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Chapter 16
- University of Missouri Press
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189 • • • Chapter 16 Chapter 16 Tonight you are going to find out you’ve got a soul. —Col. Philip Cochran The message from RAF Air Marshal Sir John Baldwin arrived at Lalaghat and Hailakandi early Sunday morning, 5 March 1944:“Weather is suitable. Carry out Operation Thursday.” Plans had been under way for days, but the cable confirmed that with good visibility the invasion would begin that evening.1 Darkness would descend early, but a waxing moon was expected to provide adequate light for the tug pilots to navigate and find the fields deep inside Burma where each would release his two gliders filled with British guerrilla troops and heavy equipment for constructing rough airfields. The focus of the Wingate expedition was to coordinate other offensives against the Japanese in Burma: “Cutting the Japanese lines of communication with North Burma, permitting the possible entrapment of the Japanese forces in that area and, as a consequence, securing the advance of the Ledo Road to China.”2 A glance at a topographic map of the area reveals that the aerial invasion would not be easy, even if the operation began at dawn with the full light of day as a guide. The site code-named Broadway was 267 miles from Lalaghat and only a rough, relatively open clearing in thick jungle. It lay in rather marshy land between two steep ranges of hills: the 190 • • • Project 9 Gangaw on the west and an unnamed range on the east. The crests of the hills rose more than 1,000 feet above the jungle glade. On a topographical map of the area the contour lines are close together and wander like the crayon scribbles of a two-year-old. The second landing site, a clearing codenamed Piccadilly, was equally far and just as formidable. The hills in northern Burma are rugged, gouged with steep crevices and covered with nearly impenetrable undergrowth beneath 75- to 100-foot trees that block any view of the sun. Freshets and larger streams cascade from the upper levels, tumbling to the lower elevations to create swampy fogged-in clearings in the otherwise unrelenting vista of trees. Northern Burma would not be anyone’s choice for a battleground; less so would it be considered suitable for aerial operations. But it was where the Japanese were. And the Air Commandos would take the Chindits there to fight them. Capt. Dick Cole turned from the cockpit, ambled down the sloping floor of the C-47 cabin, and stepped down onto the hard-packed earth of the flying field of Lalaghat. He was certain that the two-engine tug was ready for the mission. Flight crews had filled the big olive-drab bird to capacity with fuel, made the preflight checks, started it, taxied it into position, and then thoroughly rechecked everything. It would do its job. Hairless Joe, named for a character in the Li’l Abner comic strip, had performed well in grueling conditions since Cole had flown it to India from the States. Now he had done all he could to ensure that he was equally prepared. Cole had chocolate bars in his flight suit pockets and had double-checked his flight maps and a stack of instrument procedures for fields in China.3 He looked at the line of a dozen C-47s lined up wingtip to wingtip along the east side of the unpaved runway. The Cole tug was third in line; Capt. Bill Cherry would fly the first one, and Cole’s old friend Capt. Jacob Sartz would command the second tug. Cole surveyed the west side of the strip, where Waco CG-4A gliders were similarly arranged. The tugs would pull into takeoff position at ten-minute intervals, and crews would push two gliders into stations behind each tug. Staggered lengths of nylon rope would connect the three aircraft, and at a green light signal from a biscuit gun, the cargo planes would start their takeoff run. Cole glanced at his watch. The first aerial invasion of a country would begin in an hour. Cole was eager but not anxious; anxiety was not part of his makeup. A year of flying the Hump in C-47s in some of the worst weather conditions in the world, using maps that were notoriously inaccurate, with few navigation aids and risking interception by Japanese fighters daily had inured him to the rigors of combat aviation. While flying 191 • • • Chapter 16 into winds that often howled at more than a...