We decided to try it and set up poles to hold the glider’s tether up off the ground. The C-47 would skim overhead trailing its hook, grab the tether, and snatch that glider right off the ground. For anyone sitting in the glider, it was quite an experience. The C-47 pilot would open the throttles, the winding reel would play out, and gradually the tension would tighten and the glider is off like it was shot off a catapult!
The night we went in, 250 miles behind the lines, we couldn’t use one of the two landing sites, so all the gliders had to land at the same zone. Because we had twice as many gliders landing as we’d planned for, some of the gliders on the second wave crashed into gliders from the first wave that were still on the zone. We had a number of dead and injured—we didn’t know the exact count then, but in the dark things looked bad.
I was lucky; my glider didn’t hit a log or a ditch or anything. We had eight assault gliders [in our unit], and I think that my glider was the fourth to hit the field. The men got out, and started to fan across the landing area to see if there was any enemy opposition. Thank God there wasn’t. Anyway, we got all our people in.
The next morning we got up and looked out at all the wrecked gliders and learned that our commander and some airborne engineers had been killed in the landing.
Well, that didn’t stop these soldiers. In about twelve hours we had cleared a runway. We had lights, we had a generator. We set up a control tower on top of one of the wrecked gliders.
By radio Phil Cochran asked, “When can you take your first airplanes?”
I said, “Just as soon as it gets dark. But send them in one at a time, slowly at first.” I looked up just at dark, and here are five or six airplanes. We got ’em in, and we got ’em out—about 500 men and I don’t even know how many mules—that first night. The next morning, they were on their way through the jungle to fight the Japanese.
LIEUTENANT CHARLES TURNER, US ARMY
GLIDER PILOT
Expeditionary Air Base
250 Miles Inside Japanese-Controlled Burma
5 March 1944
In the glider program they sent us through, we were flying Piper Cubs. We were trained to kill the engine and make dead-stick landings. They taught us to do that in both daylight and night. And we did that for hours on end. And then they moved us into the big transport gliders.
These cargo gliders that we trained on in India had an eighty-three-foot wingspread, carried fifteen to seventeen troops, and weighed approximately 3,600 pounds. Our payload was about the same. At that weight they flew well but the landing speed was fast, around seventy to seventy-five miles an hour or more.
They were stunning to sit in and to think you were expected to fly’em. But after a few takeoffs and landings, and a few flights, they flew very well. It was easy to control, and was not a tricky airplane to fly at all. The tricky part of it was your judgment, in anticipating your altitude and your airspeed to the point of the landing. You have to arrive at the proper altitude and the proper speed at the proper point, every time, or you’re a casualty. A glider pilot has only his decision-making process. I think the idea that a glider was named the “flying coffin” emanated from the fact that there were numerous accidents, early on.
We had to assemble all of our gliders, a hundred of them, in India. And all the pilots pitched in, along with the mechanics, to put those gliders together.
Operation Thursday relied on the gliders to penetrate behind enemy lines and put the men and matériel into position. They dropped the pathfinders in by parachute. But they wouldn’t have equipment to build a landing strip capable of taking transports by hand. That would have been impossible. With the gliders we were able to bring in jeeps, mules, horses, anti-tank guns, bulldozers, tractors, and scrapers. And with that equipment we built a strip on which we could land eighty or ninety C-47s a night. Now, paratroopers couldn’t have done that in months—if ever. So the gliders were the only way to get men and matériel in to the right spot, at the same time, in reasonable safety with minimal losses. They calculated that our losses might be as high as 40 percent. Thankfully, they were not nearly that high.
Twenty-four hours before the mission was launched, we were called into a meeting and given photographs of the landing sites, and told where they were, and the tow plane pilots were briefed. The gliders were all ready, the towropes—or tethers as they were called—were laid out. We stood by for the troops to be loaded. We were going into Burma.
They used a double tow to enable one airplane to tow two gliders and get twice the load to the target. It was very difficult on the airplane and on the glider pilots. At night it was particularly hard because we glider pilots couldn’t see each other, the tow plane, or the towrope.
