Interview by Daniel Jackson, February 18, 2008
Jerry Ravenscroft:
They said there were hundreds of planes that were destroyed.
Daniel Jackson:
Oh wow.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
And we didn’t report hundreds, but they said the whole line was gone. So they don’t know either.
Daniel Jackson:
Right.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
No intense automatic weapons, bursting up to fifteen thousand feet. We came in at two.
Daniel Jackson:
So according to the Japanese records, three Japanese pilots were killed and up to six Zeros were shot down.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
And how many did we report?
Daniel Jackson:
I don’t know, between both squadrons there was five, I think ten.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Ten. We reported ten, but they only lost six?
Daniel Jackson:
Right.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Okay. Well, you know what happened to me; I know damn well I got three. But the commanding officer, he said, “Well, we’ll let the film show it.” And then the film didn’t come out. And I’m screwed. That’s the end of it. And I saw one guy bail out. And anyway.
Daniel Jackson:
Right. And so that would be one of the ones where a pilot was not killed, because three pilots were killed. He obviously bailed out so he wasn’t killed.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Yeah.
Daniel Jackson:
And so the Japanese information is imperfect too, because they burned a lot of their records. And it’s not clear whether they, well, they didn’t count damaged, or crash lands, or anything. It’s only destroyed.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Oh.
Daniel Jackson:
So if one of the guys that you shot at bellied in and severely damaged his aircraft or whatever, they didn’t report that.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Yeah, yeah.
It was always the mission that—I’ll tell you something that’s off the record, which will help, maybe, you understand some of this. The AVGs were there in existence six months. And they were—what do you call a guy who joins the French Legionnaires?
Daniel Jackson:
Mercenaries?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Yeah, they were mercenaries. They were. Some of the guys had never flown. And China would give them $500 for every pilot, for every plane they shot down. So they never took off without coming back with two or more killed. So that, when it got over and the AVGs went out, then they went into another thing for six months. And then the Air Corps said, “It’s time that we got rid of this amateur stuff and put the pros in charge.” But everybody was so scared then of reporting anything because of what the AVGs had done. It was just tougher than hell to get any credits for anything. And they didn’t give out medals any more.
Daniel Jackson:
Right. Yeah. That’s what a lot of people have said.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
This mission should have been rewarded somehow, because it was a lulu to fly that long over water, to get in the dogfight, and then fly back over water, was just unheard of. And you knew the plane I came back in. Can you imagine that plane, that shot up, and they didn’t get the coolant or the landing system?
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Wow. And then they had to destroy the plane.
That’s nonsense. Bombers strafe for only two pilots.
Daniel Jackson:
The bombers, by the way, it turns out, were G3M Nell Bombers that were assigned for anti-submarine duty.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Really?
Maybe you want to read this. This is our report on the mission. This is the 38’s [449th Fighter Squadron] report. I wonder where the hell they were. Did they come in before?
Daniel Jackson:
It seems to me that they came in before you guys. They came in low, did a strafing pass, and then got engaged in a dogfight. So I think they only made one or two strafing passes total.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
And then came back?
Daniel Jackson:
Right. A lot of people had trouble with their fuel tanks siphoning. One of the guys that I talked to who was on the mission, he was flying a G-model P-38, and apparently when you do high-G turns, the fuel siphons out of the main tanks. So he had to bail out over—
Jerry Ravenscroft:
He bailed out?
Daniel Jackson:
He bailed out over China.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Oh, okay.
Daniel Jackson:
Several hundred miles from Chengkung.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Yeah. You know, we never flew with any other squadrons. It was a crazy war over there. The average mission, this was the biggest mission I was ever on. The average was two planes, maybe four. And if you ever were—I forget the term—if you ever were cover for bombers, it was the B-25s or something like that, there’d be two of us and they’d have three. And you know they were small.
Three officers missing in that 38 thing?
Daniel Jackson:
Right. Yeah.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Out of how many on the mission?
Daniel Jackson:
Eight.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Eight?
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
So three out of eight.
Daniel Jackson:
One guy had his battery shot out, so he couldn’t—the fuel pump wouldn’t work. So he bailed out. And then—
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Where?
Daniel Jackson:
Over Southwest China or Southeast China?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Oh, in China? He made it back to China?
Daniel Jackson:
All three of them made it back to China. All three of them made it back alive.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Okay.
