{"id":483,"date":"2020-05-07T10:09:51","date_gmt":"2020-05-07T15:09:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.forgottensquadron.com\/?page_id=483"},"modified":"2021-04-18T19:08:37","modified_gmt":"2021-04-19T00:08:37","slug":"long-clifford-25th-fighter-squadron","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.forgottensquadron.com\/?page_id=483","title":{"rendered":"Long, Clifford \u2014 25th Fighter Squadron"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Long, Clifford R. Interview by Daniel Jackson. 18 February 2008.<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First of all, I wanted to ask about Tengchong. According to your list of missions that you went on, you went to Tengchong many, many times to bomb the wall, the gates, etc. Would you describe what a typical bombing mission to Tengchong was like?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well certainly it varied. There were many different types of missions. When we hit the wall at Tengchong, to breach the wall so the Chinese troops could move in, we usually used 500-pound demolition bombs\u2014instantaneous usually. And a lot of those were dive-bombing missions. We would go in there around ten thousand feet. I don\u2019t remember what the elevation of Tengchong was, but it was high in the mountains. It may have been three to five thousand feet elevation. So we weren\u2019t really diving ten thousand feet; we were diving maybe five, seven thousand. And we would roll over at that altitude, around ten thousand, and try to get as close to vertical as we could if we were trying to hit the wall. Because you could be more accurate when you were more vertical. It had less chance of error. There were other times that we hit the wall where we tried to go in low level and hit the side of the wall and blow it apart. We used the same bombs, but we found on several occasions\u2014and I have a picture in my mind that\u2019s very clear\u2014when the plane in front of me hit the wall with a 500-pound bomb and it hit the wall and rolled back away from it! Those low level missions must have had like ten-second delay fuses on the bombs. So when we learned what was happening, the mechanics tried to weld a steel point on the front\u2014on the nose-end of the bomb\u2014hoping that we could put those bombs on a level trajectory and have the point, the tip of the nose, hold the bomb into the wall. Now I don\u2019t know how successful that was, but we did that and I can remember that clearly. The thing is, I learned when I went there in 2004, the wall was made of volcanic rock and therefore it was very hard material. And it was very difficult to breach that so that Chinese soldiers could run through it, rather than put ladders up against the wall and try to go over it. Because the Japanese would just shoot them as they came over the top of the wall. Those are the two instances. I think we used mostly 500-pound bombs. And if we were hitting inside the wall\u2014different buildings and so forth\u2014we may have used 250-pound bombs. We could carry three of those and we did that sometimes. But that\u2019s what I can remember of Tengchong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What was more effective, dive bombing or low-level bombing?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It just depended on what the target was. When you were trying to hit the wall, the idea was to go down and hit the top of the wall, to knock it down as much as we could. So that was effective. I really don\u2019t know what the soldiers on the other side saw; whether we did a lot of damage that way or whether we were not successful. But of course the wall\u2014I saw photographs of Tengchong after we left there and the walls were just totally destroyed. So we must have done some good there. Eventually the Japanese had to evacuate the town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You mentioned hitting buildings inside the city, how did they mark which buildings you were supposed to hit?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You know, Daniel, I can\u2019t quite remember, except that they would say to us\u2014I think I have in my diary, and some of those missions have some explanation\u2014that we were to hit a certain section of the city\u2014like the northeast corner, or the southeast corner. I know that in my mission list there, it\u2019s pretty clear that some missions in there were to hit the gates\u2014a gate at a certain location. That\u2019s about all I can tell you about those missions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Would you mind describing the mission where you used rockets?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will! And by the way, I didn\u2019t send you my writeup on that, did I?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, you didn\u2019t.