Seventy-eight years ago today, on February 28, 1943, the 76th Fighter Squadron reported Capt Jesse R. Carney missing when he failed to return from an offensive reconnaissance mission over southwest China. Hurtling 500 feet above the ground near Datang, Yunnan Province, when surface-to-air fire crippled His P-40K, Carney realized he would be unable to reach…
Seventy-six years ago today, on February 12, 1945, the 26th Fighter Squadron reported P-51D 44-11297 missing when it failed to return from a counter-shipping sweep of the Yangzi River. 1Lt Gerald W. Ravenscroft led a flight of four P-51s aloft from Laohekou that day. They let down through a break in the undercast north of…
Seventy-six years ago today, on November 23, 1944, the 11th Bomb Squadron reported B-25H 43-4601 and its crew of five missing on a counter-shipping sweep over the Gulf of Tonkin. What followed was an incredible tale of survival, intrigue, and secret agents in wartime Vietnam. The colonial authorities in Hanoi had aligned themselves with the…
On September 14, 1944, the Chinese XXth Army Group finally captured Tengchong. After fifty-one days of siege, assault, and house-to-house fighting, Chinese soldiers pushed the Japanese into the walled city’s eastern corner. In the final days of the battle, the enemy soldiers ran out of food and ammunition. Several committed suicide and a group of…
On September 8, 1944, twenty Japanese Ki-43 Oscars from the 64th Sentai attacked the airfield at Baoshan, China. Air Transport Command had been airlifting soldiers from the Chinese 200th Division to the field to reinforce the Chinese Expeditionary Force on the Salween Front. While most of the Japanese fighters strafed the field, Sergeant Toshimi Ikezawa…
On September 5, 1944, the Japanese begin a counteroffensive at Longling. Though the Chinese XIth Army Group had surrounded the city, General Song Xilian could not be persuaded to attack. He continued to overestimate the strength of the enemy and told his superiors he needed more men. His inaction left the initiative to the Japanese.…
On August 20, 1944, American engineers detonated two mines filled with six thousand pounds of explosives under Japanese positions on Songshan (Pine Mountain). The Japanese 113th Regiment, 56th Division, had thoroughly fortified the mountain, from which it could rain down artillery on the Burma Road. The Chinese 8th Army had been fighting to take it…
On August 2, 1944, American warplanes breached the walls of Tengchong. Six B-25s from the 22nd Bomb Squadron flew through the valley at tree-top level, sending their 1,000-pound bombs into the ancient stone wall. The bombs opened up five breaches, the largest of which was just over fifteen feet wide. Chinese troops charged forward, but…
On July 26, 1944, Chinese soldiers of the XXth Army Group attacked Laifengshan, a mountain rising five hundred feet above the southwest corner of Tengchong. The Japanese had stationed their artillery on the mountain, making its capture an essential prerequisite to action against the city. At 1200 hours on the twenty-sixth, the first of four…
The Japanese 113th Regiment under the command of Major Kanemitsu Keijiro transformed Songshan into a multi-peaked mountain fortress, with trenches, pillboxes, caves, tunnels, and fortified artillery positions. The Americans called it “the Gibraltar of the Burma Road,” because it appeared unassailable. Yet on June 17, 1944, the Chinese New 28th and New 39th Divisions attacked…