One Year with the 19th

Dec. 7 is also the anniversary of the only outfit in the U.S. Army which has been in active combat almost continuously since the war began. The 19th Heavy Bombardment Group is the only Air Forces unit which has received three citations from the Secretary of War.

It has been quite a year for the air shock troops. For a while the war was Japan v. the 19th. There had been times when the group was so badly battered--in the Philippines, in Java, in Australia--that not a plane could be got off the ground. But the Flying Fortresses over Europe and Africa fly better today because of what the 19th learned.

Colin Kelly was the 19th's first hero. His crew managed to bail out, but Captain Kelly's body was found 50 feet from his plane, his parachute half opened.

Commanded by Colonel Eugene Eubank (now a brigadier general in the Bomber Command in Washington), most of the original 19th arrived in the Philippines in November 1941, after the longest mass flight (24 Flying Fortresses) in U.S. aviation history. (Such flights are now routine.) It found its base, Clark Field, little more than a cow pasture. When the Japs hit Clark Field Dec. 8 the U.S. Army knew so little about modern warfare that many men sought cover under the wings of the planes on the field. They paid with their lives. Almost half of the 19th's Fortresses were caught on the ground that day. The 19th's first Fortresses did not even have machine guns where they were needed most: in the tail. (Fortresses now carry over twice as many guns as the 19th's started the war with.)

The 7th Group joined the original 19th in Java. Casualties were heavy--the 7th lost two commanding officers in a week--so the two groups were re-formed into the new 19th.

Feats of the 19th furnish the best evidence to a country suddenly thrown into war that Americans have not lost courage. Captain Hewitt T. ("Shorty") Wheless' 75-mile battle with 18 Jap Zeros was the subject of a Presidential broadcast. Wheless' fellow Texan, Captain Alvin John Henry Mueller, also a winner of the D.S.C., brought his B-17 back with 1,400 bullet holes in it.

Major Jack Dougherty's bombs stuck. "Let's dive bomb," said Lieut. Ed Magee. The Fortress' wings held on miraculously; the bombs came out; the Jap transport sank. Lieut. Colonel James T. Connally (Senator Tom's cousin), Commander of the 19th from April until July, sank a cruiser, a destroyer, a large transport, at least four other vessels, scored four hits on a battleship. The 19th's Captain Frank Bostrom flew MacArthur into Australia.

"The most forceful officer I have ever known" was the way Major Elbert Helton, one of the 19th's squadron commanders, characterized 37-year-old Lieut. Colonel Austin Straubel, who was wounded over Surabaya but managed to land his B18 on a small airfield. Colonel Straubel had died when help arrived.

The 19th has had its moments of humor, most of them the kind that come to men when death has been cheated. Lieut. Jack Adams of Anadorko, Okla. was often the subject of such grim humor. Jack Adams, now a major, sank a transport and shot down three Zeros, but had to make a forced landing in a water-covered ricefield with two motors shot out. He and his crew, three of whom were wounded, returned three weeks later by boat, oxcart, automobile, train and plane. Captain Clarence E. McPherson, later killed in Australia, once landed on an airdrome before he knew the Japs had seized it, but realized his mistake before the Japs did. The 19th's best-beloved character, a Portuguese-accented master sergeant named Louis ("Soup") Silva, now buried in an Australian grave, shot down three Japanese Zeros while trying to explain to a private how a gun should be aimed.

There was a Fortress radioman named Warrenfels who heard that a radio operator was urgently needed on Bataan. He volunteered to go, boarded a ship trying to run the Jap blockade. The ship was sunk 200 miles off Java. Another enlisted man who is no longer with the 19th is 19-year-old Private Arvid Hegdahl, tail gunner of a Flying Fortress. After he shot down a Zero his leg was almost blown off, but he continued to shout encouragement to other members of the crew. When the time came to evacuate Java he had to be left in a hospital.

Other groups will have to break a prodigious record if they win more decorations than the 19th. Over 1,000 medals have been awarded to the living and the dead of the 19th. Major Felix M. Hardison wears the D.S.C., Purple Heart, D.F.C. and Silver Star with three Oak Leaf Clusters. More than 50 men of the 19th have won the D.S.C., including the late Captain John L. DuFrane. who flew missions seven straight days before he was killed in the Celebes. The 19th's own candidate for the Medal of Honor is Captain Harl Pease of Plymouth, N.H. During the height of the Solomons battle, Captain Pease insisted on taking off with his squadron from a New Guinea field, though he had had only three hours' rest from his previous mission. Despite an attack by 30 Japanese Zeros, several of which he shot down, Captain Pease made his run over the target. En route home his plane caught fire and was last seen plummeting toward the Coral Sea.

Two hundred members of the 19th took up infantrymen's rifles after they failed to get out of the Philippines.

Its assignments since August have been the most satisfactory, most successful for the 19th. Many new planes have arrived, and some fresh pilots have replaced battle-weary veterans. A big factor in the Jap failure to recapture Guadalcanal was the 19th's constant hammering of the big base at Rabaul. Lately the 19th, now under the command of young Lieut. Colonel Richard Carmichael (TIME, Oct. 19), pioneered in flying its Fortresses at low levels. Being taught today to younger flyers are the lessons the 19th has learned, not without expense to themselves.

During its year at war, two men out of every three in the 19th have been killed, captured or wounded.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.