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ok. I\u2019ll put that in the mail to you, because I have a writeup of that mission that goes into detail. That was my twenty-third combat mission. I was still pretty fresh, you know. It had to be some special type of mission to have rockets on the planes, because I don\u2019t recall ever after that using rockets in our squadron. And that was the first time that I had every used rockets. Lieutenant Colonel Amen, who was the squadron commander, he led this mission and I was flying his wing and Captain Bell was flying second element. Evidently, his wingman had to abort the mission, because there were only three of us that got to the target. This happened on a very beautiful morning, nice clear day, and we actually had our briefing the night before on what we were going to do. These three P-40s had been flown to Kunming to be equipped with the firing devices and so forth and the hangers to accommodate the rocket tubes. So this really was a special meeting of some type and it was to hit the former British consulate building right outside the city of Tengchong, just outside the wall. And it was on the west side of Tengchong on a hill. We went down to the flight line so early in the morning so that the pilots could do maintenance on our planes, like check for water in the tanks and so forth. We took off just at daybreak and it was a beautiful day. We went down to Tengchong. And you could set the rockets to fire so that you could fire one rocket from each wing or you could fire in combination of one from one wing and two from the other wing. So you could pick out any combination you wanted to and set the dial on the dash to fire the rockets. We were going in, we were firing one rocket from each wing on each pass, and made three passes. There were three rocket tubes on each wing. So we went down there and nothing exciting and got in trail formation and attacked the building from the southwest into the northeast. The way you fired rockets, you fired your .50-caliber machine guns and as soon as you could see the tracers converge on the target, you pushed the button on the top of your stick\u2014the top of the control stick\u2014and that was to fire the rockets. Your guns converged at 300 yards. So, you saw those tracers converge on the target, pushed the button on the top of the stick, and off went the rockets. That was really an exciting mission for me, because I had never done that before and you could see the trail of those rockets right into the building we were firing at. So, there wasn\u2019t too much exciting during those three passes into the target, but as soon as we pulled off the target, the colonel got us in formation and headed southeast, away from Tengchong, and all of the sudden I saw the colonel drop his rocket tubes from the plane. And so when I finally realized that why, I pretty much knew what was going to happen here. So, I dropped my rockets tubes and the other plane dropped his rocket tubes. So we evidently were going to get in a dogfight. In a short time, we did that. The dogfight was very intense for a while. There were three of us and, I think, there were either eleven or thirteen Japanese \u201cOscars.\u201d The Oscar looks somewhat like a \u201cZero\u201d but it\u2019s the Oscar. We ran into them just a short time later\u2014I would say five minutes or so\u2014as we headed southeast away from Tengchong. We got in a dogfight there and had quite a time. I remember banking away from a pass on the Oscars and the wingman\u2019s responsibility in a dogfight like that is to watch out for his leader\u2019s tail. Because usually the leader is supposedly intense on firing on the enemy planes and therefore can\u2019t devote that much time to look around him. So the wingman is there for that purpose. That worked maybe two, three, four times, but then I broke away and almost instantly, I was hit by enemy fire. I didn\u2019t see the planes come up on me, I was diving away from the contact. We had been taught in P-40s in China this was Chennault\u2019s way of fighting the Japanese planes: dive away at high speed, go back, climb, and come back in. And that\u2019s what we were doing, but this time, these Oscars dropped on my tail and one of them got a good burst into the right side of my plane. Actually, I must have turned my head a little to the right, because one of the shells came through the canopy and knocked the goggles off the top of my head. I had them stowed up on my forehead, you know, and this shell came through and hit the lens on the right side, which was maybe a half-inch above my skull. It knocked my goggles off and when it did that, it hit with such force that the clips that hold your goggles to your helmet, it knocked the goggles out of those clips on the right side and my goggles were hanging on the left side of my face with one or two clips that were still holding them. Also when he hit me with that burst I could see pieces of the plane falling away. I put the nose down and pushed the throttle forward more and tried to evade these guys, but almost immediately I get another burst in the same right wing and that burst severed the aileron cable\u2014the aileron to the right wing. I now only have half the lateral stability that I should have and when that happened, the plane immediately began to roll. I\u2019m already going down at a pretty steep angle, you know, and I can\u2019t tell you what the airspeed was\u2014possibly three hundred, three fifty. The plane was rolling and I was cranking the canopy open, because it looked like I was going to have to bail out. But eventually, with the stick fully pulled to the left side of the canopy to counteract the spin to the right, it stopped spinning and I had some control in and I pulled out of the dive. And as I looked back to see where they were, they were peeling up off of me. They obviously thought they had me and they were pulling up and away. First thing that you think of is to get back on them, but see, I didn\u2019t have much control of the plane at all. It was all a matter of trying to control it enough to keep it in the air, flying with the stick clear to the left side of the fuselage, and so forth. So anyway, they left me and I immediately headed north and experimented with the flying characteristics of the plane. Because I had to make up