Rocky Boyer's War by Allen D. Boyer

Author:Allen D. Boyer [Boyer, Allen D.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781682470978
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Published: 2017-05-15T04:00:00+00:00

In early June 1944, the Japanese staged night air raids on the Fifth Air Force base on Wakde, a small island crowded with Allied warplanes and packed with munitions and aviation gasoline. By June 8, so many American planes had been destroyed or damaged that only ten bombers were in shape to fly a mission against a Japanese destroyer convoy: the B-25s of the 17th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron, “the Fighting Seventeenth.” Those B-25s are seen here on the far side of the burned-out P-38. National Archives Photo SC 258444 (Signal Corps Photo # SWPA-SigC-44-13084)

Kenney was using both his voices here—the voice of the aggressive general and the voice of the public relations man. Never was any spokesman bolder and more disingenuous than he was in this explanation. It might be true, technically and literally, that the night bombing had destroyed gasoline stores and three P-47s. But the greater truth was that, as an air base, Wakde had been put out of action. Scores of American warplanes were damaged and unflyable—many would have to be junked. Sergeant Ursprung put it tersely: “Japs raided Wakde and damaged all but five ships.”9

On the morning of June 8, 1944, after several nights of Japanese air raids, there were only a handful of flyable American bombers on Wakde Island: the B-25 gunships of the 17th Squadron. That morning they would have to fly. During the night, reports had come in that the Japanese convoy had reappeared, once more steaming south toward Biak.

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