No unit of the Asiatic Fleet took a worse beating, during the first three months of World War II, than its air arm, Patrol Wing 10. When the war began, PatWing 10, as it was generally called, had twenty-eight twin-engine, PBY seaplanes equally divided between Patrol Squadrons VP-101 and VP-102. The wing’s Utility Squadron consisted of ten single-engine aircraft; four J2F amphibians, five OS2U seaplanes, and one SOC seaplane. Its pilots and aircrewmen were among the finest in the navy. Captain Frank D. Wagner, commanding the wing, called them, “the finest in the world.”
To support seaplane operations in remote anchorages, the wing boasted four seaplane tenders: the Langley, the largest, was the jaded hulk of a once-proud ship—the navy’s first aircraft carrier; the Childs and William B. Preston were converted World War I “flush deck” destroyers; and the Heron (AVP-2) was a World War I “Bird”-class minesweeper. All were especially configured for the job and carried large quantities of aviation gasoline. Although lightly armed and poorly equipped to defend themselves against marauders from sea or air, all four tenders operated alone and far removed from any back-up support. They met the challenge and acquitted themselves with distinction.
When the war began, the PBY-type seaplanes flown by PatWing 10 were often referred to as “big boats,” but, before long, they began to be derided as “flying coffins.” They were slow, cumbersome aircraft primarily designed for long-range reconnaissance. Not having self-sealing gas tanks and armed with only two .50-caliber machine guns, one in either waist hatch, a .30-caliber machine gun in the tail, and another in the bow, their defensive capabilities against enemy fighter planes were poor. Because their oxygen equipment was rudimentary, and often inoperable, to fly at altitudes above 12,000 feet was to court the lethal effects of anoxia. Besides, with a full bomb load, the PBYs could not top 16,000 feet and, at that altitude, fly faster than 85 knots. Thus, when pressing home bombing attacks, they were always within reach of antiaircraft guns and easy prey for enemy fighters.
When Admiral Thomas C. Hart received the “war warning” dispatch from the chief of naval operations on 29 November 1941, he directed Patrol Wing 10 to begin extensive reconnaissance patrols. Three PBYs, along with the William B. Preston, were sent to the Gulf of Davao to search the eastern approaches to the Celebes Sea, whose waters wash the northeastern shores of Borneo and the southern approaches to the Philippines. Four single-engine seaplanes and the Heron were stationed on the southern tip of Palawan Island to scout for Japanese ships threatening to enter the Celebes Sea from the west. Dutch aircraft, patrolling along the northern reaches of the Netherlands East Indies, covered territory contiguous to that assigned to PatWing 10. PBYs based at Cavite and Olongapo searched the areas west to the coast of Indochina, northwest to Hainan, and north to Formosa. Thus, for all practical purposes it can be said that the planes of Patrol Wing 10, with guns loaded and ready, were cooperating with the British, Dutch, and Australians a week before Pearl Harbor was attacked.
The planes sighted nothing of great interest until 2 December, when they discovered twenty Japanese merchant ships, including transports, in Camranh Bay, French Indochina. By the third, that force had grown to fifty ships, including cruisers and destroyers. On 4 December, under cover of foul weather, this ominous armada vanished. Forty-eight hours later, however, it was spotted by British aircraft moving westward in the Gulf of Siam. It should be noted here that, coincident with the attack on Pearl Harbor, these Japanese ships were to disgorge thousands of troops on beachheads 400 miles north of Singapore to begin the invasion of Malaya.
On 5, 6, and 7 December, PBYs of PatWing 10 encountered Japanese aircraft patrolling in the vicinity of Luzon’s coastline. Although machine guns were trained, no shots were fired, as, like “stiff-legged dogs,” the adversaries kept wary eyes on each other.
Even while Japanese emissaries in Washington were talking peace, this movement of ships and aircraft strongly suggested that a landing in force somewhere on the Malay Peninsula, and perhaps in the Philippines, was imminent. As this word spread, there was hardly a man in the Asiatic Fleet, from Admiral Hart down to the lowest rating, who had the slightest doubt that war with Japan was about to become a grim reality, and did not cinch up his belt ready for the fight.
At 0315 on 8 December 1941 (7 December 1941 in Honolulu), when Wagner received notification of the Pearl Harbor attack, he immediately ordered two 500-pound bombs loaded on each operational PBY and sent them to four dispersal areas within 60 miles of Manila.
At the time, three PBYs were operating with the William B. Preston stationed far to the south at Malalag Bay in the Gulf of Davao. At 0705, when one plane was on patrol and the other two, armed with bombs, were on the water awaiting instructions, disaster struck. Without warning, Japanese carrier-based dive-bombers attacked. Bombs intended to eliminate the William B. Preston fell dangerously close, but caused little damage. The two PBYs, however, were not so fortunate. Both were strafed and sunk. Ensign Robert G. Tills, the pilot of one of them, was killed as he tried to get his plane airborne. He was the first American to lose his life in Asia—a distinction the young naval reserve pilot could hardly have desired.
The first day of the war was disastrous for General MacArthur’s Far East Air Force: Japanese planes destroyed more than half its bombers and two-thirds of its fighters, most of them on the ground. This force was small to begin with, but when it was reduced to thirty-seven fighters and seventeen bombers, mastery of the air was at once relinquished to the enemy. The losses meant that the ungainly PBYs of Patrol Wing 10, primarily designed for long-range reconnaissance, had to assume the suicidal role of bombers.
