IE SHIMA, RYUKYU RETTO, JAPAN Headquarters,
348th Fighter Group
APO -245, c/o Postmaster
San Francisco, California
August 1945
Dear Fellow “Minute Men”:
Now that the war has ended and most of us are looking
forward either to an early return to the States or to a new way of living as
part of the Army of Occupation, it seems a good time to look back and review
the achievements of the 348th Group.
We have written a short summary of the Group’s
accomplishments, in order that the members may have some record of the
successes they have helped to gain. The best thing about this summary is its
inadequacy; it touches only the high points of a story that could fill
volumes.
It is, even in its bare outline, a history of which every
member of the Group can be proud, because every man contributed to
accomplish it. We hope everyone of you will feel that it is, in a very
personal sense, your story.
WILLIAM M. BANKS
Lt. Colonel, Air Corps
Commanding
The 348th Fighter Group was formed October 1,
1942. The group was one of the first to be equipped with the P-47
Thunderbolt and under the command of Colonel Neel E. Kearby, received
intensive training at Westover Field, Springfield, Mass., and Green Field,
Providence, R.I. In May of 1943 the outfit left the States for the Southwest
Pacific, and in July it was flying combat missions from Port Moresby.
The, arrival of the 348th as the first P-47
outfit in the SWPA coincided with the opening of the Allied offensive in
New Guinea. During the summer of 1943 the P-47’s missions were chiefly as
cover for bombers in the Lae-Salamaua area, and for transports carrying
supplies to the new mountain-locked airstrip at Tsili Tsili, only a few miles
from the Jap-held Markham Valley. The group met its first air combat over
Tsili Tsili on 16 August 43, when two squadrons tangled with the fighter cover
of an enemy bomber formation, and shot down three Nips.
In September the 348th’s planes provided cover
for the paratroop landing at Nadzab in the Markham valley, and with the
capture of Nadzab and Lae the group entered into one of the most
spectacular phases of its overseas career, in a series of fighter sweeps,
generally by flights of four planes, over the Nip stronghold of Wewak.
Colonel Neel Kearby first planned and instituted the sweeps, and won fame
when, leading one of the first four-plane missions, he attacked a formation of
more than 40 Japanese planes, shooting down six enemy fighters while the rest
of his flight shot down three more. For this achievement Colonel Kearby
received the Medal of Honor.
Although the 348th’s Wewak sweeps won notice
in the U.S. press and in Australia where the P-47’ s became known as
“the Wewak Scourges”, perhaps the most heart-felt tribute was in a
captured article by a high-ranking Japanese officer. Entitling his study
“Battle Lessons Learned”, he explained the demoralization and losses that
resulted at Wewak from the frequent presence high over the airfields of
“pilots of superior skill in P-47’ s”.
In December of ‘43 the group moved to Finchhaven, and in
the following month, covering the U.S. landings at Arawe, Cape
Gloucester, and Saidor, its pilot, shot down 100 Japanese planes without the
loss of a single pilot in aerial combat. The group received a Distinguished
Unit Citation for it’s work during this period. From Finchhaven the
group flew its first fighter bomber missions. In the early spring of
1944, while the group was at Saidor, fighter-bomber work began in earnest with
attacks on the Jap concentrations in the Hansa Bay region just ahead of the
advancing Australian troops.
With the U.S. landing in Dutch New Guinea the 348th
advanced to tiny Wakde Island, whence its planes covered the landing on
Biak lsland, and flew bombing and strafing missions in support of U.S. forces
at Sarmi on the New Guinea mainland only a few miles from Wakde. At this time
the group’s score for air combat stood, 231 enemy plones definitely
destroyed; our losses, one pilot shot down; four missing in action.
Next moving to Noemfoor Island, the group bombed enemy
airfields over a wide area from the Halmaheras to Ceram to the Kai
Islands. Then, after 18 months in New Guinea the 348th boarded ship
and plane for the Philippines. One squadron, the 460th, arrived
several weeks before the other three, and proceeded to roll up and imposing
score of enemy planes, shipping, and personnel destroyed. During a three-week
period it sunk 50,000 tons of enemy shipping, which was slightly more than
one-tenth of all the shipping sunk by the entire Fifth Air Force during the
year 1944. On one mission seven planes of the 460th squadron wiped
out a convoy loaded with an estimated 10,000 enemy troops enroute to reinforce
the Jap army on Leyte. The squadron’s planes were the first of the Army Air
Force to fly over Manila after the Jap capture of the Phillppines. A flight
led by Colonel Dunham, the squadron C.O. and the group’s leading ace, made
the first return flight on 17 November 1944.
The group’s greatest day, in point of total of enemy
planes destroyed, was December 14, 1944, when in protection of the
invasion fleet heading to Mindoro, 5 planes were shot down, an estimated 75
were destroyed and 20 more damaged, on the airfields of Negros Island only a
few minutes flight from our invasion force, which landed on Mindoro the
following morning.
In aerial combat the 348th’s best day came on
December 24 when its planes escorting B-24’s in one of the first heavy
bomber strikes on Clark field, met an attempted interception by an estimated
100 Japanese fighters. Thirty-two of the Nips were definitely destroyed, 7
probably destroyed, the remainder were driven off, and the bombers
proceeded undamaged to carry out their mission.
Early in December, while the group’s planes were
operating from Tacloban strip, the majority of our personnel were camped
inland near Bureaun when the Japs landed several hundred paratroops on an
uncompleted airstrip less than a quarter of a mile from the groups’ camp,
cutting the only road leading from the camp. For several days the camp was
isolated between the paratroops on the east and Jap patrols on the west. Two
men on one guard post were surprised and killed by an enemy patrol, but the
camp defense prevented any breakthrough and the paratroops were finally wiped
out by infantry and tanks.