my mind whether I would try to bail out or fly it back. I hesitated to bail out, because as soon as I let go of the stick, it would immediately roll\u2014the plane would immediately roll to the right. So I was concerned I would be caught by the wing or the tail surfaces with the plane handling like that. So I closed the canopy and experimented with the airspeed and controls and found that I could fly the plane pretty well between 170 and 200 miles an hour and hold it in level flight. There was an emergency field at that time called Paoshan\u2014it later became an airfield that I flew from. But at that time, in the early stages, that was just a grass field\u2014an emergency strip. It previously had been used by the AVG. So I headed in that direction. And also I found that my hydraulics system was shot out, because I had no landing gear. I couldn\u2019t put the landing gear down. But the engine was working pretty good. But I thought well, I better not try to go back to Yunnanyi because that would be an hour, an hour and a half, and you would never know what might happen to the plane during that time, you know? There could have been other things hit or damaged that would give way and then I would be forced to bail and I didn\u2019t think that was the thing to do. So I flew back to Paoshan and I decided to crash-land the plane at about 175 or 180 miles an hour. I\u2019ll tell you, Daniel, I\u2019d flown my model of airplane so much that I knew pretty much what the plane would do; I wasn\u2019t concerned about it. And I flew back to Paoshan, with a \u201cmayday,\u201d let them know I was going to land. The last I looked at the airspeed it had got down to 180. I cut the switches and all the electrical systems because when you crash you want to try to eliminate any opportunity for sparking or anything like that to cause a fire. So, like I said, the last time I looked at the airspeed indicator it was 180. I cut all the switches and prepared to contact the ground. And at that speed, I was able to hold level flight. Well when the plane touched the ground, I was going so fast that the propeller hitting the ground, even the grass, caused the shaft to sheer off. So the propeller went spinning off to the right of me. And in doing that, it had so much airspeed, that the airplane ballooned up in the air again on me. I don\u2019t know how high it went, maybe thirty, forty, fifty feet, but I had to get it down close to the ground before the right wing stalled out. Because I didn\u2019t want to contact the ground in that position. Because if that right wing contacts the ground, why I\u2019m done. So I did that; I worked it down close to the ground again and noticed that the rice paddies were coming up in front of me, so, I had a lot of airspeed, so I was near the ground and I just pushed the stick forward, dived the plane right into the ground, and that\u2019s what I did. And even doing that, the right wing touched the ground first and the plane cartwheeled down through the grass. And I lost consciousness during that. And when I got awake, why the plane was upright\u2014totally destroyed\u2014and there was some smoke coming up around the engine in front of me, so I wanted to get out of there as quickly as I can. I couldn\u2019t open the canopy. I should have jettisoned the canopy, but in the excited of all the things that had to be done, I had forgotten to do that. So what happened, the canopy was jammed shut, there was smoke coming up around the front of the plane, and fire is something that would be hard to face. And I got the canopy open\u2014it had a crank that you operated on the right side of the cockpit\u2014and I could get it open about an inch. So I closed it one more time and with that superhuman strength that you get for some reason, I cranked it open and it came open. So I jumped out of the plane and ran away from it, oh maybe sixty, eighty feet, and took my parachute off and laid it on the ground and I was physically distressed and looked back at that plane that I had crashed\u2014destroyed\u2014and I was so mad at myself for doing that to that plane. And I can remember pounding my parachute laying on the ground in front of me with my fist, because I was angry that I had done that. But then I got up and I went back to the plane to get my maps and so forth out of it. So that\u2019s my twenty-third mission that I was lucky to walk away from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When did it sink in that you\u2019d pulled a close one?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You know, they don\u2019t let it sink in. They had me up, I think it was two days after that. They determined that those Oscars could not get up that far north without refueling someplace. So I was in a flight two days later to go down south of where we had the dogfight, check some airfields, to see if we could find these Oscars. And in doing that\u2014I know how it was with me; I was so young that I didn\u2019t want these older guys to think that I was weak. So I wanted to be one of the boys and so I had to act the part. So I went down with a four-ship flight to find these Oscars down at Mangshi\u2014a place called Mangshi. And it was bad weather, overcast, and we found our way down through the clouds. When we got underneath the clouds, we didn\u2019t see any airplanes on the field, but here was a convoy on the Burma Road. They certainly weren\u2019t expecting us, because of the weather. And Mangshi was a very heavily-fortified place, because Tingka airfield was there. So we setup a pattern to shoot up this convoy. Well that\u2019s