Read Reluctant Warriors Online
Authors: Jon Stafford
New Guinea, December 1943
T
wice a week, a pilot from the 342nd Fighter Squadron flew the mail run from Port
Moresby to the advanced base at Dubodura. Today, it was Jimmy DeValery's turn.
He took off at 0640, heading almost directly east. His plane rose slowly above the
jungle humidity as the day began to take on its color. It had rained for a week straight,
but today would be clear and sunny, with excellent visibility. He climbed steadily.
Ahead, blocking his route, the Owen Stanley mountain range rose up ten thousand feet.
He expected to see no enemy planes on this milk run. The Japanese had mostly been
driven from their once formidable base at Lae, not far from Dubodura. The intelligence
shack told him he had nothing to worry about, and his ground chief had agreed:
“Aw, nobody has seen any Zeroes near there in a month. We put a hundred rounds in
two of the machine guns, but nothing in the cannon. You won't need 'em, though. Have
fun, Jimmy.”
Jimmy planned to. He had flown five combat missions in two weeks and needed a day
off.
As the Owen Stanleys loomed up in front of him, he thought through the mission. All
he had to do was make the pass. Dubodura was only eighty miles ahead, all downhill.
It would only take an hour and a half. He wished it were longer.
He glanced at the altimeter, which read 7,100 feet, then at the mountains ahead.
He needed more power.
Jimmy pushed the throttles ahead slightly. The two huge Allison engines responded
and he put the P-38 in a steeper climb. Soon he reached the pass, at 8,200 feet,
and then angled down for the long descent.
He looked down for enemy troop movements, although he expected none. All he could
see was a jungle canopy too thick to see through, except for a few well-worn ridges.
No enemy. He thought that was just as well.
He looked up, distracted by a speck on his canopy.
“Must be oil,” he muttered, “I wish they would tune up these old engines.”
He looked more closely. It was not a speck of oil. It was something moving in the
sky.
The specks soon multiplied into four. Jimmy, alarmed, realized they were planes high
above him, at 10 o'clock, maybe five or six miles to the north. He squinted despite
his excellent eyesight. Whose planes were they? Immediately, he pushed the throttles
all the way forward and began to climb again.
If they're Japanese, he thought, and catch me below them, I'll be a sitting duck.
Maybe they're friendly planes returning to Port Moresby. But then why would they
be so high?
He kept watching as they continued directly toward him. Several more seconds passed
as his eyes strained.
“They're Japanese!” he blurted out. “They're Zeroes!”
Jimmy pushed the throttles harder, even though they were already at full power.
I
need to get higher!
With the great weight of his plane, he could dive away from a
Zero. But he didn't have the altitude.
He grabbed for the radio.
“Mayday-mayday-mayday,” he called, “enemy planes jumping me.”
He gave his position. He waited, but there was no response. He knew he could never
raise Port Moresby with the mountains in the way, but Dubodura was relatively close.
“Mayday-mayday-mayday, enemy planes headed for Dubodura.”
The pressure built in his mind as the planes came closer and closer. There was no
answer. He could see the enemy planes' markings distinctly.
Why isn't Dubodura answering?
he wondered.
As his plane clawed for altitude, Jimmy's mind raced. He was trapped! He couldn't
get above them. There was no time! There was only one thing to do: dive away from
them and hope for the best. Fear gripped him.
Dive out, dive before they're on top
of you,
his brain screamed.
From his experience, he knew better, that altitude meant life.
“Wait, wait!” he yelled.
The enemy planes were very close now, almost within firing range, and still well
above him. The altimeter read only fifteen thousand feet, but he couldn't wait any
longer. He kicked the pedals over and dove.
The P-38 screamed straight down. His speed jumped: 260, 340, 390, 450. It wouldn't
be a long dive, he knew, but it had to be straight down if he was to have a chance.
The hills below began to come into focus.
In only a minute it was time to pull out. He grabbed the stick firmly and pulled
hard. It didn't even budge! He had never had a P-38 in such a steep dive. The ground
loomed up in front of him, and he panicked!
“Pull out now!” Jimmy screamed.
He stood straight up in the cockpit and pulled with all of his might. Slowly, almost
imperceptibly, the nose, laden with four huge fifty-caliber machine guns and an Oerliken
cannon, began to come up.
The ground jumped before his eyes. Gravity pushed him down in the seat. Grey and
white spots appeared before his eyes. He saw his wife's face and then briefly lost
consciousness.
