Interview by Daniel Jackson, May 10, 2007
Jim Hyde:
Dan, this is Jim Hyde in Olympia, Washington. I received your call concerning the time that I was in the 449th and some of the history. My phone number is 923—area code first, (360) 923-5995. I do have information and I’d be glad to share it with you. I was one of the original members of the 449th that came out of Africa after the African invasion and campaign there. I have several pages of history, and so if you’d like to discuss them, you can give me a call back almost anytime. Evenings you’d probably be more apt to find me home though. All right.
Hello?
Daniel Jackson:
Hello, sir. This is Daniel Jackson from the Air Force Academy.
Jim Hyde:
Oh, yeah.
Daniel Jackson:
I got your call yesterday. Thank you very much for responding to my letter. I appreciate that very much.
Jim Hyde:
Well, you’re welcome. Hold on, just a second.
Daniel Jackson:
No problem.
Jim Hyde:
I needed to get around where I could hear you. Well, I have some information if you’d be interested in receiving it. Are you still working on your project?
Daniel Jackson:
I am, sir. Actually, I’m doing this project over the summer so that I’ll have plenty of time. Our school year is just winding down here. This semester I did a big twenty-eight-page paper on the air war in China in general, and that’s how I started reading about the 449th, and how I got interested in you guys in the first place. So I decided to start on this project over the summer.
Jim Hyde:
Well are you acquainted with how it originated and that sort of thing?
Daniel Jackson:
Well, I don’t have—the only official documents that I have are some of the official unit histories from China and they’re pretty vague. All I know is that it was formed out of a couple of P-38 groups from North Africa.
Jim Hyde:
There were three different groups: The 1st Fighter Group, the 82nd Fighter Group, and—I don’t remember what it was. The 71st? Either the 71st Squadron of the—oh, no. It was the 1st and the 14th and the 82nd.
Daniel Jackson:
And the 82nd. Yeah, that’s what it says right here.
Jim Hyde:
And there was three squadrons out of the 82nd was the 94th, 95th, and 96th, if I recall. The 1st Fighter Group was—oh boy. The 71st was one that I recall. And—oh boy, I don’t recall any longer. I still talk occasionally with the men that I knew. In fact, an old friend of mine, Buck Burris, is living in San Antonio, and we talk probably on the order once a month. Have for many years. There’s not many of us left now.
Daniel Jackson:
Right, right. I think I found a list of about thirty-three of you guys that I sent letters to. That’s about all that I could find.
Jim Hyde:
Well, that’s probably getting pretty close to all of them. And there’s many that have been lost over the years. As a matter of fact, there’s a Fourteenth Air Force Association, and the men get together—have for many years—at least annually at Washington D.C. for a Memorial Day celebration. But I didn’t hear about that until maybe ten or fifteen years ago. So as far as my contact with them, it was virtually a dead group by the time I got involved with going and attending the meetings.
But I have paperwork, if I could send copies of it to you sometime. I have a few pictures. In fact, I’ve got a history that was compiled by—what the heck was his name? Dick Maddox. Is that a name familiar to you?
Daniel Jackson:
I’ve seen him in the Jing Bao Journal, I think. Seen a couple of articles about him, and I also sent him a letter as well, I believe.
Jim Hyde:
Okay. Well, his wife is far advanced with Alzheimer’s, I think now, and he’s not as involved as he used to be.
Daniel Jackson:
Oh, that’s really too bad.
Jim Hyde:
Dick has been very good about keeping people posted on what’s going on. But I can get some of this stuff together and send you copies of it and you can either use it or dispose of it if you want.
Daniel Jackson:
Oh, that’d be outstanding. And also, if you don’t mind, after I get to reading a bunch of it, if I could get maybe a phone interview with you to get some of your personal stories on some of the things as well, that’d be outstanding.
Jim Hyde:
Oh sure. Be glad to do it. Okay. I’ll package this stuff up and if I send it to that address that you used sending it to me, that’d get back to you all right then.
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah, the PO box? That’s right.
Jim Hyde:
I am in the family room right now and I don’t know whether I’ve got the information handy or not. Hold on a minute. No. It’s in another room and I’ve got a big house. I’m in a big house.
Daniel Jackson:
Oh, that’s fine.
Jim Hyde:
I’ll try to write it down right now.
Daniel Jackson:
That’s fine.
Jim Hyde:
I’ll get the stuff together, go ahead and mail it to you sometime in the next few days.
