Baa Baa Black Sheep (7 page)

So some of us had to just listen while we heard Sandell, over the radio in operations, making contact with the enemy. No doubts, they were pouring it to some twenty unescorted Japanese bombers, judging from the high-pitched and excited conversations. No Nip fighters had accompanied their bombers, or we would have heard.

The action lasted for an eternity, it felt, before Sandell called for a return to base. Sandy realized that they could chase the remaining bombers no farther and still have enough fuel for the return trip.

How eagerly I listened to the accounts of this first AVG action. How two of these bombers had burned in the air. How one of the twin engines of a bomber had torn out of its mounting, leaving the wing to disintegrate before their eyes. How one pilot was close enough to see the limp form of a tail gunner slumped over his gun.

Micky Mickelson’s eyes were like saucers as he told of the horror of the terrific blast that rocked his P-40 when he followed an injured bomber to the terrain below. Jim Cross returned with a P-40 full of bullet holes. And this pattern
seemed to follow Jim, and his plane always seemed to collect bullets, apparently motivated only by to-whom-it-may-concern. “Cokey” Hoffman, former aviation pilot in the Navy, the most ancient of all active pilots by far, was asked why he had persisted in making passes, after he had informed us upon returning that his guns were jammed.

Spitfire

Cokey said: “I figured I’d better keep scarin’ ’em to draw fire from them who could shoot.”

About this time we were receiving the radio broadcasts of Nippon progress, spreading like a cancer beyond control. I had received one lone letter from home before the action started, then there was no more mail for anyone.

The Philippines, Wake Island, Hong Kong, as well as
other places, were on the broadcasts. Important, yes, but too far away to be realistic.

Close by, but definitely. The Malay Peninsula and Singapore, which we had just left, were what concerned us most. The Brewster fighters had been wiped out at Singapore. The famous Spitfire was no competition for the Japanese Zero. Even the Spitfire had been shot full of holes in trying to turn in dogfights with the Japanese fighters. What a grim picture.

The English at Rangoon radioed for Chennault’s AVG, ruffians or not. There was much bickering going on. But the windup was that Chennault, through kindheartedness or pressure, sent one of his squadrons, the Third Pursuit, to help reinforce the RAF’s Brewsters at Rangoon.

The Third Pursuit, Hell’s Angels, was commanded by a former Air Corps lieutenant, Orvid Olsen. And I’ll always remember Olsen best for his remark that came later, upon his return from Rangoon. The remark had been prompted by Madame Chiang at one of the banquets we had in the royal couple’s honor in Kunming.

One of the things that Madame Chiang, a brilliant speaker, had elaborated upon was the Chinese expression of “losing face.” Later, when the pilots were referring to some action, they would twist this around and say: “I figured it was about time to get to hell away, because I’d much prefer losing face to losing ass.”

Anyway, Olsen had just flown into Kunming from Rangoon by himself, and had told about spotting twenty-odd Zeros near Lashio, Burma, on his way back. We had inquired: “Did you fire at any? Did the Zeros fire at you? What happened to you? You didn’t get hit.”

Olsen had thrown up his hands and said: “Pa—lease, wait one minute, fellows, let me explain. Madame Chiang’s immortal words seemed to run though my mind about the time I saw them. Remember? She said: ‘One AVG member has proven he is equal to ten Japanese.’ Well, I didn’t want to make a liar out of the Madame. But if there had been
less
than eleven—I would have felt
free
to attack them.”

Olsen’s Hell’s Angels were in Rangoon on Christmas Day, 1941. The Japanese didn’t observe Christmas as a holiday. Or maybe they just wanted to be nasty. In any event, the Japs chose this day to plaster Rangoon.

Again we got radio reports, reports involving our group
personally this time. Things had begun to happen fast. The self-sufficient high command at Rangoon had changed its tune completely now, for it was calling Chennault for more aid, even before the last of the planes had crashed on that first attack on Christmas Day.

