Project 9: The Birth of the Air Commandos in World War II

Chapter 15

179 • • • Chapter 15 Chapter 15 On Valentine’s Day 1944 the Japanese made the Air Commandos pay for their forays into Burma, strikes that until now had gone largely unanswered. The fighter and bomber missions begun on 3 February against the famed military might of the Rising Sun had proved something like a one-sided boxing match, with U.S. warriors scoring points against a lethargic unresponsive opponent. But the mission on this day almost two weeks later, against a supply depot on the northern edge of Mandalay on a bend of the Irrawaddy, would engender bitterness among the fighter pilots, call Cochran’s leadership into question, and threaten the morale and can-do spirit of the Air Commandos. Operations by the fighter section, headed by Grant Mahony, had started with panache and the invincible cocky attitude that is vital to fighter pilots everywhere. Mahony himself was a seasoned veteran, a handsome dark-haired Irishman with a reputation for deep and abiding hatred of the Japanese. A 1939 graduate of the University of California , Berkeley, with a degree in forestry, Mahony joined the Army Air Corps immediately after commencement and trained at Kelly Field in San Antonio. As a young lieutenant in the Philippines, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross on the recommendation of Gen. Douglas MacArthur following a hazardous night reconnaissance flight in bad weather; the information he provided led to a highly successful bombing raid the next day. The following week two enemy fighters jumped 180 • • • Project 9 him; his guns jammed, and he dived to escape. The Japanese pursued him, and he was aware that they were firing wildly and into a concentration of their own troops. He had the presence of mind to climb and dive again in the same location, again noting that the fighters were firing into their own positions.1 In 1942 he became commander of the 76th Fighter Squadron, 23rd Fighter Group, 14th Air Force, a successor to the American Volunteer Group, or the Flying Tigers. He was named to Project 9 in November 1943 and immediately put in charge of the fighter section. On 13 February Cochran received an intelligence report that indicated a large Japanese supply depot was situated just north of Mandalay, on a bend of the Irrawaddy River. The Japanese were using metal-roofed warehouses as staging points for military materiel in northern Burma, near the Laudaung Railroad Station. Could the Air Commandos take them out? Cochran, frustrated with the China-Burma-India theater and admittedly still a bit unhappy about not leading a fighter group in Europe, committed his fighter force to attack the target; moreover he would lead it. This decision, as it turned out, was the first of several with disastrous consequences. It was a clear day, forecast to be the same over the target. Cochran briefed his pilots and displayed some recon photos of the area, emphasizing the bend in the Irrawaddy as an identifier. The warehouses to be hit were part of a larger complex of metal-roofed buildings; the exact targets would be difficult to pick out. At 0820 thirteen P-51A Mustangs took off in pairs from Hailakandi; each fighter carried two 500-pound high-explosive bombs and full racks of .50-caliber ammunition for the four Browning M-2 machine guns mounted in the wings. They would observe radio silence until over the target. The Mustangs, all bearing the five white diagonal stripes of the Air Commandos, arrived over Mandalay in about an hour and quickly located the area of the target.2 And then Cochran made the most egregious tactical error of the day: he was looking down at the target, not up. He had failed to specifically assign a high cover for the attack. The Air Commandos would pay for that oversight. Peering at the densely packed buildings in the area of the river bend, and trying to match what he saw with the intelligence photos, Cochran finally identified what he thought was the large storage depot in a cluster of similar buildings. “All right, I’ve got the target spotted,” he radioed to the other pilots. “I’m going down to mark it; if anyone sees something else they believe is 181 • • • Chapter 15 the target, then we’ll talk it over and decide which is which.” He pushed forward on the stick and began a dive on the buildings below. He pulled the bomb salvo lever and his two 500-pound bombs tumbled from their...