The USS Flier

by Michael Sturma

  Many of the arms and supplies for the guerrilla network were delivered by U.S. submarines; the first shipment landed in the Philippines on 9 July 1943. Under the direction of Vice Admiral Arthur S. “Chips” Carpender, a guerrilla supply force was formed consisting of the submarines Narwhal, Nautilus, Seawolf, and Stingray. By early 1944 the submarines were transporting an estimated 90 percent of the AIB's materials to the Philippines.6 A former Manila attorney, Courtney A. Whitney, headed the Philippine Regional Section, which organized the submarine lifelines to the guerrillas.7 Initially there was no radio equipment both durable enough for jungle conditions and small enough to fit through the twenty-three-inch-diameter hatch of a submarine. Some Australian technicians managed to come up with a solution to this problem. Even before the war, Amalgamated Wireless of Australia, a government-controlled company, had pioneered the manufacture of small radio sets. It succeeded in developing a battery-powered radio that could be broken down and transported in four parts: the battery, transmitter, receiver, and collapsible antennae each fit in a waterproof metal case that was submarine-friendly. In addition to radios, submarines carried extensive propaganda material to the Philippines. Any breakable item was wrapped in newspapers proclaiming Allied victories and later circulated among the locals. A pictorial magazine titled Free Philippines was printed by the thousands in Australia and delivered along with cigarettes, chocolate, and chewing gum bearing MacArthur's slogan: “I shall return.”8

  Supplying guerrillas was dangerous work, and the submarines faced the inevitable risks of shallow, uncharted waters, mines, and enemy patrols. Things became even more dangerous beginning in October 1943, when American submarines became involved not only in delivering supplies but also in evacuating civilians. These evacuations became especially critical after January 1944, when the Japanese threatened to execute any Americans they found, whether military or civilian. Numerous U.S. citizens hiding out in the Philippines were transported to Australia, where they were debriefed and relocated. On 11 May 1944, for example, the USS Crevalle picked up twenty-eight women and children from Negros Island and dropped them off at Darwin eight days later—but not before being damaged by depth charges. Altogether, nineteen different submarines would participate in forty-one missions to the Philippines, inserting more than 300 operatives and extracting nearly 500 evacuees.9

  Pedro Sarmiento's Bolo Battalion was only a small cog in the Philippine guerrilla movement. Compared with the organizations on some islands, the guerrillas in the region of Balabac Strait and Palawan Island were considered relatively ineffectual by the AIB. Although the Palawan guerrillas mounted an occasional ambush on a Japanese patrol, their main contribution was information gathering.

  Some of the deficiencies in the region were of the Allied command's own making. As early as 10 March 1943, the Intelligence Section G-2 proposed inserting a party of coast watchers to monitor the area of Balabac Strait. Seven months later Colonel Wendell W. Fertig, the American leader of the guerrillas on Mindanao, received instructions to train a group for this purpose. A native of West Virginia and a former mining engineer, Fertig had organized a successful resistance force on Mindanao following the U.S. surrender in May 1942. The coast watchers were supposed to be picked up from Mindanao by submarine and landed in the Balabac area, but delays ensued. On 23 February 1944, when the request was finally made to insert the intelligence group on Balabac Island, the acting Seventh Fleet intelligence officer replied that there was insufficient shipping in the area to justify diverting a submarine for the mission. He also noted, prophetically, that there was a danger of mines.

  Captain Arthur H. McCollum, the U.S. Navy's liaison with the AIB, disagreed. McCollum had been born in Japan and had trained in the Japanese language before heading up the Far East Section of Naval Intelligence. Contrary to his subordinate's opinion, McCollum believed that there was considerable shipping traffic in the Balabac region; furthermore, by establishing a station at Balabac Strait, they might develop contacts with guerrillas on Palawan Island. On 24 May 1944 a six-man intelligence group, led by First Sergeant Amando S. Corpus, finally left Australia on board the submarine USS Redfin. The Redfin landed the party at Ramos Island on the evening of 8 June. A rubber boat was sent in to fix a line at the beach, and the coast watchers, along with 6,500 pounds of equipment, were shuttled to their landing spot at Encampment Point. Some weeks later, on 6 July, when their waterlogged radio equipment had finally dried out, the coast watchers established direct radio contact with Australia.10 The same team would later play a role in reporting the fate of the Flier survivors.

