Burma Star Association - B.C. Chapter
The Intelligence School in Karachi, which I was forced to attend as an unwilling pupil, was a strange organisation. Being new it was subject to serious teething problems and we sometimes wondered whether it would develop teeth at all. Nobody seemed quite sure what it was supposed to be teaching, so that the staff endeavored to teach as many things as they possibly could in the hopes that some of it at least might be of some value.
One of the subjects was Air Observation which all students were required to take, regardless of whether they would ever place backside in an aircraft or not. This involved as a finale, going up in an aircraft and noting anything on the ground beneath that might be of military value. As most of us had very nebulous ideas on such values in the first place, the benefits of this short course were not immediately apparent.
The actual flying was done by members of the Karachi Flying Club who flew us, one at a time, as passengers in the Puss Moths or Tiger Moths with which they were equipped. These small planes had two open cockpits, one in front for the driver and a second in the rear for the passenger or student as the case might be. In their models there was no canopy, although I believe that later on a Tiger Moth was produced which was fitted with such cover. Equipped with a helmet and goggles one felt like Snoopy flying over the Western Front in pursuit of the Red Baron. There was no communication between the front and rear cockpits except by shouting or gestures, which were usually rude about air sickness, and at which none of us were very proficient.
In the final test we were sent up with the pilot who would fly a prescribed course while we, gazing over the side of the cockpit, would take note of such things as railway yards, factories, girls sunbathing on rooftops or anything else we thought the instructors or other students or pilots might want to know about. Cameras were forbidden. After a required couple of hours of this the aircraft would thankfully descend and the observer would hand in his list of vitally important topographical details only to be told that he had noted all the things that did not matter and completely missed everything he ought to have seen, and that furthermore he had wasted the time of the pilot, the hours of the aircraft and the precious fuel used to take him aloft.
I was saved this trial by the pilot who, shortly after taking off passed back to me a list of all the things I was supposed to observe, and then set off over much more interesting country. I could hardly blame him as the tedium of flying the same course over and over again with different nitwit and often airsick pupils must have been excruciating. At the end of our allotted time he turned back to Karachi airport and, looking back at me made a circular movement with his hand and an interrogative look on his face, which I took to indicate that he intended to land. I nodded my head. Suddenly I was struck from beneath the seat of the plane, and then found myself hanging by the seatbelt and looking UPWARDS at the sky, a very disconcerting thing. What his gesture had actually meant was "Do you want us to relieve the tedium by a few aerobatics before we go down?" and my nod had signified my willingness.
When we landed and I crawled groggily out of the plane to the highly amused look of the pilot I handed in my suitably amended list with sufficient errors to make it credible. Later I was informed that I had fully and with great credit qualified as an Army Air Observation Officer, whatever that was.
As I had no expectation, being no longer in the artillery if that was pertinent, of ever functioning as such I promptly forgot the qualification along with almost everything else I had learned at the Intelligence School. I might mention that before the end of the course each pupil was required to submit a thesis on some original military thought.
I distinguished myself by expounding at length on the fatuousness of many senior staff officers who did not know what they were talking about but did not have the wit to recognize it, and passed on the results of their ineptitude to the poor line officer who would, unfortunately have to carry out the stupidities.
I must admit that in this I was very unjust in that the vast majority of the staff were both knowledgeable and conscientious but were human enough to make mistakes like all the rest of mankind. After submitting it I was called in for an interview with Major "Jock" Friend (a very appropriate name). Jock, who had been a line officer himself and was an instructor who did not aspire to a staff appointment, pointed out the inappropriateness of my comments. He informed me that he would certainly give me a pass for the effort I had put in on it, and its validity in certain cases. But it would be better for all concerned and particularly my future as a regular officer if the paper was somehow "lost". I agreed.
But I was wrong in assuming that I would never act in the capacity for which I had been trained, because I actually did find myself, to my great dismay, ordered to undertake that role in a real observation flight. The circumstances were this.
When 14th Indian Division was allocated to recapture Arakan the objective was the port of Akyab at the base of the Mayu Peninsula. Akyab was on an island and separated by a narrow stretch of water from Foul Point on the mainland. Covering this stretch of water the Japanese had constructed what appeared to be a battery of heavy guns, four in number. This had been noted by our air photo interpreters on photos brought back by out photo recce planes. The question was were these actual guns or were they dummies placed to deter any sea borne attack?
The interpreters were evenly split on the question, and it was thought that it would be better if some qualified person had a look at them to determine whether they were genuine or not. And right at hand was an officer who was uniquely qualified, having been an artillerist and was now a highly trained and qualified aerial conservationist - me.
