MM30-NPE

One of the Lucky Ones

19th Bombardment Group May 1940 - December 1942 by L/Col M. A. McKensie

“One of the Lucky Ones” was given as a speech to 200 cadets in the AF Academy in Feb 1995, by L/Col Melvin A. McKinsie retired; the speech was edited by Capt Matthew A. McKensie, USAF June 1995.

Mel, a graduate mechanical engineer, represents the goal at the time – that all personnel be cross trained – he served as lead navigator, lead pilot and squadron engineering officer. DL.

As the 50th anniversary of VJ Day is celebrated in August 1995, it's appropriate to take stock and remember the crucial early days of the war in the Pacific when America's ultimate victory seemed in doubt. To that end, I'd like to share my experiences with the 19th Bombardment Group in the early '40s. However, I want to start by telling you a little about my development years.

I was born in 1916; this was 13 years after Wilbur Wright made history with his flight at Kitty Hawk. When I was five years old, I had my first glimpse of an airplane. It suddenly flew by, low overhead. It looked like a Glen Curtiss pusher bi-plane, much like the Army's first airplane built by the Wright brothers. I decided from that moment on, I wanted to fly like that. My years in scouting also had an important impact on how I lived my life. The Boy Scout oath and law, along with their motto "Be Prepared", were instilled in me at an early age.

Aviation and I grew up together in the '20s and '30s. Charles Lindbergh was my idol. Years later, I had the good fortune to have him eat dinner with me at Eglin Field, Florida in 1944. While I was in high school, my chemistry teacher livened up class by writing sayings on the black board. One that stuck with me said, "The world deals harshly with the weak willed, the unskilled and the ignorant." I took the saying to heart and in June 19, 1939 graduated from the University of Maine with a mechanical engineering degree and an Army Reserve commission in the infantry. These early experiences contributed greatly to my well-being during the next three years.

With the outbreak of war in Europe in September of ‘39, the Army Air Corps planned to expand to 24 groups, including 5 heavy bomber groups. The long range heavy bombers came under General Headquarters Air Force, which was set up with in the Army Air Corps. It was the forerunner of the Strategic Air Command. To equip this bomber force, 500 B-17s were ordered from the Boeing Aircraft Company.

In the Fall of '39 I entered the Army's Flying Cadet Program and earned my winges the following May. At this there were only two active heavy bomber groups, one at time, Langley Field on the east coast and the other at March Field on the west coast. I was assigned to the 19th Bombardment Group- Heavy at March Field, California along with several of my flying school classmates. The Group was equipped with the B-17B. It was a superior weapon, using the highly accurate Norden bombsight and engines equipped with exhaust driven superchargers. Above 25,000 feet, the early B-17s could outrun the pursuit planes of the day.

Training for all B-17 crew positions was accomplished within the Group. The pilots were required to be qualified in all positions. Colonel Eugene Eubank, the Group commander, was the celestial navigation instructor. He had earned his wings during World War I. Due to his leadership and discipline, the Group was well prepared for the task soon to come. Incidentally, he retired as a Major General and is still going strong at 103 years old.

I did quite well learning celestial navigation and as a result I was navigator on many training flights. On long flights, celestial navigation was a full time job. - - - - - Where was the Global Positioning System when I needed it?! I had more time as a navigator than as a pilot my first two years in the Group.

In May '41, I navigated one of 21 B-17Cs the Group ferried from Hamilton Field near San Francisco to Hickam Field in Hawaii. By this time, I was an assistant to the Group's Materiel Officer. We were receiving new B-17Ds and preparing for a change of station to Clark Field in the Philippines in October'41. This would include another mass flight from Hamilton Field.

I was selected to be the navigator and back up pilot on theColonel's brand new B-17D. It had just flown in from the factory the day before we were to leave for Hamilton. The same day, the Colonel gave me my final checkout as a B-17 pilot. En-route to Hamilton, a fuel consumption check was made to determine the maximum range of the Colonel's B-17. However, after we landed, an error was found in the fuel consumption figures. The Colonel told us to run a full 12 hour endurance check and he'd see us in Hawaii. He then hopped a ride to Hickam on another B-17. Counting the flight time to San Francisco, the endurance test, and flight to Hawaii, I had flown over 36 hours in 2 days. Once I got to bed, I slept for 18 hours straight!

From Hawaii, we went island hopping to Midway and then Wake Island. From Wake, the next leg of the flight was over 14 hours and crossed the equator. The destination was Port Moresby on New Guinea Island, north of Australia. The flight was made at night so we would land in daylight and also be able to take star shots for better navigation. While on the flight, another navigator made a frantic call for help. He said he was 200 miles off course. The problem was quickly solved when he was told to use his southern hemisphere navigation chart. He had forgotten he had crossed the equator! Some planes had to land for more fuel at Rabaul on New Britain Island. Little did we know then we would soon be bombing the place.

