This article is the 633rd original article of the "Burning Islands" by Saukopf.
This article is translated from heroic Airacobras of the Cactus Air Force on the warfarehistorynetwork website, with deletions and additions.
The full text is 6975 words, with 15 pictures, it takes 16 minutes to read, and it was first published on October 14, 2021.
The entrance to a quick read of the author's article is to click on the author 'Saukopf Album' below the title
August 22, 1942, more than 11 a.m., Guadalcanal, Henderson Airport.
The sound of aircraft engines shattered the silence over the airfield, and the weary Marines looked up from the foxhole and saw five graceful planes with pointed noses and round wing tips, not at all the short waist of the F4F "Wildcat" who arrived two days ago. After a brief daze, as the five planes hovered and landed, the soldiers cheered as they saw white stars on a blue background and the words U.S.ARMY on the wings of the plane.
Reinforcements are coming! This is the P-400 Air Cobra of the Army Air Force's 67th Cockfighting Fighter Squadron, assisting more than 10,000 Marines in holding on to this important island. Japanese bombers had been roaming the sky for weeks, and two days earlier the 18 F4F Wildcat fighters from the Marine Corps' 223rd Fighter Squadron (VMF-223) had just arrived, and now that the Army's Cobra in the Air had also joined the regiment, it looked like it could take a vicious breath.
Figure 1. 67th Fighting Cocks squadron crest
However, when the 67th Squadron first entered the battle, the pilots were horrified to find that their aircraft could not fly at the height of the Japanese bombers, and in the face of light and flexible zero combat, the P-400 often had to choose to escape, and the "Cactus Air Force" was soon filled with gossip such as "army pilots are not enough".
Figure 2. Hasegawa's version of the P-400 had four livery schemes, one of which was the 1942 livery of the 67th Squadron on the seal
But it was soon discovered that although the P-400's air combat performance was stretched, the licking attack was a sharp weapon. The 67th Squadron often took off five missions a day, harvesting and ravaging Japanese infantry and fortifications, filling the Japanese transport ships with supplies, and playing an important role in the victory of the Battle of Guadalcanal, and the legend of the squadron's stoicism began long before it arrived on Guadalcanal.
Cockfighting on the "last line of defense"
In the weeks after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese had taken control of the western Pacific. In Washington's view, it was imperative to hold the Japanese at the "last line of defense," which stretched 3,200 kilometers from Hawaii to Australia and New Zealand, including strategic locations such as Fiji, Samoa and New Caledonia. But troops had to be sent to defend, and the United States, which was not yet ready for war, hastily organized a large number of Marines to the South Pacific in January 1942, and the responsibility of providing air cover fell on army aviation, such as the 67th Cockfighting Destroyer Squadron, which was also in the rookie stage.
The squadron, formerly stationed at Harding Army Airfield in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was equipped with the old P-35 destroyers, pilots at 50 percent of the crew, and most had just graduated from flight school. But fortunately the squadron's two commanders were experienced, Ohio native Dale D.D. (Dale "D.D." Lieutenant Brannon may seem thin but can condense the soul of a "cockfighter," while Lieutenant John A. Thompson, an Oregonian, is skilled and fearless.
On January 23, 1942, the Cockfighting Squadron boarded the Army transport using the Thomas A. Barry from Brooklyn, New York, for Australia. The tropical trip to the South Pacific was a torture, with the ship lacking fresh water and food but packed like a can of sardines, sailing for five weeks to reach Australia. The rookies rested for a month and boarded the ship again on March 6 for French New Caledonia, 1,200 kilometres east of Australia. As for where the planes were, or what kind of planes they were — all they knew was that another cargo ship would be loaded with 47 disassembled and unpackaged planes, coming from somewhere in the United States.
Figure 3. John Thompson was one of the only pilots in the squadron to fly such an aircraft when the 67th Squadron was assigned a P-400, the other being Lieutenant Branon
Troublesome "Cobra in the Air"
The biggest mystery was revealed in The Port of Noumea in New Caledonia, where the 47 planes were 45 P-400s and two P-39Fs designed and built by Bell Aircraft, and only two commanders in cockfighting squadrons had driven them. The P-400 was originally an export version to the RAF under the Lend-Lease Act, replacing the 37 mm paddle hub gun with a 20 mm gun, retaining four 7.62 mm and two 12.7 mm machine guns, and a 250 kg bomb on the midline pylon.
