Jack Newkirk: shot down?

By Bob Bergin

       After reading the comments on Jack Newkirk’s crash at Lamphun, I thought I would add my input. I was in Lamphun with the AVG members when the Flying Tiger Association visited there in November 1994. I was involved in organizing the AVG visit, and also with the search for Thai witnesses to the Newkirk crash. 

       Exactly what happened to Jack Newkirk at Lamphun will never be known, but interviews with witnesses in 1994 left an impression that Newkirk’s aircraft may have been struck by antiaircraft fire, and that he crashed while trying to set his crippled airplane down in a field.    

       The 1994 AVG visit to North Thailand was in part to see the wreckage of  “Black Mac” McGarry’s P-40 that had been hit by ground fire during the AVG raid on Chiang Mai airbase on 24 March 1942.  Six AVG P-40’s hit Chiang Mai that day, while four others, led by Jack Newkirk, flew south to look for Japanese aircraft at Lampang. The town of Lamphun, where Newkirk crashed, is south of Chiang Mai on the way to Lampang.  McGarry’s P-40 was pulled from the Thai jungle in 1991. When its discovery was publicized, an unsigned note left with the gate guard at the Chiang Mai airbase indicated that there was at least one witness to the Newkirk crash still alive. A search for the witnesses was started.    

       The following paragraphs are from my article on Jack Newkirk, “Flying Tiger, Burning Bright” as it appeared in the July 2008 issue of “Aviation History”.     

       By 1994, when the former AVG pilots visited, five Thai witnesses to his crash had been found and interviewed.  Two had been students at the Buddhist temple that stood at the site of the crash, and the other three were the children of local farmers.  All told a similar story. They saw the aircraft as it approached and crashed.  No one recalled seeing more than one plane, nor did they see any armored vehicles on the road that morning, although they said there could have been. 

       The plane they saw came from the southeast, and seemed to be following the railroad tracks from Lampang.  The Kuang River flows along Lamphun’s eastern edge, between the tracks and the town. The railroad stays on the far side of the river until it reaches the northern end of Lamphun, where it crosses a bridge and turns north toward Chiang Mai.  In early 1942, anti-aircraft guns were positioned on a riverbank at the crossing.  Those guns were manned on March 24, and it seems likely the gun crew had been alerted that enemy aircraft were nearby. 

       As the aircraft approached Lamphun from the southeast, it stayed east of the railroad and the river, flying low.  When it reached the railroad bridge, the anti-aircraft guns opened fire, and the plane started a wide turn that took it first to the west, then back to the south.  It was still turning when it reached the southern edge of the town, headed east and recrossed the Kuang River.  At that point, the aircraft fired its guns and struck a man in an oxcart, killing both driver and ox.

       The plane headed toward a field just east of the river, where in 1942 a Buddhist temple stood.  The aircraft was very low as it approached from the south, and one of its wings struck a large tree growing near the temple, sending the plane crashing into the field.  Torn from the fuselage by the impact, the engine was hurled almost up to the railroad embankment, far beyond where the rest of the aircraft came to rest.

       Locals found the pilot’s body near the plane, wearing a partially opened parachute. He had been thrown from the cockpit and appeared to have been killed instantly. Some witnesses thought he might have been trying to bail out, but others believed the chute had likely been torn from its pack when the aircraft struck the tree.

        Not included in the article, but worth mentioning here is that there was nothing the witnesses said - and nothing in the pilot combat reports of that day – to indicate that Newkirk or any of the other three pilots in his flight fired on the antiaircraft guns by the bridge – or were even aware that the guns were there.  According to the witnesses, the antiaircraft guns opened fire on Newkirk’s aircraft when it reached that area.   

       By witness accounts, Newkirk’s aircraft was already flying low when it first came into sight, well before it reached the railroad bridge. When the plane was fired on by the antiaircraft guns at the bridge, it started a turn that took it across the town and then back across the river again. It was there that the aircraft fired its guns [at] an oxcart.  In 1994, in the presence of the AVG members, one of the witnesses asked why the aircraft had fired on the oxcart. AVG pilot Robert Keeton, who had been part of Newkirk’s flight, tried to explain:  From the air and moving at high speed, it was sometimes difficult to identify what one saw. Newkirk probably did not know he had fired on an oxcart. The other three pilots in his flight thought they had seen armored vehicles.  Keeton identified what he saw as a weapons carrier. Henry M. Geselbracht, Newkirk’s wingman, wrote in his combat report: “The two vehicles we fired at, I believe, were armored cars.  They were camouflage brown and squarish in appearance.  I believe at least one was destroyed.”  That was probably what Newkirk thought he saw.  He would have had no reason to fire on an oxcart. 

        According to the witnesses, at the point Newkirk fired on the oxcart, his aircraft was heading toward a field in front of a small temple. The sense one had from the 1994 witness accounts, was that Newkirk was heading for a place where he could set his airplane down.  In discussions afterwards, AVG pilots at the event - including Keeton, Ed Rector and Charlie Bond, who had been on the Chiang Mai raid – thought it most likely that Newkirk’s aircraft had been hit by ground fire at the bridge, and that he was trying to crash land in the field when his wing hit the tree.

        So what did happen to Jack Newkirk, did he inadvertently hit a tree while flying too low?  At this point who can say, and I don’t think it’s fair to make that judgment now. The pilots with Newkirk on that day 1n 1942 believed he had been struck by groundfire, which caused his crash.  All three believe it came from one or two armored vehicles, and none of the three was aware that there were antiaircraft guns at the railroad bridge that the witnesses said fired on Newkirk as he approached, flying low.  Frank Lawlor, who led the second of the two elements in Newkirk’s flight, wrote in his combat report: “Immediately after leaving the area of the barracks (at one of three Lamphun-area airports, which the Tigers srafed) Squadron Leader Newkirk headed back up the road to Chiang Mai.  He went into a dive to strafe what appeared to be an armored car and I saw his plane crash and burn.  Since by this time visibility had improved considerably and there appeared to be no unusual circumstances, it was evident that Newkirk had been hit by enemy fire, possibly from the armored car.”

• The view from the ground (Jack Eisner)
• Photo-map of the crash site