The Birth of the Air Commandos: The Roots of USAF Special Operations

Colonel Orde Wingate, a most unconventional British officer

The fall of Burma in early 1942 threatened to derail the Allies' plans for Asia. The British withdrawal from Burma to India was the biggest, costliest, and longest not to mention most humiliating withdrawals in the military history of the British Empire. Coupled with the loss of Singapore, it left India as the only bulwark against Japanese expansion in Southeast Asia. With 12 million acres of rice paddies and an annual rice production of 8 million tons, Burma was an important logistical asset to the Japanese Empire and it also gave them control over the southern end of the Burma Road, a 717-mile supply route that was being used to provide supplies for General Chiang Kai-Shek in central China in his fight against the Japanese. Japanese military planners hoped that cutting off Chiang would mean less troops would be needed in central China to keep him in check. With dark days ahead on the minds of British officials in India, a most unconventional British officer arrived with an audacious plan to take the fight back into Burma. Colonel Orde Wingate had already gained a reputation as an unconventional war specialist leading guerrilla units in Africa and the Middle East against Axis forces. What he lacked in conventionality for a British officer he more than amply made up in his leadership abilities to inspire the men in his command. He created a jungle force made up of Indians and British called the "Chindits", which was a corruption of the Burmese word "chinthe", the fierce dragon that statues that guarded Burmese temples depicted. In February 1943, Wingate led 3,000 Chindits in Operation Longcloth. They penetrated deep into Burma on foot and scored early successes cutting Japanese rail routes. But Wingate lacked heavy guns as the Chindits were on foot and the Royal Air Force proved unable to provide the necessary air support. Wingate also counted on a conventional counter-offensive to keep the Japanese occupied while he harassed their rear supply lines. When that didn't happen, the Japanese were able to focus on defeating the Chindits and in early June, Wingate and only 2/3 of his Chindit force made it back into India. 

Phil Cochran and John Alison, the first leaders of the Air Commandos

Despite the disaster of Operation Longcloth, Wingate gained the support of Prime Minister Winston Churchill who was a known admirer of the unconventional in military operations. When Churchill headed to Quebec to meet with President Franklin Roosevelt to confer on war plans, Churchill brought Wingate to explain to Roosevelt plans for a second assault on Burma. While Churchill was thinking ahead and wanting a new Burma assault as a means of strengthening the British Empire in Asia, Roosevelt was intrigued with Wingate's plans as it could reopen the Burma Road and strengthen Chiang Kai-Shek's position in China which might provide the Allies bomber bases for which to take the war to the Japanese Home Islands. As Wingate briefed Churchill and Roosevelt, he had in mind a much bigger operation that Operation Longcloth with a much larger Chindit force that had its own air transport and air support, in effect, giving the Chindits their own air force. Roosevelt was captivated by the plan and passed it on to the head of the USAAF, General Hap Arnold, to organize the air assets that Wingate and the Chindits needed. Ordinarily this sort of order would have been a distraction from General Arnold's vision of a massive strategic bombing campaign against Germany and Japan, but he saw a chance to prove the value of air power in supporting a large ground formation deep behind enemy lines. General Arnold needed a USAAF officer who could lead the new unit and interviewed Colonel Phil Cochran who made his name as an aggressive pilot in North Africa. The other was a friend of Colonel Cochran, Colonel John Alison, who had flown hazardous supply missions "over the Hump" from India to China to keep Chiang Kai-Shek supplied. Prior to that, Alison had six kills while flying P-40s with the Flying Tigers in China. Each man recommended the other to General Arnold as they each wanted a fighter combat command in Europe. General Arnold settled the issue by choosing both Cochran and Alison to get Wingate's air force organized with the order "To hell with paperwork; go out and fight!" Figuring that two commanders made no sense, they agreed that Cochran would be the commander and Alison would be his deputy. But their long prior friendship made them highly attuned to each other's thinking as they set out to create the most unique force in the history of the USAAF. 

