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The Flying Tigers in Burma (continued)

In those two Christmas-time combats above Rangoon, one of the most significant chapters in the entire air war of the East was written by the AVG's machine guns. There was only a single American squadron, the 3rd AVG, at Mingaladon then; and the RAF's one squadron of Brewster Buffaloes. In these two combats, the first and most crucial, a maximum of 22 American and British planes took on somewhere between 100 and 130 Jap bombers and fighters. They fought against odds of more than five to one, and they seldom fought with odds of less than that at any time during the next three months. This, too, was the first time during this World War that American and British squadrons flew together and fought together in battle. Rangoon was the place where Yankee and British pilots blazed the trail toward complete collaboration of our two great English-speaking air forces and proved what was later established with such extraordinary success over Tunisia, Sicily, and Italy.

On December 23 and 25, 1941 the AVG was able to put a maximum of fourteen planes (only half a squadron) into the air. The Americans shot down thirty-six Jap planes, sixty per cent of them bombers. Against that score they lost five planes and two pilots. The percentage losses were: more than seven Jap planes for each AVG plane lost; approximately 190 Japanese flying personnel killed, against the death of two AVG fliers. This was accomplished by a single American squadron, equipped with outclassed P-40 Tomahawks; by pilots who had never faced an enemy's machine gun before. I do not think it can be described as anything less than a notable achievement, and as a most remarkable tribute to the training and leadership of General Chennault. Some of the men who did this were already saying: "I'd rather fight those yellow bastards than eat."

From then on, the only thing that curbed the AVG was lack of planes and a serious shortage of mechanics and repair men. Day after day the Tomahawks had the hell shot out of them. If these old-type P-40's had not been amazingly sturdy, like the aged Gladiators that the RAF's 80 squadron flew in Greece and Albania, they'd have been washed out very fast. Even so, the AVG could never get more than twelve or fourteen planes in the air at once at Rangoon, and sometimes they were down to eight or ten. By January 4 the shoestring was already that thin. Then the 3rd squadron was called back to Kunming for repairs, and Squadron Leader Jack Newkirk's 2nd squadron replaced it. Later on, the 1st squadron, led by Squadron Leader R. J. Sandell, took its turn. But the first heavy Jap blow was taken by Number 3 under Squadron Leader Arvid E. Olsen, Jr. Once parts of 2nd and 1st squadrons overlapped, but there was never more than one full AVG squadron at Mingaladon from beginning to end. It was Scarsdale Jack Newkirk, tall and keen-faced and dynamic, who led the 2nd AVG boys on their first ground-strafing fields in Thailand. On their first try they bagged eight Jap fighters out of nine. When they went back for more, they ripped up another enemy base. That was the day that Alan Christman brought his plane home with twenty-seven holes in it and one tire shot through. They were deadly serious at their work, these high-spirited Americans from all corners of the U.S.A. It was fun to drop in at their operations tent and listen to their ragging and grouching. The ground-crew boys were a great lot, too. They lived in burning heat and dust and dirt, and they had to dive into slit trenches continually when the raids came. But their tails were always up, and the more wrecked Mingaladon's buildings became, the more the landscape seemed to match their appearance. Here, day after day, we heard authenic Americanese. That was music to the ears of one who had been with allost everybody else's army and had begun to wonder if he would get with Americans.

The ground-crew men and boys constituted the least publicized cog in the AVG machine, but one of the most extraordinary. Characterristically it was Jack Newkirk, a real leader with a sense of fairnesss, who first pointed out to me just how amazing a job the ground crews were doing. "Those boys are doing a wonderful job," Jack said. "We'd be sunk without them. They deserve a story if anyone around here does. Listen, they have guys doing things with a pair of pliers and a screwdriver that would machine shop back home. That's the truth, literally. We've got twenty-four men here doing work that it takes nearly 150 to do at any army airfield in the U.S.A. They could never do it if it weren't for the older enlisted men who joined the AVG. Fellows like Jimmy [Henry] Fox and Micky Mihalka [Mihalko]--you know. Fellows who who are old-time army sergeants or were chief gunners or chief machinist's mates in the navy. Ten out of our twenty-four are men like that. Watch Jimmy Fox. There never was a sweeter line chief on an airfield. And watch some of our crew chiefs. Those guys keep us in the air. I'm telling you."