Daniel Jackson:
And then one guy, his airplane was so badly damaged that, once he got back to China, he had a bunch of warning lights on, and he decided it wasn’t worth staying with it because it was dark already. He could only fly at a little less than two hundred miles per hour.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
How many?
Daniel Jackson:
Two hundred. So they were crawling back for a P-38.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
That’s pretty fast, though.
Daniel Jackson:
And then, the other guy had the fuel siphoning.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Jeez.
I went to Google, I think it was, recently, and went back to look at Sama Bay. And hit it, my God, that town there is a city and the airfield is a major thing.
Daniel Jackson:
Still in the same place, though.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Yeah, same area.
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
“Mustang’s acting as top cover.”
Daniel Jackson:
Now one of the P-38 pilots I talked to did remember seeing a Mustang, at least one, during the battle.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
But we didn’t cover them. I never saw one.
Daniel Jackson:
No. It seems to me that they probably preceded you guys. And then when they got caught up in the dogfight, the people—since you peeled off, probably the main force of the P-51s might’ve seen them as they were exiting.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Well, see, there was only—we went in as a group.
Daniel Jackson:
Right.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
And I turned off.
Daniel Jackson:
Right.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Whether they, the others went down and saw 38s, I don’t know.
Daniel Jackson:
Right. Yeah. Well, obviously Forsythe didn’t.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
He didn’t go, did he?
Daniel Jackson:
Huh?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Was he on the mission?
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah. It says in the report that he was.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Was he, Grant was?
Daniel Jackson:
And he—
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Was he? I’ll be darned.
Daniel Jackson:
And I wrote to him and he said he was on it.
Something that’s interesting, though, is that he remembers a P-51 getting shot down over the island. And one of the P-38 guys remembers that, too. But there’s no mention in that. And I can’t find it anywhere else. He says that it was his wingman that got shot down.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
His wingman?
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Well, it couldn’t have been Daddy because Daddy was leading the squadron. So he’d have had a wingman.
Daniel Jackson:
Let me see what he says.
It says, “In coming around after a strafing pass, I saw my wingman explode down low as he flew through some boat masts. This tore off his wing, he flipped over, and went into a warehouse.”
Jerry Ravenscroft:
I’ll be damned.
Daniel Jackson:
And one of the P-38 guys, too, he had three brothers. And one of them was in the army infantry and was—after the war—was part of the occupying force in Japan. And one of his cooks apparently—he was working a kitchen—and one of the Japanese cooks told him that he was a pilot during the war, had been at that mission, and had shot down a P-51.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
It’s crazy, isn’t it? Because we had nobody from our squadron missing except Daddy Wilson.
Daniel Jackson:
Right, yeah.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
And there were no other 51s from another squadron involved.
Daniel Jackson:
No.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
So I wonder where they got all this stuff?
Daniel Jackson:
No, but you can see—
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Yeah. I wonder where Grandy got that?
What’s that word, Daniel, “we—something—bombers with their escort fighters?”
Daniel Jackson:
“We encountered many planes in the target area.”
Where are you talking about?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
About the third line. We something or other—
Daniel Jackson:
“We encountered many bombers”?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Is that it, “encountered”?
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
No, next line, right here.
“We”—something.
Daniel Jackson:
Dived?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Dived?
Daniel Jackson:
Target area.
Yeah. I don’t know.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
We, something. I don’t know what that word is. I’ll be darned.
His name is Black. There’s—
Daniel Jackson:
There wasn’t a Black listed on the mission.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
No Black on there? Isn’t that a crazy damn thing?
Yeah. I want to get his address before you leave.
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah, no problem. That just has a quick little blurb on it. It doesn’t say much at all. Just on that one page, that is up there.
It was the 901st Air Division responsible for pilot training for Zeros and anti-submarine, because I guess, Hanan Island was a big stopover for Japanese transports.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
It was the main depot, as I recall them saying.
Daniel Jackson:
And I guess our submarines were really active in that area.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Interesting.
Philippine campaign.
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah, they’d just been brought back, apparently.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Yeah.
They were both killed on that mission.
Let me get you—what have you got for me there?
Daniel Jackson:
Last thing is, if you look at 5 January, that’s the Fourteenth Air Force report.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Yeah.
Daniel Jackson:
They say there were twenty-three fighters all in total on that mission. Whereas my count is sixteen: eight 51s and eight P-38s. So that’s another interesting little contention.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Well, when you read this thing on the squadron report from the 38s, it’s so much more detailed than ours was.
