by Bruce Gamble
Losses among the Airacobra squadrons were heavy, but the relatively inexperienced American pilots held their own against the veterans of the Tainan Air Group. For one thing, the American pilots could afford to be a bit more reckless when fighting near their own airdromes. If shot down (presuming they suffered no debilitating wounds in air combat), they stood a much better chance of surviving than if they came down over enemy territory. During May 1942, the first month of combat for the Airacobra squadrons, twenty P-39s/P-400s were shot down with eleven pilots killed or missing in action. In June, twenty-three Airacobras were shot down or crash-landed while intercepting enemy raids, costing the lives of seventeen pilots. In comparison, the Tainan Air Group lost eleven Zeros and nine pilots in May, followed by the loss of five Zeros and four pilots in June. Although the Americans were losing more planes and pilots, replacements were available. This was not the case for the Japanese. As Saburo Sakai hinted, the Tainan Air Group was slowly being used up.
In addition to predominantly fighting over their own airfields, the American pilots held another potential advantage: motive. What Sakai referred to as “persistent aggression” by the Airacobra pilots was actually vengeance. The attack on Pearl Harbor had occurred only six months earlier, and retribution remained a powerful incentive for the Americans. In the most basic terms, they wanted to kill Japanese. The end result was that two of the Tainan Air Group’s best attributes—superior aircraft and extensive combat experience—were whittled away by the sheer determination of their opponents.
CHAPTER 18
MacArthur’s New Airman
DESPITE THE FAILURE of the 25th Air Flotilla to knock out Port Moresby, the Japanese proceeded with Ri Operation. Three transports, loaded with elements of the South Seas Force and escorted by Cruiser Division 18, departed Rabaul on the evening of July 20 for the Huon Gulf. The following afternoon, under cover of bad weather that minimized the effectiveness of Allied air attacks, the convoy reached its destination. Infantry of the Sasebo Special Naval Landing Force went ashore northwest of Buna, and a large contingent of army troops landed at Gona. Unopposed, they grabbed yet another vital segment of the New Guinea coastline.
The inability of Allied air power to prevent the latest Japanese landings was not surprising. Week after week, the crews of the 3rd, 22nd, and 19th Bomb Groups had applied pressure on the enemy, but the overall results were disappointing. Frequent mechanical problems, bad weather, supply shortages, and the sheer length of the missions kept aircrews and maintenance personnel on the threshold of exhaustion. As the months passed, the situation increasingly took its toll on men as well as machines. Squadrons struggled to provide enough aircraft for the scheduled missions, and many of the planes that could still be considered airworthy were barely holding together. If just one aircraft was slowed by a poorly performing engine, an entire formation might be compromised, especially on long missions. All too often raids were completed haphazardly, with bombers reaching the target (if at all) either singly or in pairs, almost always without fighter escort. The attackers were therefore subjected to the full brunt of the defending fighters, but for all the incurred risk, the raids rarely caused much damage. More often than not, the returning aircrews reported results far in excess of what they actually achieved.
Naturally, after flying long and hazardous missions that had no apparent effect on the enemy, the morale of the Allied flyers began to wane. To make matters worse, egotism and sour professional relationships in the upper levels of command trickled down to affect the airmen’s performance.
The trouble began at the very top. Many U.S. Army aviators, particularly those with extensive time in uniform, believed that General MacArthur strongly favored the ground forces over air power. As evidence, they pointed to his participation in the 1925 court-martial of Col. William L. “Billy” Mitchell, a brilliant but strident activist for air power who was convicted of insubordination for his scathing criticisms of the armed services. MacArthur, one of the judges at Mitchell’s court-martial, ruled in favor of conviction. Among those who subsequently harbored some resentment was George Brett, who had worked closely with Mitchell both during and after World War I.
