Burma Star Association - B.C. Chapter
BRANCH MEMBER PAGE
"Skipper, we've been hit in #3 (engine) and we've got black smoke pouring from it". The urgent voice of my Flight Engineer came through on my headset. We had just pulled up and away from a low level attack on the railway bridge near Three Pagoda Pass, south of Moulmein. This was one of the many bridges on the infamous Bangkok to Moulmein railway built by the Japanese using thousands of Allied POWs.
The engine was the nearest to my cockpit window, but the wing hid my view of the smoke that was coming from the bottom. I pulled back on #3 throttle and directed Fred, my co-pilot, to feather the propeller. He hit the large button for #3, but nothing happened.
It then dawned on me that the black "smoke" was actually black oil, making it impossible for us to feather the prop to stop its rotation. We had now left the coast and were heading for base, six hours' away across the Bay of Bengal. Ordinarily, flying with three engines in a Lib was no problem, but in this case a propeller still rotating at a fairly high RPM was a serious development.
The drag created by the propeller having stuck in "coarse", the other engines would require extra power and fuel. The engine oil soon dissipated, but the prop kept turning, the engine getting hotter and hotter as it began to seize, and was shaking so hard it was on the point of either the prop or the whole engine shearing away from the wing.
Finally there was one great jolt as the engine seized completely and burst into flames, but the prop did not shear. Fred pulled one of the fire extinguisher levers for #3 but it did no good. The second extinguisher also failed to have any effect, and if anything, the fire increased.
Now our only option was to ditch, and this was not good news. Very few Liberator ditchings were successful, as they had a tendency to break up badly when they hit the water. The soft bomb bay doors would collapse, water hitting the aft bulkhead with such force it would break the back of the aircraft.
Since we had no alternative and the fire was threatening to break into the wing, then to the gas tanks, we prepared for ditching. The rest of the crew moved onto the flight deck and Fred secured me to my seat and backrest with the Sutton harness so I wouldn't go through the instrument panel when we hit the water, then was tied down himself.
The fire was still burning fiercely. When we were down to fifty feet above the water I began easing off the throttles to just above stalling speed. At twenty feet, ready to cut the throttles I saw out of the corner of my eye - NO FLAMES!
As I rammed on the power again and thanked whoever was looking after us that day, I couldn't help wondering if our problems were yet over. Since we couldn't feather the dead prop it meant we had a lot of drag and a possible fuel shortage before we got back to base just beyond Calcutta.
Our route was over ocean and then over the dreaded Sundarbans.- * The latter region extended approximately 170 miles along the coast, and 60-80 miles inland. It consisted of myriads of waterways, swamps and islands, densely forested with mangrove and sundari trees growing in the soft mud, and home to snakes, crocodiles, and various mammals, among them two species definitely unfriendly to man. Neither sea nor land offered an appealing welcome should a fuel shortage necessitate ditching, bailing out, or a forced landing.
The latest intelligence we had regarding Akyab, a small island farther up the coast of Burma, reported it was presently under British command. It had recently changed hands, the Japanese and the British alternately gaining control. It was now used as a staging point for wounded British Army personnel, who were picked up on the Burma mainland in small ambulance planes, then transferred to larger DC3 transports for passage to hospitals in India.
Although we were aware the airstrip might be too short for large four-engine bombers, it seemed the best option and we had to try. Dick, my wireless operator, was able to pick up their ground control, who advised us they had a short dirt strip on which we could land. By this time it was night, and pitch black with no lights showing, but they offered to put two flares at the end of the strip. We landed and skidded to a stop with our nose against the jungle.
We all sat back and thanked our very lucky stars for having landed safely. Moments later a Jeep arrived and a British Army officer climbed aboard our aircraft. He handed us a large bottle of Scotch saying "Here, chaps, I expect you could use this." We certainly could and polished the bottle off in record time. He told us we were lucky because Japanese aircraft had come in earlier and cratered the strip on which we had landed.
*An interesting account of developments in that region is given in the book "Spell of the Tiger - The Man-eaters of Sundarbans" by Sy Montgomery, published by the Houghton Mifflin Company of Boston and New York in 1995.
After he left we fell asleep in our seats, and woke in the morning to find assorted Burmese clambering all over our Lib, poking into everything they could find. A blast on the loud Bail-out Bell sent them scattering in all directions. We then inspected the landing strip and were able to see that we had miraculously missed all the bomb craters. We also discovered that our flaps on the same side as the burnt engine had been damaged by the same enemy fire, and if I had elected to do another circuit before landing we would have rolled over when I poured on the power again and made a bigger crater of our own.
Later that same day we left our Liberator to its fate when we were picked up and flown back to base.
On an operation, to night‑bomb a target on the Salween River my job was to locate and light the target with flares for the rest of the squadron. The monsoon weather was at its wildest that night and our Liberator was being badly bounced around when my co‑pilot Fred yelled "There's another Lib. off our starboard wing ‑-- CLOSE!"
