THE NOVICE
First Combat over Port Moresby
By 2/Lt Donald Charles McGee
Donald Charles McGee graduated from
high school on Staten Island, New York, in January 1938. His account of his
first combat over Port Moresby is as fascinating as it is historical. McGee
would later claim a Mitsubishi G4M1 medium bomber near Port Moresby on 12th
April 1943, and a Ki-61 Tony fighter over Wewak on 15th September 1943. When he
was later assigned a Lightning he named it ‘Staten Island or Bust’ in honour
of his birthplace. This aircraft was P-38H-1-LO, serial # 42-66535, but he
learned combat in a much smaller aircraft – the Airacobra – and this is where
we pick up McGee’s story . . .
We sailed from San Francisco on
January 6, 1942. Our unescorted convoy consisted of the S.S Mariposa and the
S.S President Coolidge. After we arrived in Melbourne, Australia, on January
31, the 9th Squadron was sent to the Williamtown RAAF station, near Newcastle,
where we waited for our planes to arrive. None of us had yet flown fighter
aircraft, so we tried to snatch a few flying hours in a Wirraway loaned to us
by the RAAF. Also, I jumped into a wrecked P-40E as often as possible to
"cockpit-check" myself-when our P-40s started to arrive, I wanted to
be one of the first to check out. After being designated to fly "that one
over there," I grabbed the bit and ran. But the exuberance of youth wasn't
all that was required to do the job right and, in less than an hour, I found
myself in pretty much the same state as the guy who had wrecked that other
P-40. Not long after this, the 49th Group started receiving pilots who had had
combat experience in the Philippines and Java, so most of us were transferred
to the 8th Pursuit Group, which was then arriving in Brisbane. When the
experienced combat pilots had trained my fellow novices who remained with the
unit, the 49th moved up to Darwin. Meantime, my contemporaries and I from the
9th Squadron were assigned to the 8th Group's 36th Squadron when we reached
Lowood Station, near Brisbane. We began checking out in P-39Ds.
Then we moved to Antil Plains, a
grass strip near Townsville. Most of us had, ten to fifteen hours of fighter
transition but no high-performance or gunnery training when we were ordered to
proceed to Port Moresby, New Guinea. The 36th Pursuit Squadron left Townsville
for Port Moresby on April 26, 1942, stopping that night at Cairns. Both the
35th Squadron, from Woodstock, and the 36th Squadron, from Antil Plains, made
this move together. We stayed at Cairns on April 27, probably to patch up a few
broken birds. I logged a 40-minute local flight there in the afternoon. This
was probably to check out work on my prop, since I was flying an F-model P-39
whose prop spattered oil all over the windshield and took out any forward
vision. On April 28, we moved on to Horn Island, arriving there just after a
raid by the Japanese. Their leavings were a burned-up B-25 and a couple of
wrecked Aussie aircraft. We flew a field-cover mission right after arrival, and
I logged two hours and 30 minutes. Next day, on April 30, we took off for Port
Moresby; ruining our arrival to be after noon because we expected that any
raids by the Japanese would be over by then. We were 'told that the runway at
7-Mile Strip was very narrow and that we should clear straight ahead after
landing and then taxi back on the dirt track at our right. By the time we
arrived, ole Lucky Pierre here had a windshield full of dust and prop oil
again, so another blind landing was necessary. That was no big deal except that
Izzy Toubman, our operations officer, was taxiing back on the runway as I came
in. I couldn't see his plane until just before we hit wingtips - my left to his
left. This wouldn't have been a big deal, because the damage was slight, but it
kept me off our first attack on Lae.
This attack was cooked up and led
by Lieutenant Colonel Boyd "Buzz" Wagner, from V Fighter Command,
that same afternoon. I stopped my bitching about this turn of events by
extracting a promise from 1/Lt Bill Meng, our acting CO, that I'd be on the
first field-cover patrol the next day. That promise was kept, and it resulted
in my shooting down the 36th's first Zero.
That day, May 1, we were out of bed
at about 0400; had a breakfast of bread, Australian canned jam, and tea; and
got to the flight line before daylight. Leading the field-cover patrol was 1/Lt
Don Mainwaring. On his wing was 2/Lt Patrick "Army" Armstrong. I led
the second element, but my wingman never got airborne. The three of us climbed
to about 8,000 feet and covered an area north and northwest of the field,
expecting to meet any raids coming in from Lae. After two hours or so we were
supposed to be relieved, so Don started back toward the field and set us up in
trail formation for landing. We peeled normally and took our distance for
landing, but, as I broke, I could see that the near half of the runway was
covered in ground fog. Don continued his pattern and tried to land through the
fog, but he hit hard and wiped out his landing gear. He called on the radio and
told us not to try to land, that the runway was blocked. Army and I pulled up
and broke out of the traffic pattern. Army chose to stay down low because he
was low on gas, but I told him I was going to get some altitude. I was low on
gas, too, but I didn't want to get caught down there if a raid came in. Also,
if I ran out of fuel before the runway was cleared, I wanted to be able to pick
a soft spot to dead-stick it in. I had just reached 3,500 feet when our
controller started yelling, "Zeros attacking the field!" I looked
back and started a turn toward the field, but I didn't see any Zeros. Then I gulped
and checked my gas. The gauges registered just under 20 gallons, which, in
combat, would last about 9 minutes. I was heading in a northerly direction when
I saw a single Zero making a run from south to north across our revetment area.