Daniel Jackson:
Right.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
It was usually assigned to an enlisted man or something, that really didn’t bother getting.
Daniel Jackson:
I think they had a captain doing theirs.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Yeah. They would come back, and write up something, and not get the full report, or anything. And it was too bad.
I know at one time I was the official photographer for the squadron. And the only reason was I had taken a camera overseas, which was against the rules. And there was a kid over there before me and he had, somehow, an enlarger. And when he left, he left the enlarger and a few chemicals for me. But it was, I took some pilots—I’ve got all that stuff for you’re really interested in it, some of the pilots and stuff like that. All right, next.
Daniel Jackson:
I actually just highlighted the parts that you were receiving. I had questions about some of those.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Oh, okay. Let me get this thing for you.
Did Granton send you anything squadron reporting?
Daniel Jackson:
No.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
This is our complete squadron history they say. But starting here and going over there will be on the Hainan mission.
Daniel Jackson:
If you want, let me pull out, this is actually probably the third draft of my book so far.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Marie, what’s your major?
Marie Barrett:
Aeronautical engineering.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Engineering, really? Really?
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah, she’s a lot smarter than me.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
How come you’re a brat?
Marie Barrett:
My mother’s in the Air Force.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
She was, or is?
Daniel Jackson:
Is.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Is? Is she really? Okay. And your Dad, they’re divorced?
Marie Barrett:
Yes.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Okay. So you live with your mother.
Marie Barrett:
Yes.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
And she’s in the Air Corps—Air Force.
Marie Barrett:
Yes.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Air Force now.
Where? Where’s she stationed?
Marie Barrett:
Right now, she’s at Quantico, Virginia.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Yeah.
Marie Barrett:
She’s doing a job with the Marines.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Wow.
Marie Barrett:
So she’s trying to work both sides.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Yeah, great. Good. So you did a lot of traveling with her?
Marie Barrett:
Yes.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Yeah. Were they divorced all the time?
Marie Barrett:
It happened during high school, so—
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Oh, okay.
Marie Barrett:
About seven years, now.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
So you traveled before high school with them both?
Marie Barrett:
Right.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Was he Air Corps, too?
Marie Barrett:
No, no. He worked different jobs at banks.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Okay. At the base? Okay.
And so how long has she been in the Air Corps? Long time?
Marie Barrett:
Coming up on eighteen years.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Wow. Neat. Boy.
The only females that I ever saw in the service were nurses.
Marie Barrett:
Mm-hmm.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
And there were a few WAFs, is that what we called them?
Marie Barrett:
Yeah.
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
But they never left the States that I know of.
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah, it’s a much different Air Force nowadays.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Yeah. We had USO ladies, a couple. But it sure has changed.
Sandy Ravenscroft:
Well, that’s a few years.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Yeah, now they’re flying fighters, and squadron leaders, and—
Marie Barrett:
Yeah.
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah, that pretty much lines up with what the other mission reports said.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Okay.
Daniel Jackson:
So that’s good.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Nothing there for it? Okay.
Daniel Jackson:
Except that it doesn’t say that Wilson bailed out. It says that he just never showed up back at base.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Yeah.
Daniel Jackson:
If you want, starting right there on January 5th. That’s what I’ve written so far. Except what’s in brackets is just notes that I made for my next draft.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Okay. It was pretty comfy.
Amazing. Interesting.
Daniel Jackson:
So you can see my issue with all the different controversies here.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Yeah. It’s amazing, isn’t it? But I can remember—just the differences—I can remember, after I had, when we had gone to Laohekou, which was way over on the east part of China, and we would go into that old Marine area over there, Chin Hutch [Qingdao], I forget the name of it even, along the coast of China. And Blankenship, our squadron’s CO, was leading the mission one time and I was with him. I think I was on his wing, I’m not sure. But anyway, coming back, I looked down and here’s an airfield down there, and I could see these aircraft behind bunkers and everything. And I couldn’t get Blankenship to even look. And I came back and told him, and then he says, “Why didn’t you go down?” Well, you know, breaking off to go down by yourself, you don’t do that kind of stuff. But it was always screwed up.
And the first, well, on that disk thing, I had maybe fifteen hours in the 40, and went into combat with it, and never dropped anything but a 250-pound sand thing, and get up that one morning with three 500-pound bombs on the damn thing. And it was incredible because you didn’t know what you were doing, much less—it was was a fun thing. It was always a lot of interesting things.