However, the aircraft, like the entire "Air Cobra" family, canceled the supercharger because of the Honey Juice Confidence of the Army Air Force, so that the Royal Air Force found it unusable and refused to receive the goods, but it was just used by the Army that searched for aircraft for export and domestic sales. In addition, the specially modified British high-pressure oxygen system on the P-400 is incompatible with the low-pressure oxygen cylinders of the US military, which further aggravates its high-altitude performance. And the most maddening thing is that the scrambled Army forgot to provide the aircraft assembly manual and test equipment!
Figure 4. The XP-39 in the prototype stage can be seen to have supercharger intakes similar to the P-38 on both sides of the fuselage, but the device was ordered to be cancelled by the army high command
Figure 5. The Royal Air Force's P-400, the British ordered more than 600 aircraft, but after receiving only more than 80, they refused to accept it
So the "cockfighters" had to do it themselves, borrowing a truck to transport each 4-and-a-half-ton transport box to Tontouta airstrip one by one, each trip running back and forth on a 55-kilometer dirt road for 8 hours, running day and night for a week to safely transport 47 boxes. The squadron's ground master, Sergeant Major Robert Foy, recalled the assembly work that followed, "We used the cranes and supports made of wood we picked up around the airport, and because there were no spare parts, we had to pack the fifth box as it was for every five boxes of aircraft shipped for spare parts. Although there are no formal technical instructions or manuals, after the first week you can assemble one and a half aircraft every day."
The trouble is not over, Sergeant Major Foy is impressed by certain things, "it is common for aircraft to be packed up and lost, the key pressure and fuel lines are blocked by inexplicable scotch tape, and it does not matter, the most fucked thing is that the circuit of an airplane is connected by an idiot in the factory, press the flap electric door, the landing gear will be retracted, the landing gear electric door will be pressed... You can only pray that no unlucky egg is standing right in front of the muzzle of the plane. It took us days to turn the circuit back", plus "endless rain, mud and mosquitoes". Every day from 5 a.m. to dark, but no one complained. Poor diet and hygiene soon brought a wave of diarrhea, but the "cockfighting" still struggled day in and day out.
Figure 6. The ground crew uncle who is busy on Guadalcanal, without the hard work of these people covered in oil, even capable pilots cannot be seen
On March 28, Lieutenant Dale Branon, commander of cockfighting squadrons, flew the assembled P-400 for the first time, and then Branon and his deputy Thompson began to start from scratch, stepping up training their rookies how to fly these second-hand aircraft and air combat tactics. In June of that year, the United States Army Air Corps was reorganized into the United States Army Air Forces, and the 67th Squadron was renamed from a Destroyer Squadron to a Fighter Squadron, which really boosted morale.
First on Henderson Airport
After the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway, the Japanese expansion has been curbed, but this does not mean that the Japanese will sit still. According to aerial reconnaissance, the Japanese were building an airstrip on their occupied island of Guadalcanal, from which bombers posed a great threat to the Allied lines of transport and even threatened to cut off the United States from Australia. To this end, the 1st Marine Division under the command of Rear Admiral Alexander van der Griffit launched Operation Watchtower, the first large-scale U.S. landing offensive in World War II, in New Zealand after five weeks of planning and rehearsals.
However, the August 7 landing operation did not go well, and although the U.S. army easily occupied the partially completed airstrip on Guadalcanal, it encountered stubborn resistance on the neighboring islands of Tulagi, Kavutu, and Tanambogo, and did not clear the enemy until dusk the next day. The most fatal thing is that the US fleet was severely damaged by the long-fought Japanese Navy in the naval battle of Savo Island that broke out on the evening of the 8th, and the US transport fleet that was unloading half of the goods on Guadalcanal immediately ran away. In the weeks that followed, the 1st Marine Division was able to hold on to this tropical and wild island with 10 days of ammunition and captured Japanese rations.
