little more than groan at the insistence of the Allied forces upon fighting the Zero fighter on conventional terms. On almost every occasion when Allied fighters tangled in wild dogfights with the nimble Mitsubishis, the outcome was decided before the battle—the Japanese were almost certain to win.

  When Japanese fighters caught unescorted British bombers—the Blenheims, Hudsons, the Vildebeestes—almost always they tore apart the British ranks and inflicted severe casualties among the bombers. Fighter escort properly handled—as it frequently was—enabled the bombers both to hit their targets and return home without their ranks being decimated. On occasion the Hudsons would emerge from a bitter fight with the Japanese, perhaps not the victors, but nevertheless unexpected survivors who managed to drag their bullet-lashed airplanes home. This happened when the Hudson pilots were skilled and daring men who used the great structural strength and maneuverability of the Lockheed bomber to best advantage—by turning tightly into the Japanese fighters and bringing the Hudson’s fixed guns to bear. Such incidents did take j place, but they were rare, and the Japanese made the skies , over their operations areas essentially a Japanese domain.

  ! The extent to which Chennault had to struggle to over’ come the entrenched ideas of fighter pilots and air forces had been nowhere more evident than in Burma, where he

  worked closely with the Royal Air Force in the defense of Rangoon. There the AVG and the British fighter pilots fought side by side. Chennault has pointed out in speeches and elsewhere that the AVG and the RAF were comparable in their equipment, numbers, and courage in facing the enemy—although prior to combat, AVG pilots were bitter that the RAF had been given the Buffalo, which they had considered to be a superior aircraft to the Tomahawk!

  In that combat, Chennault has made it clear, the British barely broke even in terms of losses with the Japanese, including bombers that were attacked as well as fighters. Flying the much-abused P-40B, the Americans went on to rack up the astounding kill ratio of 15 to one, often wrecking entire Japanese formations.

  Then came February, 1942, and a massive increase in Japanese air operations, when they mounted heavy raids simultaneously against Rangoon and Port Darwin, Australia. It took such attacks to prove the validity of Chennault’s tactics. During the same week there were two separate battles to clear away the clouds of controversy.

  Over Rangoon five AVG pilots in Tomahawks plunged into enemy formations totaling 70 planes; when the battle ended the Tigers had shot down 17 Japanese planes without a loss to themselves. Over Darwin, 12 P-40s raced against a Japanese force of the same numerical strength— and only one P-40 survived the melee.

  As Chennault has stressed, the weakness lay in attitude and in tactics. The Tigers* tactics of diving into the enemy, shooting, and diving away had become the butt of much ridicule. At Rangoon, Chennault emphasizes, the RAF had gone so far as to post notice to the effect that “any R. A. F. pilot seen diving away from a fight would be subject to court-martial.” Obviously, that notice was tom down and quietly forgotten. In the Chinese Air Force, Chennault recalls, “the penalty for the same offense was a firing squad.”1

  In March, 1942, the British decided to put an end once and for all to the obvious superiority of the Japanese fighters in combat. Still ignoring the astounding success of Chennault’s men, the RAF rushed a crack Spitfire squadron from Europe to Australia to teach the Japanese a thing or two. The Spitfire, acclaimed as perhaps the finest close-in fighter plane of the war, came over with pilots well experienced against the German Messerschmitt Me-109 and Focke-Wulf FW-190. And there was no question, even from Chennault, that the “Spitfire was far superior to the P-40 as a combat plane.”2

  In two raids the British lost 17 out of 27 Spitfire pilots at the hands of the Zero fighters!

  “It was simply a matter of tactics,” Chennault said later. “The R.A.F. pilots were trained in methods that were excellent against German and Italian equipment but suicide against the acrobatic Japs.”3

  When the Japanese swept down into and through the territories and island groups of Asia and the far Pacific, they carried out a series of thrusts simultaneously along a front that extended for thousands of miles. Thus by December 11 Japanese troops were pouring ashore on the northern coastline of Borneo, and rushing swiftly to take control of the riches that were their objective—oil wells, rubber, spices, tin, and sugar, for which the East Indies were justly renowned. Seven days after they raced ashore, the Japanese troops were solidly entrenched in Kuching, capital of Sarawak.

  The aerial defenses of the Dutch comprised a weird variety of aircraft; the fighters included P-40B Tomahawks, CW-21 Demons, Curtiss P-36 Mohawks, and Brewster Buffaloes as the main force. Martin B-10 bombers, sadly outdated for World War II, made up
the backbone of the bombardment strength. Trainers and liaison planes were pressed into service, with a few flying boats, the latter mostly of American and German manufacture, to complete the force with which the Dutch would resist the Japanese. Before the East Indies fell to the enemy, more makes and types of planes were in service there— Douglas A-24s (AAF version of the SBD Dauntless in service with the U.S. Navy) as dive bombers; Douglas DB-7 Bostons and their AAF counterparts, the A-20s; old-model and new B-17E Flying Fortresses; Consolidated LB-30 Liberators; British Blenheim and Vildebeeste bombers; Beaufort night fighters; and Buffalo and Hurricane day fighters. The Japanese took them all on with devastating losses to the defenders.

  The Dutch Air Force at the outbreak of hostilities amounted to some 200 airplanes. Within a week of the Japanese push into Malaya and Sumatra, the Dutch shifted their entire bomber force to Sumatra to aid the British— who unhappily were forced to send most of the Dutch bombers back to their home bases so the crews could be trained in night flying, which they had never done in combat formations. By the beginning of 1942, Borneo was left seriously exposed to air attack, with only 158 planes of all types (including trainers and liaison planes) left to defend all of Borneo and its sea approaches.