Anyway, Sandy’s heard this a long time. The kids hear it, so that’s why I put it on tape, on a disk, so they would know more about it because I never did with my dad. And there were a lot of things that I would love to go back and question him on.
Some of the names on the mission I remember, but Black was familiar. I know the name Black. But I’m wondering if Forsythe—well, how was he going to get that screwed up? I don’t understand it. I told you about that time on Laohekou, when I was shot down and the guy that had just had a baby, and wanted to not go on the mission because we had that crazy rotation thing going on. And it seems to me somehow that his name was Black, but I’m guessing on that.
But I can’t imagine Grant seeing his wingman go into a storage shed and blow up and everything. And I can’t imagine him not remembering really what he saw.
Daniel Jackson:
Is there a list of people killed in the squadron in here anywhere?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Well, that’s literally, Daniel, from the start.
Daniel Jackson:
Okay.
Because that might be a little easier to—
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Daniel, is your book going to be a sort of reference thing for the Air Force or what?
Daniel Jackson:
No, I’m hoping to get it published by a regular book publisher.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Okay.
Daniel Jackson:
Like I said, it started out just as a unit history; it’s kind of grown into using that unit—instead of just unit history, using it as a case study for the air war in China. So I’m expanding my scope, if that makes sense.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Are you interested in only history-type things, or are you doing novels, as well?
Daniel Jackson:
No, I haven’t done any novels.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Can you?
Daniel Jackson:
Never tried.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Did you ever read the Captain Aubrey Stephen books? About the time of Napoleon, and he was American, no, he was an English sea captain. There’s a whole—
Daniel Jackson:
Are you talking about Horatio Hornblower?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Huh?
Daniel Jackson:
Horatio Hornblower?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
No, no. Different than Hornblower.
Daniel Jackson:
I’ve read that.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
But remember the movie that came out?
Daniel Jackson:
Master and Commander.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Master and Commander.
Daniel Jackson:
I’ve read those books.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
That was part of the series.
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah, I’ve read all those books.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
You read all of the books?
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah, I’ve read every single one. Yeah.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Me too. Time after time. A guy that did that with an Air Corps thing with a brother in Europe, for instance, and somebody in the South Pacific could make a fortune on that stuff. Because it was like the—Marie, what were the books that all the girls read when you were young? But that was what was for men, these things. But great books, weren’t they?
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah, I liked them. I’m trying to get her to read them.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Marie, if you get into it, there’s nautical terms and you just go right over them. Just forget it. Just get on with the plot of the thing.
Daniel Jackson:
Oh, she’s an engineer. She should be able to handle that.
Yeah. I don’t see any mention of another mission there, so I don’t know.
Interesting.
But you don’t remember anybody getting shot down on that mission?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
No, no.
Daniel Jackson:
Lots of fun.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
The only one that was missing when we got back was Wilson.
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah, that’s also in here.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
He had finished his tour. This was to be his—
Daniel Jackson:
His last mission?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Yeah, funny thing.
Daniel Jackson:
Always happens that way.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Yeah.
Sandy Ravenscroft:
And he was shot down then, or what? You said he was missing? I don’t know—
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Yeah, he got shot down in—I’m sure it was Laos. And natives in the village captured him and then tortured him to death. And our Air-Ground crew in Laos went back and found him, and found the body, and ascertained that he was killed. That’s the story I got. But after reading this stuff, you don’t know what was true.
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah.
Do you remember where you got that information about Laos?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
I forget. But Daddy was dear to us.
Daniel Jackson:
Right.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
And so, I don’t know where I got it, but somehow it’s there.
SESSION TWO
Daniel Jackson:
Okay.
Well, I did have some questions about what you’d written on the CD, if you don’t mind.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Okay. Why don’t we go to eat first?
Daniel Jackson:
Okay.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
And Marie’s going to tell us where to go.
Daniel Jackson:
So you talk about—and we’ll probably rehash some things right quick, just so I get it on tape, too. Who’s your friend from the P-38 squadron that you went to go visit in the Cub?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
I think it was Wolfe, but I’m not—he was from Glen Ellyn, Illinois. And I think it was Wolfe. It’s been a long time.