Figure 7. The Battle of Savo Island cast an American psychological shadow so much that decades later, the PC game Axis and allies compared Junichi Mikawa to Tadao Kuribayashi, Tadao Minamimo, and Isoroku Yamamoto
In order to receive supplies and evacuate the wounded, the 1st Marine Division desperately repaired the airfield, which was commissioned on August 19, named after Major Loveton Henderson, a Marine pilot killed at Midway. The next day, 12 Douglas SBD Intrepid dive bombers and 19 Grumman F4F Wildcat fighters moved from the long island escort aircraft carrier to Henderson Airport, and the Cactus Air Force was formed.
Meanwhile, the 67th Fighter Squadron in New Caledonia was ordered to move to Guadalcanal, and Squadron Leader Brannon, who had been promoted to captain, led five P-400s on a three-day island-hopping flight, first to Efat, then to Espírito Santo, and finally to Guadalcanal on the 22nd. Espirito Santo is 900 kilometers from Guadalcanal, which is almost the maximum range of the P-400 with a sub-fuel tank, so the two B-17s carrying life rafts flew with them just in case.
Figure 8. One of the five P-400s that arrived at Henderson Airport on 22 August, with serial number 14-338, still retains the ROYALF livery and serial number BW156, with the nickname "Fancy Nancy" written above the exhaust pipe
After landing at Henderson Airfield, Army pilots began to familiarize themselves with the new environment, with clear gunfire coming from the Marine Front Position less than a kilometer from the hangar, and a crumbling old dilapidated building near the runway that was used as the headquarters of the "Cactus Air Force", nicknamed "Stupa". The Marines specifically reminded Branon and his men to keep an eye on the flagpole next to the headquarters, and the raising of a black flag meant that the coastal guard post sounded a Japanese air raid alert. For weeks, Japanese bombers took off almost daily from Rabaul base, 910 kilometers northwest of Guadalcanal, usually visiting Guadalcanal at noon and dropping bombs, a point in time known to the Marines as the "Tojo Hour." The Marine Corps' F4F will change the passive bombing situation, and the Army pilots will also be eager to do a big job.
The first night on Guadalcanal was unforgettable for the "cockfighting", the camp was less than 200 meters from the front line, the Japanese cold guns, night raids and bombing, tropical mosquitoes taking turns on duty... Including the ground crew of the 67th Squadron, who arrived by transport ship that night, they were all unable to survive all night. The next morning the "cockfighting" began combat duty, patrolling the coast of Guadalcanal from dawn to dusk. On the afternoon of the 24th, "cockfighting" opened its record for the first time. The pilots and ground crew of the 67th Squadron were preparing their planes when suddenly the black siren flag lifted off, and Squadron Leader Captain Branon and Lieutenant Deltis H. Finscher rushed to their planes and took off before a barrage of bombs fell. While the Marine F4F killed 8 of the 9 Incoming Japanese bombers in one fell swoop, Branon and Fischer happened to encounter a zero battle at low altitude that was not careful enough, and then torched it, and the 67th Squadron scored one point in the first battle.
Figure 9. A model depicting the P-400 Fancy Nancy shooting down Battle Zero
Depressed and depressed
On the 26th, the black flag was raised again on time at the "Tojo Moment", and it was another round of crazy take-offs, more than a dozen F4Fs were entangled with the Japanese at high altitude, and 4 P-400s could only hover at a low altitude below it, and the last shot was not fired back to the airport, turning left and right on the runway full of craters and wreckage before stopping. The next day, under the leadership of John Thompson, who had just been promoted to captain, 9 more P-400s arrived from New Caledonia, and the 67th Squadron already had 14 aircraft on Guadalcanal. However, their arrival time was very unfortunate, just in time for the "Tojo Moment", and the ground staff hurried to give them oil and lifted to avoid the battle. So far, in addition to the first battle of the big luck, the "cockfighting" has not made more money, and morale has begun to decline.
