Interview by Daniel Jackson, December 29, 2007

Samuel Soulis: Hello.

Daniel Jackson: Hello, sir. This is Dan Jackson from the Air Force Academy.

Samuel Soulis: Yes. What’s your first name again?

Daniel Jackson: Dan.

Samuel Soulis: No, say it again. I can’t hear it.

Daniel Jackson: Dan.

Samuel Soulis: How do you spell it?

Daniel Jackson: D-A-N.

Samuel Soulis: Is that your first name?

Daniel Jackson: Yeah.

Samuel Soulis: How’d you get that?

Daniel Jackson: That’s the name that my parents gave me.

Samuel Soulis: Okay. D-A-M, you said, right?

Daniel Jackson: D-A-N, as in Delta, Alpha, November.

Samuel Soulis: My goodness, that’s a swear word, isn’t it? Damn?

Daniel Jackson: No, Dan with an N.

Samuel Soulis: No, I can’t get it. Say it again, please.

Daniel Jackson: N as in November.

Samuel Soulis: D-U-N?

Daniel Jackson: No. D-A-N.

Samuel Soulis: Oh. D-A-N.

Daniel Jackson: Yeah.

Samuel Soulis: Okay, Dan. You can call me Sam. Now I’ve got a few minutes to talk to you. Hold on while I put this thing down. Hold on there.

Okay, I’m ready. What are you calling about? The 449th Fighter Squadron?

Daniel Jackson: Well, I’m calling about a couple of things. I’m doing two different projects right now; One on the Salween Campaign.

Samuel Soulis: What’s that?

Daniel Jackson: In Southwest Asia.

Samuel Soulis: Oh, yes.

Daniel Jackson: In Southwest China, I’m sorry. And then another project on the 449th Fighter Squadron.

Samuel Soulis: They were in Kunming.

Daniel Jackson: Right.

Samuel Soulis: They were headquartered in Kunming. And I was a hundred miles away from that in Yunnanyi. You could probably find it on the map. And flying was a little difficult—a lot of mountains and we were seven thousand feet above sea level. I bailed out the first time on my sixth mission in a P-40 over thirteen thousand feet altitude, bombing a bridge, dropping three 500-pound bombs and then strafing in the one pass, and then, you know, go home but I got hit on the pass. They hit my coolant tank and my engine caught on fire. It took me five days to walk back to my base with the Japanese chasing me all the way.

What would you like to know? I can give you up to 30 minutes, okay?

Daniel Jackson: Okay, that’s fine.

Samuel Soulis: I’ll try to answer your questions.

Daniel Jackson: Okay.

Samuel Soulis: I stayed in the reserve for twenty years after World War II. And I went in with only a high school diploma—they accepted me when they were accepting only four-year college graduates. But I passed the test and half of the four-year college graduates flunked. Try to figure that one out, okay?

Go ahead, you’re asking the questions. What would you like to talk about?

Daniel Jackson: Well, first of all, when did you arrive in China?

Samuel Soulis: I arrived there—let me see now. I arrived there in the summer, just before the summer of 1944. I took all my training in Texas beginning in January 1943. PT-19A at one of the fields there for two months, BT-13, you’ve heard of that, two months. And then AT-6, the advanced trainer, two months. And then I had to take the test to fly to P-40.

And then I got overseas and on my sixth mission, I got shot down. And that’s how it is. So I flew 40s up until January of ’45. And then I flew to India—Karachi—and we picked up the P-51s that were sent over by ship in boxes.

We were heading up ninety miles to a place called Andal, and they were put together up there. I was one of three American pilots that had to test fly them after they were put together. And they were a beautiful plane. Unequaled until the jets came out with the—what is it, the F-16? And I loved that P-51.

And that was my experience. When I got back home I was discharged in Fort Dix in November of 1945. So my 40 was a beautiful plane for when Pearl Harbor was hit. We had those on the field at Pearl Harbor. It was the only fighter plane that we had in production at that time. So I liked the P-40, but it was slow, with a cruising speed of about 230 to 240.