Initially calling their outfit Project 9, they went to London to meet with Wingate and Lord Louis Mountbatten, the supreme Allied commander in Southeast Asia. Cochran and Alison quickly enlarged their force well beyond what Wingate initially requested and one month later, briefed General Arnold and Arnold's own boss, Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall. The Project 9 force was more than just C-47s and some medium bombers. It would have its own fighters, light aircraft for jungle resupply missions, gliders for insertion of troops and even helicopters. Arnold and Marshall were impressed with the plan and gave them the go-ahead. Instead of the Chindits marching back into Burma, the Project 9 transport force of C-47s and gliders would insert the entire Chindit force deep into Burma and keep them resupplied. Medium bombers and fighters would provide dedicated air support to the Chindits and no one else. All the pilots were volunteers and training began in North Carolina on 1 October 1943 at Raleigh-Durham Airport and Seymour-Johnson Army Air Field. The Project 9 force grew to 346 aircraft with Douglas C-47s and Waco CG-4 gliders for transport. Stinson L-1 Vigilant and L-5 Sentinel light aircraft would be used for air evacuation and resupply given their short field performance. North American B-25 Mitchells and P-51 Mustangs formed the sharp end of the force's spear with a handful of Sikorsky R-4 helicopters which were still in testing at Wright Patterson Field. Even General Arnold was impressed with the resourcefulness of Cochran and Alison in getting what was still an experimental program added to their force. 

Emblem of the 1st Air Commando Group, the first Air Force special operations unit

After arriving in India, the Project 9 force was designated the 5318th Provisional Unit (Air), but General Arnold had always been referring to the group as air commandos, so on 29 March 1944, they were redesignated with his blessing to become the 1st Air Commando Group. For most of early 1944 the air commandos trained with Wingate's Chindits but they weren't sure if the Chindits were comfortable with flying into Burma at night on the C-47s and CG-4 gliders. Wingate sent a message "Please be assured that will go with your boys any place, any time, any where." The gliders even carried pack mules which would be used in moving about the jungle in Burma, hence the mule on the patch of the 1st Air Commando Group. 5 March 1944 was the go-day for Operation Thursday when the air commandos and Wingate's Chindits would take the war back to the Japanese in Burma. But that'll be a subject for a future blog post! The 1st Air Commando Group is now the 1st Special Operations Wing of the USAF Special Operations Command based at Hurlburt Field in Florida. Wingate's assurance "Any place, any time, any where" remains the motto of the air commandos with the emblem of the 1st SOW showing the words "Any Time Any Place".

Source: From a Dark Sky: The Story of U.S. Air Force Special Operations by Orr Kelly. Pocket Publishing, 1997, pp 21-42. Photos: USAF, Imperial War Museum, Wikipedia.

Flying High This Past Week 16 March-22 March

First a bit of housekeeping. This week I switched this blog over to have its own domain name at www.tailsthroughtime.com. The previous address of aviationtrivia.blogspot.com still works and you'll get a redirect notice if you use the old link that will take you to the new URL. Now, without further ado, here's what's been getting a lot of page views this past week here at TAILS THROUGH TIME:

• Two's Company and Three's a Crowd: The Boeing 737-200 Flight Crew Controversy: Quite naturally the latest post to the blog would be the most popular in the past week! The question of whether the 737-200 required two flight crew or three created quite a bit of acrimony in the late 1960s when the aircraft was introduced. Nowhere else was the dispute more pronounced than at United Air Lines, one of Boeing's key customers for the new jet.
• The Crazy Cats: The Lockheed Neptunes of the US Army: Yes, you read that right. The *Army*. In Vietnam, the Army found that it needed a bigger and longer ranged aircraft for the SIGINT/COMINT role that today's Guardrail aircraft perform. Intraservice rivalries being what they were then, the Navy stepped up to help the Army and offered some P-2 Neptunes from stateside Reserve squadrons for modification so the Army wouldn't have to deal with what was then a very prickly USAF. The AP-2Es (a spurious designation to avoid antagonizing the USAF) were the heaviest and most complex Neptune variant to take to the skies. Many of the SIGINT/COMINT equipment used on the Army Neptunes would influence the development of the Guardrail system used today by the Army. 
• The N-20 Program: Switzerland's First Indigenous Jet Aircraft: The Federal Aircraft Factory (FAF) N-20 Aiguillon was an attractive flying wing fighter design that only got as far as taxi tests and some very short hops short of a true first flight before being canceled. The Aiguillon had two flying forebears, though, that contributed to the flight test program and development of this aborted fighter design.
• Tupolev's Own Tristar Design: It's not unusual for the Russian design bureaus (called OKBs) to reuse designations. The Tu-204 that flies today is actually the third use of that designation. The first use was for an enlarged T-tailed jet development of the Tu-134/Tu-154 and the second use of the designation was for a widebody trijet that looked very much like the Lockheed L-1011 Tristar. 
• The Rocket-Boosted P-51 Mustang: In 1945 the USAAF's Mustangs were besting the Messerschmitt Me 262 jets over their German bases where the jets were most vulnerable. As a result of augmented airfield defenses, work turned to a rocket-boosted P-51 that would have the speed to catch the Me 262 at altitude and not have to run the gauntlet of airfield defenses.
• The Legend of Half-Moon Bay: In this day and age when most of us are jaded to air travel and complaints about airlines are the norm, from the 1962 Christmas season is a unparalleled story of ingenuity and a can-do spirit by airline employees to go the extra mile. I won't spoil it here, but let's just say we'd all be hard pressed to come up with anything that equals what a small California airline pulled off that year, creating the "Legend of Half Moon Bay"!