Figure 10. Captain John Thompson sits at a table next to two pilots of the 67th Cockfighting Squadron at the Cactus Air Force headquarters at Henderson Airport in Guadalcanal
On the 29th, 12 P-400s took off to meet the Japanese army, but they could only fly to an altitude of 4200 meters, unable to climb to the height where the Japanese plane was located, and the Japanese plane was still high above its head. At the same time, the Marine Corps' F4F continued to show its might, and 8 Japanese aircraft were destroyed in one go, and the Army pilots could only return to the bombed airfield empty-handed again.
The catastrophic blow to morale occurred on the 30th, when John Thompson led 11 P-400s to take off to intercept a Japanese "dive bomber" formation, only to find out that the other side was 20 zero fighters! The air battle turned into a massacre, with 4 P-400s shot down on the spot, two pilots killed, seven others wounded to varying degrees, John Thompson's plane shot out of 15 holes, and the 16th in his shoulder — masturbatingly, he killed one Zero.
Three days later, only 3 of the squadron's 14 aircraft were available, all of which were tirelessly patched together by the ground crew. The P-400 no longer performs combat missions, and when the black flag is raised, it will take off to perform the so-called "reconnaissance" operation of the Cactus Command, which the "cockfighting" pilots are very self-aware to call "escape". Frustration filled the entire squadron, and they did not lack the courage to fight the Japanese, but this was not enough to make up for the gap in the performance of the aircraft, and Captain Branon, the squadron leader, said, "We thought we were flying fighters, but if we did fight Zero, we would die."
Maj. Gen. Van der Greft, also extremely disappointed with the P-400's air combat performance, asked the Army not to send bell fighters anymore, and even more so in his diary, the P-400 was "worthless for any high-altitude combat." But soon, he would discover the true value of the 67th Squadron to the embattled First Marine Division.
Fighter One and Rebirth
As a result of the expansion of the Cactus Air Force, the original Henderson Airfield had been crowded with various aircraft, and the sappers simply built a new runway about 1.5 kilometers east of the main runway, named "Fighter One", where all fighter units were moved, and the 67th Squadron began to move from here at dawn on September 2. This seemed to mean a fresh start for the 67th Squadron.
Squadron Leader Brannon, who had just been promoted to major, led all the flying P-400s, each aircraft carrying a 250-kilogram aerial bomb, targeting a Japanese transport ship outside the village of Tasinboko, and after dropping the bomb, it swept back and forth at the Japanese soldiers who were fluttering in the water. Two hours later, the P-400, which had returned to load ammunition and fuel, took off again and went to Tasinboko to harvest the heads again.
Figure 11. A crashing 99 ship exploded on a transport ship in the waters off Guadalcanal. It turns out that while the "aerial cobra" is useless in air combat, it performs well when attacking surface targets on the ground
There is no doubt that the ground attack is not as star-studded as the air combat, and the dangers in the face of anti-aircraft fire are numerous, but the "cockfighting" who have found a new goal of struggle are tireless, taking off five times a day at most, from morning to night, extending the most sincere and fiery greetings to the locust army, and when there is no "Tokyo Express" to fight, the Japanese assembly area and supply field have become the most ideal targets.
Although on this hellish island, in addition to the squeaking Japanese, the American army also had to face typhus brought by rats, malaria from tropical mosquito bites, and diarrhea caused by cold rice and canned sardines, the pilots of the 67th Squadron felt that they were born again of blood. To that end, they named a P-400 that the ground crew had just cobbled together as "Resurrection," and the plane flew in Guadalcanal for several months.
"They're just tempting"
In early September, the Japanese put in more effort to retake Guadalcanal, and almost every night transport ships unloaded soldiers, and Japanese warships repeatedly poured large-caliber shells into the airfield, leaving the rookies of the First Marine Division huddled in scattered pits. All indications are that the Japanese are going to play big, but when will it start?
In fact, as early as August 30, more than 4,000 people of the 35th Brigade regiment under the command of Major General Kiyoken Kawaguchi landed in the eastern part of Guadalcanal, concealing into the attack positions, planning to take advantage of the black wind on september 12 to attack the American army. In response to Kawaguchi, the Japanese Navy also sent 25 bombers to bomb Henderson Airfield at the "Tojo Hour" on the 12th, and a bomb landed near the bunker of Major Branon, the commander of the "Cockfighting" Squadron, and almost buried him alive. Badly wounded, Branon had to hand over command to Captain Thompson, his lieutenant, who had not yet healed his gunshot wounds, and was then carried to a transport plane and sent for treatment.
