The Flying Tigers: The Untold Story of the American Pilots Who Waged a Secret War Against Japan by Sam Kleiner

Author:Sam Kleiner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 20th Century, Asia, Aviation, China, History, Japan, Military, Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), United States, World War II
Publisher: Viking
Published: 2018-05-15T03:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

AERIAL GUERRILLA WARFARE

After Rangoon fell on March 7, the AVG would make their last stand in Burma on a small, barren airfield near a town called Magwe, about three hundred miles north of Rangoon. The RAF had set up a small base there, but it was little more than a few hangars and planes on a dirt field. Pilots from the First Squadron manned the post in early March and then they were relieved by a group from the Third. Bill Reed, a pilot in the Third Squadron, arrived on March 14 and could tell immediately that he wasn’t going to like this new posting. “So far there hasn’t been any activity here except reconnaissance work. Magwe is very hot and dusty—living is quite makeshift,” he wrote in his diary. To make matters worse, it didn’t look like they were going to have the opportunity to do any fighting in this desolate outpost. “On alert today . . . Had one call for patrol duty today, but nothing developed.” As he waited for the Japanese to appear, he ate the local watermelon and was “getting pretty tan again, and there is plenty of chance to read. Most of the time is spent in reading, sleeping, playing Acey-Deucey, etc.” But Reed wasn’t the sort of man who was content to spend his days reading and playing cards. “Action seems to make the days go by much more swiftly,” he wrote, “which is a thing much to be desired.”

Frustrated with waiting, he proposed a reconnaissance mission deep into Burma, where he could assess the Japanese forces. The mission was approved, and he persuaded Ken Jernstedt to join him. The twenty-four-year-old Jernstedt grew up on a farm in Yamhill, Oregon, where he shot gophers with a .22 rifle. He’d spent his whole life in Oregon until he signed up to become a Marine Corps aviator. When he heard about the secret mission in China, he signed on eagerly, like Reed, for the adventure of it all. The two pilots had become good friends. They played softball together during the training in Toungoo, they shared meals in Kunming, and they had fought together in the early battles over Rangoon in December. But this would be a challenge unlike anything they had done before—just the two of them flying deep into enemy territory.

Their first stop on the reconnaissance mission was an overnight rest at Toungoo. They arrived on March 17 and took a walk around places they had known well. If they assumed they would encounter the familiar setting from their days before the war, they were gravely disappointed. The town had been bombed by the Japanese and was “ruined,” as Reed characterized it in his diary. A pile of corpses stacked in a field was a particularly gruesome sight. That night, they went back to their old barracks and went over their reconnaissance plan, though they may have discussed doing something more ambitious, as their .30-caliber and .50-caliber machine guns had plenty of ammunition.

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