by Mike Edwards
There upon the Pilot Officer started calling him a fool for not knowing that there was a blackout in Calcutta. Ghulam Ali, who was about twice the size of this officer, caught hold of him and dragged him on to the veranda. The officer was too drunk to know what was happening, so Harjinder shouted at Ghulam Ali to control himself. Ghulam Ali reluctantly obeyed but grumbled and said: ‘This is the type of Sahib we are going to fight for; cowards, and they are our rulers. They can’t even stand against Japs whom we are going to face. They have run out of Burma and on top of that, he calls me a fool.’
Harjinder told Ghulam Ali to say no more and approached the Pilot Officer, realising he was the duty Orderly Officer. Harjinder said: ‘Sorry Sir, you have been talking to the wrong man. I am the senior man here.’
The officer then turned to him and said: ‘Then you are a bigger fool.’
On hearing this Ghulam Ali stepped forward once again, threateningly, but in the meantime, the other air gunners had come out of the rooms and held him in check. Harjinder ordered them all to go into their barracks. He took the Orderly Officer to one side and tried to reason with the drunk, saying: ‘Firstly, you as the Orderly Officer should have seen to it that our billets were properly blacked out. We do not have the time to do anything about it. We have come here only for one night and we are leaving early tomorrow morning. Secondly, you as an Orderly Officer should not have behaved in the way you did.’
But he was too drunk to understand and stumbled off on his way to the next set of barracks.
Early next morning Harjinder reported the matter to Jumbo who insisted that he accompany him to the Station Commander. The latter was furious when he learned of the incident. Jumbo insisted on having their evidence recorded before their departure, the Wing Commander agreed, and a Summary of Evidence was held immediately. They discovered that this man was an Equipment Officer recently posted to India. The charge against him was: ‘Misbehaving and maltreating subordinates which could have caused mutiny.’ The Station Commander called Harjinder in his office and commended him for ‘cool action under provocative circumstances.’
Later in the morning, all the pilots and air gunners were called into the Station Commander’s office for briefing. He gave them all the information he had about the land and air situation up at the front, and then chalked out their route for them. There seemed to be no good news, even as he ended his briefing, he warned, ‘In case you find fog over Toungoo, divert to Rangoon–Mingaladon. You are likely to meet Japanese Zero Fighters in the area, so look out. I wish you the best of luck.’
When they came out, all seemed to be nervous. Suddenly this all seemed very real. This was not another posting up to the North-West Frontier. The very idea of meeting Zeros was enough to give them the shakes, because the pilots were under no illusion about the fast, agile, Japanese fighters. They had spent hours digesting all the latest intelligence reports on the enemy equipment. If caught, their Lysanders would be sitting ducks. Of that, there was little doubt.
Finally, on the last day of January 1941, they took off from Calcutta and headed to their last Indian base before heading into Burma; Chittagong. The flat flood plains they flew over would be part of East Pakistan in a few years’ time, and then Bangladesh after that, but to the pilots who had been flying operations on the brown, mountainous, boulder-strewn moonscape of the North-West Frontier, this was the first signal, that things would be different. The flat flood plains with the endless twists and turns of rivers and streams would soon turn into dense jungle, covering the hills and mountains that had been thought to be impenetrable, before the Japanese proved the Allied commanders wrong.
All the pilots had been briefed about how difficult it would be to re-supply spare parts in a war theatre, so they approached their task with greater resolve and thoughtfulness. The thought of facing the enemy, in an antiquated aircraft, over unfamiliar terrain, brought all their minds into focus. Harjinder wrote; ‘The quality of their flying, I must say, improved thereafter. Even Padam Gill, who had crashed his Lysander P 9179 at Meerut only three days ago, seemed to have matured overnight-confident and reassured in his demeanour. He had taken over P 9197, with Sergeant Zia as his Air Gunner. I felt very happy because I knew that I was among a very brave bunch of young pilots and air gunners. We refuelled at Chittagong and drank a lot of coconut water, quite new to most of us. It was Joe Niranjan Prasad who introduced us to this delightful drink. He was a grand and gallant officer. He combined the esprit of our wonderful Army with the daring of our young Air Force.’
