The Mammoth Book of Fighter Pilots

by Jon E. Lewis

  This was the decisive moment I had been awaiting for more than four years – American pilots in American fighter planes aided by a Chinese ground warning net about to tackle a formation of the Imperial Japanese Air Force, which was then sweeping the Pacific skies victorious everywhere. I felt that the fate of China was riding in the P-40 cockpits through the wintery sky over Yunnan. I yearned heartily to be ten years younger and crouched in a cockpit instead of a dugout, tasting the stale rubber of an oxygen mask and peering ahead into limitless space through the cherry-red rings of a gunsight.

  Suddenly voices broke through the crackling radio static.

  “There they are.”

  “No, no, they can’t be Japs.”

  “Look at those red balls.”

  “Let’s get ’em.”

  Then maddening silence. I ordered Sandell’s reserve squadron to dive to Iliang about thirty miles southeast of Kunming along the Japs’ line of probable approach. There was nothing more on the radio. The Chinese net reported the bombers had reversed course and were heading back toward Indo-China. Sounds of gunfire were heard, and the heavy fall of Japanese bombs in the mountains near Iliang was reported. There was nothing to do but return to the field and wait.

  Chinese were already streaming back to the city from their refuge among the grave mounds, incredulous that no bombs had fallen. Howard’s patrol over Kunming came down. They had seen nothing. Newkirk’s flight returned, sheepish and chagrined over a bad case of buck fever on their first contact with the enemy. They had sighted the Jap formation of ten gray twin-engined bombers about thirty miles southeast of Kunming, but for a few incredulous seconds could hardly believe the bombers were really Japs. The bombers jettisoned their bombs, put their noses down for speed, and wheeled back toward Indo-China. By the time Newkirk’s flight recovered and opened fire, the bombers had too big a lead – too big that is for everybody except Ed Rector. The last the other pilots saw of Rector he was still chasing the Japs at full throttle.

  Finally Sandell’s squadron came straggling in. From the whistling of the wind in their open gun barrels and the slow rolls as they buzzed the field, we knew they had been in a fight. They had sighted the Jap formation in full retreat over Iliang about thirty miles southeast of Kunming, scuttling along on top of a solid overcast with Rector still in pursuit.

  As the P-40s dived to attack, everybody went a little crazy with excitement. All the lessons of Toungoo were forgotten. There was no teamwork – only a wild mêlée in which all pilots agreed that only sheer luck kept P-40s from shooting each other. Pilots tried wild 90-degree deflection shots and other crazy tactics in the 130-mile running fight that followed. Fritz Wolf of Shawano, Wisconsin, shot down two bombers and then cursed his armorer because his guns jammed.

  When he landed and inspected the guns, he found they were merely empty. When the P-40s broke off three Jap bombers had gone down in flames and the remainder were smoking in varying degrees. Ed Rector was the only A.V.G. casualty. His long chase left him short of gas, forcing him to crash-land his P-40 in a rice paddy east of Kumming with minor injuries.

  Back at the field most of the pilots were too excited to speak coherently.

  “Well, boys,” I told the excited pilots, “it was a good job but not good enough. Next time get them all.”

  I herded them into the operations shack for an hour before I let them eat lunch. We went over the fight in minute detail pointing out their mistakes and advising them on how to get all the bombers next time. Not until the spring of 1945 did I learn how close Sandell’s flight had come to getting all the Japs in that first fight of the A.V.G.

  Lewis Bishop of De Kalb Junction, New York, an A.V.G. pilot shot down five months after the Iliang battle and taken prisoner in Indo-China, met the Japanese pilot who led the raid. The Jap said his crew had been the sole survivors of the mission. Nine of the ten bombers had failed to return.

  Bishop was a prisoner of the enemy for three years. He finally escaped by jumping from a moving train in North China while being transferred from Shanghai to Manchuria. He reached me in Kunming early in 1945 to write the final footnote to the A.V.G.’s first fight.

