Warbirds: Flying with the Yanks Part 2

In 1942 a small group of Australian navigators were plucked from the Empire Air Training Scheme and sent to north Queensland to join the Flying Fortresses of the American 19th Bomb Group. In Part 1 of this feature, Steve Birdsall recounted their training and initial missions. Here, in Part 2, he tells what happened next to these RAAF navigators in foreign aircraft and which of them managed to survive the war.


“Bravest kid I ever saw”
The sustained night and day campaign against Rabaul ground on. In the early hours of October 5 six 30th Bomb Squadron B-17s took off from Port Moresby, led by Maj. John Rouse in 41-24403, Blitz Buggy. They reached the target area shortly after dawn.

Daylight meant fighters, and a fierce battle erupted as the B-17s began their bomb runs with a dozen Zeros attacking from all angles. On the first pass they hit Blitz Buggy’s nose area. Bombardier Lt Ritchie Gooch was wounded by glass fragments, temporarily blinded, and his bombs fell wide of the target.

On the second fighter pass Blitz Buggy’s left inboard engine was knocked out and on the third pass an explosive bullet tore through the fuselage under the bombardier’s seat. It struck the navigator, P/O Allan Davenport, in the right leg, shattering bone and tearing a large hole just below his knee. Gooch left his gun to apply a tourniquet, administer morphine and bandage the wound. They were flying at 24,000 feet so Gooch covered Davenport in warm clothing and made sure he was getting enough oxygen.

The B-17s were pursued by the fighters for perhaps 45 minutes and became separated when they sought cover in the clouds, forcing them to make their way home individually. Davenport was suffering great pain, but there was no more morphine so they gave him codeine and he seemed to rest easier. “Never a word of complaint . . . bravest kid I ever saw”, Rouse later wrote. Davenport survived the long flight back to Port Moresby in the crippled B-17, but died in hospital soon after they landed.

“When we landed, the Military Police were there to meet us”
Allan Thompson had flown a daylight Rabaul mission on September 15 with Lt Glen Lewis in 41-2638, then was sidelined for nearly two weeks by a bout of dengue fever. On September 28 he began ten days leave, flying to Sydney in 41-2432 with the Lewis crew.

When it was time to return to Mareeba, the airmen gathered at Mascot and found that 41-2432 was gone, but 41-2430 had been flown in by another crew a few days before. Glen Lewis recalled that “my crew chief said that he had done some repairs on the plane and that he felt we should give it a test flight before returning to Mareeba”.

Lewis suggested flying under the Sydney Harbour Bridge, but Thompson forcefully reminded him of the likely painful consequences. Not to be totally denied, Lewis flew around for a few minutes near the bridge and spotted the U.S.S. Chicago, in dry dock for repairs after the battle of Savo Island. “We flew down alongside of the ship, and then down the streets of Kings Cross”, Lewis recalled. “When we landed, the Military Police were there to meet us. As they were questioning me about where we had been, one of my crew members, with his girlfriend, climbed down out of the nose of the plane. Unbeknown to me, two of the crew members had taken their girlfriends on the flight.”

Front-page news
Three of the Australian navigators took part in a night attack on the Rabaul airstrips on October 13, and it was one of the few times they were mentioned in the newspapers at home. Thompson was with Capt. Paul Cool again in 41-2638, one of the flare ships marking the target. Esler was with Capt. Cecil Knudson in 41-9011 and Fairfax was in 41-24448, Taxpayer’s Pride, with Lt John Frost. Under a front-page headline “Successful Night Raid”, The Age quoted Frost’s praise of Fairfax: “He brought us in right on the mark. It made our work pretty easy.” The story also noted that only one plane failed to find the target and that it was “flown by an all-American crew”!

“They got me”
Rumours had been circulating since August that the 19th would be relieved, and on October 25 the 93rd Squadron began the journey home in 12 B-17Es. They were led by Lt Col. Richard Carmichael and Maj. Felix Hardison in 41-2489, Susique, soon to become famous as Suzy-Q. The other squadrons would follow in November.