The R.A.F. was then making things miserable for the Japs in Akyab by attacking them with Vengeance dive bombers. These Vultee Vengeances were strange craft. I was told that they were capable of lifting a heavier load than any other single engine bomber and delivering it with pin-point accuracy to any target within range. As to this claim I had many reservations. The craft was easily recognizable in the air as it had a very large tail fin, or rudder, out of all proportion to the other dimensions, so that from the ground it presented a strange optical illusion, apparently flying with its arse end pointing upwards and its nose downwards as if scanning the ground beneath. It had another strange characteristic, typically American with their love of gadgetry, in that the fuel was fed to the motor by an electric pump, and this pump, whether from poor design or whatever, was inclined to fail for some reason at the most unexpected and probably inconvenient moment, if there is a convenient moment for an aircraft's fuel pump to fail. Instead of redesigning the whole thing and to overcome the fault, a small hand pump had been built in, so positioned that the gunner or observer could operate it in case of necessity and keep the aircraft flying. No thought had apparently been given to the possibility that the air gunner in such an eventuality might have other things to occupy his attention. This was to play an important part in our flight.
A raid was planned on Akyab, and a gunner on one of the Vengeances was replaced by me who was supposed to look at the battery during the bombing dive when we would come down to within a thousand feet or so of them. This sounded all very well in theory, but for myself, if I had to fly, which I consider a dangerous occupation, I preferred to do it in level flight at twenty thousand feet or so, or even more so. Diving down like that had no appeal to me. As I was to replace a gunner I was given a five minute course on the twin Browning’s with which it was equipped, and which consisted in showing me how to load it and where the triggers were. The mysteries of the sights were not gone into. And so we took off.
Arriving over Akyab I was preparing to examine the guns when the plane suddenly fell away from underneath me and I closed my eyes in terror. After I pushed my stomach back into place I did manage to pry my eyes open long enough to form the opinion that the guns were, indeed, dummies. I then firmly closed them again as I did not want to see any more before we crashed.
There was a sudden bump as if somebody had, with malice aforethought, kicked my rear, my stomach reversed its direction and I thought we had finally hit and I was dead. Instead we were now going as rapidly upwards as we had previously gone downwards, and I later learned that it was at that point the bombs were released, the dive brakes came into play, and the pilot momentarily fainting from the gravity effect. The pilot told me that the two 500 pounders were now on their way down towards the guns, dummies or not. This was the optimistic point of view and was in error.
The idea was that the six aircraft would then resume their formation over Akyab and scoot for home. But the aircraft did not seem to be climbing as fast as the others, and it was obvious that we were being left behind. Investigation into this disclosed that one of the bombs had NOT in fact dropped, and this is what was slowing us down. No amount of cursing and button pushing by the pilot would induce it to let go and allow us to go home.
The Japanese had a squadron of fighters stationed on the excellent Akyab airport, which had been a civil airport in times of peace, and in order to allow us to bomb them at leisure the R.A.F. had arranged a fighter sweep of our own on the Kaladan Valley somewhat to the east in the expectation that this would draw the Japanese Akyab fighters away at the critical moment when our dive bombers were going in. It is a strange thing that on land, sea or air the Japanese ideas on things never seemed to coincide with ours, and our hopes were not fulfilled. The Japanese fighters had not been drawn away but were orbiting their field like a swarm of angry hornets trying to find out who was dropping bombs on their island. They spotted our labouring plane and came towards us, bent on vengeance.
The pilot spotted the first one as it came in and yelled at me to give it a squirt from the Browning’s. I was just about to do so when the fuel pump stopped! The pilot shouted at me to start pumping the red knobbed lever on my right side to keep the engine going. It is enjoined on the most recently joined 2nd Lieutenant and I am sure every pilot officer that orders given should be clear, concise, explicit, non conflicting and capable of being obeyed. I hope I never gave a series of contradictory orders I now received from the pilot and which would certainly have been severely criticized by any R.A.F. or Army instructor. On the one hand I was urged to open fire on the Japs and on the other hand ‘for Christ's sake keep pumping’. I was in a quandary. Did I fire at the Japs and allow us to crash through engine failure? Or did I continue pumping and allow him to shoot us down? I was saved from making the decision by the pilot who hurriedly hurled the plane into a nearby cloud. The Jap did not follow us in. There followed a lethal game of hide and seek, with my pilot dodging in and out of clouds while the Japanese circled angrily around outside trying to guess where we would appear next, rather like a fox watching a group of gopher holes.
It could not go on. We were making no progress towards home and were going to run out of clouds or fuel eventually. The pilot had been on his radio to base asking for help. The Hurricanes, after their useless fighter sweep, were not far off, were ordered to come to our assistance, and a few minutes later they arrived. The Japanese did something which I still do not understand and was completely out of character for them and not in accordance with Bushido or the Way of the Warrior. They broke off the engagement, declined combat with the Hurricanes and took off, while the Hurricanes grouped around us and escorted us homeward.