Daniel Jackson:
I appreciate that very much. And if you let me know how much the shipping costs on that, I should give you that—
Jim Hyde:
Oh, forget it.
Daniel Jackson:
Well, thank you very much. I very much appreciate you getting back ahold of me and everything. I was pretty excited when I listened to your message.
Jim Hyde:
Okay. Well I’ll take care of it in the next few days.
Daniel Jackson:
Okay, thank you. And I will give you a call probably—next week is finals for me, so it’ll probably be after that. I’ll give you a call and—
Jim Hyde:
Well as a matter of fact, next week is going to be kind of busy for me and my wife as well. I’m eighty-five and she’s eighty-two, and she’s having a replacement of her right hip next Thursday.
Daniel Jackson:
Oh.
Jim Hyde:
So that surgery is going to have her tied up, and it’ll have me tied up as well until she’s kind of back on her feet again.
Daniel Jackson:
Right.
Jim Hyde:
But I can still get this stuff together and mail it to you, and then just about any time I can talk with you.
Daniel Jackson:
Okay, well I’ve got, like I said, finals next week and it sounds like you’ll be pretty busy too, but after that it should clear up pretty nicely.
Jim Hyde:
Yeah. Okay, fine.
Daniel Jackson:
Okay, well thank you very much, sir. I look forward to talking to you in a couple of weeks.
Jim Hyde:
All right, bye-bye.
Daniel Jackson:
Bye.
Hyde, James. Interview by Daniel Jackson. June 3, 2007.
Daniel Jackson:
Hello, sir. This is Daniel Jackson from the Air Force Academy. I talked to you a couple weeks ago.
Jim Hyde:
Yeah?
Daniel Jackson:
I was wondering, sir, if you had time for a quick phone interview about your time in the 449th, or if another time would be better for you?
Jim Hyde:
Well, I guess this is probably as good a time as any. And I’ve been so busy and getting down and getting all this stuff copied. I’ll try and do that tomorrow.
Daniel Jackson:
Oh, that’d be much appreciated, sir.
Jim Hyde:
Okay.
Daniel Jackson:
First question, I was wondering, sir, how you ended up being assigned to the 449th? You were in North Africa, correct?
Jim Hyde:
Yeah. Well, when the unit was formed, there were twenty men taken from [each of] three different groups, and I was in the 82nd Fighter Group in the 96th Squadron. And they took several men from my squadron and several from the 95th and six from the 97th, I guess it was. So that composed the twenty men from our group, and then there was twenty from the 1st Fighter Group, and twenty from, I believe it was the—oh boy. Let’s see the 82nd and the 1st—I don’t remember the rest. I should. I don’t remember them.
Anyway, they took the twenty of them from each of the three squadrons, and my first sergeant called me. At that time, I was a staff sergeant in Africa. And the campaign in Africa was really over and we were getting ready to be a part of the invasion of Italy. And First Sergeant Dansie was the man’s name, came around and said, “They’re forming a squadron in China, or a group, would you like to go?”
And I said, “Yes, I would.”
And he said, “Well, have you got anybody that you’d like to take with you?”
So I thought of four or five guys. In fact, I lost a friend out of it. Cause after the war, he wanted to know why I didn’t pick him. Anyway, I picked six other guys that I was friends with and we wound up joining at, I believe it was Casablanca—Casablanca or Constantine, I’m not sure which. Part of the group met there and we waited there for the others and eventually, there was sixty men all gathered together there. And then we started around about, oh the 27th, 28th, 26th—something like that—of June to fly out of there in C-47s, there to India.
We eventually stopped in Agra, India, where the Taj Mahal is, and we spent about a month there. The pilots and the planes joined us there and we spent a month in getting the planes ready to fly the Hump. And I was part of the advanced detail—there was two of us. One was Buck Burris, who I still talk to, who now is at a retirement home in San Antonio, Texas. Anyway, Buck and I were a part of the very first group to go into China. We went there and about three or four days after we were in China, then our pilots and other crewmembers began to come on over.
And so by around—oh boy I think it was—you know, sixty years ago is a long time to remember. But if I recall, around the 3rd or 4th of July of 1943, we landed in China then, and from there our first duty station was a place called Lingling, China. And then I was sent back again—seemed like they were trying to get rid of me all the time! But I was sent back to Kunming to be in charge of the maintenance detail that we had there. We had, if I recall, two or three fighters—maybe four there—and we had possibly a dozen or so maintenance people, both armorers and mechanics and so on there.