Without fighter escort, the courageous PBY pilots and aircrewmen went to war. They tried to bomb battleships and cruisers, but in so doing, were badly mauled by antiaircraft fire and enemy fighters. By 13 December, five days after the war began, eleven of the wing’s twenty-eight PBYs had been lost, and the remainder were sent to safer bases in the Netherlands East Indies. About 172 officers and men, who, for lack of space, were left behind, fought on Bataan and Corregidor.
During the desperate weeks that followed, PatWing 10’s PBYs operated out of Surabaja and, backed up by the tenders William B. Preston, Childs, Heron, and Langley, out of remote coves throughout the chain of islands that comprises the Malay barrier to Ambon and south to Darwin. It was rough duty. PBY crews often slept on board their anchored planes, in native shacks, and, on occasion, in the hot, cramped quarters of the tenders. Food was in short supply and had to be rationed. Clean clothes and warm-water baths were luxuries. There were long, dangerous patrols to be flown by day and night, and rest in between was rudely interrupted by air raids. This, coupled with heartrending news of squadron mates shot down or missing in action, was enough to break the spirit of lesser men, but the airmen of PatWing 10 never wavered. Although the odds were stacked against them, they carried out their missions with grim determination and great skill. Sheer guts, however, were not enough.
By 1 January 1942, only eight of the wing’s original twenty-eight PBYs were left. These were augmented by eleven PBYs of Patrol Squadron 22, which had been hurriedly flown out from Honolulu, and five provided by the Dutch, who did not have crews to man them. On the sixth, the wing underwent a change of command: Captain Wagner was ordered to Admiral Hart’s staff as commander, Aircraft, Asiatic Fleet, and was replaced by Commander John V. Peterson.
Lacking sea and air power, the Allies could not stay the giant octopus of Japanese aggression whose tentacles reached ever closer to the Netherlands East Indies. With the enemy dominating the skies, not even the remotest base was safe. Even Darwin, thought to be out of Japanese bomber range, was devastated on 19 February by land-based bombers and carrier planes. At the time, four PBYs of VP-22 were based in Darwin and operating from the William B. Preston. One was shot down while on patrol, the other three destroyed on the water. The Preston took a direct hit, which killed seventeen men and wounded eleven. She was severely damaged, but managed to reach southern Australia for repairs.
Eight days later, the same day the ABDA fleet was crushed in the Battle of the Java Sea, the Langley, attempting to reach Tjilatjap with a deckload of fighter planes, was bombed and sunk 130 miles south of her destination. During the early morning hours of 1 March, Japanese troops swarmed ashore on Java’s north coast and, meeting only sporadic resistance, moved rapidly inland. Left without warships or combatant aircraft, its army of native troops disintegrating in the face of battle, and enemy warplanes continually on the attack, the ABDA command was dissolved. With that, Glassford, Wagner, and their staffs, along with Rear Admiral Arthur F. E. Palliser, RN, Vice Admiral Helfrich’s chief of staff, wasted no time in clearing out of Bandung for Tjilatjap. At the same time, Commander Peterson and his small staff left the wing’s headquarters in Surabaja and headed for the same evacuation port.
That night Glassford, Palliser, Peterson, and some key enlisted men boarded a PBY and, in spite of warnings by Dutch pilots that to take off from the restricted confines of Tjilatjap Harbor in the dark was suicidal, departed near midnight, and arrived safely the next morning at Exmouth Gulf, Australia.
Just before dawn on 2 March, three of PatWing’s 10’s PBYs, braving Japanese carrier-based fighters in the Indian Ocean and the ever-present fighters and bombers over Java, flew in from Exmouth Gulf to evacuate Captain Wagner, his staff, and other naval personnel. Before takeoff, one of the planes, whose engine could not be started, was turned over to the Dutch to repair and use or destroy. Its crew and passengers were packed into the two other planes, which arrived safely in Australia.
Only five of the forty-four PBYs assigned to Patrol Wing 10 remained on 3 March 1942, and the Utility Squadron had lost all but one of its aircraft. The wing was temporarily out of business. Its pilots and crewmen were assigned elsewhere, but the tenders Heron, William B. Preston, and Childs stayed in Australia to service replacement squadrons.
This is not intended to be a definitive history of Patrol Wing 10. It is rather a brief summary whose purpose is to lay the groundwork for the accounts contained in part II of this book. It will suffice, therefore, to point out that besides being ordered to fly 15 bombing missions without fighter protection and more than 200 long-range patrols of one or more aircraft, the pilots of Patrol Wing 10 successfully completed 10 dangerous rescue missions. These missions, generally considered routine, encompassed landing in Japanese-controlled areas of the Netherlands East Indies to pick up Dutchmen left behind to destroy oil and other important installations, and downed army and navy airmen stranded on treacherous reef-ringed atolls or adrift on the open sea.
Patrol Wing 10 was blessed with an abundance of heroic men who will remain unknown because, in those early days of World War II, courageous feats were considered the norm. Formal patrol reports were not required, and actions were mentioned only briefly in the wing’s “war” diary. The following is a typical entry for a routine patrol:
January 30, 1942. Two planes, #41 Ensign Deede and #42 Ensign Jackobson, departed on patrol of Makasar and Kendari area. Plane #42 reported being attacked by land plane fighters, and took evasive action into clouds. This plane escaped (44 holes).
The only detailed reports are those written by men who survived being shot down.