Daniel Jackson:
Well, the name sounds familiar, so I’ll check it, but it should be good. Also, did you ever fly yourself over The Hump or were you in a transport when you flew over?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Well, I’ve come over many times—not many times, but several times—in the 40 and the 51s. And then that one time in an L-5, and a guy and I flew over with it, and that was to bring back planes. So we would fly over from China into India and pick up a replacement aircraft and then load it with booze and we’d fly it back.
Daniel Jackson:
And did you ever end up flying over in bad weather or was it usually pretty good?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
No, nothing. I was there once when the weather closed in on us and was just dumbfounded. It’s how fast you were, but I had sense enough to get out of it and I did.
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah, that’s good. One of the P-38 guys, they were flying across and they were at thirty thousand feet. There was clouds above them, clouds below them, clouds on either side. So they made a 180-degree turn, but everybody was turning all at once. So one guy got confused, popped into the clouds and they found him months later. It was bad. But did you guys take the southern Hump route near Myitkyina?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
No. We were north of Myitkyina.
Daniel Jackson:
Okay.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Myitkyina, when I got there, was just about to be taken over by the Japanese.
Daniel Jackson:
By the Americans, from the Japanese, right, because you arrived in ’44?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Yeah, okay.
Daniel Jackson:
Because I know that there were two different routes. Because Myitkyina was a big fighter base for the Japanese.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
No, we were north.
Daniel Jackson:
Let’s see here. Well, you talked about all the beggars and how dirty India was.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Yeah.
Daniel Jackson:
Now from what I understood, China had just as many poor people, especially all the refugees.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
That’s true.
Daniel Jackson:
So do you know what the difference was then? Why China appeared so much cleaner?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
I think it was the climate. China was cool compared to India. The customs there then, but guys should discuss things that you hardly want to talk about in mixed company. But when a young child would have, a young child, would have a BM, they’d call the dog over to lick the kid’s butt. Jesus, you’re sitting there, it’s a young kid, you’ve never seen stuff like this. And it was common then. And Mao Zedong stopped this. They’d pick their nose and wipe it on something. Jesus Christ. And of course the communal latrines are still going on. But it was different. But in India, you never saw that kind of thing, but it was common to defecate anywhere you looked. Even today, you can’t look anywhere that you don’t see somebody defecating. But it was different.
Daniel Jackson:
How did the P-51 compare to the P-40?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Day and night. Day and night. God. The P-40 had a very close landing gear and it was tough landing. And the 51 was spread out and it just handled like a dream. It was just day and night. There was nothing similar, nothing.
Daniel Jackson:
How about for ground attack missions?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Well, I don’t think there was any comparison anyway, of the 40 to the 51. The 51 was faster, lower. Jesus, you could skip-bomb that thing and just put it in anywhere you wanted, you know. And strafing, anything, the 51 had it.
Daniel Jackson:
Let’s see. You said that Wilson bailed out over Laos?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
I think so. That was my understanding that Daddy Wilson bailed out over Laos, was captured by the native people, and tortured to death.
Daniel Jackson:
Why did he not make it all the way back? Was he low on fuel? Was his airplane damaged?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
I don’t know.
Daniel Jackson:
Okay.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
See, we went over with radio silence, we got in combat, and we started talking. But I never saw another plane in combat except Japanese. And they say—I forget where I read it. Maybe it’s in one of the reports that Daddy Wilson said, “Let’s go home.” Well, I don’t recall him saying that. But I know I took off because I knew that I had been over there long enough. And so I took off and flew home and never saw another plane on the way home. And that’s when later on I learned that Daddy had been shot down, I think.
Daniel Jackson:
Obviously, I’m trying to rectify all these different stories. I’m wondering if possibly his plane could have been damaged and smoking or something and that’s why they thought it was shot down.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Could have been. I don’t know.
Daniel Jackson:
That’ll be fun to write about. Could have been this, could have been that, could have been this.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Yeah.
Daniel Jackson:
And you said your P-51 had pretty much had it when you got back.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Two-hundred-and-something bullet holes.
Daniel Jackson:
That’s crazy.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Crazy. Never hit the coolant, never hit the landing. I forget how many bullet holes in the propeller.
Daniel Jackson:
Wow.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
And some of them wouldn’t go through because the Japanese bullets were nothing like ours.
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah, the .30-calibers.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
And they were stuck right in the propeller.