There remained the vexing problem of the hung up 500 pounder. Bomber crews intensely dislike the idea of 500 pounders going off inside their aircraft. This feeling is fully shared by artillerists of the army and torpedo gunners of the navy. To a gunner, shooting the enemy off the muzzle might sound very stirring as a propaganda phrase used by a war correspondent when describing a very close action. But to be very honest about it the gunner much prefers the explosion to take place at a somewhat safer distance from the muzzle and himself. He objects, as did the ancient engineer, to being hoist by his own petard. To ease his mind shells, torpedoes and bombs have a built-in safety device so that the fuse or detonator cannot be activated until the missile is at a reasonable distance from whoever fired or dropped it. The question was, had the bomb been displaced sufficiently to fully arm the detonator or not? There was no way of telling from where we were sitting as we could not actually see the bomb. It is difficult to assume a restful pose when you are sitting over 500 lbs of T.N.T. which could possibly go off at any moment.
Of course we had another worry. By this time I was becoming somewhat weary from the constant pumping of fuel into the engine, and any attempt to slow down or rest my muscles brought forth an angry snarl or admonition from the pilot. I was starting to wonder which would run out of energy first, my arms or the fuel tanks.
The Hurricanes were based at Agartala and it was to that airfield they escorted us. The ground staff there were the most inhospitable people I have never met. Apprised of the situation re the bomb we were sternly forbidden to attempt a landing there. The Station Commander had some misgivings over the nasty dent it would make in his nice runway if the bomb happened to go off when we landed, as well it might. We were bluntly told to take ourselves off to Feni, which was a bomber station. They had armourers there who could deal with the bomb if it had not solved the problem by itself before then. With all this geeing and hawing the pilot was looking anxiously at his fuel gauges which were giving a very depressing picture, and it was quite clear that if we did make Feni there would be no gasoline left to fuel any fire that might ensue, which was very nice to know.
Arriving over Feni the pilot held an anxious conference over his radio with the armaments officer on the ground. That authority opined that the bomb fuse we were using had a built in delay of a few seconds. Dive bombers dropped their eggs from a very low altitude and for a short while both bomb and plane followed the same trajectory. A delay was essential to allow the bomber to get clear; otherwise it might be caught in the blast of its own bombs. In view of this it was his opinion that we could try landing, and even if the bomb was fully armed there would be a few seconds for the plane to distance itself before the bomb went off. This was encouraging news from the expert, but HE was safe on the ground about half a mile away from where WE could come down. He could afford to be optimistic. In any event we had to get down somehow, and the pilot circled the field to make his approach.
A further problem made itself known. Some of the Japanese bullets must have struck home and done some damage of which the pilot was, to that moment, unaware. The wheels refused to come down and lock into place. Wheels are somewhat essential to an aeroplane if it is to come to earth without denting itself and its occupants. Dumbflummoxed, the pilot again sought advice from the ground. Off to the side of the landing strip were acres and acres of rice paddies. These were of soft mud and partly submerged under three or four inches of water. He was advised to bring it down on the paddies where the mud would soften the landing and also deaden the blast of the bomb if it went off. This was the first we had heard that there was any doubt in his mind over the accuracy of his analysis, and was a fine time to tell us about it. But there was now nothing for it but to go. I stopped pumping, the engine died and down we came in a deluge of mud and water and immature rice. The pilot was singing to himself the old music hall ditty "Knees up Mother Brown" which was most appropriate and probably stopped his teeth from chattering as mine were. The bomb did not go off at all, which is how this came to be written.
Crawling out of the plane, which was not badly damaged, we plowed through the mud to the runway where all the emergency vehicles were parked at a safe distance and we were picked up and escorted to the orderly room, or whatever it is that airfields have. The Station Commander met us and asked us why we had not simply bailed out instead of creating all the foo-fa and risking the damage that might have occurred from attempting to land under such circumstances, not to mention the risk to both of us. The pilot looked at him red faced. Such a solution had not even occurred to him. As for me nobody had told me that the cushion on which I was seated, and to which I was firmly attached, was a parachute! I would not have known how to use it anyway. The pilot and I looked at each other wordlessly and separated. He obviously thought I was a Jonah and responsible for all the nasty things that had happened to him and his nice machine and should never be allowed to get into an aircraft again. I thought that with his type of luck he was not a fit person to fly with anyway, and would be fortunate to survive the war.
Years passed. I left the army and eventually rose to be manager of Mainland Ice and Cold Storage Company in Vancouver. I was sitting at my desk one day when a man walked into the office. Mutual recognition was instantaneous. Without a word he placed a business card on the counter and left, while I watched him safely off the premises with some doubts that we would all safely make it. He was a salesman for English Electric who manufactured refrigeration machinery. As a matter of fact we were in the market for new ammonia compressor. But, with his record, if we had bought one of his machines it would likely have blown the plant up. We bought a York compressor instead.