Similarly, many aviators were critical of MacArthur’s role in the Philippines debacle. Brett also belonged in this category. When MacArthur was beleaguered on the Bataan Peninsula, Brett had recommended to the army chief of staff that no more supplies should be expended on what was obviously a lost cause. MacArthur later became aware of Brett’s position and decided he was disloyal. MacArthur also blamed Brett personally for the failed attempt to provide B-17s for his evacuation from Mindanao.
Conversely, Brett was harsh in his private criticisms of the supreme commander. “General MacArthur has a wonderful personality when he desires to turn it on,” he wrote in July 1942. “He is, however, absolutely bound up in himself. I do not believe he has a single thought for anybody who is not useful to him, and I believe he detests the Air Corps through his own inability to thoroughly understand it and operate it as he does ground troops. There are rumors that he refuses to fly.”
Brett had ample reasons for his rancor. When MacArthur reached Australia and traveled to Melbourne, Brett made several attempts to meet with him and was deliberately snubbed. During the next four months, Brett met face to face with MacArthur only seven times. Brett was frequently stonewalled by MacArthur’s chief of staff, the arrogant, acerbic Richard Sutherland, who was now a brigadier general. Although not an aviator, Sutherland had the habit of meddling with mission orders and other aspects of the air war he knew little about. He flaunted the power that came with his position as MacArthur’s chief of staff, and many officers detested him for it. Brett went so far as to call him “a bully who, should he lose his ability to say ‘by order of General MacArthur,’ would be practically a nobody.”
Brett outranked Sutherland and probably should have been more forceful with him. Instead, the two became embroiled in a war of words, firing retaliatory memos and directives from their respective offices. On June 3, for example, Sutherland directed Brett to explain why the P-39s and P-400s at Port Moresby were unreliable as escorts for bombing missions. Sutherland thereby revealed his lack of understanding about the dire situation in New Guinea, where the Airacobra squadrons were desperately trying to defend Port Moresby against daily attacks.
In the same memo, Sutherland questioned the low availability rate of the B-17s, but before Brett could address either grievance, Sutherland fired off another memorandum. This time he complained that “according to operations reports, no attack has been made upon the airdromes at Rabaul in compliance with Operations Instruction No. 8.” But the reality was that Flying Fortresses had attacked Rabaul several times since May 29, when that particular instruction was posted. Sutherland, for all his posturing, appeared to be totally ignorant of the week’s activities. On June 9 he sent Brett another memo that purportedly showed no B-17 raids on Rabaul, only reconnaissance flights. He ordered Brett to attack the stronghold “without further delay,” unaware that Flying Fortresses had already hit the waterfront and storage facilities three times between the 2nd and 5th of June. The crews were doing their best with what they had, but Sutherland seemed more interested in discrediting Brett.
Sutherland was not the only one causing friction. Some of MacArthur’s department heads, having accompanied him from the Philippines, regarded themselves as the heroes of Bataan. The group included Brig. Gen. Charles A. Willoughby (intelligence), Brig. Gen. Richard J. Marshall (deputy chief of staff), Brig. Gen. Hugh J. Casey (engineering), Brig. Gen. William F. Marquat (antiaircraft), and Brig. Gen. Harold H. George (air). Their cliquishness was an affront to outsiders. “Marshall, Willoughby, Marquat and Casey … have talked a great deal but accomplished little,” noted Brett. “They have an exaggerated idea of their own importance, and the impression I get is that they are controlled by Sutherland; [they] are, in fact, ‘yes-men.’ They are officious and have no proper sense of the need for cooperation with the forces op
erating under the Commander-in-Chief.”
Among this group, Willoughby was probably the most unique. Born in Germany, he described himself as the son of a baron and behaved accordingly, but birth records in his home city of Heidelberg do not substantiate his claim. Alternately, he said he was an orphan. Whatever his true heritage, Willoughby served two stints in the army after changing his surname from Weidenbach to Willoughby. By the time he pinned on his star he’d cultivated a Prussian demeanor. He wore expensive tailored uniforms, even a monocle, and often expressed himself with a dramatic flair. Such traits might have been charming had Willoughby been a brilliant officer, but he was greatly overshadowed by MacArthur.
