Fighting Japan in the air...

Korero (AEWS), Volume 2, Issue 7, 10 April 1944, Page 3

Fighting Japan in the air...

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A KORERO Report

Strange -as it seems, one of the busiest members of the Royal New Zealand Air Force in the forward

Pacific is a sign-writer. He works in red and white, painting Jap flags on a scoreboard at the island headquarters of the New Zealand Fighter Wing. Each new flag shows that another Japanese warplane has crashed to its doom after exchanging aerial unpleasantries with an R.N.Z.A.F. fighter. And the signwriter is busy—extremely busy.

There is more in this tropical signwriting than occurs at a cursory glance. To those who know the R.N.Z.A.F.’s short but eventful Pacific history, the scoreboard points in two directions. Its empty spaces offer dismal cheer to the flying men of Hirohito’s hordes, and its gay chequers of red and white recall the equally chequered history of R.N.Z.A.F. pioneers in the Pacific. The latter is a short story that goes back to a tropical hurricane .

The wind blew strong in Fiji halfway through February, 1941, so strong that

it wrecked half of the R.N.Z.A.F.’s aircraft strength in the Pacifictwo de Havilland 89’s, tethered down on a Fijian aerodrome. The R.N.Z.A.F. had then been up in the Pacific ” for four months. Its first unit, assigned to carry out reconnaissance, shipping escort, and operational training, consisted of four aircraft taken over from civil owners and converted for service flying. This flight, plus a headquarters unit, arrived in Fiji in November, 1940. It had the “will” even if it had but little with which to make the “ way.”

Even earlier than this Fijian commencement, however, R.N.Z.A.F. aircraft were operating in the Pacific. Traditions were founded in the earliest days of the war, when a handful of pilots flew cheerfully hundreds of miles out over the Pacific on reconnaissance from New Zealand air bases. They flew obsolescent, single-engined aircraft, with only their life-jackets as small salvation in the event of a water “ landing.” Nevertheless, the pilots of this little band join

in crediting the Fijian unit with the first “ real Pacific operations.

But to get back to the hurricane : the two aircraft destroyed by the wind were replaced by another two machines takeri over from a civil air-line. These two aircraft, with their fresh war-paint, were harbingers. In less than twelve months a bomber reconnaissance squadron, equipped with Lockheed Hudson bomber aircraft, was operating from Fiji, in addition to an army cooperation squadron and a flight of multi-engined flying-boats. The primary role of these squadrons was to carry out reconnaissance patrols in the Fijian area. They also provided escorts for merchant shipping trading in Fijian waters, and flew searches as deep as 400 miles seaward from their bases. To the realist student of geopolitics, however, this R.N.Z.A.F. expansion was too small to be noticed beneath the shadow of a greater and more devastating

expansion—that which Japan initiated with Pearl Harbour in December, 1941.

The events which followed Pearl Harbour are already history New Zealand prepared to meet dire eventualities.

By the middle of 1942, however, the strategical position in the South Pacific area had altered. The Midway and Coral Sea Battles, the United States landings in the Solomons, and the halting of the Japanese drive in New Guinea, had all contributed to remove the immediate threat from New Zealand. This improvement made it possible to revise earlier plans, which were mainly defensive. The time was ripe “to let the boys have a crack at the Japs,” to quote the term of a New Zealand journalist writing of a New-Zealand-based

reconnaissance squadron just after Pearl Harbour.

Consequent on the United States’ activity in the South Pacific, the pioneer

squadrons at Fiji had borne a heavier burden of reconnaissance in Fijian and Tongan waters. More was required, however, for the bamboo halted in its southward flight had now to be sent whistling back to its mother grove in the East.

It was a cool, grey October morning, just after dawn, when the next chapter began. From the runways of a northern New Zealand air station a squadron of Lockheed Hudson bombers took off at one minute intervals to fly to the forward Pacific area. This departure is history now, but at the time it was an epic, being the first mass aircraft departure from New Zealand soil for a landing in the combat zone. As the sign-writer " up forward” will tell you, such mass migrations are commonplace nowadayseven fighter aircraft now migrate en masse.