Daniel Jackson:
Okay. What was your job in particular, sir?
Jim Hyde:
Well, initially I was a crew chief for the majority of the time there. Toward the very tail end, before I came home, I wound up being maintenance chief.
Daniel Jackson:
Okay. Would you describe a normal day for you as a crew chief? Like, what kind of duties would you have? What kind of things would you have to do?
Jim Hyde:
Well, first and foremost is maintenance of the aircraft—the mechanical maintenance. We also had armorer crews. But armorers were not assigned specifically to an airplane. The armorers were maybe a half a dozen guys who were on the line and Buck Burris, this friend in Texas, was an armorer. And they rotated through all the aircraft. We had—in Kweilin we must have had around lot, eighteen or twenty aircraft. And then we sent two aircraft from there to a place called Hengyang and we sent four—either three or four—back to Kunming, and that’s where I was. And I was a crew chief during the majority of my time they were there. And I had, I don’t know, two or three guys who worked for me on the maintenance of the aircraft.
Daniel Jackson:
Okay. Do you remember the specific aircraft that you were crew chief for?
Jim Hyde:
The type of aircraft?
Daniel Jackson:
Well, it was initially P-38Gs. But were you assigned to a specific aircraft then?
Jim Hyde:
Well, yeah. As a matter of fact, for a short time—do you recognize the name of Tom Harmon?
Daniel Jackson:
I do. I actually just finished reading his book.
Jim Hyde:
Oh, okay! Well, I was, for a short time, the crew chief for Tom Harmon. And he got shot down and had to escape from the Japanese. He was cared for with different Chinese for a few days. And then he rejoined us at Lingling, China. And at Lingling, if I recall, he flew home only a few days after that. But the Japanese wanted him desperately and he was returned to the States to keep him from possibly being taken by the Japanese sometime.
Daniel Jackson:
Right, right. Okay. Do you remember any particular anecdotes about your time in China? Any particular unique stories, maybe about maintenancing a plane, or about any parties, or the facilities there, or anything?
Jim Hyde:
Well, yeah. I remember specifically paying $400 for a gallon of ice cream. That’s not Chinese dollars, that’s American dollars. We hadn’t had ice cream in a long time and I don’t remember where in the dickens that was now. I think the ice cream was in Suichuan. Anyway, we found a Chinese man who would furnish the ice and the freezer and stuff if we could furnish all of the ingredients, and he would make it for $400. And so we got the sugar and the vanilla extract flavoring and the milk and so on, and furnished him with all the ingredients and he made the ice cream. And I was the only one of us that had any money, and so there was six of us who got together, and I was supposed to be paid eventually by the others and divide the cost but I never did get refunded.
I tell you, when we were coming from Africa to China, we stopped in—I guess it was Agra. We stopped in India, when we first came into India, and we went to a place—we’d been eating in Africa C-rations, primarily—and they had a place called Piccadilly Circus there—a take off from London, England, and they served really good food there. So, the sixty of us went to dinner and the meal came to a dollar and a half or so each. We had one long table, maybe half a dozen tables strung together, but all sixty of us sat at the same table. So when the bill came it was $98 for sixty of us. They brought the bill and they handed it to Orvil Splitt. He looked at it and passed it on to the next guy. And the next guy looked and it went all around the table. It came back to a guy named Rose and Rose looked at it and he handed it back to Splitt. Orvil said, “Oh, no I’ve seen it.” We got up and walked away and left the bill and two years later, he was still trying to collect some of it from us.
Daniel Jackson:
That’s terrible.
Jim Hyde:
But he paid the whole bill.
Daniel Jackson:
Wow. That’s pretty funny.
Jim Hyde:
But, we split up shortly after that then, and divided up into maintenance group—maintenance, armament, and so on. And then we started getting our planes in from Africa. And it’s at that point when we began to get those into good mechanical condition—and I’m going to guess that it was about thirty days that we spent before we went into China, when Buck and I were the first two to go in, and then bit by bit they all came in.