Harjinder watched the men as they found ways to prepare themselves for the unknown. He took time to reflect on this family, and he felt responsible as they headed into the biggest test any of them could imagine:
Pilot Officer Deuskar was a quiet and unassuming Maratha, whose courage knew no bounds; Flight Lieutenant Raza was all smiles, a brave heart hidden behind a becoming gentleness; Satyanaraya – intelligent and deliberate; Ratanagar, with bags containing tennis racquets and a blazer, seemed to indicate he wasn’t entirely aware of what was facing him; Henry Runganadhan was waiting for the chance to meet a Japanese aircraft, not the slightest bit daunted by the disadvantage in speed. He was always telling anyone who would care to listen; ‘I would rather get bumped off in aerial fight than be burnt on the ground like my brother.’
Pilot Officer Malse had the demeanour of a seasoned pilot. He already could see that the only way to survive was to get down to the tree tops. He talked about evading Zeros by steep turns, wing tip touching the tree, so that his air gunner could let off a ‘fun’ blast at the Japanese aircraft when they meet one. How many of these young men would accompany Harjinder back to India? Would there be an India to come back to if the Japanese couldn’t be stopped? Harjinder could not stop the question popping into his head; would he be coming back?
The Japanese were successfully rolling through Burma. So far, they had shown no apparent weakness, but the Indians’ hopes were pinned on the British stronghold at Singapore. That fortress would surely stop the Japanese and draw their forces from the Burma front. The IAF’s No. 1 Squadron was entering the combat arena, and what they needed was a quiet start to prepare themselves for the fight. They needed time to get accustomed to the new surroundings, and the new style of operations.
That didn’t happen.
Eight
Into Burma
‘I have come here to fight a war and not observe formalities and ceremonies… You have won the admiration of my aircrew.’
The Squadron followed the flat lands of the coastal strip South into Burma. Further inland, the forest canopy became denser as it cloaked the hills that rose beyond their left wing tip. Delhi had been a little chilly, Calcutta and Chittagong warmer, but now the temperature was on the rise. These were the conditions they would operate in, that they would fight in. The long beaches, lined with palm trees, pointed the direction for the team to travel. Still flat along the coast, numerous rivers and inlets broke through the flooded, swampy plain to cut into the beach. Two larger rivers sliced through the land to leave a substantial peninsula. On the bottom-most corner, tucked against the beach, was the airfield for the coastal town of Akyab. It was mid-afternoon by the time the last Lysander’s wheels touched down in this foreign country. Harjinder was first out to start the refuelling and dispersal of the aircraft. The tension hung heavy in the humid air. The Japanese seemed to have demoralised the RAF, because the talk from everyone they met was of abandoning Burma ‘any day now’. One Senior RAF Sergeant approached Harjinder and said: ‘You people are going the wrong way. You ought to be heading West. Everybody else is.’
Harjinder firmly told him to shut up and not to demoralise his air gunners. The RAF man had the grace to apologise and leave them to their work.
The arrival of the IAF meant they had already done better than the ‘bloody shambles’ of the RAF reinforcements leaving India at the same time as they. The eighteen, desperately-needed, Hawker Hurricanes had left Calcutta, led by a twin engin
e Blenheim bomber, whose job it was to do the navigation. Somehow, the Blenheim crew got horribly lost as night fell over the Shan mountains. All the precious aircraft and pilots were lost, dropping through the forest canopy when their fuel tanks ran dry, some never to be found. The RAF were trying to fight the Japanese with the outdated, obsolete fighters in their inventory. This, compounded with the use of wrong tactics against them, trying unsuccessfully to out-turn the nimble Japanese fighters, led to horrific losses. The Americans quickly realised the ‘dive and zoom’ tactics were the only way forward.
In Akyab, there was a full moon that night, so all of the air team decided to walk around the airfield and drink in the sights and sounds of Burma. Sergeant ‘Cabby’ Cabinetmaker put his mouth organ to good use, and the beautiful music had the effect of a soothing blanket being laid over the men. Some of the young ones sang songs, some clapped to the rhythm. Everyone’s morale soared. They felt part of the team, and they felt ready. A glow of satisfaction spread through Harjinder, mainly because he could see that his men were brushing aside the negativity of the RAF personnel returning from the front.