George was the most promising. A genuine fighter ace with five victories in World War I, he had earned a Distinguished Service Cross for combat valor. In the Philippines he performed well during the bitter but hopeless defense of the northern islands, particularly after General Brereton departed for Australia. Using the remnants of the Far East Air Force’s pursuit group, amounting to hardly more than a handful of fighters, he harassed the Japanese for weeks. George is also credited with organizing approximately one thousand airmen into an infantry unit. Unfortunately, his life ended tragically while visiting Batchelor Field on April 29, 1942. Newly assigned as the aviation commander for the Northwest Area, George had just climbed from his twin-engine transport and was talking with a group of bystanders when a P-40 veered off the runway during takeoff and smashed into the parked plane. The spectacular collision caused only minor injuries to the P-40 pilot, but three bystanders were killed, including George.
The loss of the top airman in MacArthur’s headquarters added to the discord in Australia. Brett and Sutherland feuded openly, and Brett’s own chief of staff proved to be unpopular as well. He had selected AVM William D. Bostock, wanting a senior RAAF man as his deputy, but Brett underestimated the harmful effect of internal politics on his directorate system. Furthermore, he found his deputy’s behavior annoying. “Bostock has a very poor personality,” wrote Brett. “He always appears to be grumpy and discontented. He is rather arbitrary in his opinions, which of course will not work without adequate background. He is completely [against] General Headquarters and is unsympathetic towards everything they do.”
By the summer of 1942, the bickering and the personality clashes had everyone on edge. MacArthur demanded absolute loyalty from his subordinates, but he did not have Brett’s or even Sutherland’s. The latter faked his loyalty in the interest of advancing his own career, but MacArthur never caught on. The one he resented most was Brett, who had arrived in Australia more than two months earlier and was treated almost like royalty by representatives of the Labor and Conservative parties. Brett had been unanimously recommended for supreme commander by the Australian and New Zealand service chiefs in late February, a month before MacArthur arrived, and that alone was enough to make him intensely jealous. Described as “an exceptionally sensitive man and excessively attentive to his personal destiny,” MacArthur coveted the spotlight for himself. He probably did not despise Brett quite as much as Sutherland did, but neither did he attempt to mediate the feud between his two subordinates.
With so much finger pointing and professional jealousy infecting the leadership in Australia, it’s almost miraculous that the Allies were able to conduct any sort of campaign against the Japanese. Brett did the best he could, but the mediocrity of the air war reflected badly on him. It became painfully clear to many people that Brett simply wasn’t tough enough to handle the demanding job. Colonel Burdette M. Fitch, the adjutant general at MacArthur’s headquarters, described Brett as “a rather easy-going Air Force officer who was probably a better flyer than administrator.”
HALFWAY AROUND the world, General Marshall and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were increasingly aware of the trouble brewing in Australia. Over the past few months MacArthur had sent numerous “eyes only” messages to Marshall and Gen. Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, commanding general of the U. S. Army Air Forces. The two men also received an objective briefing from Brig. Gen. Ross G. Hoyt, recently returned from Australia, who was of the opinion that “either Brett or MacArthur must go.”
Marshall was not eager to recall Brett, with whom he shared a friendship as well as an alma mater, Virginia Military Institute. But the secretary of war, Henry L. Stimson, had lost confidence in Brett months earlier and leaned on Marshall to replace him. In late June, MacArthur sent yet another message complaining of the critical need for more planes, parts, and people, describing the efficiency of his air units as “only average.” He reminded Marshall that the supply problems had been “reflected constantly in reports made by Gen. Brett to Gen. Arnold and by occasional radios by myself.” Convinced that the time for change had finally come, Marshall sent a reply to MacArthur on June 29 that read: “Desire your views and recommendations on possible replacement of Brett by General Frank Andrews.”