another story; after about three passes into this convoy, I noticed the flight leader\u2014I was flying his wing\u2014well that was Captain Bell, who was with me the day previously in the dogfight. I noticed gunfire coming up from a hedgerow to the right, tracers going up at him, so I knew when I broke from the target, why, they were firing at me. On about the third or fourth pass over the road, over this convoy, bang, I get hit again. And when you\u2019re hit in a plane, in those planes, you could feel it and hear it and dust flies up in the cockpit and of course, immediately, you push the stick forward and get as close to the ground as you can. And I called the flight leader and told him I was hit. So, he got the flight together immediately and we pulled up and got out of there and landed at Paoshan where I had crash-landed two days before. When I was parking the plane\u2014pulling up to park\u2014the ground crew came up and said, \u201cWhat happened to you, lieutenant?\u201d I said, \u201cWhy?\u201d \u201cCome and see the gasoline coming out of the back of this plane!\u201d I didn\u2019t have to look very far, because when I looked out my left side, there the shell, the bullet, had come up through the plane, come up through the bottom of the plane in back of the cockpit and tore the corner out of the fuselage tank, went up under the seat, and went out through the faring\u2014that\u2019s where the wing comes into the fuselage\u2014on the left side. And there was a piece of metal about the size of my hand, or your hand, in the way and was hanging there where the shell came out. So, as I say, they don\u2019t give you time to think about it too much. But I wanted to tell you, on the twenty-third mission I hit the ground so hard\u2014I didn\u2019t realize this because we were all in great physical condition\u2014a couple days later, this fellow came up to me at Yunnanyi, our home base, and said, \u201cLieutenant, is this your ring?\u201d And I said, \u201cYeah.\u201d And here was my Marianna Advanced Training School graduation ring that I had on my hand when I had the crash. And if you can imagine, that ring was on my right hand, a finger, that\u2019s the one that holds the stick. And surely I had a grip on that stick and how that ring came off my finger, with your hand in that condition, I don\u2019t know. I didn\u2019t even realize it came off, you know, until they returned it to me. That was the twenty-third and very exciting\u2014too bad I didn\u2019t get to shoot down a few Oscars there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, everybody has his down days, I guess!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, when you\u2019re flying wing you\u2019re kind of vulnerable. You know Dan, another thing I might say here; I never had any dogfighting training experience. They sent us into combat only with\u2014we were given training missions firing the guns at aerial targets. A tow plane would tow a target. And we were given training on firing on those targets. But we were never given\u2014and we were given training on dive bombing, quite a bit of that. But never did we have any dogfight training. Like they do today, they send planes up to combat each other. We never had any of that that I know of. They just sent us into combat with the minimum of experience. We had to learn in combat. And if you got through two or three of those, why you were pretty well seasoned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Was that your only encounter with Japanese fighters?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s all that I can recall. I notice on that mission list that there were a number of intercept missions, but that\u2019s the only dogfight I can recall. You know that the 25th\u2014I knew that from the beginning the 25th, their primary mission was ground support. I don\u2019t know what your training, what your schooling teaches you, but anyway it was my understanding that ground support missions were most dangerous. You not only had ground fire coming at you, you had every soldier on the ground taking shots at you and you were going a fairly slow speed when you\u2019re dropping these different bombs. And we dropped many different kinds of bombs. I think I told you that we even dropped napalm that time. We dropped parafrags. We dropped incendiary bombs. So, quite a combination. We could haul up to a thousand pounds on the P-40. And they were pretty high altitudes, too, with those mountains down there around fourteen thousand to sixteen thousand feet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Generally speaking, how accurate was the ground fire?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pretty accurate. I lost my roommate and I lost my best friend and I was on one three-ship mission and the flight leader got shot down in front of me. He bailed out, but the Japanese executed him the following day. You know, I looked at that recently and of the close friends that I had in combat, I\u2019d say about half of them were shot down, either killed or walked out. They hit us. And I came back with my plane shot up many times. In recent times when I went to a convention, I had asked some of those ground people, \u201cHow did you get these planes in shape to fly again so quickly?\u201d They said they worked on them overnight and they would patch them up and off we would go. They did a pretty good job on us. What did you think of that picture I sent you of that aviation cadet at Lakeland, Florida?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not much has changed! Though the uniforms are blue now, not pinks and greens.