Then Olsen’s report was radioed: “Two AVG pilots killed. Rangoon bombed. Able to stave off concentrated attack. Only two Brewsters left. Most of RAF destroyed on ground. Disregarded RAF orders and took all airworthy P-40s off on first alert. This is only reason AVG was spared …”

If my memory serves me correctly, the Hell’s Angels knocked down twenty-six Japanese planes out of some one hundred twenty that had come over. Duke Hedman, a quiet, unassuming young man, was the first American in World War II to become an ace (five planes downed).

Report after report came through until, in the first week in January, Chennault decided he had better augment Hell’s Angels with his Second Pursuit, Jack Newkirk’s Panda Bears. How I envied the Panda Bears as they too left to join the battle at Rangoon, or take on where the Hell’s Angels had left off.

Newkirk’s Panda Bears did exactly that, as most of the Japanese bombers were not able to get any closer than the outskirts of Rangoon at that time.

In the meantime our Adam and Evers might just as well have been back in the United States blowing bubbles in the bathtub, for nothing came over Kunming or even near it. Damn it to hell. Stuck here. Our First Pursuit seemed to be worse than second-best, maybe third-best.

Many of the Hell’s Angels were back by this time, telling us of the scares, the thrills, and their victories. And while we were listening to these boys, we got all the glowing reports from Jack Newkirk to top it off.

But these feelings didn’t last for long. Two weeks, perhaps, at the outside. Then Sandell was called to send our old Adam and Eve pilot to help Newkirk. What a moment! I couldn’t seem to swallow, now that the time was here. A hard lump stuck in my throat, lasting until the following morning, until after I started my P-40 rolling down the dirt runway.

Rangoon-bound at last. It exhilarated me. My poise had returned once again, and the hard lump that had been lodged in my throat was gone. Perhaps the relief I possessed when flying came from feeling inadequate while on the ground. I don’t know.

Our First Pursuit had been divided into two groups of ten, because our P-40s would be low on gas when we arrived at Rangoon, and we weren’t putting all our eggs in one basket. Our two groups were paced twenty minutes apart, for we had planned to have the last off to arrive on the button at dusk. Getting the other half of our squadron there fell upon my back, as Sandell was miles ahead out of sight. Thought of seeing the ground crew, and the few of the staff who had waved farewell as we had taken off, came through my mind. On most of them I had interpreted this wave to mean: “I hope you get back alive.” I assumed that a few were thinking: “I hope you never get back.” But to hell with them. To hell with them all.

However, my only purpose, after delaying twenty minutes, was to get the other half of the squadron to Rangoon. I was fully aware that I had to plan to the minute my navigation and the amount of time refueling in Lashio, in order to arrive at Rangoon just before dusk. Not after dusk. In the lower latitudes there is no such thing as twilight. As the sun sets, you get the impression that someone has suddenly put a bucket over it.

One factor is definitely in the favor of inexperienced navigators out there, same as on the east coast of the United States, where I had done most of my flying. The magnetic-compass variation is zero degrees, thank God. Anyway, we eased up on Mingaladon Field, Rangoon, just before dusk, February 2, 1942.

After landing we refueled and dispersed our aircraft as usual. It was too dark after landing to do much sight-seeing about the field; until retiring we spent most of the night in the RAF officers’ mess, there on the field. We drank with them, RAF and AVG alike. We coaxed all the information we could out of the pilots who had seen action, anything pertaining to the performances of Japanese aircraft we would be up against. As we talked and drank, this information became all the more important, for the ceilings and walls around us in this mess bore mute evidence that this was no game. The Nips were playing for keeps. Although this mess had been spared by the bombs, it was perforated by machine-gun fire. One even had to watch his elbows upon the bar, or he was apt to pick up splinters.

When I inquired as to how the alerts were announced, some AVG pilot facetiously said: “Long before the RAF gets around to announcing the alert, you will see two Brewsters take off in a westerly direction, regardless of the wind sock. That’s the signal.”