At Port Moresby, a detachment of the Royal Australian Air Force put the crews up at their camp. A fellow classmate, Ed Graham, thought the camp quite primitive with straw mattresses and no running water. Showers were taken in the open under a perforated 5 gallon can which was filled by native workers. I thought it was pretty good considering some of my Boy Scout camping.

The rest of the trip to the Philippines was uneventful with one more stop at another Australian Air Force detachment at Darwin on the northwest coast of Australia. By the time we landed at Clark Field on the 2^nd of November, we had flown about 10,000 miles in 6 flying days. In comparison, last year, NASA's space shuttle Discovery covered 400 million miles in 13 days while circling around the world but I think we had more fun island-hopping!

After a short 2 week stay at Clark, I found myself on a 16 day trip back to Australia and New Guinea as navigator and back up pilot on Colonel Eubank's B-17. Major General Brereton, the commander of the Far East Air Forces, was on board to evaluate Australian Air Force facilities for our use in time of war. At the time, U.S. forces in the Pacific expected to be prepared for war with Japan by April '42, five months away.

By the time we arrived back at Clark on the 2^nd of December, life had changed completely. We went on 24 hour alert. The Japanese were making daily high altitude recon flights over the Philippines. The air raid warning system consisted of ground observers using telephones. It was too slow and inaccurate to enable the P-40s to intercept the Japanese while in Philippine airspace.

Pilots of an A-24 dive bomber outfit had also arrived in the Philippines. However, their planes were still in Australia waiting on critical parts from the States. One of the A-24 pilots was a flying school classmate, Tom Garrity, who ended up on General MacArthur's staff as General Wainwright's aide. Tom's Bataan Diary was published in the Boston Globe in 1942. He eventually made it out of the Philippines on a Navy sub. In later years he became a four-star general.

The few P-40 squadrons we had were operating from "bare bones" air strips with no buildings or support equipment. Meanwhile, brazen Japanese nationals openly boasted that they would soon be taking over the Philippines.

On the 7th of December, Philippine time, half our B-17s were flown south to a grass airstrip used by a Del Monte pineapple plantation on the north coast of the Philippines' southern most island, Mindanao. This move was done to reduce the number of vulnerable B-17s at Clark Field.

I was the Group's Officer of the Day after duty hours on the 7th. At 2 o'clock in the morning on the 8th, I received a radio message reporting the attack at Pearl Harbor. The Colonel alerted the squadrons at Clark to prepare to bomb Japanese-controlled Formosa (now known as Taiwan). However, General MacArthur's staff would only permit recon flights around the Philippines because there had been no formal declaration of war.

Clark's air raid alarm sounded at 9 am causing the 17s to take off for their own protection. The Japanese made a diversionary attack on an Army installation north of Clark. After the "all clear" sounded at 11 am, the planes landed and were prepared for a bombing mission to Formosa that had finally been approved. At noon, most of the headquarters officers had gone to the Officer's Mess for lunch. I stayed behind to make tracings of a secret hand-drawn sketch showing the location of Japanese airfields on the south coast of Formosa. I started makings tracings to help the navigators find their targets on the mission.

I was listening to the noon news on the radio when the reporter announced that Clark Field had just been bombed. All I could hear was the singing of the birds, then in the next breath, I heard the whistles of falling bombs, followed by shaking explosions. High flying Japanese bombers laid 2 strings of bombs across Clark Field.

At first I it all seemed like a movie. I grabbed my tin helmet off the wall as I went out the door and into a slit trench that had been dug the night before. For a moment it became unearthly quiet- then the Japanese Zero fighters came in strafing everything in sight.

When the "all clear" sounded, I headed back to Headquarters. As I approached the Colonel's staff car, I thought it odd that his driver was still sitting in the car. Then I noticed half of his face was gone; he had been killed by shrapnel. When I took my helmet off back at the office, I saw it had a shrapnel hole in it; fortunately made before I put it on. After the raid, only 2 out of the 17 B-17s at Clark were repairable. All the refueling trucks had been destroyed, but luckily the fuel dump was still intact.

Also during the raid, the Officer's Mess received a direct hit, killing 50 officers. One of them was my immediate boss, the Group Materiel Officer. I took over his job which was now reduced to servicing the B-17s that flew into Clark from Del Monte to attack the Japanese invasion forces. The Group's personnel not injured in the raid camped out a short distance away from Clark in a sugarcane field by a river. I happened to see my classmate Ed Graham again and asked him how he'd like to be back at Port Moresby now. His reply was " 0 boy, would I!".