Daniel Jackson:
Did you have a vibration problem on the way back or anything?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Not that I know of. And through the top where the propeller was in, it would’ve gone through. And then I had one that went through the strut right by my shoulder. And that’s why they had to junk the airplane from that one.
Daniel Jackson:
Did you have any cannon holes in it, too? Or just the machine gun?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
No, no, just the machine gun.
Daniel Jackson:
Interesting. Because the Zeroes had cannons. I wonder if they didn’t have the ammo or if—I guess the cannons don’t shoot out with as high of velocity, so maybe they just hit you with the machine guns.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
I never even knew they had cannons. I had no idea.
Daniel Jackson:
Well, now you know.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Yeah, I had no idea.
Daniel Jackson:
Because the Oscars didn’t have cannons.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Well, see that’s what we were up against, the Oscars only.
Daniel Jackson:
Right. Well, over Hainan Island, though, those were Zeroes because those were the only planes that were there. Those were the only Japanese fighters. Now they look a lot similar.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Well, could be. But when I came back and they said, “What was it?” I described it. And they said, “Well, those were Oscars.”
Daniel Jackson:
And they look very similar. The only difference—and I wish I had some pictures to show you. Well, they both have the same—generally the wing looks the same. I guess the big differences are the Oscar is more maneuverable than the Zero, but it’s slower.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Slower?
Daniel Jackson:
And then it only has two machine guns, whereas the Zero has two machine guns and two cannons. I think in general, most people would say that the Zero was a much higher quality aircraft than the Oscar, but generally they looked about the same.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
As I told you that nobody ever said when we got over there what to do. Never told you on strafing missions or anything to do. But we knew that the torque on the Japanese wouldn’t allow them to turn to the left as we could. So we’d always turn to the left and dive, and then they were out there somewhere, then we’d come back. So whether the Zero or the Oscar was better on that, I don’t know.
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah, the Oscar was a little bit more maneuverable. It also had flaps that dropped down so it could make really tight turns.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Really?
Daniel Jackson:
I think as far as the Zero is concerned, the P-51 might’ve been just as maneuverable. I know obviously the P-40 was a lot less maneuverable than the Zero, but I think the P-51 might’ve been about on par.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
But that was the only maneuver I knew, turn fast to the left and dive.
Daniel Jackson:
They didn’t give you any air-to-air training or anything?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Nothing.
Daniel Jackson:
I guess they didn’t figure you’d—
Sandy Ravenscroft:
He wasn’t coming back.
Daniel Jackson:
That’s crazy. What kind of training did they have you go through in Karachi?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
I had maybe ten hours in the 40. That was all.
Daniel Jackson:
And that’s it?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
That was it. And I had trained in the 47.
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah. Were you expecting to get assigned to 47s somewhere?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
We had no idea what was going on. We got on the aircraft and there was orders to report to the CO at Karachi. And everybody said, “Where the hell is Karachi?”
Daniel Jackson:
You mentioned how when you were walking out how there was kind of a de facto truce between the Chinese and the Japanese. Where did you learn about that? Did one of your guides tell you?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Probably sometime when I got back. The first night I was with the guerrillas, they went out on a mission, and I wanted to go with them and they wouldn’t let me. But that is literally the only time that I know of where they were trying to make contact with the Japs. And the only other contact we had on the Japs was the last night that I was really involved with occupied area was when we walked through that Japanese camp.
Daniel Jackson:
Right.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
And it was right through the middle of a Japanese camp for God’s sake. You could hear them snoring and coughing and everything else. But we paid off the guards. Well, the only time, again, was that first night out we saw them in this two-story building, and I was going to spend the night there and there were Japanese billeted there, so we left right away.
Daniel Jackson:
Gotcha.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
I never saw a Japanese that I know of when I was walking out.
Daniel Jackson:
That’s good.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
But you’d go in at night and you’d sit down with this whole group of people and you had to go to an opera. Someone would come back and you’d be at Jingao and here’s this guy sitting next to me and listening like hell. And he got all through and asked this guy, “Who is he?” And he didn’t know. It could have been a Japanese spy. We never knew.
Daniel Jackson:
Interesting.
Sandy Ravenscroft:
Jerry, how old were you?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Young. Twenty-three.
Sandy Ravenscroft:
I was just going to ask. Can you believe that? How old are you, twenty-three?
Daniel Jackson:
Twenty right now.
Sandy Ravenscroft:
Twenty. You are Twenty.