Newkirk gave me some figures that were astonishing. The one AVG squadron at Mingaladon had only two radiomen, four armorers and twelve mechanics with which to try to keep thirty planes in condition. It simply couldn't be done at the unrelaxed tempo of air battles and damage, but they performed near-miracles for all that. At an army airfield at home, Jack pointed out, a pursuit squadron would have twenty-eight crew chiefs, one for each plane, plus fifty-six mechanics. The AVG had only twelve mechanics, including its line chief; four armorers instead of eighteen; two radiomen instead of ten. Jimmy Fox, of course, did the work of five mechanics in anybody's air force; and the inimitable Micky Mihalka, with some twenty years in the U.S. Navy behind him, was easily equivalent to four or five radiomen. I suppose that one or two ground crews on Guadalcanal may have performed similar prodigies. But certainly the AVG ground crew at Mingaladon did the greatest job of its kind that I have ever witnessed or heard of. If they were mercenaries they had long since forgotten it. In any case they earned five or ten times any amount they were paid. And like all the AVG men, at that crucial moment when these American fliers and ground crews were providing the only victorious news in the entire Pacific war, what they were worth to the Allied cause could not be computed in dollars and cents. They had saved the name of American aviators throughout the entire East; and for many weeks, with a little band of British Buffalo boys contributing all that their planes would let them, they alone saved Rangoon.

One day twenty-five Jap fighters strafed the field at Mingaladon. AVG mechanics were working on a shot-up P-40 that was badly needed. They dove into their trenches, then leapt back to their jobs the moment the last Zero had passed. They put the plane back into commission while the battle was being fought out over their heads. Things like this happened many times. The ground-crew boys simply took it as part of their job. They were the same boys who had bellyached so foolishly about food and almost everything else when they first reached Burma. Could it, by any chance, be that most Americans had need of hard living and dangerous days to discover the stuff that was in them?

On January 23 and 34 the AVG had two more big days above Rangoon. Led by Squadron Leader Sandy Sandell, one of the very few absolutely superlative fighter pilots I have known, the Americans shot down a confirmed total of thirty-seven Jap planes against a loss of four of their own P-40'S and one pilot killed. He was the 1st squadron's Flight Leader Louis Hoffman of San Diego, a brave man. Probably he was killed because of his thirty-two years. For fighting combat that is much too old. The reflexes can rarely stand the pace. But this score of thirty-seven Japs against four planes and one pilot was truly remarkable. Again the Japs had paid an excessive price. This time it was so excessive they never tried another full-scale daylight assault on Mingaladon until Pegu was falling and Rangoon was doomed. Nevertheless, in any war a price must be paid on both sides, and although they were comparatively few as yet, we felt this price in the gaps which gradually grew in the roll of the AVG.

I think that no loss was so great and irreplaceable as that of Sandy Sandell. Sandy was a born flier; a potential peer of Pat Pattle ... who was the RAF's highest-scoring ace when he was shot down over Athens in the last air fight of the Greek war. Sandy reminded me of Pat, that South African flier among fliers and gentleman among gentlemen; the same knife-edged mind, the same quietness, and the same sureness. That was why I liked him so much from the first. The greatest flier I have ever known, and one of the finest men, was Pat PattIe. Sandy had many of his flying and fighting qualities and also his essential shyness. The way it happened was as if it had been in the cards all along.

There was another dogfight and the score was all our way. Sandy got two Japs before he was forced back to Mingaladon out of ammunition. A Jap chased him home and swooped on the field just after Sandy stepped out of his plane. There were no other Japs anywhere around. This one, for some reason of fury or suicidal madness, let go with his machine guns at some ground-crew men and then swerved around and dove straight at Sandy's P-40. He plunged his plane straight into the ground and demolished the tail of the Tomahawk. We had our pictures taken with Sandy beside the wreckage a few minutes later. Well, the Jap was crazy, we thought. He didn't get much for wiping himself out.

Ten days later George Burgard of the 1st Pursuit came over to the club before breakfast.

"Sandy's gone," said George in a voice that told everything.

"My God, no. It's impossible. Not Sandy!"

"Yes, Sandy. He had the new tail assembly on his plane. Took it up to test it out an hour and a half ago. He was doing a few rolls only a thousand feet up. The controls must have jammed, or something went wrong with the tail section. We saw him go into a spin. He went straight in. Couldn't get out of it. What a wonderful fellow! . . . Those stinking sons of bitches. We'll smear them for this. . . ."

So the Jap madman had much more than evened the score by his suicide dive. His revenge came ten days later, but it came.

continued in part 4