His vision returned, and he found himself rocketing along just above the trees. Relief
flowed through him.
“I made it! I got away. No man on Earth could follow that dive,” he called out, laughing.
He rubbernecked.
Four dots still followed him.
That can't be!
he thought. As his speed rapidly fell off, 395, 385, 375, the Japanese
gained quickly.
Jimmy realized what had happened. The dives of the Zeroes, long and shallow, had
been more than the equal of his short, violent one. He pushed his throttles hard
again, just to be sure he was getting every ounce of power.
“Mayday-mayday-mayday,” he called into the radio, over and over.
Why aren't they
answering? I can't be more than fifty miles from Dubodura.
He checked every few seconds.The enemy planes continued approaching, growing from
specks to larger and larger objects. Sweat began to pour down his face, a face contorted
in pain as though his body were being jabbed with pins. He prayed that their dives
must be wearing off as well.
In seconds that seemed like an eternity, the Japanese planes' speed did taper off.
Jimmy looked back at them constantly, wondering if it would be enough. They would
be within firing range in moments.
Then he noticed something else. He was passing from the land of New Guinea out over
the Pacific.
“Out to sea,” he mumbled, the sound entirely drowned by the motors. It was almost
a death sentence.
Heading away from Dubodura, if he turned even slightly, the Japanese would turn inside
him and he would be an easy target for a deflection shot. His only chance was to
outrun them. He would have to forget about the radio. Even if it worked, help was
too far away to do him any good.
Jimmy looked around again. The enemy was within range now, he judged, as the five
planes raced along at about one thousand feet. Then he realized something. They were
no longer gaining.
They're no faster than I am
, he judged.
There's a chance after all.
The enemy planes fanned out behind him. He thought each Zero might get one pass at
him before their dives wore off fully. The one on the end was closest and would probably
take his firing pass first.
Just as Jimmy realized that, the plane began firing at about four hundred yards.
He could see the gun flashes on the wings. Sweat cascading down his face and down
the inside of his clothing, he prayed that the shots would miss, but didn't believe
they would.
He huddled behind his armor-plated seat, but nothing happened. The first pilot had
missed!
Jimmy watched as the first plane faded back, pushed by the recoil of its guns. As
he looked back again, the relief he felt faded.
The second Zero angled toward him. He saw the wings twinkle, almost
instantly followed
by loud pinging sounds. Out of the corner of his eyes he saw about thirty holes from
machine gun rounds appear in his left wing, like a sharp pencil poking holes through
aluminum foil.
A bullet came through the back of the Plexiglas canopy, just missing Jimmy's head,
and ricocheted about inside.
The cannon shells hit harder. One made a large and jagged hole in the left wing,
and two hit the back of the seat, bucking him forward violently.
The giant Lockheed plane flew on, seemingly undamaged. The engines were untouched!
Jimmy looked around just as the third plane made his run, and saw it firing. He ducked
again. The seat had a contour piece for his head, but nothing for his feet. He put
his tennis shoes up on the pedals as high as he could.
Again, nothing happened. The third plane had also missed.
He looked again. The Japanese planes had receded somewhat, but still hung behind
him like pictures on a wall.
There were only three Zeroes now. He looked for the fourth, several times, in both
directions. It was gone. It must not have been able to keep up.
Jimmy smiled, though he looked terrible. Here, just above sea level, the insidious
humidity of the South Pacific pervaded the cockpit. Sweat was cascading down his
body as though propelled from an unseen pump. His T-shirt was completely soaked as
continuous beads of water ran down inside it, into his shorts, down his legs, and
into his sneakers. He noticed none of it.
All he could think of was the trap he was in. He was well out to sea now, and while
the enemy planes weren't closing, they weren't falling behind either.
Minutes dragged on. Jimmy crouched in his little canopy. It was almost like being
in a closet. He wondered whether he would ever see his wife, Mara, again.
Thinking of her steeled his determination.
I will find a way out of this!
No longer panicky, he checked the two fuel gauges at the left of the control panel.
The dial marked “Rear” for the fuel tanks in the rear center of each side of the
plane showed they were depleted. The “Front” tanks still had
a full forty-five gallons
in each: forty minutes left. No, thirty minutes at this speed.
What if he picked up slowly on the ailerons? The plane would rise, he knew, and if
he did it slowly enough it would offer the Zeroes very little angle for a good shot.