The Japanese were flying in from the east. And deep down in my heart I couldn’t blame the two English pilots of the Brewsters that remained, considering that this craft had already proved its inadequacy. The Brewster fighter was a United States product that had been lend-leased to England, and it turned out to be a perfect dud in combat. It is not unusual for one aircraft to perform better than design while another is unsuccessful. This happens all the time.

Furthermore, I even felt more sympathetic later when I found out that a Brewster squadron of my old Marine Corps buddies at Midway had only one survivor out of an entire squadron. And but for the grace of God I could have been in that squadron and not here. This lone survivor was my old friend Slim Erwin. And he had said: “The Japs had diddled my Brewster with so many bursts they gave me up for dead, or I’d never gotten back either.”

Another AVG pilot, apparently feeling no pain from good scotch, added: “The Japs can outturn you. But no one, no one, can follow a P-40 when it dives.”

This statement turned out to be very true, for it was not until the Messerschmit 109E came along that a P-40 pilot couldn’t dive away when he so chose. The slow-climbing P-40 used this evasive maneuver until an ME-109E pilot sportingly
displayed what his new plane could do, in North Africa when they first came out with the 109. As the firsthand story was told to me, the South African pilot had dived out, pointing his P-40 straight down, but, much to his amazement, an ME-109E German pilot slowly passed him in his dive, rolling back his hood, and holding up the first two fingers of his left hand in a “V” for victory.

Again, here was big Gunverdal, with a smile on his lovable face, which had all the appearance of a hog looking at a slop trough. And Gunny said something I’ll never forget: “I didn’t believe it would be humanly possible to get all two hundred twenty pounds of me under one of these tin helmets. But by God, I did, when the Japs bombed the field Christmas.”

I learned later that Gunverdal had acquired a position as a test pilot after he left the AVG, and was killed while testing a new airplane back in the States.

After drinking all the scotch I dared I was shown to the RAF barracks, where I was to sleep for the next few nights. Surely, if the mess looked like no man’s land, the barracks were worse. In addition to the machine-gun ventilation an unexploded bomb had gone through the roof, down through the two-story wooden building, and finally come to rest in the earth beneath the ground floor. We slept there even though a sign said: “BEWARE UNEXPLODED BOMB.”

There were many roped-off areas. I discovered the following day, in which the RAF demolition crew hadn’t had time to disarm the bombs as yet. Skeletons of burned aircraft were strewn about Mingaladon Field in a haphazard manner. Former hangars were blackened heaps about the field.

The AVG had attempted upon several occasions to track down Japanese bombers at night, afterward avoiding night flying altogether. One of these nights several pilots were sitting in the front seat of an automobile waiting for a P-40 to land, after one attempt. Another pilot had dozed off in the back seat of the same car. One of the pilots realizing in the nick of time that the P-40 making a landing was off the runway, had screamed: “Get the hell out, quick.” And later, as these pilots were dusting off their clothes, they were laughing and complimenting one another upon their narrow escape, because the propeller of the P-40 had chewed the car to pieces when it crashed into it.

A few minutes later these same pilots checked with an
RAF cleanup crew to determine if the car they had recently jumped out of had been removed from beside the strip. And to their amazement the Englishman in charge had answered: “Sir, we are attending to that. But what shall we do with the body in the car?”

The name of the pilot who was dozing off on the back seat seems to have slipped my memory.

The first few days at Rangoon passed by without too much consequence. The formality of getting our RAF passes with the usual photographs and fingerprints, took us to the guardhouse at the gates of Mingaladon Field. There we saw a native lying grotesquely in death, because he had become confused or had misunderstood one of the sentries at the gate. Tensions were running high around here.

Then one morning around ten o’clock, after a relatively peaceful three days, I saw the two Brewsters take off to the west. A few minutes later came “scramble,” an unidentified “bogey” had been picked up upon RAF control radar.