Intentionally or not, Marshall’s message gave MacArthur carte blanche to openly criticize Brett—and that is exactly what he did. The verbose reply erased all doubts about MacArthur’s frustrations:
I would prefer Andrews to Brett and believe a change here would strengthen the air component. I know both men intimately and have no doubt whatever that Andrews, while not naturally as brilliantly gifted as Brett, possesses those elements of basic character which constitute a better fighting commander under battle conditions. Brett is unquestionably highly qualified as an air technician and in air administrative duties of a productive or supply character; he is an unusually hard worker but his very industry leads him to concentrate at times upon unimportant details which tend to obscure a true perspective of more important matters; he is naturally inclined toward more or less harmless intrigue and has a bent, due perhaps to his delightful personality, for social entertainment and the easy way of life; he is unpopular with the Australian administration who resent his lack of forthrightness and he does not command the confidence of the younger and fighting elements of the air corps here. I would rate his service during the past three months under my command as only average. His relationship with the navy component is poor. His relations with my headquarters have been personally most cordial but professionally he has been evasive. Although Brett has a very large staff I do not consider it particularly competent. This may be due to his inability to select and place the right men in key positions or possibly he is unable to properly coordinate them. Andrews is a type of commander who needs a competent Chief of Staff and Operations Officer. In case the change is made I suggest that he be permitted to bring these two staff officers with him and that men of corresponding rank here be returned with Brett.
Marshall had his answer. It was obvious that MacArthur wanted Brett replaced, but a new problem arose when Marshall’s first nominee turned down the job. Lieutenant General Frank M. Andrews, a renowned advocate of strategic bombing and a longtime ally of Marshall’s, had no intention of working under MacArthur. Andrews, then in charge of the Caribbean Defense Command, considered the offer as more of a demotion than an opportunity.
On July 6, Marshall offered two new candidates for MacArthur’s consideration: Brig. Gen. James H. Doolittle, the hero of the raid on Tokyo a few months earlier, and Maj. Gen. George C. Kenney, presently in command of the Fourth Air Force on the West Coast. MacArthur answered promptly:
I know intimately all commanders named … and rate them all superior. I would much prefer Kenney to Doolittle not so much because of natural attainments and ability but because it would be difficult to convince the Australians of Doolittle’s acceptability. His long absence in civil life would react most unfavorably throughout the Australian Air Force. I therefore recommend Kenney and would be glad to have his order issued as soon as possible.
MacArthur’s arguments against Doolittle ring false. Doolittle was known worldwide for his many aeronautical achievements, so the Australians did not need to be convinced of his acceptability. Doolittle was about to receive a Medal of Honor for his role in the Tokyo
raid, and the suggestion that the RAAF would disapprove of Doolittle’s “long absence” from the military was preposterous. MacArthur didn’t care what the Australians thought; he wanted an American-led effort in the SWPA and would do whatever was necessary to support his own ambitions.
The real reason MacArthur didn’t want Doolittle was because Doolittle was far too famous. He was a superstar, one of the world’s most renowned aviators. He had set numerous speed records, won the world’s three biggest air racing prizes (the Schneider, Bendix, and Thompson trophies), and personally developed much of the technology and methodology used in instrument flying. His impact on aviation was extraordinary. Doolittle would have done the Allied cause a great service in Australia, which he proved later by leading the Eighth Air Force in Europe. But MacArthur didn’t want him in Australia because he might steal the spotlight.
Compared with Doolittle, few people outside the U.S. Army had heard of George Churchill Kenney. Even his citizenship was obscure. He considered himself an American but was born in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. Both of his parents were Canadian citizens, not vacationers as he claimed, and Kenney spent his first ten or eleven years in Nova Scotia. On the other hand, his family could trace its heritage to some of the earliest settlers of New England. Moreover, the Kenneys moved to a suburb of Boston around the turn of the century. After high school Kenney studied engineering at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology but dropped out after three years because of financial concerns. He still found steady work in civil engineering and gained experience in all types of construction—from bridges to railroads to office buildings. He and a partner started a successful business, wherein Kenney discovered his knack for problem-solving.