Jimmy touched the controls, and the plane rose. He looked behind to see the Zeroes
doggedly following. He was too afraid to smile, but soon he could see it was working.
The P-38 was at its slowest at sea level. If he could just get her some altitude,
get into lighter air, the engines' power would be better used.
Over the next few minutes, he rose five thousand feet. The enemy was still hanging
on behind him, but got no closer.
In ten minutes he passed ten thousand feet. The superchargers began to kick in.
Soon enough, he reached seventeen thousand feet. The enemy planes began falling back,
and as he turned back toward Dubodura, they could do nothing. Soon, they disappeared.
Now his chief worry was fuel. He throttled back on both motors.
The coastline appeared in a few minutes. Twenty more, and he began to recognize familiar
landmarks.
Three hours almost to the minute after he took off on the supposed milk run, Jimmy
made an uncharacteristically bouncy landing on the field at Dubodura. Once the plane
came to a stop and the engines were powering down, he went still in his seat, shaking
all over.
He became aware of a figure coming up beside the plane, waving at him to open the
cockpit. As he did, he recognized the guy. It was the ground chief, shouting.
“You musta had some trouble, huh? Hey, why didn't you call in on the radio? I just
tested it and it's good! We had planes in the air, buddy.”
Jimmy looked down at his radio. In a rush of awful clarity, he realized why no one
had answered his calls. In his fear, he had completely forgotten to turn the radio
on.
New Guinea, December 1943
I
n order to cover the attack by the First Marine Division on Cape Gloucester on New
Britain Island, Washington ordered General George Kenney to strike along the coast
of New Guinea with his Fifth Air Force. The target of the Army Air Force squadron
Jimmy DeValery belonged to was the port of Wewak, 310 miles away.
An hour before, Jimmy had been grumbling, which was unusual for him. The ground crew
hadn't tuned up the engines on his plane,
Mara
, even though he'd requested it. His
P-38 J model was not as fast as the new J-2s most of the other pilots had, and he
worried he might lag behind the rest of his squadron in some crucial spot. He had
fussed at Pete, his ground crew chief. Later, during breakfast, he wondered whether
he'd asked too much. Pete's crew put in a lot of long hours.
The sixteen silver Lockheed planes, with their 231 squadron numbers in black on their
red tails, took off, one by one. Jimmy and his wingman, Tony Seegars, joined up with
the planes circling the field awaiting them. They began turning toward the distant
target.
It is good to be up in the air
, Jimmy thought. It had rained even more than usual
in the last few days, and everything on the ground was saturated beyond belief. It
was hard to even breathe when it got that humid. The smell, like rotten vegetables,
was perhaps even worse.
There was nothing on his person or in his possessions that was actually dry. His
clothes had run so badly that there was little of the original green
color left.
Everything he owned was slimy or downright soggy. His B-4 bag, with his dearest possessions
inside, was the worst: moldy and smelling like rotten leather.
The ink on the letters his wife Mara had sent had run so badly that he could no longer
read them. It hadn't stopped him from getting them out and trying though. He could
remember almost every word without being able to see them.
Even his breakfast, with its powdered eggs and Spam, had been slimy and disgusting.
He had made the same promise that millions of other American servicemen were to make:
if he made it back home, he would never touch the stuff again.
Jimmy looked at the altimeter, now reading ten thousand feet, and smiled.
Up here
,
he thought,
the humidity clears out, and you can breathe easier. And it's so much
cooler!
It wasn't that he was breathing easy about the mission. The coastal town of Wewak
was an ominous name to many of the men. He had only seen it once, from about twenty
miles out. But he was fairly confident. His squadron had developed into a great team,
and he loved the men he fought and lived with, would do anything for themâespecially
his tent-mate Mickey Vivaldi, from Philadelphia, and Rickert, Seegars, and Freddie
Davis in his flight.
Besides, this was the twenty-first time he had risen from the jungle to attack the
Japanese from one base or another. He and the others were longtime veterans by now.
They knew what they were doing. Jimmy had been on strafing runs, bombing runs, escort
duty, and even on the mail run that time he had been bounced by that flight of Zeroes
in the fall. He thought again about his plane,
Mara
, which he had named after his
wife. It worried him that newer and faster Japanese planes, Tonys and Hamps, had
arrived at the front in the last few months.