The P-51 was the master plane that we had after the P-40. So, now I was in the 25th Fighter Squadron, stationed at Yunnanyi, about a hundred miles west of Kunming, and primarily used in the Salween River campaign, and the other river there, the Mekong. After bombing the bridge, they would have them built up again by the next morning—you know, the enemy. They’d have planks on there, and they’d be using it. They finally captured the Burma Road, so we couldn’t use the Burma Road anymore. So, what are you specifically asking Go ahead. You’ve got the floor.

Daniel Jackson: So, as I understand it then, most of the missions that you were involved in from Yunnanyi were ground support missions, correct?

Samuel Soulis: Yes, we couldn’t fight with the Zeroes, they were too light. And whenever we caught the Zeroes, we had to be above them and we’d go down with full throttle, just about, and make one swoop—you know what I mean? And then we had to come home. You couldn’t stay and fight with them. They were light at the kite and they’d get behind you every minute. So, yes, it was mostly ground support.

Daniel Jackson: Did you ever see any Japanese aircraft? I heard that they were pretty scarce by that point in the war, too.

Samuel Soulis: No, we encountered them once or—a few times. Like once and up to five times. When we were above them, we just used that, we couldn’t stay and fight with them. We would dive down on them, fire at them, and keep going back to home. You can’t stay and fight with a Zero. They’ll knock you down every time.

Daniel Jackson: Okay, and as far as the ground support missions went, how were those coordinated with the Chinese troops on the ground? Was there radio communication?

Samuel Soulis: Oh yes, and many times our American soldiers would be on the ground joining in with the Chinese troops.

Daniel Jackson: And so they’d guide you in on the radio or would they have smoke flares set up or how exactly would it work?

Samuel Soulis: Mostly radio.

Daniel Jackson: Okay, and how did that work with the command sets in the P-40 that weren’t the highest quality?

Samuel Soulis: With the radio in the P-40?

Daniel Jackson: Right.

Samuel Soulis: What did you say?

Daniel Jackson: Well, some people that I talked to had said that the command sets that you guys used in the P-40s at the time weren’t the highest quality, so a lot of times they’d fail or it’d be difficult to understand somebody who wasn’t particularly close or anything. So they said—

Samuel Soulis: The radio you mean?

Daniel Jackson: The radio.

Samuel Soulis: Yeah. Well, many times you wouldn’t have a long range with them, and many times you couldn’t connect with the ground forces. And anyway, usually up in the mountains, we had Americans stationed, observing the ground forces and reporting by radio—coordinating. We’d bomb—what do you call it—ammunition dumps. We would catch boats on the river, things like that.

I got a bronze star on my—let me see now, what mission was that? I think it was my sixth mission when I got shot down. I bombed an ammunition dump with the Japanese forces, and they moved their ammunition like once a week. They moved it from one village to another. I happened to bomb a bridge at the time, but because the leader, [unintelligible], made one complete three-hundred-sixty-degree turn above the bridge and then started to go in and drop his bombs. By the time I dropped my bombs, I was way out in right field, you know what I mean?

I was a bit past the target, but I dropped my bombs anyway, and very luckily for me, they hit the village down the road where they had moved the ammunition dump, and I blew that up. Well, my bombs worked. And I got a Bronze Star for that. I treasure it very much with my other medals.

That’s next to the Medal of Honor, you know, the Bronze Star.

Daniel Jackson: As far as the close support missions, were you used on any missions near Tengchong or any of the other walled cities in the area?

Samuel Soulis: No, that was mostly in the east, right?

Daniel Jackson: No, Tengchong was one of the walled cities right near the China-Burma border, I believe.

Samuel Soulis: Oh, yeah, we would be close to the border. We were more or less closer to Myitkyina. You’ve heard of Myitkyina.

And that’s where we didn’t go much beyond towards the borderline, we flew mostly from Myitkyina to Kunming. East of Kunming, they had other American troops—I mean Americans—flying to the coast there. We very, very seldom went to the east of Kunming. That was for another air force taking care of that area.

Daniel Jackson: Right, right. I had read that this city, Tengchong, which was right on the border, that was one of the primary objectives during the Salween campaign, and that American aircraft were used to bomb holes in the walls so the Chinese troops could take the city during the summer of 1944.

Samuel Soulis: I see. Yes. No, I didn’t get that far, Dan. Mostly our Mekong River and Salween River were as far as we went. And of course, bombing the Burma Road until the enemy took it over.

