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

Chapter 18

215 • • • Chapter 18 Chapter 18 Back at Lalaghat, Cochran felt immense relief when radio reports from Broadway detailed what had occurred and why Alison had sent the original “soya link” message. Cochran had spent hours in an agony of suspense and self-doubt, imagining the worst had happened to his friend Alison and the entire glider-borne assault team. Nonetheless the total picture was bad. Nearly all the gliders had been destroyed, rendered unavailable for future missions. Two dozen men had been killed—four Air Commandos and twenty British and Indian troops—and dozens more injured, all in accidents, none by enemy action. Nine gliders had broken their towlines and were lost somewhere in the jungles of Burma; eight others had landed in India. A mission involving ten of the Air Commandos’ UC-64 Norseman light cargo aircraft, sent out to drop additional supplies, had been a disaster. The Norseman fiasco resulted from a hasty and incomplete briefing of the flight crews following the change of plans that eliminated Piccadilly as an objective. The UC-64s were supposed to drop supply bundles to the Chindits. Told to simply fly in formation several pilots lost visual contact with the leader, Lt. Col. Clinton Gaty, because of the poor visibility. One landed on a sandbar in Burma, and others became lost and turned back to India. In the end three of the aircraft were lost after their pilots bailed out, and only two bundles of supplies made it to Broadway.1 216 • • • Project 9 Despite the catastrophically high number of casualties, Cochran learned days later of some good news involving the gliders that had broken their towlines and landed in the Burmese jungles. Aboard one glider that went down short of Broadway was Capt. Weldon O. Murphy. He was acting as copilot aboard the glider and was to serve as medical officer at the stronghold. His glider was designated to serve as a hospital ship, and it was equipped with stretchers as well as a full load of Chindits and battle gear. Murphy recorded the events following the crash landing of his glider, and the chief medical officer and flight surgeon, Maj. Robert C. Page, included Murphy’s account in a comprehensive medical report. Murphy noted that he and the pilot had been apprehensive during the flight. Their Waco was scheduled to land early at Broadway, but their worry was less about the possibility of combat and more about the constant surging of the glider and the loss of elasticity in the nylon rope. Two hours after takeoff the surging“became sufficient to break the communication wire between the tow ship and glider.”2 When that happened, the towline flew back into the glider’s right wing, badly mauling the trailing edge. Things quickly got dicey. “Now there were two damaged gliders tied together in the air,” Murphy recounted. “There was an eminent [sic] danger of spinning. The rope was quickly released. Our badly damaged right wing was raised by constant banking to the left. The ship glided to a safe landing on a sand bar located in the midst of Japanese-occupied territory on the East bank of the Irrawaddy River opposite Katha.”3 No one was injured in the unscheduled landing, and they quickly evacuated the glider and slipped into the surrounding jungle. Accompanying them was the RAF flight lieutenant who was to have been the ground-air liaison at Broadway; he insisted that they destroy the virtually intact glider. Seventeen men were aboard Murphy’s Waco, and they stood ready in the inky darkness to provide the RAF officer with covering fire if he were attacked. Murphy, armed with a Thompson submachine gun, eased off the safety as he nervously waited for the RAF officer to return. Suddenly the sandbar was illuminated by a bright blaze, as flames licked at the doped fabric of the glider. The fire quickly consumed the covering and the wooden wings of the glider, leaving only the blackened skeleton of its fuselage. They were eighty miles from Broadway. The men resolved to walk to their original destination rather than try to return to India. For the next eight days they trod stealthily through the jungle, avoiding trails and villages, speaking only in a whisper, eating a third of a day’s ration per day, and never stopping for more than four hours. Despite frequent use of mosquito repellent at each rest stop, they were covered by insect bites 217 • • • Chapter 18 after two hours...