They were fifty miles into the mission now. Jimmy eyed the other fifteen planes in
his squadron. Davis and his wingman, Rickert, were right in front of Jimmy, and Seegars
was glued to Jimmy's wing. He smiled thinking of
young Seegars, only twenty and a
recent replacement for Duns, who had been sent home. At twenty-four, Jimmy was the
oldest pilot in the wing, and he would have to watch out for his young wingman.
He pulled his aluminum tray onto his lap and looked at his notes. Take off just after
dawn. Rendezvous with the B-24s at some place called Veersma about 250 off and about
60 miles from Wewak. Escort them to the target, get them headed back, and then strafe
the harbor area.
The squadron continued climbing, to twenty-two thousand feet, and then proceeded
along at 250 miles per hour. Jimmy glanced ahead and behind to find his flight in
position. All was in order.
Mara
was ready. Pete had said there were 500 rounds for
each of the plane's four .50-caliber machine guns, and about 150 rounds for the Hispano
cannon.
They made the rendezvous point within an hour and circled, searching. There was no
sign of the B-24s.
What the hell?
Jimmy thought, over the whine of the engines. He
could hear Colonel Hazelton, the squadron commander, on the radio, trying to find
out what had happened.
In a crackle of static, one of the bombers radioed back that they had been early
and decided to go on ahead. Hazelton ordered the squadron to speed up to three hundred
miles per hour to catch up.
Within a few minutes, Jimmy could see specksâthe bombersâmaybe fifteen miles ahead.
Wait
, he thought. There were too many specks, and thin trails of smoke were spewing
from some of them. As the squadron drew closer, he saw the telltale yellow and red
of the Rising Sun insignia on some of the distant planes' undersides. The Japanese
had jumped the unescorted bombers!
Two of the big bombers were in trouble, smoking and falling out of formation. Jimmy
thought he could make out about thirty enemy planes, mostly Zeroes, but maybe some
Hamps as well.
As the squadron drew close, the Japanese broke and headed for home. Jimmy watched
as the shot-up bombers headed toward the coast and the open sea. If you had to crash,
it was better to hit the ocean than the hellish jungle. They had all heard stories
of crews going down in the jungle and
never being heard from again. Submarines were
supposed to be on duty off the coast. If you went down in the water, you had a good
chance of being found.
One of the bombers was smoking from two of its four motors. Jimmy knew it would never
make the coast. He watched it drop lower and lower until it crashed into the jungle.
The tree cover closed almost instantly above the wreckage, leaving no sign that a
crash had taken place.
Not one chute
, he lamented.
Not one guy parachuted out. Damn,
that's bad luck. Seems like someone could have gotten out.
He had to look away.
Ten more minutes of flight, and Jimmy could see Wewak below, even the big red smokestack
that everyone was supposed to key in on. He watched the B-24 formation pivot, and
then make their bombing runs west to east, against scattered antiaircraft fire.
As the bombers turned south for home, the P-38s sliced off for their strafing runs.
The flights were staggered, so that no one crashed into anyone else. Jimmy's flight
of four was to be last to hit the docks. They circled for some minutes, flying top
cover as the other flights took their passes and cleared out.
Then it was their turn. They went into shallow dives from about twelve thousand feet.
By the time they made their runs, they were speeding along on top of the waves at
more than four hundred miles per hour. On the first pass, Jimmy picked out a little
freighter that was already smoking from an earlier attack. He opened fire at about
five hundred yards, and watched the .50-caliber slugs pour into the ship, going right
through the sides.
As he pulled up to ten thousand feet, the radio came on. It was Rickert.
“I can't see the target with that smoke.”
“Me neither,” Seegars shouted.
“Jimmy, how about you and me?” Davis asked.
“Sure.”
“Stick to my wing, Jimmy.”
As the two planes dove, the smoke got worse. Davis kicked the rudder over, and the
two yawed to the right. The flak was much heavier than before,
but Jimmy didn't notice
it much. He concentrated on targeting a warehouse by the water's edge, watching the
bullets pour into it.
Just as he reached the other side of the harbor and began to pull up, a tremendous
explosion ripped into the plane on the right side. It seemed to blow up in his face.
The left side of his head slammed against the Plexiglas canopy. The plane skidded
to the left, almost out of control. Stunned, his instincts took over, and he righted
the plane, narrowly missing a smokestack at the water's edge.
As if in slow motion, Jimmy saw the smoke and debris coming from the right motor.
But it did not concern him. His head was still spinning from the blow. In that moment,
he was supremely confident that he was all right and in complete control, that he
and his
Mara
would be fine. He had no idea of the seriousness of what had happened.