That night, Japanese bombers dropped flares, and Japanese warships began shelling American positions south of the airfield, and then Japanese infantry touched them. The Marines' 1st Assault Battalion and 1st Paratrooper Battalion repelled the attack, but Lieutenant Colonel Merritt Addison, who was directing them, was well aware that "they were just tentative, and they would definitely fight back."
After dark on the 13th, the Japanese launched a larger offensive, braving the intensive artillery fire of the American artillery to force Addison's men to retreat little by little. Now that the situation was in jeopardy, Van der Griffit prepared for the worst, throwing in the last reserve. If the Japanese had occupied the ridge that Addison was holding, they would have easily rushed down and occupied the airfield, and Guadalcanal would have been finished.
Bloody Ridge
At about 3 a.m. on the 14th, Captain Thompson was awakened and ordered to the "Stupa", and Addison, who had only more than 800 men and was almost unable to hold it, sent an officer to ask the "cockfighting" to take off for support. Thompson later recalled the scene when the officer, who had been covered in mud and blood from head to toe after two days of fighting, "picked up paper and pen and roughly drew a map of the ridge, marking the locations of both sides." He expected the Japanese to attack at dawn."
Thompson, Lieutenant B.E. Davis, and Lieutenant Brian Brown quickly jumped into the gas-filled plane that was on standby, took off almost grazing the palm treetops at the end of the runway, flew through the bloody battlefield, and then turned the nose and rushed straight down. According to Thompson, "We flew to the height of the treetops and pulled up again and saw the Marines' positions. In the clearing below, there were hundreds of Japanese ready to attack. I pressed down on the nose and pulled the trigger, swept it from beginning to end, and the two planes in the back did the same."
Figure 12. A watercolor depicting the P-400 skimming over the heads of japanese troops during the Battle of Blood Ridge
The first strafing caught the Japanese off guard, but when Thompson turned back to prepare for another wave, all the Japanese on the ground raised their guns, and when the P-400 once again faced a dense counterattack as it rained down at an almost ground-high inclined bullet, Thompson and Davis were no big deal, and Brown's radiator was hit and leaked, and the young man had no choice but to pull up and return to Henderson Airport to crash and land. The third pass through Thompson's plane was also damaged by the radiator, leaving only the loneLy Davis, and even if he returned to the airport at this time, no one was qualified to accuse him, but he only knew one thing - he had to scare the Japanese back until Tokyo! He continued to shake the nose of the plane in search of targets until he had all the bullets gone.
Figure 13. Wiping the P-400 through the treetops, the previous one appeared to have been shot, dragging out a trail of green smoke
The air raids of The Battle of the Bulge completely shattered the Japanese offensive, and the remaining Japanese troops retreated into the jungle, and the Army Aviation assisted the Marines in holding their positions. Subsequently, the U.S. military counted more than 600 "better" Japanese, a considerable number of which were the results of the P-400. Later General Van der Griffit met with Thompson, who said, "Your deeds will not be in the newspapers, but you and your P-400 have just saved Guadalcanal." Van der Griffit then grabbed a bottle of Scotch whiskey and stuffed it into Thompson's pocket as a personal reward for the Land Aviation pilot.
For this mission, brown and Davis were both awarded the Silver Star, while Thompson, who led the team, was awarded the Navy Cross after the Medal of Honor, an honor that only 11 Army Air Corps pilots in World War II received, somewhat more than the Medal of Honor.
Figure 14. A P-400 (or later reloaded P-39) of cockfighting squadrons, marked by a record mark on the nose that it shot down two Japanese aircraft, sank four Japanese transport ships, and dropped 129 bombs
Figure 15. At today's Guadalcanal Honiara International Airport (near the former Henderson Airport), the wreckage of the "Cobra in the Air" is still displayed for posterity to hang, telling the tenacious battle of the Army Air Force in the darkest hours of the island
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