August 18, 1943
Fourteen Mile Drome, Port Moresby, New Guinea
As his aces cut a swath through the new Japanese Army Air Force units, General Kenney wanted to know from where all the new planes were coming. Through the summer, his photo recon squadrons buzzed over New Guinea, searching for the Japanese buildup. They found it, of course, at the airfield complex around Wewak. Photo reconnaissance showed Japanese aircraft crammed into the five airdromes there, none of which were properly developed enough to handle the hundreds of planes sent from the Home Islands. Without dispersal areas, the planes sat around the runways, and the influx of personnel to fly and maintain them lived in filthy, primitive conditions that took a heavier toll than the 5th Air Force could. Amebic dysentery, malaria, jungle rot, fevers, scrub typhus, and dozens of other diseases felled about 60 percent of the men at Wewak.
Kenney recognized the threat the new Japanese units posed and resolved to knock them out with the most destructive force he possessed—Pappy Gunn’s strafers. The Japanese, thinking Wewak was out of range of American fighters and medium bombers, did not adequately protect their own airfields. A sense of bizarre complacency had set in for them. The Japanese felt safe.
Pappy Gunn changed that. He devised an auxiliary fuel tank for his modified B-25 strafers that could be ejected from the fuselage through a trapdoor installed where the Mitchell’s belly turret was usually located. The extra three hundred gallons gave the Mitchells the legs needed to get to Wewak.
To protect them, Kenney wanted every single P-38 in theater overhead, knocking down any Japanese planes that rose to defend the airfields. Through the first part of the summer, he possessed three P-38 squadrons: the 39th, 9th, and 80th. Collectively, they fielded about forty fighters on any given day. That would not be enough to keep the B-25s safe.
In June, Kenney formed the 475th Fighter Group in Australia. This was his baby, and it was staffed with a mix of veteran talent from the three established Lightning squadrons and a raft of well-trained newbies fresh from the West Coast. They spent a month and a half assembling newly arrived P-38s and melding into a combat outfit. By early August, Kenney could wait for the 475th no longer. Wewak needed to be destroyed. He ordered the 475th to New Guinea. The number of P-38s available to the 5th was now over a hundred.
On the seventeenth, two hundred aircraft gathered at Port Moresby. Gerald Johnson led the Knights over the Owen Stanleys to refuel as the B-25s took off from nearby strips. With everyone concentrated in one place, the intricately timed strike went off flawlessly.
The strafers hit the Wewak airfields just after the Japanese brass came for an inspection trip. Brand-new Ki-61 Hiens and Ki-43 Hayabusas stood wingtip to wingtip as if on display at a peacetime air show. The strafers went in, dropping parafrags and blowing aircraft apart with their awesome firepower. When the day was done, scores of Japanese planes lay wrecked and burning on the strips.
That afternoon, Kenney ordered Wewak hit again. The entire mission was to be repeated on the eighteenth. They’d hammer at Wewak until their bombs had only broken wreckage to rearrange.
On the morning of the eighteenth, Tommy McGuire looked up from a cup of lemonade as another wave of B-25s thundered overhead. These past two mornings he had seen more planes concentrated in one place than at any other time in his life. He took one more swig and handed his cup to a waiting Red Cross volunteer. She smiled at him, and he thanked her. Nearby, his former squadron mates in the 9th were finishing their lemonade, munching on doughnuts, and flirting with the women running the Red Cross trucks.
He’d heard about the fights over Lae and the Markham Valley. He knew Bong’s score now, and how Duckbutt jumped to second place in the race. His old Aleutian pals were in on the scoring too. But what really got Tommy was Gerald Johnson’s rank. Promoted to captain now, his friend had gone from a first lieutenant with no authority or official slot in the 9th Fighter Squadron to its new squadron commander. Twenty-three years old, same as he was, and his friend would be a major before Halloween if he did well with the Knights.
What a difference eight weeks makes.
When Kenney called for veteran pilots to form the cadre of the 475th, he underscored that he did not want the deadwood. He wanted proven pilots who could fight, and teach others to fight. The 475th was to be the elite fighter outfit in the Southwest Pacific. Amazingly, by and large, the New Guinea squadrons abided by their commander’s wishes and sent great pilots to the 475th.
Tommy was a talented pilot, of that nobody had any doubt, but he had been bounced out of the 9th as a problem child. He came to the 475th under a cloud, made worse by the fact that he was assigned to the group’s 431st Fighter Squadron, which happened to be full of guys from the 9th. His reputation followed him.
When he tried to ingratiate himself with his new command, he was transparently sycophantic, which turned his peers off. At other times, the snark and sense of superiority burned through the new affectation, and he once again got under more than a few skins. He was on the skids again, and if he was bounced out this time, there’d be nowhere else to go but home. He’d be a combat pilot with no combat experience, sent Stateside in disgrace.