The lack of serviceable equipment forced us to improvise. The B-17s from Del Monte were refueled from 55 gallon drums using portable "putt-putt" fuel pumps carried on each plane. I managed to get a mowing tractor running to haul oxygen carts to the parked B-17s. When the B-17s returned from attacks on Japanese shipping, they were refueled for the flight back to Del Monte and loaded with needed personnel and critical parts.

After weeks of daily bomber and fighter attacks, not to mention the approaching Japanese Army, Clark Field was abandoned. On Christmas Eve, the Group was trucked to the Bataan Peninsula. We were camping out again, this time in a grove of trees by the road, singing Christmas carols around a campfire. We had one good thing going for us: we had the best Mess Sergeant in the Philippines. His cooks fixed us a great Christmas feast from food bought along from Clark. I was traveling light in a walking mode. Back at Clark, I had planned my packing for three conditions: travel by truck, walking or running. My weapons were my Colt .45 and an 18 inch Moro bolo knife I had purchased while at Clark. My valuables were packed in my mess kit.

We were to be evacuated from Bataan on two small inter-island passenger steam ships bound for Mindanao. However, one was bombed and sunk before our planned departure. This meant only half the Group's personnel from Clark could leave Bataan. I was one of the fortunate ones to make the trip to Mindanao. We heard later the ship was sunk the day after it left Mindanao. Those of the Group remaining on Bataan were used to defend a nearby airstrip. They later became POWs and were part of the Bataan Death March.

When we arrived at the Del Monte air strip all we saw were two badly damaged B-18s and no personnel. The Group's surviving B-17s had been flown to Darwin, Australia for fear Mindanao would soon be overrun. While camping out beside the airstrip and listening to short wave radio from the States, I heard President Roosevelt say, "Though we have had minor setbacks, soon the sky will be black with our airplanes." I thought, well, we were the minor setbacks!

I used my Army ROTC infantry experience to train our gang how to set up and use Browning machine guns to defend the airstrip. Others of the Group were defending the nearby harbor with only four machine guns and several rifles. Some of our Master Sergeants were offered Army commissions by some of MacArthur's staff who had come south from Correcridor, but there were no takers.

The Japanese had landed on the south coast of the island and were advancing up the south side of a high mountain range in the middle of Mindanao. U.S. Army troops and Philippine Scouts were putting up stiff resistance to the Japanese advance. We heard reports about their heroism during the controlled withdrawal. Fortunately, we were on the north side of the range.

We had no way to make radio contact with the gang at Darwin to inform them the Del Monte airstrip was still in friendly hands. As for the B-18s, one had a wing burned off and the other had a burned out engine alone with damaged oil and fuel tanks. The mechanics went to work to make one flyable, using serviceable parts from the other. However, there was another problem to solve: we didn't have the bomb bay fuel tanks needed for the long flight to Darwin. The mechanics solved this problem by hanging 55 gallon drums of Gasoline in the bomb bay and rigging the plumbing so fuel could be hand-pumped to the wing tanks while in flight.

The B-18 flight to Darwin was successful and our B-17s started stopping by to pick up needed personnel, after they attacked Japanese airfields and shipping in the area. I was once again one of the fortunate ones to keep one step ahead of the Japanese. This time, I was flown to the island of Java in the Dutch East Indies. The B-17s at Darwin had re-deployed to help the Dutch defend the rich oil fields on the islands north of Java.

On the 2^nd of February, I arrived at a Dutch Air Force airfield on Java being used by our B-17s. As we taxied to a dispersed parking pad, the field air raid warning sounded. So, like the first day at Clark, I dove into a convenient foxhole. It was the first of daily raids by Japanese Zeros. I was pressed into service on the ground as the Assistant Engineering Officer of what was left of the Group. My new job each night was to get as many flyable -17s ready by daybreak for the day's mission.

In addition, I was finally able to become a B-17 first pilot. It had been four long months since I had been given my final check ride by the Colonel. In my first 8 days on Java, I was first pilot on four combat missions. I quickly learned the hard way how to fly a tight formation clouds and all. Each day the Group lived in two worlds: peace at night with movies and cafes in downtown Malang and war at daybreak at the airfield. Whenever we were lucky enough to get an extra plane ready without a regular crew, I would get a pick-up crew and join the mission of the day.

Reinforcements were slow in coming. A few P-40 fighters and A-24 dive bombers attempted to island-hop from Australia to join us. Less than half made it. Many were strafed at refueling stops and others had forced landings or lost their way. Unfortunately, the A-24s drew a lot of friendly fire because they looked and sounded like a Japanese Zero.

The Dutch pilots were exceptional, but they only had obsolete Martin B-10 bombers and Brewester Buffalo fighters, which were no match against the Zero. By the time I arrived on Java, the Dutch Air Force was out of airplanes. We weren't much better off. Since we had no revetments, B17s caught on the ground were easy targets and often reduced to ashes by attacking Zeros. I never saw a P-40 over our airfield. Critical spare parts were about gone and the mechanics were doing double duty, flying as gunners.