We lost one of the guys, who we later recovered: Evan Wilder. Evan Wilder was flying the Hump coming in and he had to bail out. We thought we’d lost him but eventually, he walked out from those mountains and came in. We had another guy when we were in Lingling, China, we had a man named Bosma, Ben Bosma. And Ben slept in the same bedroom that I did, along with, oh I guess we must have had eight people to a room, double bunks on each of the four walls. And old Bosma had to bail out over the Hump. Well, after three or four days we thought he wasn’t coming back so we divided up all of his stuff, packed the rest of his personal effects to send home. Well, after we had parceled them all out, he came walking in, so we had to go back and gather up all that stuff to give old Bosma his britches back to him.
Daniel Jackson:
That’s pretty funny. How would you describe—since you were involved in maintaining aircraft as a crew chief, how did the supply situation affect you? I know that supplies were pretty scarce there in China, especially since you were the only squadron flying P-38s. That must have been interesting.
Jim Hyde:
How did what now?
Daniel Jackson:
How did the supply situation affect you?
Jim Hyde:
Oh, the maintenance supplies. It wasn’t good. In fact, most of the time we kept one airplane stripped, it never got into condition. Something would go wrong and we’d have to rob it of a part. And about the time we got that part in to fix it, something would happen where we’d have to rob it for another one. And we had one airplane that stayed down for parts for two or three months at a time.
It was essentially the same way when we were in Africa, though. We were out in a place called Telergma and right across from that, from where our planes were parked, was the junkyard, boneyard. And we went into that boneyard all the time, robbing some kind of a part off of an airplane. But in China it was by far worse. You just didn’t get supplies over there.
Daniel Jackson:
How was it being assigned—the 449th was a twin-engine squadron assigned to a single-engine group. Did that provide any interesting situations or did that really not affect you guys?
Jim Hyde:
The training?
Daniel Jackson:
No, as far as just the organization since you were the only twin-engine squadron assigned to that group.
Jim Hyde:
Oh. Well, first and foremost, it was common scuttlebutt in our outfit that General Chennault didn’t want us to start with. And so while they came over his objection—they meaning us, along with the planes—he kept us stationed as far from Kunming, where his offices were, and as close to the Japanese as he could. We all were always the very furthest outpost in China. And when we left China, when we were finally driven out, the unit was stationed at Suichuan, and we had a couple of detachments—one back at Kanchow, and another one back at Kunming, and another one at Yunnanyi. And when we got ready to leave, all of our planes—the Japanese were within just a very few miles of getting to our base. And so we had a situation where all the people were gone except for a few of us who remained behind to get the last airplanes in the air—we were still trying to fly missions, but at the same time, get as many of the personnel out before they got trapped behind the lines.
And I was one of the very last ones to leave. There were six of us—six or seven. I don’t remember all the names. There was Harold Reeder, a guy named Clairborne, Bill Kuflik, a guy named Bunton, Ray Bunton, and—oh boy—one other, and that’s the one I can’t remember—Ritterbush. So we loaded—and blew up buildings and so on as we were leaving. We loaded all the remaining supplies aboard five or six—I’d say five—old Chinese charcoal-burning planes [trucks]. With charcoal burners, they’d take charcoal, generate a gas, it was captured in a tank, and the engine would run off the charcoal gas until it was exhausted. It didn’t last very long and we’d have to stop, burn the stuff for a short while, generate more gas, and then go on for another—you know, a full tank would take you several miles, but you could only generate gas for maybe thirty minutes or so before the Japanese caught up with you again. It didn’t give you a lot of distance in captured gas.
So we’d stop, and when the Japanese caught up with us and we were fighting them off, then we’d jump in those trucks and drive again for distance. Our first stop was at Kanchow. And ultimately, our whole squadron had gone on down to a place called Chengkung. And there’s those of us left behind that had to bring all the vehicles. Well, it took us to the middle of July, from the last of June, to make it that seven hundred miles through the mountains and all the terrain to get there. But we did eventually get there. But by then, all the squadron members were pretty well dispersed and by now, we had a detachment of four airplanes at Yunnanyi. It was a pretty hairy situation when we were being forced out of Eastern China. But anyway, that is kind of the way Chennault kept us all the time we were there. There was never an outpost further into the dangerous territory than the 449th.
Daniel Jackson:
Would you say that Chennault ever came around to you guys? Did he ever change his attitude or how he treated you?
Jim Hyde:
A defeatist attitude?
Daniel Jackson:
No, did Chennault ever change his attitude about you guys?