As he struggled in the 475th, his mother died on July 22, 1943. Still living in the hotel where he’d visited her on his last home leave, she drank herself to death, though the official cause was “heart failure.” Perhaps the official cause was true; she died of a broken heart abetted by alcohol and years of alienation from her family and neighbors. She wasn’t found for days. In fact, the hotel staff couldn’t get into her room after repeated attempts to check on her. Finally, they called the fire department, raised a ladder to her floor, and went in through a window. Tommy’s mother was found dead, naked on the floor, survived by the family poodle.
Word spread over town, and her death was reported salaciously in the local papers. Tommy’s wife was summoned to help deal with the scene, but nobody in Sebring knew how to contact Tommy directly. He found out much later that he was on his own, a fact underscored by a document his war bride discovered among his mother’s personal effects. His dad had given up legal custodianship of him years ago and terminated his parental rights.
All he had waiting for him back home was his wife, with whom he’d lived for bare weeks before leaving for the Pacific.
The sense of isolation and grief must have taken its toll on him. He took to spending most of his time with the squadron’s P-38s, and he understood these machines so much more, it seemed, than the people in them. He tried to be kind and helpful. He got branded a suck-up. He fired back when provoked, and was then judged an asshole. He couldn’t win.
Two things happened that saved him from ignominy. First, the squadron commander made him the assistant engineering officer, which required working closely with the mechanics and armorers. Enlisted men were no threat to Tommy’s prickly personality since he outranked them. That position of superiority put him at ease, and he grew friendly with them. He worked hard and learned more about the P-38’s design and construction than probably any other pilot.
Marion Kirby became the second half of Tommy’s salvation. Kirby was an Airacobra pilot from the defense of Port Moresby days with a probable kill to his credit and reputation for being a no-nonsense, blunt tiger. He ranked Tommy by both experience and date of promotion. When he came to the 475th and was given a flight, Tommy initially ended up in it.
Kirby saw considerable talent in McGuire’s flying and intellect. He wanted to shape that talent into something useful, but he watched McGuire shoot himself in the foot time after time. At length, he pulled Tommy aside and called him out on his behavior. He gave him a choice: shut up, learn from him, and stay in the squadron, or get sent home. His way or the highway.
The tough love worked. Tommy had never really seen anyone stand up to him like that. He fell into line and did what the former Texas Aggie demanded of him. Kirby’s mentorship laid the seeds of McGuire’s transformation, and by the end of the squadron’s workup, Tommy was given his own flight to command. The ground echelon came to respect and admire McGuire so much that they picked the best P-38 in the squadron and gave it to Tommy as a gift for all the hours he’d sweated beside them in those Australian hangars. He named it Pudgy, his wife’s college nickname.
Finally, a step in the right direction.
The last B-25s passed overhead, turning north for the Owen Stanleys. The morning’s raid would cross through the heart of New Guinea’s interior, avoiding the coast and all the Japanese bases dotted along it, to delay detection for as long as possible. As they sped onward, the ground crews at Moresby worked to pump the final gallons of gas into the P-38s. Almost a hundred Lightnings launched in the wake, forming up and climbing to their escort altitudes. Whitehead and Wurtsmith worked through escort tactics that layered the ’38s in front, above, and behind and on the flanks of the strafers. Any waiting Japanese fighters would have to fight their way through a Lockheed blanket stacked from four to fifteen thousand feet. The 431st provided close cover that morning, with McGuire’s flight catching up to the B-25s and pushing thirty seconds ahead of them to clear their path.
The strike group flew through thick overcast, weaving around towering mountains and dark clouds. The bombers held tight formation. It was a miracle nobody collided in the soup. One B-25 from the 3rd Attack Group narrowly missed a rocky outcrop. As they swung around it, a black mass erupted in front of them. Swirling, swarming bats—thousands of them—filled the sky so completely that the pilots opened fire with their nose guns to try to clear a swath through them. Too many. They impacted against the bomber, leaving bloody, furry smears and severely damaging one engine. As fast as they appeared, the bats vanished in the squadron’s rear. Wewak lay ahead.
Patrolling Japanese fighters spotted the inbound raid and called in a warning to their base. Ki-61 Hiens were already warming up, their ground crews throwing buckets of water on their engine cowlings to keep the temperamental in-line engines from overheating. As the pilots got them out on the runway, steam rose from their noses. They opened their throttles and sped into the sky.
The strafers hit them in mid-scramble. A wave of B-25s passed over the fields like a threshing machine, mowing everything before them. Planes exploded. Antiaircraft guns were torn apart. Men dove for cover, including one who found refuge in a cesspool.
The patrolling fighters, Oscars from the newly arrived 59th Sentai, dove to the defense of their bases. The 431st saw them coming, and a wild, low-altitude dogfight erupted in the middle of thick antiaircraft fire.
An Oscar bounced McGuire’s fight, diving in from two o’clock high. The Americans punched their tanks and prepped their ’38s for combat, all while banking up and into the attack.