The next morning, white wisps of condensation whipped off the Lysanders’ wing tips as they took off in to the moist air at 0900. They left the coast, and the protection of the sea behind them. Not only did the coastline make navigation easy, but it also offered the crews a chance to land a sick aircraft on a beach, or to put it down in the surf if the engine stopped. Soon, this option disappeared when they turned inland and the vast areas of lush green jungle canopy stretched out for miles on all sides, with only the occasional stream carving through the green. The all-important capital city, Rangoon, was in the Southern part of the country. Beyond that was only a narrow strip of the country continuing on South, butting against Siam (now Thailand). The Japanese were successfully fighting through the jungles to the North and East of Rangoon, putting the city in mortal danger of being cut off. Away from the coastal strip, Burma consisted of high, North-South mountain ridges that were split by the four great river valleys flowing through them. The jungles that covered the ridges had been thought impassable, but the Japanese, with their low-tech approach, were proving the Allied Commanders wrong, yet again. The rivers Chindwin, Irrawaddy, Sittang and Salween would be impassable when swollen by monsoon rains, even to the ingenious Japanese, but in January, they were at a more manageable level. The Japanese were working on a time table to reach the coastline, take the capital, and have a port to stage their push towards India.
The IAF gaggle of aircraft looked more and more like vultures searching for a nesting site as they climbed up, and over the hills. They had turned East to pick up the central Burma lowland around the mysteriously gorgeous city of Mandalay. Their final destination was Toungoo, 175 miles North of Rangoon, sitting on the main, broad, flat Sittang river valley floor, which runs down the spine of Burma. Jumbo told Harjinder, quite unnecessarily, to keep a lookout for Japanese aircraft as they floated above the sea of green jungle below them. Both heads scanned back and forth constantly. The rear guns were fully loaded, and Harjinder admitted that he was itching to press the trigger. However, nothing more sinister than some curious birds were sighted and, with eyes tired and itchy after the constant scanning, they approached their new home. The airfield was on the flat valley floor, but just a few miles further East was the sawtooth mountain wall, shimmering in the blue haze, guarding the Burma-Thailand border beyond. Jumbo lead the Lysanders in a circle overhead the airfield, before dropping down onto the approach for the single North-South runway. The whole squadron was on the ground by 11 am.
The Lysanders came to a stop and, after one final burst of power, all the propellers came to a click-clicking halt. The pilots and air gunners, streaked in sweat, climbed down the steps in the fuselage, on to the step atop the large main-wheel cover, before dropping to the ground. Waiting for them, seeking out Jumbo, was the Station Commander, a Wing Commander, whom they had known in Peshawar in 1937. It was heartening to see old friends in this new and exciting land. He wasn’t the only old friend because, as expected, No. 28 Squadron RAF had already taken up residence there. Harjinder did a quick scan of his surroundings. The asphalt runway meant that operations could continue during heavy rains, if any. There was a small control tower, some office-type buildings and several hangars. Harjinder discounted the hangars immediately; they would offer a juicy target to any attacking Japanese aircraft. Harjinder gathered his men together and ordered the twelve aircraft to be scattered around the airfield, tucking them under any tree cover where possible, to make them a difficult target for any enemy air attack. Some of the RAF’s No. 28 Squadron pilots had a good laugh. A cheeky young man said to Harjinder: ‘What are you scared of? Toungoo has never been raided so far.’
However, Harjinder was not to be put out by these taunts and set his men to work.
The refuelling was nearly complete when the whine of the air raid warning was sounded. Nobody at Toungoo had bothered to dig slit trenches for cover in the event of bombing raids. So, with no organised destination in mind, the aim of the individuals seemed to be to run, and take cover, as far away from the aircraft as they could go. Some showed some hereto unknown athletic skills as they seemed to go mighty fast, and mighty far, before diving to the ground! This was their first air raid, and Harjinder admitted that they were all scared out of their wits. Any thought of this being an exercise was quickly dashed as the roar of Japanese engines, at full power, filled the air. The mind-numbing din of the first aircraft engine screamed overhead in an angry statement of intent, but that suddenly seemed tame, when the scream was joined by the crump, crump, crump, of the first bombs going off. The shockwaves reverberated over the airfield and through the chests of the men, who were now trying to be at one with the earth beneath them; all trying to make themselves as small and thin as possible. Large dirt fountains showed the progress of the bombs over the ground. In reality, it was all over in seconds, but for every man lying prostrate on the ground, with hands over heads, it seemed an eternity before it took all the aircraft to drop their loads and scoot over the horizon at tree top level. When Harjinder felt it was all clear, he stood up and looked around at the other men slowly getting to their feet and wiping the dust from their working uniforms. Harjinder blew a whistle to get some order and get all the heads back to thinking about the job in hand. He collected all the Squadron Airmen together, wondering who would have ‘copped it’ in the raid. One by one the men, some of whom had shown Olympian qualities in both speed and distance, reappeared, and it became apparent to Harjinder that all were present and correct. The men had scattered to all corners of the airstrip, so each brought news of the damage done. Excitement rippled through the men as they realised that all their precious Lysanders were intact.