Jim Hyde:
If he did, I never heard of it. But I’ll tell you, I won $960 from him and his outfit in a softball game. He was a softball pitcher and we had a guy named Tony Scalzo. And old Scalzo was good, but Chennault was pretty good himself. And so, he—this was while we were at Lingling—he brought a bunch of his ballplayers up and they came up. Well altogether, I got $960 worth of bets and we won!
Daniel Jackson:
That’s pretty funny. I’m seeing—I’m actually looking at your squadron’s official history right now, which I got from the Air Force Historical Research Agency. It’s pretty vague in some places, but some places it talks about the ground echelon, it talks about you guys working overtime to keep the planes in the air.
Jim Hyde:
Oh, yeah.
Daniel Jackson:
Would you be able to build on that? It only has one sentence, it says, “The ground echelon is working overtime to keep planes in the air.” I was wondering how long were your days out there and how hard did you guys work to keep those—
Jim Hyde:
Oh, most of the guys—after we got to China, our squadron was filled in with people from other spots in India and China. And like most outfits, they were people nobody else wanted. They were hard drinking, but the hardest working guys I’ve ever known. And it was nothing uncommon for us to work a twenty-four-hour shift and we have aircraft—in Suichuan in particular—an aircraft mechanical revetment where we’d park airplanes to work on and we had lights set up so that you could work at night. And we worked on those aircraft. It was just a circle of earth about twelve, fifteen feet high, and in a big circle then with a gate wide enough to bring the aircraft through it—or an opening wide enough—and it would be in this circle of earth then.
And I remember in May of 1944, the Japanese had bombed and strafed us for three or four nights and days in middle of that. And I was down there, and I want to say it was May the 13th. It could have been the 12th. But anyway, it was in early May and we were working on an old aircraft, one that I had been a crew chief on at one time, named “Patches” because it had been patched up so many times. It was in that revetment being worked on along with another aircraft. Well, when you see bombs dropped, if they look oblong or long, you know they’re going to miss you. When you see them and they look like a needle pointing at you, they’re going to be close. And so we were working and I looked up and I see this like a pencil, and I hollered, “Boys, get out, it’s coming close.” So we laid down—we had kind of trench dug around the side of the revetment and we laid in that thing. Well that bomb hit on the end of that trench and showered dirt on all of us. It shook us up pretty good but it didn’t hurt anybody. But it was a very close deal. But anyway, that revetment was a twenty-four-hour working area and we tried to rotate the crews so too many guys didn’t have to work all night and not the same ones all the time.
Daniel Jackson:
Okay, that sounds like a pretty heavy schedule all the same. That’s pretty crazy.
Jim Hyde:
Oh, it was [inaudible 00:24:22].
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah, I guess when you got a war on, there’s not much choice.
Jim Hyde:
Well, there’s no place to go anyway, so unless you were playing cards, there was nothing to do anyhow.
Daniel Jackson:
Did you go into town often? Depending on where you were stationed?
Jim Hyde:
I went into town from Suichuan one time, and that was back at Kweilin. And we caught a train, and that was on New Year’s Day going from ’43 into ’44. And I thought it was Suichuan that we were at then; it could have still been at Lingling. Anyway, we went into Suichuan [Kweilin?], and then when we rode the train back—we rode the train to and from it—but we got off and it turned out we thought we were getting off at the right place and we didn’t. As far as, me, Henry Ward, John Singer, and Mitchell. And we had bought a string of firecrackers and it must have been—it is at Lingling we were.
It was probably ten or twelve feet long that we had these firecrackers. We were always being threatened by paratroopers. And so, we brought that thing back to the barracks that we were staying in at the time, where they had a long porch the whole length of the building—a porch that was maybe five or six feet wide. You could sit out on it or walk and stay out of the rain walking down that porch. We waited until about midnight and strung that row of firecrackers out across that thing and lit it at both ends and they’re going off and we started hollering, “Paratrooper! Paratrooper!” What the heck was his name? It was Jim something. Anyway, he come roaring out of that thing with a Thompson submachine gun. He didn’t hit anybody, but it’s a wonder he didn’t! We knew we were really dumb to have done something like that.
But we got off of that train—that’s what I was going to tell you—I was telling you that we got off at the wrong spot and we had to walk twelve miles back to camp and we walked every step of the way carrying that fifteen- or twenty-pound load of firecrackers. But we [inaudible 00:27:02].
Daniel Jackson:
That’s pretty funny.
Jim Hyde:
Well you know young men will do anything.