Daniel Jackson: Okay, and so you guys bombed a lot of bridges on the Burma Road as well?

Samuel Soulis: Oh yeah, bridges, yes. Bridges were one of our main targets. But you see, any bridges crossing the Salween River or the Mekong River would have heavy planks on the bridge, you know what I mean?

And of course, when we’d bomb those out, during the night, they’d replace the wooden planks over the river. And then by the next morning, they were using them again. So we would have to continuously bomb the bridges.

Daniel Jackson: What kind of bombs did you use against the bridges?

Samuel Soulis: Mostly 500 pounds. With the P-40, we’d carry three, one under the fuselage and one under each wing—three 500-pound bombs. Occasionally a heavier bomb, like a 1000-pounder or so, but you couldn’t carry three of those, not with the P-40.

Daniel Jackson: How did the P-40 do, carrying such a heavy load?

Samuel Soulis: Well, you’d lose maneuverability if you dropped your three bombs. And if you wanted to go further, you couldn’t carry three bombs. You might carry one under the fuselage or one under each wing. But you couldn’t go much further than that. You couldn’t carry enough gas. You could carry a fuselage tank with gas, and then you could carry wing tanks with gas. But when you’re carrying three bombs, one under each wing and one under the fuselage, you couldn’t get a full supply of gas and go further. You were limited with your missions. You follow me so far?

And we used it a lot for, you know, getting, breaking their trenches and so on. They would dig their trenches deeper, and they’d hunch down in the trench, so they wouldn’t get shot. And I always used to go up to about twelve thousand feet and do a split-S and come down almost vertically into the trenches. By shooting that way, with your three .50-caliber guns, you could always hit more ground forces. And of course, these actions were all monitored by our radio people up in the mountains, looking down at the action, you see?

And on my sixth mission when I got hit at thirteen thousand feet, I threw the ripcord away on that. And when I got down, it was a 5-days walk back to my base, with the help of the Chinese. Everybody says, “Oh, did you save the ripcord?” And I was trying to steer the parachute with the, you know, by yanking on the cords, you know, to the left, the right and all. And the ripcord was in my hand, and I threw it away. But on the second bailout, which was out of a—one of our transports, a C-47, and I bailout out at about fifty feet. I was the only American officer on board, so I let everybody bail out first. When they loaded the plane, they loaded fifteen parachutes for eighteen people.

So the pilot and copilot got killed. And a Chinese colonel got killed who didn’t have a parachute. And I bailed out at fifty feet, pulled the cord right away, swung three times, and hit a tree. I hit right into a tree and then dropped to the ground. That was quite an experience for me.

Daniel Jackson: That doesn’t sound particularly pleasant.

Samuel Soulis: It wasn’t pleasant at all. The Chinese rescued me the next day. They gave me a grandfather with a pony—you know, a horse, a pony. And they gave me a donkey, a pony—no saddle. And I rode that for two days with just over a blanket. And after that, I was so sore I couldn’t ride the animals anymore, so I walked along over the trail, down the mountain, across the valley, up another mountain, across the valley. I thought I’d never make it back, with the Japanese pursuing me. So I made that one all right, I guess. I didn’t get caught.

What else?

The P-40, it was slow. And it was the only fighter plane that we had in production back at Pearl Harbor. You know, I guess a couple of them took off when they heard the Japanese were coming in from the aircraft carriers, and they got shot down, I believe. So, that’s about the story on that.

I will say this, we knew that Japanese aircraft carriers were coming in towards Pearl Harbor. But actually, it was an excuse for the U.S. to declare war on them and of course, Germany ended up wanting to get in the war, and that’s how they got us into the war. We lost a lot of people. And the battleship in the water now, on the bottom, with what—2,500 Navy people in it? Is that the Missouri? I’ve forgotten that one.

Daniel Jackson: It’s the Arizona.

Samuel Soulis: They never got that ship up. And of course, they suffered a lot of casualties on that.

Daniel Jackson: Right. Well, let’s see here. When you guys did most of your ground attack missions, did you guys do skip bombing and dive bombing then?

