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The Flying Tigers in Burma (continued)

A great many wild figures about the number of planes shot down by the AVG have been published. Undoubtedly a few of the least prominent and least combative of the Flying Tigers contributed to this. In any war zone it's naturally difficult to maintain an absolutely accurate score, especially where air battles are over jungles and open sea. Another confusing factor was Chungking's weakness for propaganda headlines, a fact which has long been known by all correspondents and diplomats in the East. Here is a typical example of how this works out.

As director of the organization (Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company) which had to payout $500 per Jap plane destroyed, Bill Pawley had enlisted RAF officers and one or two others to keep the most accurate account possible of the AVG score in Burma. This score certainly leaned to the conservative side, but it was valuable as the official minimum count. Also the RAF totals served as the basis on which the fliers' bonuses were paid. The RAF's list credited "Buster" Keaton [Keeton], a former football fullback from Colorado Springs, with shooting down the AVG's hundredth plane in Burma on February 3. Most of us were convinced the actual count was at least twenty more than that, but for five weeks even one hundred planes made a fine record. Two weeks Defore the RAF recognized the Mingaladon boys' bag as at the century mark, however, Chungking announced "that AVG operations against the Japanese air force since the outbreak of the Pacific war have accounted for 108 Jap planes in China." The catch in this Chinese press release lay in the words "in China." At least ninety per cent of AVG combats during this period had been in Burma, nowhere near Kunming. AVG pilots at Mingaladon had been fighting ten or twelve air battles to one fought by AVG units at Kunming, which was then a quiet sector where the Japs scarcely ever attacked. When the boys at Mingaladon read the Chungking story about 108 Jap planes downed "in China," they laughed out loud. They knew it was simply impossible; that an accurate Kunming count was certainly no more than one fourth of that figure, if that. But of course Chungking had beaten Rangoon to the world headlines with a round and impressive figure....

In any case, it was perfectly clear at that time that the real record of the AVG was being hung up in Burma, and that Burma was the place where these fliers could best serve the interests of China. I talked wIth the pIlots after every air battle in Rangoon and was in constant contact with RAF officers. I do not think that any score card, under the circumstances, could be strictly accurate. Nevertheless I checked as closely as possible and I'm confident that my unofficial score for the first six weeks of AVG fighting near Mingaladon is sufficiently reliable to be worth recording. Between December 23, 1941 and February 7, 1942 the AVG shot down approximately 130 Jap planes, of which at least half were bombers which averaged crews of eight men. In this same period the Americans lost 25 planes, six pilots killed in action, and one taken prisoner.

This meant that the Japs lost better than five planes for every every P-40 they shot down. In these six weeks the Japanese personnel loss in air crews amounted to nearly 585 against a loss of 7 for the single AVG squadron which opposed them, usually with ten or twelve planes. By March 12, when I left Burma, I know the AVG's score had passed the 200 mark and the Japs' loss of personnel had reached approximately 850. At that time, incredible as it may seem, the Americans had lost only seven pilots killed in do this action, two who died in accidents, and three who were prisoners or missing. I believe this is one of the most extraordinary records made anywhere in the global war by any fighter-plane unit of such small size. It is one of the truly great aerial combat records of the entire war. The AVG's score would unquestionably have been larger still if many Jap planes had not fallen into deep jungles or the sea where their destruction could not be conarmed firmed.

How did the A VG do it?

First and by all means most important, they did it on the specific instructions of General Claire Chennault. Pilots of the he pub- American Volunteer Group were the only Allied pilots, anywhere from Hawaii to Kunming, who were trained long and carefully in Japanese combat tactics and how they could defeat the Jap Zero plane. They were the only American or British pursuit-ship squadrons--and they were only three--who were instructed by a brilliant aviation commander who had actually studied Japanese air tactics at close hand for nearly four years. General Chennault had had three precious months in which to drill methods and warnings into their heads. Beyond that, and never to be overlooked or underestimated, they had had the full benefit of Chennault's brain--and it is a great strategic brain. All through the air battles of Burma the AVG had nothing but the first and oldest model P-40, the Tomahawk. They did not receive a single Kittyhawk, which is a much better plane, until their last Burma airfield was lost. But Chennault had shown them exactly how the old Tomahawk could be used to outsmart the Japs' Zero, and from the first combat they flew and fought as he had taught them to do.

"Get in and get out fast! Hit them and run! Never stay in and fight with a Zero. He can turn in on you, outmaneuver you every time. But you've got more fire power than he has. The Zero can outclimb you, but you can dive faster than he can and stick with him on the level. Give him all the fire power you can, then get out and come back on your own terms."

The whole tactic was punch, speed, and fluidity--and it worked like a charm. But pilots must know the things they shouldn't do, right from the start. Thanks to Chennault, the AVG boys knew that, and that, more than anything else, I suspect, explained why the old American Tomahawks made a much better showing in Burma than the British Hurricanes which came in toward the end. The RAF pilots hadn't had General Chennault's training and they had no officers with sufficient knowledge of Japanese aerial tactics to give it to them. Nor, as far as I know--and the record seems to substantiate it--had any other American fliers at that stage of the war. At any rate the AVG men who fought the battles and took the risks, and thrilled every American and Britisher who knew what they were up against, gave complete credit to their shrewd and trigger-minded chief, Chennault. "It's the old man," the AVG boys would say. "Everything works out exactly like he said it would. The colonel--say, he's a wonder." The one thing they regretted was that Chennault, their leader and their idol, couldn't be with them during the air battles of Mingaladon. But because he was commander and AVG headquarters were in Kunming, and also because his presence close to the Chinese authorities was absolutely essential, Chennault had to remain up in Yunnan--and his boys had to meet their test completely on their own. That was another remarkable feature of the A VG record. They took orders for strafing missions from the RAF command. Otherwise their squadron leader had to carry the entire responsibility alone. He had to handle administration and ground crews, problems of morale and everything else, yet fly and fight at the same time. In this respect the performances of Sandell, Newkirk, and Neale were especially notable; the more so because these three placed themselves among the best of the AVG's aces despite their heavy additional responsibilities.

The last air battles over Rangoon occurred on the last days of February and at the beginning of March. Pegu was falling. Rangoon was doomed. The Japs struck in full fury. In their final two battles before evacuating Mingaladon the AVG's 1st squadron (the boys who had as the emblem on their planes an apple with a snake coiled around it and inside Eve chasing Adam, as a symbol of The First Pursuit) shot down more than forty Japs. But the enemy caught ten Blenheims on the ground the second day and destroyed them. The airfield was almost unusable. Ed Lussier, a radio operator from Plymouth, Massachusetts, described those battles as something terrific.

"Bob Neale was up all night between those fights," Lussier said. "That last fight Snuffy [Robert H.] Smith got three and in two days Bob shot down six or seven. You should have seen Bob when he came in. His windshield and his instrument board were shot to hell. He had seventeen bullets through the tail of his P-40. Both is tires were flat--and he landed the damned thing safely. God knows how he did it. He's a wild man in the air, Bob is."

And Bob was the fellow who had once asked me if war corspondents got bonuses. Bob could ask me any questions he wanted from now on.

"The RAF had twelve Hurricanes up the first day," Snuffy Smith told me later. "They had ten Hurries up the second. They got six Japs Thursday and two on Friday, and lost one each day themselves. We never had more than eight P-40's up at one time those last two days, but our final score was twenty-three and twenty. We really raised hell with them--and didn't lose a man."

That, in large measure, seemed to be the difference between having been trained by General Chennault to fight Jap Zeros, and never having been trained to fight Zeros....