  Japanese airmen never again tried to bomb Kunming while the A.V.G. defended it. For many months afterward they sniffed about the edges of the Yunnan warning net and dropped a few bombs near the border but never ventured near Kunming. Our border patrols shot down a half dozen of these half-hearted raiders, and by the spring of 1942 we were on the offensive carrying the war deep into Indo-China with dive-bombing and strafing missions. The Japs waited until sixteen months after their first defeat to launch another mission against Kunming in the spring of 1943, when they knew I was in Washington attending the Trident Conferences of the British-American Combined Chiefs of Staff. Then they brought thirty fighters to protect their bombers.

  Although the A.V.G. was blooded over China, it was the air battles over Rangoon that stamped the hallmark on its fame as the Flying Tigers. The cold statistics for the ten weeks the A.V.G. served at Rangoon show its strength varied between twenty and five serviceable P-40s. This tiny force met a total of a thousand-odd Japanese aircraft over southern Burma and Thailand. In 31 encounters they destroyed 217 enemy planes and probably destroyed 43. Our losses in combat were four pilots killed in the air, one killed while strafing, and one taken prisoner. Sixteen P-40s were destroyed. During the same period the R.A.F., fighting side by side with the A.V.G., destroyed 74 enemy planes, probably destroyed 33, with a loss of 22 Buffaloes and Hurricanes.

  Winston Churchill, then prime minister of the United Kingdom, added his eloquence to these statistics, cabling the Governor of Burma, “The victories of these Americans over the rice paddies of Burma are comparable in character if not in scope with those won by the R.A.F. over the hop fields of Kent in the Battle of Britain.”

  Air Vice Marshal D. F. Stevenson, who replaced Manning in January 1942, noted that while the ratio of British to German planes in the Battle of Britain had been 1 to 4, the ratio of Anglo-American fighters to Japanese planes over Rangoon was 1 to from 4 to 14.

  The Japanese began their aerial assault on Rangoon with a strength of 150 fighters and bombers based on a few fields in southern Thailand. In Burma, the Allies could muster only 16 P-40s of the A.V.G., 20 Buffaloes of the R.A.F., some ancient British Lysanders of the India Air Force, and a few Tiger Moth training planes. As I anticipated, the radar-phone combination of the R.A.F. warning system failed to provide adequate warning. Many times the only warning my pilots received was a hurried phone call, “Bombers overhead,” or the noise and dust of the R.A.F. Buffaloes scrambling for an alert. Numerous A.V.G. interceptions were made only after the enemy finished bombing and was leaving the target due to the inadequate warning. When the R.A.F. indicated that its only attempts to bolster the warning system consisted of providing advanced ground troops with heliographs to flash warning messages, I fought vigorously to withdraw the A.V.G. from what I considered an unnecessarily exposed position. Only the heavy pressure of the Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff and the Generalissimo prevented me from doing so.

  Shortly before the Rangoon battles began, the A.V.G. suffered its final blow from William D. Pawley. The contract between Pawley and the Chinese government provided that I could call on Pawley’s Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company for technical personnel, tools, and materials for repairing damaged P-40s of the A.V.G. At a conference with General Chow, chief of the Chinese Aeronautical Commission, in September it was agreed that all A.V.G. repair work west of the Salween River would be handled by CAMCO’s Loi-Wing plant, located in Yunnan just across the Burma border, while the Chinese Air Force repair shop in Kunming would do all servicing east of the Salween.

  As damaged planes began to pile up during training at Toungoo, I made repeated requests to Pawley for men and materials from his Loi-Wing plant to repair them. A few CAMCO men were sent to Toungoo but it was decided to do only emergency work there and to ship badly damaged planes over the Burma r
ailroad to Lashio and thence by truck to the Loi-Wing factory. A number of P-40s were shipped to Loi-Wing, but after they arrived, little work was done on them.

  CAMCO was engaged in the assembly of Curtiss-Wright Model 21 fighters and some trainers, which Pawley had already sold to the Chinese government. Pawley had that repairing A.V.G. planes interfered with his assembly program. I argued that repair of proven combat planes for experienced pilots rated higher priority than the assembly of trainers and experimental fighters. We also disagreed over the need for an A.V.G. squadron to be stationed at Loi-Wing for the protection of his factory. At that time the possibility of enemy air action against Loi-Wing was too remote to be considered seriously.