The tow plane flew over at about twenty to thirty feet off the ground and snatched the glider off the ground. The glider ran about 150 to 200 feet, max, on the ground before it was airborne. The reel on the tow plane would pay out the cable like a fishing reel, so that the G-force would not break the cable. For those of us in the glider it was like being shot out of a cannon. We went from zero to 120 miles per hour, in about 200 feet.
The visibility at night is bad. It’s not like landing at an airport. We were totally at the mercy of what’s in front of us. There could be enemy troops all around the landing field. Anything can happen, and most everything that can happen is bad.
The landing was normal, for a glider overloaded 20 or 30 percent. I estimate that my landing speed was somewhere in the neighborhood of ninety miles an hour. And when landing a glider, in order to stop it fast, we put the nose over on the ground by pushing the stick forward. Then, if there’s uneven ground, the nose breaks and dirt comes boiling into the cockpit with you. We landed fast and hard. I ran the length of the field, and I was next-to-the-last glider in. I put my glider in between two gliders that landed ahead of me. The last glider came over me, very fast; he had cut loose way too late and he made a 180-degree turn. His wing caught a big tree and he went straight into the ground with the equipment, the engineers, and the bulldozer. It killed them instantly.
We knew the danger that was there. But I think most glider pilots would agree that while glider flying was dangerous, in the total analysis, it was worthwhile.
SERGEANT RAYMOND BLUTHARDT, US ARMY
Expeditionary Air Base
250 Miles Inside Japanese-Controlled Burma
5 March 1944
I was drafted into the Army and reported to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. That was the induction center. Then I was assigned to the 1877th Airborne Engineers, Company C, at Westover Field in Massachusetts. They said we were going to be an airborne unit. I asked, “What’s an airborne unit?”
It was cold when we got to Massachusetts, and when they issued our gear they gave us parachutes. We hung them over the foot of our beds and every one of us, for three months, had to take it down to the hangar, unfold it, hang it up, and dry it for three days. Then we would have to repack it. The funny thing is, after we got to India, we never saw another parachute.
After Massachusetts, they took us for more training in New Jersey, and from there we made a twenty-eight-day trip on the USS America, sailing first to Rio de Janeiro, where we stayed one night and took on supplies. Then we took off for Cape Town, South Africa.
Eventually we arrived at Lalaghat, India, a British air base not far from the border with Burma. It was a grass-field landing strip. They put us on the backside of this base, and that’s where we learned how to make runways. When we finished that training, they picked Company C of the 1877th and made us the 900th Expeditionary Engineers and told us we would be involved in some special project and that we would be over there probably a year. We were there for three years.
After a while, they brought in a whole bunch of Waco gliders—and lined them up, two gliders behind each C-47. Inside some gliders were Clark bulldozers. They had six-inch tracks and thirty-seven-inch blades, and were gasoline-operated. The only men on my glider were the pilot, copilot Paul Johnson, a bulld
ozer, and me.
About an hour out, the window on my side just blew out and it got pretty cold. We didn’t realize until we got over the Himalayas that the Japanese had control of that area. You could see their campfires all along the way. And every once in a while we could see a tracer bullet go past. But we never got hit.
Then the C-47 pilot cut us loose. We circled the landing site a few times and then came down. My CO was killed there. His glider didn’t make it past the trees. He, the pilot, and seventeen British troops were on that glider, and all were killed. When my glider came in, we hit the grass and the wheels washed out from under us. We slid toward the jungle and dove right into it.
There were two big trees there and the fuselage of our glider went right between them. Our wings stopped us, and the ropes on the bulldozer broke and it ripped the front of the glider open. The pilot and I ended up upside down but we were okay.
Since we were there to get a runway built, we just got to work on that grassy, bumpy field. We had started out with four bulldozers, three graders, two carry-alls, scrapers, and two jeeps. All we had were the two jeeps, one Clark bulldozer, one carry-all trailer, and a scraper to skim that grass off, level the field, and push it out of the way. There was buffalo grass out in the middle of it, probably six or eight inches deep.