Operating from Guadalcanal, aircraft of this pioneer squadron were immediately on the job, co-operating with the U.S. Forces. The squadron was early to find need for a scoreboard—in attacks on submarines, one was accounted definitely destroyed, and another counted as a probable, while later at least one enemy float-plane was definitely destroyed. This, judged by European standards, was a modest beginning, but not so modest when it is remembered that the squadron’s assignment was reconnaissance and search.

Many jobs of flying came the pioneer squadron’s way, including the bombing of supply dumps and other targets, the illumination of targets for U.S. night bombing attacks, and weather-reporting flights prior to U.S. bombing operations. On many occasions the Hudsons were intercepted and attacked by enemy aircraft, and, as recorded earlier, at least one Jap will never intercept again. This squadron laid a foundation.

Other squadrons went to the Solomons and by as early as May of last year R.N.Z.A.F. reconnaissance craft in the forward area, operating from Guadalcanal alone, had flown missions aggregating 700,000 miles; had carried out 1,240 searches and other operations, and had clocked 5,000 hours of operational flying.

On over twenty occasions they had clashed with the enemy.

Sign-writing became almost a fulltime job for the R.N.Z.A.F. painter in June last, when the first New Zealand fighter squadron arrived in the Solomons. Ten emblems went up on the board after the first two major battles in which our fighters met Japanese Zeros. Six of the

ten victims were despatched by pilots who had arrived at Guadalcanal only the day before the engagement.

Since that June beginning the fighters of the R.N.Z.A.F. have gone on to bring the score to the century mark, the shooting-down of the hundredth Japanese plane being announced a short time ago. Fresh fighter squadrons have been flown up from New Zealand, and to-day their bases are much farther forward than the original landing-strips on Guadalcanal. Word has recently been received that New Zealand fighter squadrons are to

be equipped with the famous Corsair aircraft. Meanwhile, New Zealand Warhawks, operating from Bougainville, have assumed the role of fighter-bombers, and are striking the Japanese in the Rabaul area. An attack bomber squadron of Venturas has made its presence felt among Japanese installations, while Catalina flying-boat squadrons based at Fiji and farther north have carried out valuable reconnaissance and search missions. During the last few weeks New Zealand Catalinas have rescued over twenty United States airmen from the sea. Squadrons of Grumman Avenger torpedo bombers and Dauntless dive-bombers have been formed and trained. Linked with the operational squadrons in the Pacific are the Air Transport and Pacific Ferry organizations. These play a less spectacular but none the less important role than the fighters and bombers. New Zealand heavy transport aircraft carry personnel and supplies to and from the forward area of the Pacific, generally maintaining fast and efficient communication between New Zealand and the forward bases. This organization is equipped with Douglas Dakota and Lockheed Lodestar transport planes. i The Pacific Ferry organization brings to New Zealand by air across the Pacific many of the modern aircraft that are subsequently flown by operational units. In many respects the work of this organization is similar to that of the famous Atlantic Ferry Command. It has greatly speeded up the delivery of aircraft, and so has played a vital part in the efficiency with which the air war against the Japanese is being prosecuted. The organization has tens of thousands of mishap-free miles to its credit and, as a weekly newspaper stated recently, “ the ferry crews have yet to lose an hour, much less an aircraft on the way.”

No review of R.N.Z.A.F. activity in the Pacific is completed without some reference to the ground organization

which, in itself, is material for a long article. In brief, it can be said that wherever R.N.Z.A.F. aircraft are based in the Pacific area there also will be found New Zealand servicing units, personnel, and administrative organizations. Like their flying counterparts, the men in the ground organizations have tradition ; some of them served with the R.N.Z.A.F. fighter squadron and aero-drome-construction unit in the MalayanSingapore campaign. They bring to their work a speed and quality which wins high praise from British and American correspondents.