“Let’s get him! Zero at two o’clock,” McGuire called out. He was shaky, filled with fear and adrenaline. He fired twice before the Oscar blew past him. Then the smell of cordite from his own guns filled the cockpit. Something about that flipped a switch in McGuire. The nerves vanished. His knees quit shaking. He felt a sudden warm calm flush away the fear.
“Tommy!” yelled his wingman, Francis Lent. “Zero on my tail!”
Tommy dove toward Dagua Airdrome, fires burning everywhere along the runway, smoke rising from bomb craters. People ran back and forth. Antiaircraft cannon blazed, filling the sky with deadly black puffs as their shells exploded. He checked his tail, saw the enemy fighter closing on Lent. It was an Oscar, misidentified as a Zero. Either way, the dictum was clear: never maneuver with the more agile Japanese fighters.
Tommy hauled the P-38 into a left wingover, turning impossibly tight. Tommy pushed the bird right to the edge of its envelope and beyond. He knew the P-38 was overengineered and could take more G-forces than the tech manuals said. He put that knowledge to use now as he sped to his wingman’s rescue. It was a risky strategy, as he didn’t know just how far past the manuals he could push the plane before he’d spin out of control.
But until he found himself past that line, the strategy would work. The Japanese pilot, taken by surprise by Tommy’s incredible maneuver, dove away for Dagua.
McGuire tenaciously went after him, snapping out bursts every time the Oscar crossed his gun sight. He saw his bullets striking home, sparks flaring on the fuselage near the cockpit. He scored another hit. The Oscar engine began to burn. The Japanese pilot stood no chance. Another fusillade from McGuire’s Lightning shattered the cockpit. Pieces of plexiglass streamed back over the Oscar’s tail. Pilot dead or wounded now, the Japanese plane rolled and crashed at the edge of Dagua Drome.
Tommy and Francis Lent chased another Oscar, but were foiled when another Ki-43 came to its rescue. The Japanese tacked onto McGuire’s tail, but Lent saw him and scraped him off with a long burst, saving his flight leader’s life.
The fight waxed and waned around Wewak as more fighters joined in and a wave of bombers sped through the flak. The 431st fought on around the B-25s, chasing Oscars to the treetops and keeping the strafers safe.
Lent and McGuire worked as a team, keeping their tails clear and shooting up anything that crossed their noses. Whenever a Japanese fighter made a run at them, they’d turn and offer a game of chicken. Head-to-head, they rushed at their enemies, guns barking. Some of the Japanese had no stomach for such a contest and would break off their runs. One Oscar pilot took the challenge. Firing all the way in at McGuire, the two stubborn pilots refused to break. At the last instant, McGuire tried to duck under the Japanese fighter as its pilot rolled to avoid a collision. Both waited too long, and their wingtips smashed together. The Japanese plane dove away. McGuire went looking for more trouble until the last of the B-25s finished their runs. They spotted three, running on the deck for home and rolled in after them to give them cover. Ten minutes out of Wewak, the weather started to clear. The two Americans swiveled their heads, searching for threats.
Above them, a lone Ki-61 pilot saw the B-25s. He dove to the attack, his fast in-line fighter gaining speed quickly. He blew past Lent and McGuire and shot at the bombers, the two P-38s in furious pursuit. As fast as the Ki-61 was, the P-38 was faster, and Tommy caught up to him. The silver and mottled yellow-green fighter swelled in his gun sight. He’d been careful with his ammo use, but he’d fired a lot already and wasn’t sure how much he had left.
He pressed the gun triggers. The cannon boomed. The fifties chattered. The cockpit filled with smoke and the Ki-61 began to burn. He held course, making instinctive corrections with his rudder and yoke before firing again. His tracers disappeared into the fleeing Japanese plane. Oily black smoke belched from the engine cowling. The fighter rolled over and went into the jungle, its courageous lone pilot wounded. He would be rescued, only to die in a jungle hospital four days later.
Back at Moresby, McGuire’s crew chief, Sgt. Frank Kish, helped him out of the cockpit. “Frank, can you take a look at the left wing? I think I had a midair collision with a Zero.”
The crew chief scrambled down the ladder behind the cockpit and went to go take a look. McGuire joined him a minute later. Soon, a small crowd gathered to check out the streak of Japanese green paint along McGuire’s scuffed-up wingtip. A few bullet holes peppered Pudgy’s aluminum skin, but neither the collision nor the Japanese lead did significant damage.
Tommy McGuire hit five fighters that day. His squadron saw three of them go down. A fourth also went into the jungle, but another pilot in the squadron was shooting at it the same time McGuire was putting rounds into it. In other theaters, this would have been a shared kill, half credit for each pilot. But the 5th was an all-or-nothing outfit, and only one man could get the credit. The intelligence officer took everyone’s statement, and the situation couldn’t be resolved from what everyone had seen. The men settled on a coin flip. McGuire’s poker luck failed him; the other pilot won the toss and got the victory.
It didn’t matter at the time. McGuire just made a statement, one that quickly made the rounds through every tent at Moresby and Dobodura: the outcast was back, and kicking ass.