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have one of those here. You see, I was in the reserves when they changed from the Army Air Force to the Air Force. And I can remember I went down to the Pen State campus\u2014and this was 1958 or so\u2014to get my blue uniform. So I have it here. Not a dress uniform\u2014not the dark navy blue\u2014but the lighter blue. I eventually got to captaincy while I was in the reserves. I was flying in the reserves. I got too busy with the Gulf Oil Corporation and finally after fifteen years I got a discharge. They called it separation from service for officers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What did you fly in the reserves?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We flew T-6s and also C-130s at Pittsburg. I gave that up shortly after, because I really didn\u2019t care to fly those big planes\u2014more fun in the small ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You said at some point they moved your squadron down to Paoshan. Was that your entire squadron, or did they just move a detachment down there?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A detachment. Just two flights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I believe it was a couple days before, they had an air raid there where four Air Transport Command C-47s were shot up by a bunch of Japanese Oscars. Do you know if they moved you down there because of that?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, partially. But, in addition to that, you see, the Chinese forces were pushing the Japanese down farther south. We were pretty much at our extremes with P-40s flying out of Yunnanyi, as far as range is concerned. So they wanted to put the P-40s nearer to the front lines. And that\u2019s why they converted that grass field and they built their typical gravel runway at Paoshan. And we moved in there\u2014I think it was December 21 of \u201944. And it made our trip to the front lines shorter and we could go farther south. Also it had a mission too that we were kind of a safety valve there for the Hump route going across from India to China. That\u2019s why you see so many of those patrol missions on that list too. Basically that was defending that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you remember what the terrain was like around the airfield there?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You know, between Yunnanyi and Paoshan, there\u2019s hardly any flat surface of a valley. It\u2019s all mountains. And when you get to Paoshan, it\u2019s a nice, large, wide valley and it\u2019s very long from south to north, and flat, with rice paddies. And the same thing with Yunnanyi; it was in a large valley and the floor of the valley was fairly flat with rice paddies all around. As you go south to go to the Salween towards Longling and Mangshi, it stays quite mountainous for a while\u2014one mountain after another. When I was over there in \u201904 and we traveled down to Tengchong, the terrain looked foreign to me. Because you see I remember it from the air and it was considerably different when you go down there and you\u2019re down on the surface. And it was very mountainous all around. Then you get down to Mangshi, which is beyond Longling, it\u2019s more flat. You have mountains that extend out there, but it\u2019s more flatland. By the way, I have here several files and I\u2019m going to send you a copy of that rocket mission\u2014I did write that up. And there was something else; Do you have Jeff Greene\u2019s phone number? His organization is called the Sino-American Aviation Heritage Foundation. He was the sponsor of my two trips over there\u2014flew me over there free of charge. It didn\u2019t cost me a penny. \u201904 it was for the purpose of speaking at a symposium in Kunming and that was sponsored by the Yunnan provincial government. And there were all kinds of historians, educational people, and military people there. I would say there were maybe four or five hundred. They flew ten of us pilots over there to tell them about the war. They paid all our expenses\u2014even for Shirley. Same thing, Jeff organized an official delegation to China on their anniversary of the victory over Japan, their sixtieth anniversary. That was in 2005. He had me kind of lead up a delegation. There were about a hundred people in it. We had a great time. We went throughout all of China: Shanghai, Beijing, all those eastern cities, and on down to Kunming and around. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you remember what the field elevation was at Paoshan?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sure, right off the top of my head I\u2019ll tell you like sixty-two hundred fifty? Yunnanyi was the same. I have the exact elevations here someplace, but that\u2019s very close. I know it was over six thousand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you talked about flying escort for the opening of the Ledo Road, what type of aircraft were you flying? Were you still flying P-40s or were you in a P-51 by then?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