  In mid-December Pawley issued an order to his American employees at Loi-Wing, forbidding them to touch an A.V.G. plane, and followed this with a radio to me that, as of January 1, CAMCO would do no more repair work on A.V.G. P-40s. I replied that Pawley’s inability to do this work was regretted, but we would manage without him.

  Loss of the CAMCO repair base was a serious blow to the group since we were already fighting over Rangoon. I took the matter to the Generalissimo in Chungking. He ordered the Chinese manager of CAMCO, Colonel Chen, to continue repairing A.V.G. planes. Chen did an excellent job for us until the plant was burned and abandoned in the face of the Japanese advance into Yunnan. The Chinese government acquired Pawley’s interest in CAM-CO, and he flew off to India where he had already begun construction of another aircraft plant.

  I have always suspected that Pawley, like the Japanese, thoroughly believed the British and American intelligence reports that the A.V.G. would not last three weeks in combat. At any rate on the occasions when he had a chance to provide the A.V.G. with badly needed assistance, Pawley exhibited what I considered a remarkable lack of co-operation. It was only after the A.V.G.’s combat record had made the organization world famous that Pawley made strenuous efforts to have himself identified with it, even to the extent of attempting to secure an honorary membership of the Flying Tigers Incorporated, the only authentic postwar organization of former A.V.G. men, by offering a ten-thousand-dollar contribution to the corporation’s funds. His offer was flatly rejected by the membership, who apparently felt that a few repaired P-40s during the dark days of 1941–42 would have been more valuable to them than a postwar check. After a succession of wartime manufacturing ventures, Pawley embarked on a diplomatic career as ambassador to Peru and Brazil. No doubt he found the Medal for Merit awarded him for “organizing the Flying Tigers” useful in his new work.

  Two days before Christmas the Japanese shot their first aerial bolt against Rangoon with 54 bombers escorted by 20 fighters. The low fighter-bomber ratio indicated that the Japanese were confident and expected little trouble from the Allied air defense. There was no warning at Mingaladon. The Third Squadron was casually ordered to clear the field. While still climbing they were informed by R.A.F. fighter control, “Enemy approaching from the east.”

  The Japanese had finished bombing and were on their way home before the A.V.G. sighted the formation. Jap fighters were diving on the city, strafing the crowds of civilians who jammed the streets to watch the raid. One bomber formation hit Mingaladon Field, and the other laid their eggs along the docks. In the brief fight that followed, the Americans shot down six Japanese planes and lost two of their own pilots – Neil Martin of Texarkana, Arkansas, riddled by a quartet of Jap fighters, and Henry Gilbert of Bremerton, Washington, blown up by the top-turret fire of the bomber formations. The R.A.F. failed to make contact.

  This raid put the torch of panic to Rangoon. Those who were rich enough to do so fled for their lives to India. Native Burmese rioted, looted, and began potting stray Britons. All the native cooks and servants fled from Mingaladon, leaving the A.V.G. without a mess. For two days they lived mainly on stale bread and canned beer, of which there seemed to be an ample stock.

  On a cloudless Christmas day with the temperature at 115 degrees in the sun the Japanese came back to finish off Rangoon. They figured 60 bombers and 30 fighters would be ample for the job. This time 12 P-40s were waiting at altitude and sailed into the Japanese formations as they droned toward the city. “Like rowboats attacking the Spanish Armada,” one observer on the ground described the attack. The R.A.F. put 16 Buffaloes into the fray later.

  “It was like shooting ducks,” Squadron Leader Olson radioed me at Kunming. “We got 15 bombers and 9 fighters. Could put entire Jap force out of commission with whole group here.”

  A.V.G. losses were 2 planes. Both pilots bailed out safely. The R.A.F. got 7 Jap planes and lost 9 Buffaloes and 6 pilots.

  William Pawley happened to be in Rangoon that memorable Christmas and apparently suffered a slight change of heart in his attitude toward the A.V.G. He loaded a truck full of food and drink in Rangoon and drove it to Mingaladon to present the Third Squadron with Christmas dinner. Under the shade of banyan trees around the airport rim, with the smoke of burning Japanese wrecks still rising from the jungles beyond, the Third Squadron squatted to a dinner of ham and chicken liberally lubricated by beer and Scotch. The rest of the group, eight hundred miles to the north on the frosty Kunming plateau, dined on Yunnan duck and rice wine.

