Sabre-tooth shark-mouths were an emblem of P-40 Warhawks in the 51st Fighter Group’s 25th Fighter Squadron. Colonel Scott describes the use of 25th Fighter Squadron P-40s as a (highly) improvised method of delivering 1,000-pound bombs on Japanese bridges in Burma. Lloyd Howe’s illustration nicely complements the text…
There’s a steamy river country
Rimmed by mountains all around,
Where the world humps up its backbone
Full five miles above the ground.
Flying there with Assam’s Dragons
Into India’s mold’ring clime,
“Brereton’s Bhamo-Busting Bombers”
Were “B-Forties”—every time.
ASSAM DRAGON
IT WAS the steaming month of March, up there in eastern Assam, where one finds Dinjan, Chabua, and Debrugarh and all those tea plantations strung along the Brahmaputra. This was India’s most easterly extension, right into the horseshoe loop which the Himalayas make as they form the Naga Hills. To the north the Great Mountains rose abruptly, in less than a hundred miles, to twenty-five thousand feet; then, further back, they jutted to the top of the world at twenty-nine thousand feet. Out to the east was the “Hump,” where even the low hills were thirteen thousand feet and the higher ones were eighteen thousand. To the south the jungle-covered hills were lower, but they were just as mean to cross. On to the west there was low land, and it was all of India – some 2200 miles of arid, flat country to Karachi. That is to say, it was dry now, for this was March, but in less than two months the monsoon would come and then everything would be as wet as the Brahmaputra.
But this was no time to let your imagination play over those things about mountains, and whether or not the annual rainfall was really 968 inches a year, as the missionaries and tea planters at Sadiya claimed. No, for there was work to be done.
There were Jap supply lines radiating into northern Burma, and these must be severed. About to tackle the job, Johnny Barr, operations officer of a P-40 fighter group, shrugged his shoulders and walked to his ship, on which was painted the wildest-looking, biggest-bottomed dragon any of us had ever seen. Under this weird portrayal were the words “OUR ASSAM DRAGGIN.”
The P-40 roared down the runway with a pretty, yellow five-hundred-pound bomb and set its course toward Burma and the Chindwin, aiming for a railroad bridge over which Jap supplies were flowing. Barr was determined to make that nice American bomb do a good job of ripping out that bridge.
Over his point of attack, Barr looked down on the high spans of the steel bridge. These things are hard jobs for fighter ships and he knew it. They have to be hit just right, too, or the bombing must be done over and over. Johnny circled once; then he got the nose of his ship down and began to dive at the bridge like a comet. His altitude needle started to spin round and round as he concentrated his aim – seven thousand, five thousand, two thousand – then at five hundred feet, Johnny cut his bomb loose. Just as he began to climb, there was a blinding flash, and then a terrific explosion. Parts of the bridge were blown high into the sky.
“That wasn’t a bad job,” he thought, and the big-bottomed dragon on the Warhawk probably grinned. Anyway, Johnny turned it northwest and home, satisfied with the day’s work.
Two days later, Barr went over to appraise the damage his bomb had done. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said, astounded. There, below him, was the bridge, showing no signs of having been blasted by a direct hit just forty-eight hours before. Jap crews had repaired the damage and supplies again were flowing across. It made Barr madder than hell. Something had to be done – this couldn’t go on if the Japs were to be stopped from bringing in vital supplies to their North Burma bases.
As he dejectedly winged his way home Johnny’s mind was so immersed in thought that he couldn’t even hear the roar of his Allison. What to do? They certainly couldn’t afford to divert the few B-24s from their long-range objectives to blasting bridges near the American bases. And the little P-40 certainly couldn’t carry any heavier bomb than the five-hundred-pounder she was already carrying. Sure, the old pea-shooter was the most versatile plane of the war – it had been used for everything except as a lawn mower. But a thousand-pound bomb! Well, that was a little too much to expect even from such an accommodating standby.
Then the thought flashed: After all, why not? It certainly wouldn’t hurt to try.
Barr could hardly wait to land his ship. The moment the plane had stopped he crawled under the belly of the P-40 and meticulously studied every part of his ship’s bomb-rack, even the rivets. Some of the boys who were standing around wondered what Johnny was up to now.
In a few minutes, Barr emerged from under the Warhawk. He was all grin. He signalled his crewmen to bring him one of the half-ton bombs that the mediums used, and as the enlisted men carted the heavy missile toward the ship, they probably grinned to themselves too. Well, now, it just couldn’t be done – the Warhawk would never get off the ground with such a heavy load. But they knew their commanding officer to be a determined man; so under his supervision they installed the thousand-pounder under the belly of the little fighter. Why, it nearly touched the ground! But perhaps they remembered then that not long ago another Warhawk had hauled one thousand pounds of cargo (unofficially known as “C-40”) in a bangalore drum strapped to its belly. Maybe it could be done after all.