P-40s. We held onto those P-40s because of the advantage we had for ground support. P-51s were hot, fast, and could go longer distances, but when it comes to dive bombing, you have to have a platform that will let you do the best job of putting the bomb where you want it to go. You know, it was slower. To turn a P-40 over, what we used to do, we usually bombed from eight, ten thousand feet and you roll that thing over and cut your engine back to idle speed, six or eight hundred RPMs, and just roll it over to slow you down. And then you\u2019re rolling over almost at stall speed and you can put your plane in a vertical position, get it lined up with the target. All you had to do is dive at the target, line it up, and decide when you should pull through and release the bombs. And I\u2019ll tell you, we were accurate. I got letters in my files from some of the ground forces for the Mars Task Force\u2014those were some of our fellows that were down with the Chinese\u2014and I said to him, \u201cDid we ever do any good really?\u201d And he wrote back to me and he said, \u201cI was with a group of about three hundred soldiers and we were trapped in a valley,\u201d and he said, \u201cWe couldn\u2019t get out of there.\u201d Then he said, \u201cWe called for you guys,\u201d and he said, \u201cYou saved our lives.\u201d So we did do some good, but I just wanted to explain that to you: the P-51 was a great plane, but they kept that detachment of P-40s there until the end of the war. And I don\u2019t think there were any other P-40s operational in China. They had been replaced by P-51s. \u2018Cause the way I got to fly a P-51 on a couple of missions, they needed some P-40s up east for some special mission and they couldn\u2019t do it with a \u201851. They thought they\u2019d have a better chance if they had some P-40s. So they sent four P-51s down to Paoshan, picked up four of our P-40s, took them east. I was assigned leading the P-51s for a week or so while they were there at Paoshan. So it shows how special that plane was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also heard it was less susceptible to ground fire?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, it was mostly the coolant. They\u2019d shoot out the coolant lines. It was just like the radiator in your car and they\u2019d hit one of your coolant lines and your coolant would leak out and you only had a few minutes then, because the engine would freeze up. I had a number of guys with me that got shot down that way and had to walk out because of the coolant. And of course they could hit the oil lines as well and the hydraulic lines for the landing gear. But both those planes had pretty much the same problem, the \u201951 and the \u201940, both had the same problem as far as that was concerned. And of course the P-38 had the same problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Except it had two engines.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It had two. The P-47 Thunderbolt didn\u2019t have that problem. It was air cooled. I don\u2019t know if I told you about the P-38, I think I told you that Chennault didn\u2019t want them to fly\u2014only on special missions. He could get the same job done and get it done better with a P-40 than to use the gasoline for two engines. I met up with a P-38 pilot at one of our reunions, got to talking, he says, \u201cYeah,\u201d he said, \u201cI was at Yunnanyi for a while flying P-38s.\u201d And so he said, \u201cYou know,\u201d he said, \u201cwe were always upset at you guys.\u201d He said, \u201cIt was like young boys at a baseball game standing outside the fence.\u201d They couldn\u2019t get into the game. And that\u2019s true, because they wouldn\u2019t send them up\u2014only on special missions\u2014and at Yunnanyi we were going in and out and in and out. I think you noticed, I think there\u2019s someplace I flew eleven missions in three days. That was very tiresome and very stressful. I was telling my grandson one day about some of these missions and I was looking through my diary and I\u2019d say, \u201cHave a terrific headache today.\u201d \u201cHeadache.\u201d \u201cSevere headache today.\u201d Wesley said to me, he said, \u201cPap-pap, why didn\u2019t you just tell them that you were sick, you couldn\u2019t fly?\u201d I said, \u201cWesley, when you\u2019re name\u2019s up on the board, you go.\u201d So I know it was probably stress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did you see in P-38s when you were down there?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh yeah, they were right there at Yunnanyi\u2014on the other side of the field. Yeah. They would take off and land\u2014they\u2019d go on long missions and then they would give us a show coming back, you know, showoffs, we called them. They\u2019d come back with one prop feathered\u2014one engine shut down and the prop feathered, you know\u2014just to show us that they could fly on one engine. So that was something to see anyway, to see a flight of four P-38s coming back with just one engine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All four of them each using just one engine?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah. Uh huh. They can fly on one engine. They were in formation. Just a bunch of young boys over there, like you. How old are you, Daniel?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m twenty<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twenty, ok. I flew all those missions, except the last one, when I was nineteen. Went to get married when I come home, I was twenty years old and my wife was nineteen, and we went to the local district justice\u2019s office and he wouldn\u2019t give us a permit to get married. He said we had to have our mothers with us. Times have changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll probably be twenty-five before I ever fly in combat<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You ever get some flying time in?