  The guerrillas on Bugsuk Island believed that a Japanese landing party was imminent. After their meal of rice and fish, the survivors of the Flier were hustled off in the direction of the Bugsuk River, where a sailboat was waiting. Sarmiento's instructions were to send any Allied survivors he found to the guerrilla headquarters at Cape Buliluyan on the south coast of Palawan. As a parting gift, the Flier men gave Sarmiento a magnifying glass from Jacobson's binoculars, which he had managed to hold on to throughout their ordeal. A grateful Sarmiento assured them that he could make good use of the gift to light his pipe.

  It was a five-mile trek to the boat, and given their damaged feet and weakened condition, the submariners clearly would not be able to make the entire journey without rest. They stopped for the night at a village in the center of the island. A Filipino family graciously made room for the visitors in a small hut next to a rice paddy, and the men slept on bamboo mats.

  Waking the next morning at about 6:30, the Flier men discovered that the generous villagers had killed a chicken to make a broth for them. They were also given some wild honey to eat. After resting for a while, they set out again. Around noontime they stopped at another hut for an hour of rest, and when they were ready to leave they were given a large basket of rice, donated at some sacrifice by the local people.

  The following day they reached their destination at about 4:00 in the afternoon. The waiting sailboat was about sixteen feet long with a rounded hull. It was a type of boat used by the local Moro people, who were Muslims; they retained a distinct identity and lived mainly in the southern Philippines. A local trader, dubbed the “Sailor” by the Flier men, was going to navigate the boat for them. In previous navy briefings, he was precisely the type of person they had been told to avoid if they were ever shipwrecked. But the Sailor would prove to be one of the most remarkable characters they encountered on their journey. Jacobson joked that the Sailor “would be handling the tiller with one foot, rowing with the other foot, handling the sheet with his teeth, sewing up a hole in Baumgart's pants and cooking our meal, all at the same time.”11

  The party set sail down a narrow, sheltered river and had covered the three miles to its mouth by dusk. Sunset in these latitudes passed quickly; as one coast watcher put it, “You could almost hear a clunk when night fell.”12 Once at sea, the Sailor was able to negotiate the many hazardous reefs and submerged rocks despite the pitch-black night. At 3:30 in the morning they reached the guerrilla outpost at Cape Buliluyan on Palawan. Most of the men at the outpost appeared to be well educated. They explained that they would set out the following night, traveling the seventy miles to the guerrilla's main stronghold at Brooke's Point.

  The next day the guerrillas rounded up some clothing for the Flier survivors. Each man got a pair of pants, and the lucky ones also got a shirt, although it was generally far too small. They would have to wait for footwear. Among coast watchers and guerrillas, shoes were valued above any other commodity. In the tropics, boots rotted and wore out quickly. Some of the American coast watchers resorted to wearing handmade wooden clogs whenever possible, to prolong the life of their shoes.13

  For dinner that evening the Flier men had a special meal of caribou meat. It might well have doubled as shoe leather. Even though it was cut paper-thin, they found it difficult chewing.

  Sergeant Pasqual de la Cruz assumed responsibility for guiding the Flier men to Brooke's Point. Cruz l
ived at Tabud in the south of the island and knew the waters of Palawan and Borneo well. He spoke a number of local dialects, and Allied intelligence considered him “thoroughly trustworthy.”14 Cruz had served in the U.S. Army Forces Far East (USAFFE), created 26 July 1941 under MacArthur's command. As the inevitability of war became clear, young Filipino volunteers had been avidly recruited, and by the end of November 1941, the USAFFE numbered more than 30,000, including 12,000 Filipino scouts. Once these forces officially surrendered on 29 May 1942, many of the recruits became guerrillas.15

  On the afternoon of Monday, 21 August, the Flier men and their guerrilla escorts set sail for Brooke's Point. With favorable winds, they were optimistic about reaching their destination the next morning. They had not sailed far, however, when the Sailor turned the boat back toward the beach. In the distance they spotted a Japanese patrol boat. Once it had passed they set out again, but later that night the winds changed direction, and they ended up anchoring for the night in the Tuba River. Again a local family generously provided food and shelter.