We used air-driven chain saws to cut down the trees at one end of the runway for a better approach. Then we cleared the dead timber and took our little Clark bulldozer, picked up the dirt in the carry-all, and dragged it behind the tractor to take the debris away. Then we had the men tramp the dirt down good and tight so it wouldn’t be a problem for the transports when they landed and took off.
It wasn’t too difficult, except where crashed gliders had to be pushed off the runway and into the jungle. That was about the worst. It took a lot of time for our equipment to get that stuff out of there. And we had just one day, working as soon as daylight broke till dusk, before the first plane came in. Everything worked fine, even though there were just a few of us to get the runway done.
We just had that one day but we had trained for it. And when you’ve got a bunch of guys who know what to do, you just do it. It’s something we had to do and we did it.
I wouldn’t take a million dollars for the experience, and I wouldn’t give ten cents to go through it again.
ALLIED AIR BASE
1ST AIR COMMANDOS
LALAGHAT, INDIA
5 AUGUST 1944
By nightfall on 6 March 1944, at the end of just twenty-four hours on the ground, the 1st Air Commandos had succeeded in establishing an advanced air base deep inside enemy-held territory in the Burmese highlands. Back in India, at Hailakand, they had fighter planes and ambulance aircraft standing by. Ten miles away, at Lalaghat, were the C-47s that had towed the sixty-three gliders—two at a time—into Burma. Both sets of aircraft were designated for direct support of Wingate’s troops on the ground in Japanese-held territory.
By penetrating 250 miles deep into Japanese-held territory in a matter of hours, Wingate had achieved tactical surprise. Though the high-risk venture had resulted in fifty-seven casualties, the transports that then landed at Broadway—and other Expeditionary airfields like Blackpool and Aberdeen—made it possible to insert nearly 9,000 men and a remarkable amount of matériel deep behind enemy lines. Those who arrived by glider that first night survived what amounted to a crash landing, and yet, the men of the 1st Air Commandos were still able to construct the first of several airstrips, which would serve as logistics bases and medical evacuation sites for Chindit casualties.
Though the overall effort was successful, not everything went according to plan. Wingate had wanted to build two airstrips that he had dubbed Broadway and Picadilly. But on 4 March, the day before the operation was to commence, reconnaissance photos of the proposed landing sites showed that the enemy had strewn huge teak logs all across the field code-named Picadilly. The glider pilots were concerned that none of the gliders could make it in safely. After reviewing the options, it was decided at the last minute to abandon a landing at Picadilly.
There were no visible obstacles at the Broadway site, so all sixty-three gliders employed the night of 5 March were ordered to land there. This decision doubled the number of Wacos landing at Broadway and caused the problems that Alison and Turner experienced with gliders landing on top of one another. The result was that only thirty-seven of the sixty-three gliders attempting to land made it intact. Twenty-four men were killed and another thirty-three were injured, many seriously.
Despite the casualties, men, mules, and tiny bulldozers went to work. When darkness fell on 6 March, Broadway had a usable runway! Later that night, there were also lights, provided by a generator. The first C-47 transports—flying ammunition, anti-aircraft batteries, and security troops to protect the base from Japanese attack—landed without incident after dark. By dawn of the second day, more than 500 additional troops had been delivered and all the injured from the glider crashes had been evacuated.
Within the first week, C-47s were able to deliver aviation fuel in fifty-five-gallon drums to Broadway, and P-40 fighters soon followed. Positioning fighters forward in Burma permitted the P-40s to provide fighter escort for the B-25s launched out of India. The effect was almost instantaneous. With fighter cover from Broadway, B-25s could now go after the big Japanese airbase at Shwebo, which was immediately targeted. The first American raid on the base—by B-25s escorted by Broadway-based P-40s—caught the Japanese air force completely by surprise. Sixty enemy planes were destroyed on the ground. Another mission by Allied planes did even more damage to the Japanese air base two days later.