We were down to five combat-ready planes when a brand new B-17E flew in from the States by way of India. We thought it was from heaven. It had a powered upper gun turret and a ball turret in the belly. Best of all, it had tail guns. The youthful crew had just come out of training school. They said more planes were on the way and they were to return to the States to ferry more, but the Colonel told them to get a good night's rest because they were going out on a mission in the morning! That next day, their tail gunner got 5 kills.

The influx of a few B-17Es was too little too late. Defense of Java was a lost cause. We had no effective air cover or anti-aircraft defenses. I had been in Java less than a month when we evacuated to Australia in late February'42. The injured needing hospital care had to remain on Java and became POWs. One of them was a classmate I had helped to safety during one of the many air raids. His foot had been hit by an explosive 20mm bullet. The surviving, around personnel had another boat trip. The ship's Dutch captain chose not to go with a convoy to Australia, preferring to go it alone. As it turned out, he made it, but 3 of the 5 ships in the convoy were sunk by submarines!

The 19th was down, but not out. I hitched an airplane ride to Melbourne, Australia. What was left of the Group took a long overdue leave in Melbourne while the planes were patched up or taken out of combat. The squadrons were brought up to strength with new personnel, and equipment. It took a while to stop looking skyward when we saw someone running.

As late as March'42, people were still being flown out of Del Monte on Mindanao. Lt Harl Pease another of my flying school classmates and later winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor, was [sent] to fly General MacArthur and family out of Del Monte. After MacArthur's staff saw the sad condition of his airplane, they asked for another plane and an older pilot! This suited Harl because then he was able to fly out more of our gang.

After the Group reorganized, I became the Engineering Officer of the Group's 30th Squadron, which was sent to a dirt airstrip at Cloncurry, in northern Australia, 1000 miles from any other town. Cloncurry reminded me of scenes in old western movies with dirt streets and one hotel. The movie house was an open air structure, with a dirt floor and wooden benches. Rain came only one month of the year. Mosquitoes out numbered flies 2 to 1. There were more sheep than people in town, but it did have a post office we could use. A Christmas package of Macintosh apples from my parents finally caught up to me in July! The apples had dried to the size of grapes, but we enjoyed eating the 7-month-old popcorn packing.

We started running missions out of Port Moresby, New Guinea and doing our repair work back at Cloncurry, a 1,000 mile trip. I continued to fly missions with a pick up crew when a plane was available. Our targets were shipping and air fields around the islands northeast of Port Moresby, including the major Japanese base at Rabaul. On one mission over Rabaul, my ball turret gunner said he was hit, but was OK. When he came out of the turret, he opened his jacket and a bullet fell out! It had just enough energy, after penetrating the turret, to pierce his jacket and give him a skin burn.

In May '42 the Group participated in the Battle of the Coral Sea, bombing the Japanese fleet. This first Allied victory prevented the Japanese from taking Port Moresby and stopped the Japanese advance in the South Pacific. It also set the stage for the critical Battle of Midway which came in June.

Through out the summer of '42 the Group attacked targets of opportunity on the east coast of New Guinea and New Britain islands. In August the Group also supported the first Allied offensive at Guadalcanal. We were told we'd be home for Christmas; this was hard to believe, but it did come true. B-24s took the place of our B-17s the Fall of '42.

Upon return to the states, the 19th became a combat crew training school at Pyote Field, Texas. Most of the veterans were soon transferred to other organizations so that the experience gained could be used to train others for combat. I became a proof-test pilot at the Proving Ground Command at Eglin Field, Florida. In a little less than a year, the Group had been awarded over 1000 individual medals for their effort as well as the Group being awarded 5 Presidential Unit Citations. Of the original Group that went to the Philippines, over two-thirds were killed or became POWs.

The 19^th went into combat again in 1944 equipped with B-29s. It was part of General LeMay's 21^st Bomber Command attacking Japan. After a short peace, the 19^th again entered the fray over Korea as a Wing in 1950. Today, the 19^th is part of Air Mobility Command as an Air Refueling Wing headquartered at Robins AFB, Georgia.

During the early war years in the Pacific, I feel the B-17's ability to make long range bombing strikes was properly used. However, our airfield protection and defensive air cover were nil. The valuable experience gained, greatly benefited later operations in Europe.

I want to close by paying tribute to the aircraft mechanics who were the backbone of our effort. Their successors are just as crucial today as they were then for success in combat. They're like the pit crew in a car race, except war is not a race. In combat, there's no second place. I think the 19^th more than lived up to its motto: In Alis Vincimus : "On Wings We Conquer", and so ends my story.

Are there any questions?

Melvin Mc Kenzie

94 Poquito Rd

Shalimar FL 32579