When u.s. troops landed on Luzon, the 348th, now
in process of conversion from P-47’s to P-51 Mustangs, began operation
from San Marcelino airstrip a few days after the landing at San Mercelino and
Subic Bay. From this location the unit entered upon what many of its members
consider its most outstanding work of the war, bombing and strafing in
close support of group troops. This work lacks the excitement and glamour of
aerial combat, or even of bombing and and strafing of seen targets. Bombs and
bullets are poured into areas where the enemy is reported to be, and day after
day the mission reports repeat “Results unobserved due to foliage”. Only
rarely are advancing ground troops able to tell what part of the damage found
was done by a particular air strike.
At the time the 348th began ground support
operations from San Marcelino, the infantry had taken Subic Bay and
Olongapo and had started East with the objective of sealing off Bataan so that
the Japanese, retreating southward from Lingayen, could not use the Bataan
Peninsula’s defensive strength as did the US forces in 1942. However, a few
miles East of Olongapo stubborn Jap resistance suddenly had been met in Zigzag
Pass, where the road climbed in a series of hairpin turns overlooked by the
enemy’s positions. Our ground forces had suffered some casualties, had dug
in, and in four days had been unable to make any appreciable gain.
On Leyte the 348th had done experimental bombing
with a new and highly effective firebomb, and it was proposed that it be
used to break the deadlock in Zigzag Pass. However, the infantry division
occupying the west end of the pass was uncertain about the use of the bomb in
close support of their troops, for fear of inaccurate bombing So a Jap
supply area, well back of their front line, was bombed as a demonstration
of accuracy, and was left neatly blanketed with flame There was no further
lack of confidence; the infantry proceeded to direct our pilots bombing
and strafing just ahead of their front line, and for seven days advanced
steadily until their mission of sealing off the Bataan peninsula had been
accomplished.
Occasionally the curtain of “unobserved results” would
lift. One strike, directed by Filipino guerillas who set off smoke pots
to mark an enemy bivouac area, was later found to have caused 700 Jap
casualties. After another strike west of Fort Stotsenburg, ground troops were
able to move in quickly and found 574 Japs, all killed by the single air
attack. Neither of those missions involved more than 32 sorties, at a time
when the group frequently flew 200 sorties and 30 missions a day It would be
impossible to estimate how many other thousands of enemy dead are covered with
the phrase “results unobserved”.
During the month of April ‘45, the 348th met a
record for tonnage of bombs dropped on the enemy, with a total of 2091.5
tons Total ammunition expended was just under two million rounds So far as is
known, this bomb tonnage is the greatest ever dropped in one month by any
group, either fighter or bomber, and the accuracy of the bombing attested
repeatedly by reports from ground observers Most of the record tonnage was
dropped in the IPO DAM area northeast of Manila, and helped pave the way for
the infantry’s capture of that vital control-point of Manila’s water
supply. From San Marcelino the 348th also flew missions over French
Indo-China, Hainan, China, and Formosa.
In May ‘45, the group moved to Floridablanca airfield,
west of Ft Stotsenburg, and from there continued attacks on Jap ground
troops, chiefly in the Cagayan Valley in northern Luzon.
By the middle of June the enemy forces had disintegrated
and scattered so that profitable& targets were hard to find—so the 348th
embarked for the Ryukyus, and began operations from Ie Shima in mid-July.
Contrary to expectations the Japanese air forces did not
choose to fight, and in the following month only 15 enemy planes were
shot down—without loss to the 348th in air combat. However, there
was an abundance of ground and shipping targets in Kyushu and North China, and
the group’s P-5l’s took a constant toll of enemy transportation on water
and land before the afternoon of August 14 when the planes of the 348th
delivered the last bombs dropped on Japan before the order was given to
“cease firing”.
No account of the 348th Group would give proper
perspective without mention of its members -- particularly its enlisted
personnel and the life they have led between Australia and Japan. The
majority of its members came overseas with the unit 28 months ago Most of
these spent an unbroken 18 months in New Guinea without so much as the
opportunity to speak to a white woman; endured, without the loss of a man,
encountered scores of enemy air raids; moved and built a new camp on an
average of once every two months; repeatedly lived for weeks on end on a diet
of “C” rations varied with “bully beef”; and in their 24-month
overseas showed their undiminished vigor and skill by breaking all Air Force
bombing records. The pilots of the group shot down 361 enemy planes and
received, in medals and clusters; Medal of Honor -1; Distinguished Service
Crosses -4; Legion of Merit -2; Silver Stars -13; Distinguished ‘ Flying
Crosses -123; Air Medals -819; and Purple Hearts -12.
It is not a cheapening of their successes to point out that
the achievements of the group’s enlisted men must pass without equal
individual recognition only because their work is less spectacular, and
not because their accomplishments and merits have been less worthy of high
praise.
The group leaders for enemy aircraft destroyed are: Colonel
N. E. Kearby -22; Lt. Colonel W. D. Dunham -16; Lt. Colonel William M.
Banks -9; Colonel R. R. Rowland -8; Major W. G. Benz -8; Lt. Colonel E. F.
Roddy -8; Major S. V. Blair - 7; Captain G. A. Davis Jr. -7; Captain M. E.
Grant -7; Major J. T. Moore -7; Major E. S. Popek -7; Major M. M. Brown -6;
Captain R. H. Fleischer -6; and Captain W. B. Foulis -6.
Appendix