Barely conscious, he flew blithely away from the harbor, in the wrong direction.
It was several minutes before he was fully aware of his surroundings again.
There's
wind coming through the canopy
, he thought.
That's strange
. He looked at the Plexiglas.
There are holes in it
, he observed, not comprehending.
Next, he realized that the plane wasn't responding to the stick. He knew instinctively
that something was wrong with the right motor. He looked at the smoke billowing out
of it. The twelve-foot Hamilton-Standard propeller had stopped. One of the blades
was sticking straight up.
The motor stopped
, he thought, in a complete quandary. Something was very, very wrong.
Slowly, dizzily, he looked at the left motor to see if it was all right, and then
at his compass on the left side of the control panel.
It read 350 degrees. For a few moments, he didn't know what that meant. Then, he
recalled the briefing by Colonel Hazelton.
“If you get in trouble,” Hazelton had said, “just take the heading of 132 degrees.
It'll bring you back here.”
His mind was still clouded, but Jimmy nevertheless recalled clearly the Colonel looking
downward and tapping his foot on the floor. Not knowing how much trouble he was in,
he concentrated on the image of the colonel's foot.
Then, dutifully, almost like a robot, he brought the machine around, slowly banking
to the right until the compass lined up on 132 degrees. He had no idea that he had
flown almost fifty miles in the wrong direction.
As he worked the stick, sudden pain flared in his right arm. It seemed on fire!
Jimmy looked at his arm and noticed his blood spattered on the right side of the
canopy. And his arm would barely move! Every movement he made to correct the plane's
trim was almost more than he could bear.
I've trained for this
, he thought, blinking and shaking his head to clear his brain.
He thought back to his advanced training at Eglin Air Base in Florida: how he had
resisted holding the stick in the left hand, and then almost crashed into the beach.
“Switch,” he muttered. “It's okay.” It did not feel as awkward as before, but the
truth was he had the touch of an elephant.
He looked again at his right arm. He could see blood dripping from it onto the cockpit
floor, and thought of his jungle kit with its bandages. He reached for it with his
right arm without thinking, and excruciating pain shot up all the way up his shoulder.
I'll wait
, he thought, grimacing and nodding slowly.
With his head spinning, Jimmy thought of his wife, Margaret Ann, his Mara. She appeared
before his eyes, seemed so real that he thought he might reach out and touch her.
He smiled, thinking how he had loved her all of his life. He saw her now as he had
first seen her, on the swing at the elementary school playground all those years
before. He thought of their baby, Claire, now eleven months old, whom he had never
seen. Despite his disorientation and pain, he thought:
I would trade my life to see
Mara and our baby together, just once see them both.
His thoughts were becoming more coherent with every passing minute. He'd been in
the air for three hours now. The altimeter read 4,800 feet, which he guessed was
all right. Then, he began to think of his speed. He wondered what it was.
In a moment, he remembered: all he had to do was check. He was already
looking at
the controls. He moved his gaze an inch to the left. The dial read “MPH” in small
letters. Two hundred, it said. He had to think for a few seconds to understand what
two hundred meant.
Go slower
, he thought.
More speed will only use up the fuel.
Jimmy's left hand went almost automatically to the throttles on the left wall of
the cockpit. After a thousand-plus hours of flight experience in a P-38 cockpit,
he didn't even have to look for the correct metal lever covered with the red plastic
ball, or think about how far to pull it back. Slowly, the plane's speed dropped to
160 miles per hour.
His brain cleared, and his brow furrowed as the depressing truth came to him quite
clearly. He was alone and hurt, and a long way from base in a shot-up plane. The
gas gauges weren't working. Maybe the fuel had bled out through the damaged motor
and was about gone. Maybe the left motor would stop soon.
The radio! Why hadn't he tried the radio? He was used to operating it with his left
hand. He switched it on, but there was nothing, not even static. He tinkered with
it for a minute or so, then gave up.
He realized that air was coming into the cockpit from below as well as from holes
in the Plexiglas. He looked down at the floor and noticed a large hole in the right
side of the fuselage, near his right foot. He could see the jungle passing by below,
in swaths of brown and green. How much damage had
Mara
taken?
A reflection far off to the right drew his attention. It had to be a glint off something
metal. There it was again! He watched it move. It approached slowly, almost on a
parallel course, and not much higher. He throttled up a bit, knowing that if was
an enemy plane, he was a sitting duck.