Daniel Jackson:
Yep. Yeah, I experience that here too often enough. We have some pretty funny stuff that goes on. One group of four degrees this year wanted to set the grass on fire out in the middle of the quad here shaped like a big number six for their squadron six, so that was pretty funny. That didn’t go over too well.
Jim Hyde:
Well, there’s a lot of things we did that in hindsight, didn’t go over too well.
Daniel Jackson:
How—
Jim Hyde:
We were all pretty much nonconformist, or we wouldn’t have been there to start with.
Daniel Jackson:
Yep, yep. How long were you with the squadron?
Jim Hyde:
Well, from it’s inception until May—April of 1945.
Daniel Jackson:
So, were you with the squadron when they were stationed at Mengtze?
Jim Hyde:
That’s at the tail of it, wasn’t it?
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah, yeah.
Jim Hyde:
No, we were still—our primary location was still at Chengkung. That move to Mengtze was at the very tail end of the war. Most of those guys didn’t really see any action to speak of.
Daniel Jackson:
Right, right. Okay. Do you remember what the atmosphere was like at Chengkung or how it was down there? Any funny stories about being stationed there?
Jim Hyde:
Well, I left to come home before they went there.
Daniel Jackson:
Oh, to Chengkung?
Jim Hyde:
Oh, Chengkung. Yeah, well that’s—as a matter of fact, I, at that place, was in charge of all refueling. By then I had become the engineering chief and we had—I recall that I lost one of the guys from the outfit and I don’t know if I’ve cleared up how many B-29s we had there. I can still see at least three of them sitting on the line and we were trying to fuel those things. Our little refueling truck only held 750 gallons. Well, that was enough to do a pretty good bit of refueling with the P-38s. But shoot, it would hardly fill the gas caps on those B29s. We knew they were coming and so we filled up a whole bunch of 5-gallon cans—all we had—and we had gotten a 50-gallon drum out, and our refueling truck, and we started filling those. Shoot, you can imagine how fast refueling goes when you’re pouring gasoline through a funnel out of a 5-gallon can into a 4,000-gallon tank. It was slow, slow, slow. Finally, one of the pilots—I guess it was the ranking pilot—he said, “We’ve got enough to make it back home.” We had been refueling them for, I don’t know what it was, it seemed like four or five hours and still just barely got them enough to get home with. That was a Chengkung.
By the time with got there—soon after we got there—we began to send some of the first—the 1st Fighter Group was the first ones overseas back in 1942. And then the next, the 22nd was the other one. And they were next, and then the 82nd were third in the group and so that’s the way we went home, the guys from the 1st were gone, then the guys from the 22nd, and finally [the 82nd]. And so of the three squadrons that started us out, ours was the last one to leave because we were the last ones to leave the States. But, in that group that left the same time I did was, we went home was Lee Widhalm, a guy named Colter, and a Francis Carter, and Bill Kuflik. Old Bill Kuflik is still down in northern California and so we talk occasionally. Bill was with me when we left Africa.
Daniel Jackson:
Okay. So you went home in 1945—
Jim Hyde:
Yeah, in April I got back to the States. When we were on the way back home, the way—I was in Agra, India, then, and we were going to fly back out of there. Well, it turned out that the war in Europe was over at the same time. So they started taking all the aircraft—transport aircraft—out of there to go start moving supplies and equipment from Europe to the Pacific Theater and there was no aircraft available. So they offered us to wait and then we could go by plane, or go by boat. Well, that would have been around the world for me, so I voted to go by boat. But everybody was so anxious to get home that going by plane was out of sight. So it was determined that we’d go by plane. Well, we rode a train then from Calcutta—actually across the whole country of India—to get to Karachi. Wait a minute, no. To get from Calcutta to—maybe it was Karachi. And then we waited a while trying to get home. I bummed a ride with an English bomber across the Middle East and I landed in—one of the many stops I made was in Africa, at Casablanca, as I recall. Well there was a C-54 there and the tech sergeant crew chief, we had asked him, “Where are you going?” And he said, “We’re going to the States.”
And I said, “Could I catch a ride with you?”
“Oh no,” he said, “this is General So-and-So’s plane. He wouldn’t take you.”
And I said, “Well, we’ll see. I’ll ask him.”
“Oh no, no. Don’t do that. You’ll be in real trouble.”
So when the general came I said, “Sir, I’m Sergeant Hyde, I’m just coming back from almost three years overseas and I’m hitchhiking home. Can I have a ride?”
