3 – Too good to be true (part 5)
So the American Volunteer Group had failed in its intended mission, defending Chongqing in the summer of 1941. Nor were there any Russian pilots to oppose the Japanese: in a masterstroke of deceit and folly, Hitler had turned on Stalin the month before, and Soviet air units were withdrawn to the western front. The G4Ms and their escorts came and went with no opposition except from anti-aircraft guns. Very few were shot down—but they did include a Mitsubishi A6M. After inspecting the wrecked Zero and questioning prisoners, Chinese intelligence produced a remarkably accurate data sheet, along with a set of recognition sketches. Maj. McHugh at the U.S. embassy sent this information back to the United States, and he gave a copy to Chennault when he arrived.
As it happened, the side-view drawing had a significant flaw. The Zero’s tail was drawn out to a point, giving it a cigar-shaped silhouette. Because the tail of the salvaged fighter was too damaged for reconstruction, the Chinese artist endowed it with the rounded rudder of the JAAF’s fixed-gear Ki-27. The composite bore a strong resemblance to a retractable-gear fighter then going into production at the Nakajima company, and no doubt contributed to the difficulty AVG pilots would have in identifying the planes they encountered in Burma and China.
The AVG’s late start had another consequence. Its intended base, Wujiaba airport near Kunming, was sodden with the monsoon rains, making a training program there impossible. Ed Pawley had a solution—the Pawleys always had a solution! He got the British to loan him Kyedaw airfield in Toungoo, Burma, an arrangement that served everyone’s purpose. It put the AVG base close to the Pawleys’ Mingaladon assembly point. It enabled Chennault to train his squadrons without fear of attack. And it assured Chiang Kai-shek that AVG supplies wouldn’t compete for cargo space on the crowded Burma Road.
As for the British, Air Marshal Robert Brooke-Popham though he’d done a very fine thing to provide a base for the AVG. In truth, giving up Kyedaw was a scant loss for the RAF. Toungoo in summer was a petrie dish breeding malaria, dengue fever, and dysentery. The only planes stationed there were the Blenheim bombers of RAF 60 Squadron, which could be more conveniently and comfortably accommodated at Mingaladon airport near Rangoon. And there was a bonus: “an understanding, amounting practically to an agreement,” as Brooke-Popham put it, that if Japan moved south, “part, or the whole, of this American Volunteer Group would be detailed for the defence of Burma.” Chennault apparently knew nothing about this unwritten clause in his lease on Kyedaw airfield.
Toungoo was located in the broad valley of the Sittang River, 175 miles north of Rangoon. Its main street rumbled day and night with trucks bound for Lashio, while its railroad thundered with freight to the same destination, whence it would be pushed over the Burma Road to Kunming. The town lay a bit to the west, its narrow, twisting streets closely lined with bamboo shops and huts, including a liquor store and an establishment that purported to be a hotel but was in fact a brothel. The most notable building was the sprawling, redbrick railroad station, containing the town’s only restaurant. The principal product was teak, hauled out of the rain forest by elephants and gangs of coolies under the supervision of young British “jungle wallahs.” The population was 23,000, including a few thousand Indians, some half-wild Karen tribesmen, and a few hundred westerners.
Toungoo society was dominated by a dozen British families who lived on the outskirts. The men were army officers (Toungoo was headquarters for the recently formed 1st Burma Division) and managers for the MacGregor teak company. Off hours, they gathered at the Gymkhana Club—golf, tennis, billiards, and whisky-soda—and at dinner parties given by the wives in rotation. Black tie was obligatory, and afterward the ladies left the gentlemen to smoke cigars and discuss world affairs with unquenchable optimism. Sundays, they met again at St. Luke’s, Church of England, which had more headstones in its graveyard than communicants in its pews. Southeast Asia was not a gentle land for Europeans.
Six miles north of town—past the hulks of trucks broken down on the road to Mandalay; past a pagoda guarded by statues of chintha, the ferocious seated lion of Burmese mythology—was the side-road to Kyedaw airfield. Its single runway ran north-south for 4,000 feet and was surfaced with asphalt. Eastward lay the Karen Hills, a sawtooth mountain wall, blue with haze and marking the Burma-Thailand border. Away from the squalor of Toungoo, the countryside had a wild tropical beauty, with gnarly trees and fantastic flowering shrubs.
The RAF had outfitted Kyedaw with a small control tower, hangars, and office buildings. A mile from the field were barracks built from teak and bamboo according to the architectural fashion of Southeast Asia: no interior partitions, and the exterior walls open from waist-height to the eaves, with the sunny side sheltered by a veranda. There were no screens. Instead, the occupants slept under mosquito netting, on slat-bottomed cots sternly labeled “On His Majesty’s Service.” Ceiling fans stirred the air, if the electric generator were running. The roofs were bamboo thatch, and the latrines were open pits with urine buckets on the side, attended by Indian “sweepers.”
Chennault inspected Kyedaw on July 26 with Butch Carney, who’d accompanied him from Kunming; Group Capt. E.R. Manning, the Australian who commanded the RAF in Burma; and Ed Pawley, who laid on CAMCO’s twin-engine Beechcraft for the tour. Chennault wasn’t impressed, but he had no better alternative, and he approved the arrangement.
Skip Adair was still on recruiting duty, and the Greenlaws and Daffy Davis were still in Hong Kong, waiting for visas. So Chennault left Butch Carney in charge. Carney lived with an enterprising Chinese woman, Rose Mok, who among other things was a free-lance trader on the Burma Road—buying a truck in Rangoon, filling it with goods, and selling vehicle and cargo after a hired crew brought them to Kunming. She followed Carney to Toungoo, to keep track of her dealings on the Burma Road and to see what opportunities this new venture might pose.
In Washington, meanwhile, President Roosevelt approved the formation of the 2nd American Volunteer Group, to fly the twin-engine Lockheed and Douglas bombers that had been diverted from British orders. Their mission included “the incendiary bombing of Japan.” Poor George Marshall. It was like keeping a cat off the couch: no matter how many times he put it down, it jumped up again.