The next TAILS THROUGH TIME article goes up tomorrow night, 23 March. Stay tuned! 

The Rocket-Boosted P-51 Mustang

In September 1944 the first operational unit of Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighters was established under the command of the celebrated ace Major Walter Nowotny of the Luftwaffe, his unit being tasked with the operational development of tactics for the fighter and being named "Komando Nowotny" in honor of that significance. USAAF heavy bomber crews had ready been encountering the Me 163 Komet rocket interceptor for several months but the persistence of the jet over the point-defense nature of the Komet made the 262 a more significant threat in the eyes of the Allies. After Nowotny was killed in combat in November 1944, the unit became Jagdgeschwader 7 (JG 7), the first operational jet fighter unit in history. However a threat that the Me 262 posed in the threat, it was quickly realized that it was most vulnerable during its landing and takeoff phases of flight as early jet engines of the day suffered from long spool up times. If American fighter pilots could get at the 262 at its home bases, then its speed advantage was negated. 

The distinctively marked Fw 190 D-9s of JV 44

In response, not only did the Luftwaffe bases of the 262 boast more robust air defenses in the form of anti-aircraft artillery, German fighter pilot Adolf Galland's fighter unit, Jadverband 44 (JV 44) had also come up with another tactic to defend the 262s. At the time, Galland had become a very vocal critic of the Luftwaffe's tactics and operational decisions to the point of becoming quite the thorn in the side of Hermann Goering, the head of the Luftwaffe. It was thought by Goering and his command staff that if Galland were given front line command of a unit, he might be killed in action which would get him out of their hair. Galland was tasked to gather the best fighter pilots he could find to operate the 262 as JV 44 was formed in February 1945. To deal with marauding American fighters over their bases, one of Galland's men formed what was called the Platzschutzstaffel (airfield protection squadron). Equipped with Focke Wulf Fw 190 "Dora 9s" which had excellent performance at low to medium altitudes, the Dora 9s were painted with a distinctive red/white stripped pattern on the underside of the fuselage so they could be recognized and not fired up on by the anti-aircraft artillery of JV 44's base. Each time Galland sent up 262s on an intercept mission or 262s were recovering at the base, the distinctively-marked Dora 9s were airborne. 

Ground testing the Aerojet rocket-equipped P-51D

Fighting past the the Platzschutzstaffel's combat air patrols wasn't the most ideal situation as American fighter pilots also had to deal with the AAA. With the first American jet fighters still a ways from operational employment, various methods were considered to deal with the Me 262 jet menace. One of the few concepts that did make it to the flight test stage was a rocket-boosed North American P-51D Mustang. With an approximately 100mph speed advantage over the Mustang, it was felt that a rocket booster of some sort could bring the P-51D a burst of speed that would allow it to battle the Me 262 at altitude instead of over the Luftwaffe's home fields. Tail number 44-73099 was pulled from the production line for modification with an Aerojet liquid rocket engine installed in the lower aft fuselage just behind the radiator and ahead of the tailwheel. The rocket engine used two hypergolic fuels- red fumaric acid and aniline with the fumaric acid acting as the oxidizer. Both were extremely toxic and corrosive and each was housed in a pressurized, 75-gallon tank, one under each wing and much smaller than the standard Mustang drop tank. 

With the lower aft fuselage painted with a reflective material to prevent heat damage from the rocket engine, all the pilot had to do was flip a simple off/on switch on the left side of the cockpit to activate the rocket engine. North American test pilot Bob Chilton took the modified Mustang to the air for the first time on 23 April 1945 and at 21,000 feet, he fired the rocket engine and the Mustang surged forward another 100mph. The two 75-gallon tanks were sufficient for one minute of operation. Several test flight were made, but the underwing tanks, even though smaller than the standard fuel drop tank, induced a considerable amount of drag that prevented the rocket-boosted Mustang from really getting the most out of that one minute of rocket-boosted flight. By the time the USAAF took delivery of the 44-73099, the Germans had surrendered unconditionally and the operational need for the rocket boosted Mustang faded into aviation history. 

Source: Building the P-51 Mustang: The Story of Manufacturing North American's Legendary World War II Fighter in Original Photos by Michael O'Leary. Specialty Press, 2010, p166-167.