“Sure! Get aboard!” So I flew with him and the crew then into Ascension, I guess it was. Ultimately, I landed in New York City. And I landed in New York City around the middle of May, something like that, of 1945. I got back and they had a point system. And you got like, five points for a month overseas, and five points for battle stars, and five points for medals and so on, and it took eighty-seven points for a discharge. Well, sure enough, one of these kids says, “How many points you got?”
“Well, I don’t even know what points are. What are you talking about?”
And he said, “Well, this is how you get them, and you need eighty-seven.”
I said, “I got a lot more than eighty-seven.” He started figuring it out and I had 385 points. He hollered out, “Look here, a guy with 385 points!” And so that lined up a discharge.
Daniel Jackson:
That’s crazy. Did your family meet you in New York then when you got back?
Jim Hyde:
Well, my parents lived in Alabama. And I was discharged at Fort McPherson, Atlanta, Georgia. And I came across my wife, who was born and raised in Fresno, California, and she went back to Alabama and waited for me and I met her there. And eventually, after a month there, we came back across the country to California.
Daniel Jackson:
Oh, wow. So you hadn’t actually seen your wife or parents for two full years then?
Jim Hyde:
Well, yeah from September of ’42 to the last of May ’45.
Daniel Jackson:
When you were in China, did you have any interactions with the local Chinese? Any memorable interactions with them?
Jim Hyde:
No, not really. It was a pretty—well, first and foremost the only interaction that we had with Chinese was we had Chinese people who took care of our hostel barracks area and some who did some work in the mess hall and folks like that. But that’s the gist of what our communication with them consisted of.
Daniel Jackson:
Okay. Do you remember any of your commanding officers particularly well?
Jim Hyde:
Oh yeah, a lot of them. At that time, there was very little difference between officers and airmen. And I became a warrant officer, eventually, a chief warrant officer. And so, with me, I was always more of a G.I. than I was an officer, frankly. But, I never had any trouble with officers. I was born and raised in Alabama. I was taught to say, “Yes, sir,” and “Yes, ma’am,” to everybody that was older than me, so saying, ” Yes, sir,” was never a problem for me.
Daniel Jackson:
Sounds pretty good. But, do you remember anybody? Major Kirtley, Captain Palmer—
Jim Hyde:
Oh yeah, Palmer, sure. He was with the original group. And it was Major Who?
Daniel Jackson:
Major Kirtley. This says that he was the original Squadron X commander before you guys got designated the 449th.
Jim Hyde:
Chief Curtly?
Daniel Jackson:
Robert Kirtley.
Jim Hyde:
Was that his name?
Daniel Jackson:
According to this, actually, he might have actually been taken out of command before they actually got to China. So you might not have known him. But then it talks about Captain Enslen, Lieutenant Colonel—
Jim Hyde:
Yeah, Enslen. In fact, Enslen was, I believe, the first casualty we had over there. Does it say that he was killed?
Daniel Jackson:
He was killed. He was killed in the same action that Tom Harmon was shot down in, I believe.
Jim Hyde:
Yeah. When that happened, shortly after that, I was at Kunming, and I was in charge—he was buried in a Chinese cemetery outside of Kunming. And I was on the firing squad, the commander of the firing squad that did the burial honorguard for him.
Daniel Jackson:
Oh, wow. That’s crazy. Yeah, it looks like he was shot down in the fall of ’43.
Jim Hyde:
Yeah, if I’d have had to pick the date, I would have said probably something on the order of September, but it could have been a month or two lter than that.
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah, for some reason I’m not finding the date here. But, I’m sure I can find that later. Do you remember much about Lieutenant Colonel McMillan? I believe he was an original AVG pilot too, and then he got—
Jim Hyde:
Who?
Daniel Jackson:
Lieutenant Colonel McMillan? George—
Jim Hyde:
Oh, yeah! Yeah, he was a great guy. Yeah, he got shot down by ground fire, to tell you the truth. Shot out the—the P-38s had methyl glycol radiators, and it was shot into the ethylene glycol, the thing run out of fuel, and the aircraft caught fire, and he had to crash-land, and he was killed in the crash-landing. Does that jive with what you’ve got?
Daniel Jackson:
Yes, it does. Let’s see here, what else did I need to ask you? What was your turnover for personnel? How often did you get replacement personnel or new personnel?