Samuel Soulis: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Daniel Jackson: And what—

Samuel Soulis: Dan, let me set this a little louder, please.

I shot a Japanese general’s airplane that was on the ground and destroyed it. And if he was in the plane, I destroyed him too, because on the strafing pass, I looked at the corner—it was one of our runways that we used only forty miles away from our base, which was an emergency landing field, you know? There was dirt runways and all that. But on the second pass, strafing pass, I saw something in the corner that caught my eye. I couldn’t see the airplane because they had it all covered with camouflage. But I shot at it, and then I saw smoke coming out of this, so on my third pass, I went back and blew it up. So I got one Japanese airplane to my credit, destroyed on the ground, which is unusual. None destroyed in the air, because like I said, we made one pass if we were higher than the Japanese were, then we just went full-throttle back home. We wouldn’t stay and fight with them. The Zeros would outmaneuver you every time.

Daniel Jackson: Were there particular instances where you’d use skip bombing instead of strafing or strafing instead of dive bombing or anything like that?

Samuel Soulis: Yeah, we did dive bombing.

Daniel Jackson: Against what sort of targets would you use dive bombing though?

Samuel Soulis: Huh?

Daniel Jackson: Would you use dive bombing against bridges?

Samuel Soulis: Yeah, bridges. Oh yeah. Like I said before, we’d bomb bridges over the Salween, bridges over the Mekong. And sometimes we would dive-bomb on the ground troops. And we were allowed one strafing pass after dive bombing. That was it. Because once they trained their guns on you, and you were—like I was on my sixth mission—and they had time to—I was the fourth man in a four-man formation. And I had just joined the squadron. And of course, the guy that had joined the squadron last, got the fourth place flying position in the four plane—you know, what do you call it—mission.

Daniel Jackson: Right. The flight, yeah.

Samuel Soulis: Flight, yeah. Of course, when you carry three bombs, you limit yourself in the length of the mission because you didn’t have any extra gas tanks, you know?You had your fuselage gas tank and then I think there was 165 gallons besides that. My longest mission was 4 hours and 45 minutes. That was how long it was. They were flying and protecting the Chinese ground troops that were below us.

And believe me, that’s a long mission in a fighter plane. You’ve got a tube where you can eliminate your water, and that’s about all. You’ve got to wait until you get back to the squadron, you know, back to headquarters.

Daniel Jackson: Oh, no.

Samuel Soulis: It wasn’t easy.

Daniel Jackson: No, I wouldn’t image.

Samuel Soulis: I loved flying over there. The mountains were a little—you know, you gotta be sharp on your navigation.

Daniel Jackson: How did the P-40 compare to the P-51 in a ground attack role?

Samuel Soulis: In a ground attack role? Oh my gosh. The 51 were automatic when you dropped flaps. I used flaps in landing because I always come in at a higher speed so I wouldn’t stall out. The P-40 would stall out at eighty-four miles an hour. Coming in for a landing, I usually had my speed up to about 90 to 100 to 110—fast. And I would use about, oh, I’d say 20 percent flaps coming in, which is very unusual in a fighter plane to use flaps while landing, you know? But you had to do that in a P-40, otherwise you’d stall out and crash.

In the 51, everything was automatic. You wanted to fire your guns, you just hit a little trigger. You wanted to drop your flaps? Instead of pumping your flaps down like you did in the P-40, you just hit a button and you drop whatever flap you want, like 20 percent, 30 percent. Yeah. The plane was the best in any time of the war, the best fighter plane we had. Of course, after the war, I had a chance to fly a 16 jet, but I couldn’t get time off from my job in training as a procurement officer. See, when you’re a fighter pilot, and after a few years, you get to your late 30s or early 40s, you don’t fly anymore. They take you off flying—say you’re too old. That’s ironic, isn’t it?

Daniel Jackson: Yeah, I suppose so. I suppose so.

Samuel Soulis: Yeah. So what year are you in at the Academy?

Daniel Jackson: I’m a junior this year.

Samuel Soulis: Oh, really? How do you like it?

Daniel Jackson: It’s pretty good. I’m a glider instructor pilot there, so I teach other cadets how to fly the gliders and stuff like that. So it’s a good time.

Samuel Soulis: What do you intend to do when you graduate?