Wingate’s Chindits, supported by the 1st Air Commandos and Chennault’s Flying Tigers, were able to pursue a far more aggressive campaign in 1944 than they had a year earlier. With Broadway secured as a “rear” base, the Air Commandos and Chindits forged deeper into the Burmese jungle, hacking out additional airstrips as they advanced through the inhospitable terrain.
Wingate’s deep penetration operation was certainly not the decisive factor in the eventual defeat of Mutaguchi’s campaign to invade India—that credit surely goes to General William Slim and his 14th Army. They bore the brunt of the Japanese attack along the border and withstood Mutaguchi’s offensive against Imphal and Kohima, two of the biggest engagements in the CBI theater.
But it is also evident from postwar records of the Japanese 15th Army that Wingate’s LRP force, along with the proper air support, became just what the Allies had hoped it would be—a disruptive thorn in Mutaguchi’s side. Within two weeks they succeeded in cutting the Mandalay-to-Myitky-ina railroad—the main Japanese logistics route that the Imperial Army had built with POW slave labor.
Wingate was well aware that the railroad his irregulars had seized was one of several in Burma that the Japanese were constructing with slave labor provided by Allied prisoners of war. When he was planning the March 1944 Chindit operation into Burma, one of the missions he assigned his officers was to be prepared to use their LRP units to rescue any Allied prisoners within their zone of action. Unfortunately for men like Private Kyle Thompson, a Texas National Guardsman captured in the opening days of the war, Wingate’s Chindits never got close enough to rescue him or his long-suffering mates toiling and dying in the Burmese jungle building railroads for the Japanese military.
PRIVATE KYLE THOMPSON,
TEXAS NATIONAL GUARD
Japanese POW Work Camp Kilo 80, Burma
Autumn 1944
In October 1940, my National Guard unit in Wichita Falls, Texas, started training to go overseas. In November 1941, my battalion was sent to the West Coast and we sailed out of San Francisco the day after Thanksgiving. We went through Pearl Harbor on Sunday, a week before it was bombed on 7 December. We were supposed to go to the Philippines but got sent to Java instead, because Manila was already under attack.
After Singapore fell to the Japanese on 15 February 1942, we pretty well figured Java was next, because they
were invading Borneo, Sumatra, Bali, and the other islands around us. During the night of 28 February and the early hours of 1 March they landed on Java with at least 50,000 very experienced, well-equipped, first-class soldiers. The Japanese army was a tremendous fighting force. It was their duty to fight to the death and it was against their principles to be captured.
We were badly outnumbered and had been retreating for several days when we dug in around a big bamboo grove. The next morning a Dutch officer drove up and talked to our commanding officer, Lt. Colonel Thorpe, and informed him that the Dutch government had surrendered to the Japanese, and that we were all prisoners of war. I don’t know, how do you describe something like that? We were stunned, frightened, and had no concept of what lay ahead.
We just disappeared when the Japanese captured Java. Back home they started referring to us as the Lost Battalion. Once the Dutch surrendered we had no way to communicate with anyone.
The Japanese came and loaded us on a train, and they started screaming, poking at us with bayonets and loaded rifles. It was something out of a nightmare. And it went downhill from there. The Japanese beat us and punished us excessively. I have no idea of the total number of times I was beaten by the Japanese guards—sometimes by rifle butt, sometimes with a bamboo pole. But maybe they were trying to toughen us up for what was coming.
In early March 1943, we got to our first work camp in Burma, at the end of a rail line. They made us start working from there, southeastward, through the Burma jungles.
We were taken out in work parties of 100 or 200 men. A few weeks later, 368 survivors of the USS Houston, an American cruiser that had been sunk off of the Java coast, joined us. The Japanese rounded up the sailors who made it to shore. When the Houston survivors joined us, it brought us to about 900 American POWs. All of us were put to work on building this railroad through the jungle.
War Stories II Page 16