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have my pilot\u2019s license and I\u2019m working on my glider rating.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m going to tell you something\u2014maybe I told you this before, I have this conversation with so many people, but this is something to remember: It came from a famous test pilot, very popular name, but I forget what it is right now, he said, \u201cIf you have to make a forced landing, fly the plane as far into the crash as you can.\u201d You remember that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Will do.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You remember that dogfight I had with the Oscar; what did I do? I kept control of that plane and flew it right into the ground. What he means is, if you lose control of a plane in the air, you\u2019re dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good advice.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can use that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hopefully I\u2019ll never have to.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, you can talk as an old seasoned pilot by telling the guys that. Fly as far into the crash as you can. That\u2019s very good. Very appropriate. Very true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you very much, I appreciate it.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alright. Good luck on your training! I wish I were with you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just wanted to\u2014I thought of this earlier, but I\u2019ll just take a minute to tell you about accuracy. I can remember one mission very clearly and I had a flight of four P-40s. We went south and we were to pick up a ground communications person and he was to give us the target. And when I get down there, we were cruising around about ten thousand feet in the area we were told to go to, and it was near a town. And I called the observer and asked him for the target. And after some conversation, this target was a building in the fork of a \u201cY\u201d in the road. And I said, \u201cOk, I think I have it.\u201d You know, you\u2019re talking at least around eight thousand feet in the air. And I have my eye doctor, talking to him about this, and he said, \u201cThat\u2019s amazing you can pick out a house, a building, at that distance.\u201d I said, \u201cWell, we did.\u201d Anyway, I put the guys in echelon and spread them out and I told them, I said, \u201cNow I go in and Number Two man, you hold back for a while to see if I hit the right target.\u201d Because we weren\u2019t really that sure. I made a pass from southeast to northwest. I can picture it like it was yesterday. And it was in a large valley and the road was coming south and it forked. And I could see this building. And I was heading southeast to northwest so that if I got hit, I would be heading towards friendly lines. We had three 250-pound bombs, instantaneous. And I went down on that pass, dropped the bombs. And normally, what I did when I pulled out, I rolled the plane over so I could look back and see where our bombs dropped. Before I got my plane rolled over, the observer said, \u201cNumber Three and Four man, just drop your bombs anywhere in the area, the target\u2019s destroyed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nicely done.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those are the days it seemed like it was worthwhile, you know? We had quite a few of those. We were pretty good with that old P-40. Well Daniel, I\u2019ll let you go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Actually, you brought up one more question that I have for you: when you talked about being talked into the target, somebody had told me there was a liaison squadron out at Paoshan flying L-5s and that sometimes, the L-5s would act as airborne forward air controllers. I was wondering if you knew anything about that?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, that liaison outfit was there, and when I got shot down and crashed there that day, one of those pilots flew me back to Yunnanyi in an L-5. So yes, they were there. As far as working with the fighter squadron or working with us on targets, I never experienced anything like that, no. Intelligence either gave us the target\u2014a specific target, like the bridge at Tingka. A bridge at Tingka, well, that\u2019s pretty easy to do. Or, contact Acorn, Dewclaw\u2014there were four or five different observers, and I have the names written down here someplace, that we contacted down with the Chinese troops, and we usually dealt with them. And there were times when they could not be specific enough, verbally, that they would say, \u201cWe\u2019ll lay a smoke bomb on the target.\u201d And they would use a mortar and fire a smoke bomb right on the target and this puff of white smoke would come up. And they would tell us exactly where the target was from that smoke. And boy, that really worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well thank you very much sir, I appreciate it.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ok. Have a good day!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You too<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Long, Clifford R. Interview by Daniel Jackson. 18 February 2008. First of all, I wanted to ask about Tengchong. According to your list of missions that you went on, you went to Tengchong many, many times to bomb the wall, the gates, etc. Would you describe what a typical bombing mission to Tengchong was like?…<\/p>\n

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