  The following day when they got under way they had two additional passengers. The family who had put them up for the night asked whether their recently married daughter and her husband might travel with them. In the early evening they encountered a group of canoes that turned out to be manned by friends of the Sailor. The canoeists provided them with fish and eel, and Russo and Baumgart decided that they would also try the local cigarettes. This proved to be a short-lived experiment, which the men likened to inhaling hot tar.

  Finally, at about 8:00 A.M. on 22 August, they reached Brooke's Point, where they were greeted by a large group of guerrillas. The Flier men, still unable to walk well and shabbily dressed, felt self-conscious about being such poor representatives of the U.S. Navy.16

  14

  Brooke's Point

  Once at Brooke's Point, the Flier party was taken a short distance from the beach to the home of Captain Narizidad B. Mayor, who commanded Sector D of the Sixth Military District as part of the Palawan Special Battalion. Allied intelligence was unimpressed by the organization, characterizing it as “weak, ineffectual, and badly in need of arms and supplies.” Mayor was described as “not generally liked by his men who are afraid of him.”1

  Whatever his personal faults, Mayor was proud to be a representative of the U.S. military. Although a native of the Philippines, Mayor had graduated from the University of Nebraska and received a commission in the U.S. Army through the university's ROTC program. Before the war he ran a lumber business on the islands of Balabac and Bugsuk, so he knew the area well. Once the Japanese invaded Palawan, he hid his tractors and other equipment, destroyed his records, and left his home for the jungle.2

  The Japanese had occupied Palawan's main city and port, Puerto Princesa, since early 1942. They began carving an airstrip out of the jungle, using American prisoners transported from Manila for labor. On 14 December 1944, most of the POWs would become victims of a massacre. The men were herded into air-raid trenches at the prison camp, doused in aviation fuel, and set on fire. Those trying to flee the flames were shot or bayoneted. Only 11 of the 150 men survived the atrocity. Visitors to the island after an Allied invasion in 1945 still found ample evidence of the massacre: skeletons in tattered clothing, charred flesh, and leg bones sticking out of rotting boots.3

  Apart from Puerto Princesa, located in the center of the east coast, most of Palawan Island was outside direct Japanese control. Of the approximately 2,000 Japanese soldiers on Palawan, most were stationed at Puerto Princesa under Captain Kojima Chokichi. Smaller detachments were posted at Dumaran Island to the northeast and at Conon and Pandanan islands to the southwest. For the most part, the Japanese soldiers limited their activities to seizing rice crops and making occasional patrols.

  In August 1942 six U.S. servicemen managed to escape from the Puerto Princesa prison camp. The escapees—three sailors and three marines—joined a small settlement of other Americans already at Brooke's Point. It was around this nucleus of Americans that the guerrilla groups in southern Palawan initially developed. Within a short time they had organized enough men to beat back a Japanese landing party in October 1942. Most of the Americans subsequently moved to the island of Tawi Tawi. For a time the guerrillas were led by Vens T. Kerson. Although a Finn by birth, Kerson had worked as a U.S. Navy diver. Pasqual de la Cruz, who escorted the Flier survivors to Brooke's Point, had served as a guide and interpreter for Kerson.

  In late 1943 the guerrillas on Palawan were organized as the Palawan Special Battalion of the Sixth Military District, headed by Major Pablo Muyco. At the time the Flier was lost, the battalion's total strength was about a thousand men. Sector D, headquartered at Brooke's Point under Captain Mayor, included four officers and eighty-two enlisted men.4

  Fortunately for Crowley and his men, the organization at Brooke's Point included a recently arrived coast watcher group with radio equipment. This was the detachment under Sergeant Amando S. Corpus that had been landed by the USS Redfin less than three months earlier. Corpus, described as a multilingual American-Filipino, was a member of the U.S. Army 978th Signal Corps. He was also a most welcome sight for the men of the Flier. Jacobson professed that “this was the first time that we could feel completely relaxed because no matter how assuring the natives were, you still had a doubt about whether they would sell you to the Japs or something like that.”5