I had a debate with myself here, the gist of which was, `It's not smart to jump
into a fight with no gas. I'm down low at low airspeed. I can't out-turn a
Zero. They left me off the mission yesterday. Piss on it, I'm goin’ in !
I rolled in on the Zero and pushed
over. To conserve fuel, I did not push it to full power. The pilot of the Zero
hadn't seen me, and I didn't see several other Zeros above. As I closed in-too
slowly-I tried to figure out which crossbar in, the gunsight I was supposed to
use. Giving up, I simply worked the whole sight out in front of the enemy plane
and fired a burst at about 40 degrees deflection. The tracers flew by the Zero
on the right side. I adjusted-my lead and fired another burst. The tracers flew
by just under my target. Adjusting again, I pulled the sight farther out in
front, raised rit some, and fired at about 15 degrees deflection. This time,
the tracers covered an area in front of and all around the :enemy plane. There
was no fire or smoke, but the Zero rolled slowly to the left as if to start a
split-S. I followed the Zero, but, suddenly, I realized that we were only about
150 feet off the ground ! I pulled out at just about the level of the trees and
saw the explosion over my right shoulder as the Zero hit the ground. I assume
my bullets had the pilot. Then all hell broke loose. A mess of red balls
surrounded coming from my left, so I automatically broke hard left, fled too
hard, snap-stalled as I tightened the turn, popped the stick (quickly pushed it
forward to break the stall), and overed. Then I was surrounded by red balls
coming from the right, so I yanked the airplane around to the right: suddenly
realizing that I had given one of my pursuers a sharp, no-deflection shot, I
thought, "I got me one, but I'm gonna be around to tell anybody about
it." As I racked plane around to the right, I snap-stalled again, spun,
and veered just about at treetop level. I was now headed not for Port Moresby,
but the sea, so I hugged the treetops, and started jinking violently so I could
keep those others from getting a good shot at me. That I had the good sense to
do the jinking, I attribute to Captain Ajax Baumler, who had shot down 8 planes
while flying for the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War and had been our
tactics instructor at Selma.
I looked back and saw that I had
three Zeros lined up in back of me. The closest one was getting a burst in now
and then. He missed me on my right, on my left, and over the top, so I knew the
jinking was working well, but it still made me flinch when I saw the guns
blinking at me. I wondered what it was going to feel like when I got hit. But,
one by one, they gave up the chase. Then I only had to think about how far I'd
have to swim home if my gas gave out before I reached land again. As soon as
the last Zero left, I turned around immediately, staying down on the water. I
practically followed the last Zero in as he climbed out to the north. Then, as
I crossed the south end of 7-Mile Strip, still at treetop level, I dropped the
gear, made a left pattern, and landed. As I turned off the runway, I saw that
several of the ground crewmen were pointing at my airplane, so, with pride in
my victory, I stuck my arm out of the window and held up one finger. Then the
engine quit - out of gas. The pointing, I learned, was at the damage to my
aircraft. It had taken two 20mm hits in the tail, one on each side of the
rudderpost, with plenty of little shrapnel holes in the horizontal stabilizer
and elevators. There were five 7.7mm holes in the left wing root, four in the
right wing root, and one in the top of my canopy. That one had taken my
sunglasses off my head without even scratching me (the glasses were a mess,
though).
The shooter's cowl guns had
apparently straddled me. The Zero I shot down was the first confirmed victory for
the 36th Pursuit Squadron. Confirmation was easy since the Zero had gone down
only about a mile from the field. Later confirmations were a lot more difficult
to come by, and several were lost entirely.
Aerothentic Comment – The Zero
shot down was that flown by Petty Officer First Class Yoshisuke Arita. It
crashed on top of a hill, later named by the Americans as “Bitsabishi Hill”.
The next day, 2nd May 1942, Don McGee scored another Zero probable
near Port Moresby (Leading Airman Haruo Kawanishi), and on 29th May
1942, he claimed two more Zeros, about 50 miles southeast of Port Moresby, one
of them is confirmed as Petty Officer Second Class Hisao Komori. All Japanese
losses were from the Tainan Kokutai, then based at Lae.
After flying 154 combat missions,
Captain McGee returned to U.S in November 1943. He was assigned as a P-47
instructor in a replacement unit at Hillsgrove, Rhode Island, and to piloting
target fighters for B-24 gunners at Charleston, South Carolina. He arrived in
England as a volunteer replacement pilot in September 1944, where he obtained
an assignment with the 357th Fighter Group, a P-5I Mustang unit. His sixth and
final air-to-air kill of the war, a Bf-109, was scored near Magdeburg, Germany,
on 2nd March 1945.
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