Since all the other aircraft should have been at least five minutes behind me, we tried to make radio contact but with no success. The other Lib. kept flashing his navigation lights on and off and obviously had a message for us.
Thinking that base had tried to contact me with a change of plans, we flashed the message "WHAT?" to him with our "Aldis" lamp. The "Aldis" reply came back reading like a wartime poster on a London train station: "IS THIS TRIP REALLY NECESSARY?"
He crept cautiously along the narrow jungle path, stopping fearfully at any sound. Suddenly he tripped the snare, leaping in the air, squawking and flapping his elbows in imitation of a jungle chicken, while his companiondoubled over, holding his sides in fits of laughter. These were two of our instructors, Kachin tribesmen, rumoured to be headhunters, but we were a bit dubious. They were small, wiry men, always full of fun and laughter. They spoke neither English nor Burmese, while we spoke neither Burmese nor the Kachin tongue. Obviously all communication had to be in pantomime. It was December of 1944, and we had been in India only a few days.
We had enlisted in the RCAF in '41, completed the obligatory courses, and then were posted to the RAF station in Charlottetown. That is another story, but for the two years we were there we did our utmost to be sent overseas. Finally we succeeded.
Before proceeding overseas, we were sent to Boundary Bay, near Vancouver in British Columbia, to become familiarized with the four engine Liberators, then to Montreal where new Libs from the eastern U.S. were to be delivered. We were to fly them to India via North Africa. However, they were not ready, so we were sent by troopship from Halifax to Greenock, then from Southampton to Bombay.
When my crew and I disembarked from the P & O troopship, in India, I thought we would be posted to a Liberator squadron in the next step of our journey to wartime flying. Not so.
Some of the crews were sent to refresher courses, but lucky us, we were informed that we were to be sent to a recently-formed course in jungle survival. It seemed like a waste of time to us as we had no intention of being shot down, but being in no position to argue, we dutifully boarded the train to Poona, and then stood in open trucks for the rest of the trip to the nearby mountains where the school was located.
Tents, each containing four cots, had been set up, and we settled in for a three to four week course in how to live should we be shot down and survive the crash.
The course was fascinating. Part of each day was spent with Burmese ex-schoolteachers, who taught us about Burmese customs and the basic language, as well as useful phrases such as "take me to your village headman." The other part of the day was spent with our Kachin friends, who showed us how to dig for edible roots, one of which looked like okra, and a tree, the bark of which could be scraped to provide food, etc. We were also shown how to snare a jungle chicken. They taught us how to make twine, plus some of the many uses of bamboo. Living bamboois green and easily cut, not like the dried bamboo that we see here in imports. A section of it, about 3" - 4" in diameter, could be made into a water carrier by making a small hole near the top and fitting it with a stopper, then attaching twine as a carrying handle. The same configuration could be split in half, lengthwise, to make a cooking vessel and because the bamboo was green, the food would be cooked when the bamboo started to burn. We learned many other uses of jungle materials.
After the over-crowded troopships we were enjoying life in the mountains, and were looking forward to the challenge at the end of the course. We would be taken into the jungle and left to find our way back to the base, a two or three day hike, living off the land as we had been taught.
My participation in the course came to an abrupt halt when I developed an abscessed tooth and a very swollen jaw. The trouble had started back in Canada when, after take-off, at about 1000' or 2000' the pain would hit like a kick from a mule. I didn't report it because I was afraid I would miss my chance to go overseas.
Now it was a couple of days before Christmas. I was nut in a truck and taken to the army base in Poona to have a dentist look after the problem, But the dentist was in Bombay on Christmas leave and wouldn't be back until after Boxing Day. I tried to sleep but nearly went crazy with itching all over my body. The blankets I had been given were host to a million fleas. I could shine my flashlight down inside the blanket and see them merrily jumping up and down. Then I remembered hearing that a nearby village was out of bounds due to an outbreak of bubonic plague. Knowing that fleas were the carriers of this plague made for some sleepless nights, although I had almost immediately been given clean blankets.
Christmas Eve I sat alone in my room with my aching jaw and listened to the sound of carols and general revelry coming from the officer’s mess. I felt truly sorry for myself. The swelling and the aching had abated to some degree by the time the dentist returned. He gave me some medication and pulled the offending molar, and wouldn't you know? --- New Years Eve I again sat alone in my room with a sore jaw while I listened to sounds of a rip-roaring party in the nearby mess
A few days later I was ready to rejoin my crew at the school, but we were unable to do the survival trek to test our new jungle skills because it was time to report to the Liberator base in Digri, near Calcutta. We had mixed feelings because the outing would have been fun, but joining the war effort was our real goal. During my absence in Poona, several crews had successfully returned to base from the survival trek. Later groups had been surprised to discover booths selling cooked rice and other foodstuffs set up along the route. The ever-entrepreneurial Indians had figured out a way to earn extra rupees. So much for jungle survival. Private enterprise prevails.