  The 978th Signal Services Company was activated in July 1943 to deal with secret radio communications from the Philippines. Radio operators were chosen from among the better-educated Filipinos serving with the U.S. Army in California. Colonel Courtney Whitney, as chief of the Philippine Regional Section, personally oversaw the selection of volunteers from the First and Second Filipino Infantry Regiments. In November 1943 about 200 radio operators from the company arrived in Australia from the United States. They underwent jungle training in a secret camp south of Brisbane at Beaudesert, Queensland. At Camp Tabragalba (also known as Camp X), a former cattle ranch, they honed their skills in communications, hand-to-hand combat, and survival. Most of the men were then deposited behind enemy lines by submarine. They were supposed to work with local guerrillas in the Philippines and provide radio reports to headquarters in Brisbane on Japanese forces and movements.6

  The coast watchers at Brooke's Point had originally landed on Ramos Island, but they moved camp to Mantangule Island two weeks later. The move was precipitated by a report that there were nearly 150 Japanese troops on nearby Balabac Island, which was separated from Ramos by only a narrow channel. In addition, the locals on Ramos Island were considered untrustworthy. The coast watchers used sailboats to transport themselves and their supplies to Mantangule, arriving on 23 June.7

  This was the same island that the Flier survivors had initially washed up on. But like the Flier crew, the coast watchers had concluded that there was no water on the island. After making contact with the guerrillas on Palawan, they relocated to Brooke's Point on 17 July. The constant humidity of the Philippines wreaked havoc with radio equipment, rotting components and shorting circuits. Some of the coast watchers’ radio equipment was inoperable when the Flier men arrived, but Howell was able to repair it so that they could transmit a message to Australia.8

  On 23 August, a Wednesday, Sergeant Corpus transmitted special message number one to the commander of Task Force 71, informing him of the Flier’s fate: “Flier struck mine in Balabac Strait 2200?H on 13th. Sank in 30 seconds in 50 fathoms of water. Do not believe Nips know. Only eight known survivors now with P.A. at Brooke's Point, Palawan. Strong indicators that Robalo suffered same fate July 3rd.”9 The message was routed to MacArthur's General Headquarters in Brisbane, and from there to the headquarters of the Seventh Fleet. A duty officer received the dispatch at 3:00 A.M. local time on 24 August. The navy operations officer, Captain Richard H. Cruzen, was immediately notified, as was the commander of Task Force 71, Ralph Christie, in Perth.10

  The reply sent to the coast watchers wa
s both swift and devastating. Transmitted on 24 August, it read in part: “Why have you not forwarded information on enemy positions in South Palawan and Balabac and naval movements through Balabac Strait? Why did you not advise of presence of mines in Strait reference your Special No. 1? Your mission is to cover that area and advise me instantly of all important enemy dispositions and naval movements. Results thus far are disappointing and immediate improvement in your intelligence coverage and reports is desired and expected.”11

  Three days later, Corpus committed suicide, shooting himself in the chest with his service revolver. He left no note. Those at Brooke's Point assumed, however, that his suicide was directly related to the rebuke from Australia. They thought that he might have interpreted the message not only as criticism of his mission but also as blame for the loss of the Flier and the Robalo.

  Following the death of Corpus, Sergeant Carlos S. Placido assumed command of the coast watcher group. Before enlisting in the U.S. Army the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Placido had run a bakery business in Laguna Beach, California. His leadership of the coast watchers was confirmed by a message on 28 August. The intelligence party under Placido would remain in operation until Allied landings at Puerto Princesa on 28 February 1945. In the interim the coast watchers provided information on southern Palawan and aided a number of escapees from the Japanese prison camp.12

  At Brooke's Point the men from the Flier remained weak and ill. Captain Mayor provided the survivors with some additional clothing, but they were still barefoot. They were then taken five miles inland, toward the mountain chain that runs the length of the island. Crowley was transported on a two-wheeled cart pulled by a water buffalo, and he later recalled that the animal would stop to wallow in any mud it encountered along the way.