Daniel Jackson:
And Marie’s Twenty-one.
Sandy Ravenscroft:
Can you believe being over there into that direct contact?
Daniel Jackson:
That’d be amazing.
Sandy Ravenscroft:
A real experience, wouldn’t it?
Daniel Jackson:
I talked to one guy who joined the Aviation Cadets when he was seventeen years old, and got called to active duty when he was eighteen, flew 104 combat missions before he even turned twenty.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Oh, boy.
Sandy Ravenscroft:
Oh, my.
Daniel Jackson:
Crazy.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Europe?
Daniel Jackson:
No, in China.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
104?
Daniel Jackson:
104.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
He was with the 23rd.
Daniel Jackson:
No, 25th Fighter Squadron.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
25th?
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah, doing ground support for the Salween Campaign.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Okay. Ours were long missions.
Daniel Jackson:
Right. Well, and then especially when you were based in the north there, I bet you you guys got weathered out quite a bit.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
But they were long. I don’t think I ever went on a mission that was an hour. They were always longer. Go from Kunming to Hanoi back, or if you went right over the border to Haiphong, it was long missions.
Daniel Jackson:
These guys were flying, I think they were about two hundred miles away from the front. So pretty close.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
The 23rd would take off at the end. Take off and bomb, and then come back and load a bomb, and they’d get twenty missions a day.
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah, these guys were flying three or four missions per person per day.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Yeah.
Daniel Jackson:
So it was a lot more than the average guys. I asked about the unwritten armistice because it’s kind of a contentious point amongst historians as to whether that kind of thing existed or not.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Sure.
Daniel Jackson:
Because a lot of them say that the Japanese ran out of supplies, so they stopped their advance. Other people think that the Japanese saw that there wasn’t any political advantage in continuing in China because of the Pacific campaign. And so they just made a deal with Chiang Kai-shek to stop the fighting between the Chinese and Japanese.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Our understanding was that when the Japanese had come down from the north, they would come down during the harvest season, harvest the crops, and then go back. And it wasn’t to attack or anything, it was to harvest the crops and take them back. Well, when I first got over there, our missions were when the Japanese were on the drive down to Kweilin to get rid of Kweilin.
Daniel Jackson:
Right.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
And so we were at Lingling and Hengyang, and then Kweilin. No, we had nothing that—but I do know somewhere where they had this armistice between the Japanese and the Chinese: “You don’t bother us and we won’t bother you.” And that’s why the Chinese villages that I was in was never bothered until I left. And then it was my understanding the Japanese would come in and wipe out the village. Well, I don’t know if they ever did or not. Maybe I learned that afterwards. I don’t know.
Daniel Jackson:
Were the guerrillas that took you out, were those communist guerrillas then?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
No.
Daniel Jackson:
They were nationalist guerrillas?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Yeah, they were nationalists. I was right on the border of the communists. I might have been with some, but I don’t recall any.
Daniel Jackson:
Okay.
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Did I tell you too, that one of the kids that was a translator—young man—and he was probably the only translator I was with for a day or two. Because normally if you went from one village to the next, they could very seldom talk to each other. So he was the translator because his girlfriend was in the village I was going to. And they had a thing in China then that anybody that was shot down and was rescued by the Chinese, the Chinese could sue for a ransom. And years later I got a letter from War Department or some place wanting to know if Su Xiaoyue was the guy that rescued me. Well, I don’t think I ever knew the guy’s name. And I said, “I don’t know.” But then I got a letter from him and he was in the embassy in Spain for the Mao Zedong regime. So the kid was smart.
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah, it sounds like it. Well, I mean, I guess if he’s got that good of linguistic ability, put him to work, right? You mentioned an American landing near Canton—an amphibious invasion. Do you know any details about that? Because a lot of people say that Chennault wanted a landing, but there wasn’t one actually planned. Other people say—
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Well, it was rumored, when I was with that air-ground group, I had taken a radio-equipped Jeep to Nanning and that was to be used on a landing of the American troops. But it was all rumor.
Daniel Jackson:
So they were just getting you guys prepared for it just in case?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
Yeah, something.
Daniel Jackson:
That makes sense. Well, that’s all the questions that I had. Awesome. Anything else that you wanted to comment on?
Jerry Ravenscroft:
I don’t know what it would be. If you think of anything, let me know.
Daniel Jackson:
I will. I appreciate it very much.