The welcome from the Japanese had woken the IAF up, but left them intact. However, the same couldn’t be said of No. 28 Squadron, RAF. Every single one of their Lysanders had received some degree of damage, lined up as they were, providing perfect target practice for the Japanese. There was one casualty from the raid, within the Indian community. Harjinder had been allotted a personal assistant by Jumbo, Leading Aircraftsman Chatterjee, a carpenter by trade. He was supposed to carry a machine gun and accompany Harjinder on the move around the airfield. It was not the Japanese bombs that did the damage but the poor, unfortunate Chatterjee broke his leg whilst diving for cover! From that point onwards, Harjinder had to be Chatterjee’s personal assistant, looking after his daily needs!
It is doubtful whether the bombers were on the hunt for the IAF’s, or even for No. 28 Squadron’s Lysanders. They were almost definitely looking for the American Volunteer Group (AVG) pilots and aircraft, who had been causing them disproportionate trouble, especially on their recent Christmas day raid. The Japanese sent two waves, totalling 80 bombers and 48 fighters, to hit Rangoon. The AVG knocked down 23 of them, the biggest victory of the war so far, with reportedly six more shot down over the Gulf of Martaban, to the South. The AVG
did not lose a single plane. The Chinese national leader Chiang Kai-shek had agreed to pay for the formation of the AVG, which consisted of men from the US Army, Navy and Marines Reserves, led by Claire Lee Chennault. Either thrill seekers, or desperate for the impressive wage, they all had a story to tell. Their mounts were the lend-lease P-40 Tomahawk fighters, shipped in from the USA. The men had copied the shark’s teeth mouths painted on the noses of the RAF P-40’s in Libya. Somehow, the shark had been lost in translation and the nickname ‘Flying Tigers’ had stuck. Back in America, these laid-back, veteran pilots, hired at a daily rate of $600, and paid a $500 bonus for every aircraft shot down, were becoming legends. Hollywood couldn’t let this opportunity slip by, and so, even Disney became involved, drawing up what became their emblem of a Tiger jumping through the ‘V for Victory’. After being formed in China, Chiang Kai-shek had sent the AVG into Burma to bolster the poorly-equipped RAF forces. The AVG had originally used Toungoo as a training airfield, during which they had had been at the end of some minor Japanese bombing; ‘practice bombing’, as one of the technicians had called it! At some point in the last 48 hours, the Japanese had figured out that the AVG training base was now an offensive platform. Having sent the bombers screaming in, they now realised this AVG fighting base was shared with the IAF and the RAF; Toungoo, in the Sittang river valley, was in for a rough ride.
And how rough it was to be…
The airfield took its name (pronounced ‘Taangoo’ in Burmese) from the town to the South. The small track from the airstrip emerged onto the main Lashio Road next to a pagoda guarded with statues of ferocious lions, or Sinthe’s, from which Major General Wingate’s Special Forces group got its name, the Chindits. This road was the main artery from Rangoon to Kunming, in China, via the seven hundred mile, winding, Burma Road. Six miles down this road, past the hulks of abandoned trucks, was the Main Street of Toungoo, constantly vibrating with the lorries carrying vital supplies day and night to China. The road was flanked with shops on one side, and market stalls on the other. Further into the town, the narrow, twisting, streets were lined with bamboo shops and huts. The so-called hotel was nothing more than a brothel for the lorry drivers. Away from the squalor of the packed humanity, the countryside had a truly tropical beauty, with flowers climbing the gnarled trees. However, even though the exact position wasn’t known, beautiful as the jungle looked, it was clear that it contained Japanese soldiers pushing towards the airfield and towards Rangoon in the South.