The next day, as Barr approached his ship, the P-40 looked to him as if it were very pregnant, and great beads of perspiration seemed to be dripping from the tongue of the dragon painted on the nose of his ship. The “B-40,” like most bombers, would have to have fighter escort; so Johnny assigned one of his pilots to fly on his wing, and then he climbed into the cockpit of his plane. As he taxied the new “medium bomber” into takeoff position – rather slowly and very, very cautiously – the men on the ground noticed that the heavy bomb missed touching the ground by a couple of inches. It would take all of Barr’s long experience to take his ship off the ground without a mishap. Their Commander was too good a man to lose in foolish experimentation – but hadn’t he insisted on taking the ship up himself?
While Barr “revved up” the plane, the boys said a silent prayer and held their breath. As Johnny poured the coal to the little ship she groaned, hesitated for a few seconds – then she was off. Slowly, she gained altitude and was airborne. Johnny circled the field. He saw that the men were waving a frantic “good luck” to him, and he dipped one of his wings in salute.
Soon the “B-40” and its fighter escort were mere needle-points in the deep blue sky, and then they disappeared on a course towards Mogaung. Johnny knew the exact spot he had reserved for his thousand-pound bomb. After carefully checking around, he nosed the “B-40” down and then pulled his bomb-release.
The terrific explosion nearly flipped the little fighter on its back. Somehow, Johnny felt that his bomb had done the job, but he couldn’t be sure until the “recco” photos came out of the lab. They showed that the explosive had done more than wreck the trestle; one abutment no longer existed – there was a huge gap in the steel structure where the thousand-pounder had connected. The attack had been a complete success. He was certain that now it would take the Japs more than forty-eight hours to repair that bit of “dental” work. You see, after this mission, the “B-40” boys became known as “the dentists” because of the devastating work they had done on enemy bridges.
Barr now called for five volunteers to build up a team, and the moment he had finished his talk five pilots stepped forth. From that day on, Jap bridges have no longer offered a problem for the P-40 boys of the Assam Draggin Group – they have simply been atomizing them.
Yes, that’s one of the ways time is passed over there in eastern Assam, where the tea plantations flourish under the shade of the smaller jungle trees. It’s where the rainbow and the supply line come to rather disappointing ends, and where we have to use substitutes for everything. Here some inspector may some day find an airplane landing-light being used in a movie projector; he may find some salvageable item, perhaps a copper and asbestos gasket, being worn on the ear or the ankle of some local head-hunter tribesman. For everything is an item of barter.
The point of this story is not just that Peashooters carry bombs, for they do that all over the world – bombs, and cargo, and extra people in baggage compartments. But out here these same Peashooters have operated successfully for a year now as medium bombers specializing in carrying the thousand-pound American bomb payloads in addition to their full service of fuel and ammunition. It’s not a fair-weather occupation, but it’s just as much a part of the business of Assam nowadays as is the curing of the finest tea in the world.
When the first “B-40” raids went into Burma, the Jap radio in Rangoon broadcast that we had a “new type medium bomber.” But after the Japs had lost a dozen or so Zeros to these “bombers,” which maneuvered as fighters when they had dropped their bombs, the entire subject was promptly dropped by the radio commentator. Out there now it’s taken very much as a matter of course that P-40s can carry anything from bathtubs and refrigerators to half-ton bombs. Sooner or later some pilot is going to get a two-thousand-pound bomb on a P-40 – probably has already, but no one knows definitely of its having been done.
Nothing in this war surprises anyone any more. Oh, periodically some new “Joe” may show mild astonishment – some head-hunter, when he sees a P-38 go over and observes the double tail and hears the whistle of the wind through the tail boom, may mutter: “Big bellied bird – havum two tails – huntum Jap Feller.” Then perhaps they speak of the thousand-pound bomb-loads on the little Warhawk, but they show only mild wonder too. “Double airplane bird which drops half – BOOM!!”
So the Yanks are off with their P-40’s and their “Assam Dragon.”
______________________________
An excellent photograph of a 25th Fighter Squadron P-40K: Aircraft 42-9870, “Mimi”, assigned to Earl J. Harrington, the squadron commander. The caption of the image (Army Air Force Photograph A-56074AC / A2508) “Received on March 9, 1944, from the 16th Army Air Force Combat Camera Unit,” states: “Installation of the mail belly tank on a Curtiss P-40. Left to right: M/Sgt. William C. Land of Montgomery, La., line chief, supervises S/Sgt. Wilbert W. Froelich of St. Louis, Mo., crew chief, in installing the tank, while 1st Lt. Southwell (in cockpit) receives a last minute official letter from Cpl. Harold O. Pendergrass of Lexington, Ky., clerk in the Operations office.” (China.) (Information from Gmasher: https://www.fold3.com/profile/Gmasher)
Reference
Rust, Kenn C. and Muth, Stephen, Fourteenth Air Force Story, Historical Aviation Album, Temple City, Ca., 1977