  After the Christmas battle, the Third Squadron had only 11 serviceable P-40s left. Olson radioed for help, and I sent the Second Squadron, led by Newkirk, to relieve him. By the first week in January the transfer was completed, and the pattern of the Japanese effort against Rangoon became apparent.

  While they gathered strength for another mass daylight assault, the Japanese sent night bombers to harass Rangoon, slipping in singly all night long to gain maximum nuisance value. A.V.G. efforts to halt them were unsuccessful, but the R.A.F. bagged several. Meanwhile the A.V.G. took the offensive, prowling the enemy fields in Thailand to smash their planes on the ground. Newkirk and “Tex” Hill led many of these early strafing attacks on the Jap airfields.

  While the A.V.G. P-40s fought to keep the port of Rangoon open, our ground crews were working like beavers on the docks loading truck convoys with lend-lease equipment for shipment up the Burma Road to China. It was during this period, with the hot breath of the Japanese blowing on our necks, that the Burma Road first delivered twenty thousand tons a month to China. These supplies, trucked out of Burma before the fall of Rangoon, enabled the A.V.G. to continue operations in China long after every land line of communication with that unhappy land had been severed by the enemy. Every type of A.V.G. nonflying personnel, including our chaplain, Paul Frillman, of Maywood, Illinois, sweated like coolies on the Rangoon docks during those hectic weeks.

  By the last week in January the Japanese were ready for another knockout attempt on Rangoon. From January 23 to 28 six major attacks of up to one hundred planes each rolled over the Burmese port. It was a tribute to the Anglo-American fighter pilots that the Japanese formations had switched to a three-to-one ratio of fighters protecting small bomber formations.

  On January 23 and 24 the Japanese tried to floor the A.V.G. with a series of one-two punches. They led with a fighter sweep designed to get the Allied fighters into the air and use up their fuel. Then a second wave was scheduled to deliver the knockout punch while the A.V.G. and R.A.F. were on the ground refueling. It was a good plan but it didn’t work. A.V.G. ground crews were too fast on refueling and rearming the P-40s and had them ready to fight again before the second wave of Japs appeared. By January 28 the Japs were sending over only large fighter formations, and the score for this offensive stood at 50 Jap planes destroyed against a loss of 2 A.V.G. pilots and 10 R.A.F. pilots killed.

  Newkirk radioed Kunming, “The more hardships, work, and fighting the men have to do the higher our morale goes. Squadron spirit really strong now.”

  However strong the Second Squadron’s spirit, they were down to ten P-40s, so I sent Bob Sandell and his First Squadron to take up the burden at Rangoon. The Japanese ground offensive into Burma had begun to roll during the last weeks in January, and it was
evident that the British had neither the men, equipment, nor leadership to stop it.

  Before I left the United States in the summer of 1941 I asked a few friends in Louisiana to watch the newspapers and send me any clippings about the A.V.G. Now I was being swamped with clippings from stateside newspapers, and my men were astonished to find themselves world famous as the Flying Tigers. The insignia we made famous was by no means original with the A.V.G. Our pilots copied the shark-tooth design on their P-40s’ noses from a colored illustration in the India Illustrated Weekly depicting an R.A.F. squadron in the Libyan desert with shark-nosed P-40s. Even before that the German Air Force painted shark’s teeth on some of its Messerschmitt 210 fighters. With the pointed nose of a liquid-cooled engine it was an apt and fearsome design. How the term Flying Tigers was derived from the shark-nosed P-40s I never will know. At any rate we were somewhat surprised to find ourselves billed under that name. It was not until just before the A.V.G. was disbanded that we had any kind of group insignia. At the request of China Defense Supplies in Washington, Roy Williams of the Walt Disney organization in Hollywood designed our insignia consisting of a winged tiger flying through a large V for victory.

  Although the Flying Tiger victories made ready frontpage copy for an Allied world rocked by a series of shattering defeats, I noticed too much tendency to attribute our success to sheer derring-do or some mystical quality and not enough on the solid facts on which our triumphs were really based.