Allan Thompson’s last B-17 missions were flown as Capt. Richard Ezzard’s navigator. In the afternoon of October 25 they flew up to Port Moresby in 41-24420, and took off at 0800 the next morning on a reconnaissance mission to locate Japanese naval units moving down towards Guadalcanal. Thompson noted, “Flying at 200 ft through misty weather when met by salvo from all ships. Darn lucky not to be blown back to Aussie”.

They reported sighting a battleship, two cruisers and two destroyers, and headed home. On October 31 they were in 41-24401, Lak-A-Nookie, and spent two and a half hours dropping flares over Faisi. After at least 20 runs over the target they staged through Milne Bay and got back to Port Moresby mid-morning on November 1 for some well-deserved rest.

At 0116 on November 2 they took off in Hell from Heaven Men to search the moonlit ocean between Gasmata and Milne Bay for a convoy bound for Buna. They found two large merchant ships and two destroyers and were cleared to attack after reporting their position. Ezzard made three bomb runs between 3,000 and 1,000 feet and direct hits were claimed, although in retrospect Thompson considers they were more likely “very close”. The intense anti aircraft fire from the ships knocked out an engine on each wing of Hell from Heaven Men and the tail was hit by an explosive shell which blew one of tail gunner S/Sgt Robert Chopping’s legs off.

“I can still hear Choppy say over the intercom, ‘They got me’”, Thompson recalls. “I was the crew member who went back to him, and the sight that I saw has never been and never will be forgotten. It is unbelievable that he was able to say anything. He was still in his harness and partly out of the plane. How the rudder controls were not damaged is beyond belief. It took several members of the crew to get Choppy back in the plane.” They dragged the tail gunner out of his turret and tried to administer morphine, but he was dead.

When Hell from Heaven Men landed at Port Moresby, Thompson saw other B-17s warming up “to finish what we started”. A “high ranking American officer” told them they’d all receive the Silver Star, but that was the last Thompson heard of it. Helton sent the crew on a week’s leave in Sydney, stressing that it should be for “R&R, not I&I” –  “rest and recreation”, not “intercourse and intoxication”!

Thompson returned to Mareeba on November 11, fittingly enough in old 41-2432. The next day, Operations Officer Capt. Edward Habberstad certified the flying times in his Log Book and Butch Helton wrote “Superior as Navigator” in the proficiency assessment and signed it.

Some 19th Bomb Group airmen didn’t have enough rotation points to go home and were transferred to the 43rd Bomb Group, and at least two of the Australians briefly went with them. Alan Esler joined the 64th Bomb Squadron on November 15 and flew four more missions. Allan Fairfax had flown almost all of his missions with Lt John Frost, so when Frost went to the 65th Bomb Squadron on October 31, Fairfax had gone with him. In the afternoon of November 22 they were in 41-2536 making a bomb run on a Japanese destroyer east of Lae when their B-17 suffered a direct hit. Six open parachutes were counted before the burning aircraft hit the water, and the enemy warship was seen turning toward where they drifted down. There was real hope that there might be some survivors, but none were ever found.

Reflecting on his time with the 19th Allan Thompson says, “I found the Americans very easy to associate with, and I was always treated the same as their own. The ones I flew with had a lot of the confidence usually associated with Americans badly dented. One thing I will say about them is that they were always prepared to carry out, to the best of their ability, any duty asked”.

Donald Farquhar was discharged on medical grounds in March 1944 as a Flight Lieutenant. Allan Thompson was granted a commission in June 1943 and he, Edkins, Esler and Fowler all left the RAAF as Flight Lieutenants between 1945 and 1947.


Acknowledgments: Australian War Memorial, Colin Bruggy, Paul Cool, Peter Dunn, Jill Franc, Kevin Ginnane, Glen Lewis, Bob Livingstone, MSgt Craig A. Mackey, Lex McAulay, National Archives of Australia, Janice Olson, Kevin O’Reilly, Jane Richardson, Edward Rogers, Robert Stitt, Justin Taylan and Allan Thompson. The Boeing Company, Michael J. Claringbould, Lynn Gamma.