Jim Hyde:
We didn’t actually lose a lot of personnel. So, there wasn’t a great turnover because we just—well, first I think it was like pulling teeth for Chennault to give anything that would augment the squadron, so we didn’t have a lot of people come in except for the initial group, and then to bring it up to strength. We had some real oddballs but boy, they were hard workers. I’d say I’ve never been with a group that was harder workers than they were.
Daniel Jackson:
Oh, okay yeah. That looks like what other people have said too, yeah. Especially since it was hard to get up to a full tour because of how few missions you guys flew. There wasn’t a lot of turnover.
Jim Hyde:
Yeah.
Daniel Jackson:
And then, as far as aircraft go too, did you have a good rate of replacement for those? Or were those few and far between as well?
Jim Hyde:
Oh, we got a fair amount of replacements over there. I would say that we weren’t really kept destitute. I really guess I’d have to say that replacement aircraft were pretty much available.
Daniel Jackson:
Okay. From your point of view, from a maintenance point of view, how did the newer model P-38s compare to the G models that you came over with?
Jim Hyde:
They were faster. As far as the structure of the aircraft, there was really not much difference. The engines remained the same. They were Allison in-line. And I don’t know—I don’t recall there being any aircraft engine model change, it certainly wasn’t visible. But there must have been some changes. But it was so minute, it mainly would have been like a P-38D as opposed to a P-38E with every designation there was major changes that occurred, that I could tell.
Daniel Jackson:
Okay. Was the P-38 a difficult aircraft to maintain in general?
Jim Hyde:
It was, I thought, pretty easy to maintain.
Daniel Jackson:
So, the Allison engines were fairly easy to maintain?
Jim Hyde:
Yeah, the Allison was a clean, sleek-looking engine. The intercooler was exposed on top and so it wasn’t—I worked on both in-line and radial engines and I prefer the in-line because of the appearance. And then it’s just a slicker-looking engine. The old radial engine, while it delivered a little bit of horsepower, it was a monstrosity to look at.
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah, I can imagine. Let’s see here, one last question sir. Were you ever stationed at Yunnanyi, with the detachment there?
Jim Hyde:
At where?
Daniel Jackson:
At Yunnanyi when then had P-38s stationed there for attacks into Burma?
Jim Hyde:
Yeah. Now, I was in Yunnanyi at two different times: First time for a short stay and the last time for maybe a month or so, and I had to come back to the hospital in Kunming to have my tonsils removed or I’d have been there longer.
Daniel Jackson:
How was it out there? Were the facilities fairly comparable to what you had in the rest of China?
Jim Hyde:
They were no better there. I don’t recall it being any worse either. Actually, most of the time the hostel area was a nice area. They were never bad at any of the places. It was a lot better than sleeping in a tent in Africa. So it was a big move uphill comparing quarters in China to the quarters we had in Africa.
Daniel Jackson:
How was the food out there?
Jim Hyde:
How was what?
Daniel Jackson:
How was the food?
Jim Hyde:
Terrible.
Daniel Jackson:
Did you guys have Chinese cooks?
Jim Hyde:
We had water buffalo, bamboo shoots, and fried rice. I didn’t eat rice for ten years after I came back to the States. But when we were leaving China, coming home, Ike Quick and I had a large dinner in New Delhi. We had known that they were coming out of Kunming, China. And that night, we went to dinner and they had chicken—no, turkey ala king. It had been years since either one of us had had anything like that and our stomachs were so small we couldn’t eat anything, hardly. When we finished eating that night, I was just stuffed and I guess I had probably eaten a cup full. And we went on back to the table and then Ike says, “I hope we have the rest of this for breakfast.” That wasn’t something we’d eaten for a long time, it seemed like. But that was the best food we had had since we left the States the year before.
Daniel Jackson:
Wow. I don’t have any more specific questions, sir. Is there anything else that you wanted to comment on?
Jim Hyde:
No. Holler if you think of something. You got my phone number. I’ll try to get that stuff for you.
Daniel Jackson:
Okay, I’d appreciate that sir. And after I look through that, perhaps I’ll have some more questions. But, I very much appreciate you giving your time for this. And guaranteed that whenever I get finished with this project, hopefully by the end of the summer, I’ll send you a copy.
Jim Hyde:
Okay, appreciate it.
Daniel Jackson:
Okay. Thank you very much, sir. You have a good night.
Jim Hyde:
All right, bye-bye.
Daniel Jackson:
Bye.