Daniel Jackson: Well, I’m hoping to fly, of course.

Samuel Soulis: Fighters or transports, or what?

Daniel Jackson: I don’t know exactly. I’m not sure how much of a choice I’ll get either so I’ll just keep an open mind, I guess.

Samuel Soulis: Those fighters are pretty fast. I flew in one, but I never got to use the controls.

A friend of mine down in Texas, from when I was in China, was flying the F-16s and he took me up one day in that plane and I never got to fly it at the controls. Today we have a lot of jet fighters that will go very fast, you know. I’m not familiar with those, because I never flew any of those.

Daniel Jackson: Yeah, there’s some pretty sporty planes out there these days, I guess.

Samuel Soulis: Any other questions?

Daniel Jackson: Yeah, what were the facilities like at Yunnanyi, the living facilities and the food and everything?

Samuel Soulis: You mean the targets?

Daniel Jackson: No, what were the living facilities and the food like at Yunnanyi?

Samuel Soulis: Oh, at Yunnanyi?

Daniel Jackson: Uh-huh.

Samuel Soulis: The food had to be flown in from India, and the only thing that was plentiful in China was chickens and, of course, eggs. That was primarily what they had for dinner. All the other things had to be flown in over the Hump by transport plane.

Daniel Jackson: And how about the living facilities? Were they good quality living facilities? Did you guys have—

Samuel Soulis: The living facilities?

Daniel Jackson: Yeah.

Samuel Soulis: You know, at the fields we had single-story rooms, usually shared by three pilots. One bunk upper and lower, and then one separate. That’s usually three. And you had a potbelly stove for heat.

The living conditions were not good. They installed showers and, you know, all those things. And of course, you got your laundry done most of the time. No beer to drink or alcohol, but there was water, and every time we flew a mission, they would give you like, two shots of liquor. And you’d throw it in your bottle, and when the pilots got enough from the missions they flew, we’d have a party. So we didn’t have much of a—we had movies to watch, and USO, and things like that, but it was pretty spartan living.

Daniel Jackson: Okay, one last question. How did the weather affect your operations?

Samuel Soulis: How did what affect our operations?

Daniel Jackson: The weather.

Samuel Soulis: Say again?

Daniel Jackson: The weather?

Samuel Soulis: Oh, the weather. Very rough. I mean, with our airfield at Yunnanyi at seven thousand feet above sea level, and mountains on all sides, and storms coming up here and there, and it affected your flying, your weather. You would cancel a lot of missions that you’d plan on account of the weather.

Daniel Jackson: Did you ever get caught out in the weather on a mission?

Samuel Soulis: Oh, yes. A couple times. Very rough. You’d get tossed around and you’d turn up your speed a little bit and fly through it. On the way over to Kunming from Karachi with the P-51s, we flew nineteen planes over with fifteen American pilots and three or four of the other planes to make up the nineteen. We lost three pilots on the way over. Mostly by trying to climb high enough to clear mountains at nineteen thousand feet and so on. And by pointing the nose up and decreasing the speed level too fast, you’d stall out. And that’s what they did. They crashed, and we never saw them again. That’s how we got our 51s in January, of ’45.

Daniel Jackson: And how long did you stay in China?

Samuel Soulis: How long was what?

Daniel Jackson: How long was it before you left China then? How long did you stay in China?

Samuel Soulis: Oh, from the summer of ’44, training two months at Karachi, India—which is now Pakistan—and getting over to China. That was the summer of ’44 through the fall of ’45.

I was discharged in November of ’45 at Fort Dix, New Jersey. But I stayed in the reserve for twenty years. And when I was flying, on flying status, I would fly to all the different—in the summer, two weeks off—and fly to all the different airfields around the country. For example, Denver and Waco, Texas, and other places where they had airfields. Rome, New York, I’ve covered the country practically. But I never went further west than Denver, Colorado. I enjoyed it. I was single. I was nineteen—wait a minute now. When I joined in July of ’42—yeah, I was nineteen years old. And I was one of the few fellas they took in pilot training with only a high school diploma.

Daniel Jackson: Wow.

Samuel Soulis: You had to have a four-year college diploma to get into the pilot program. But they took me. And I made it fine, and I promoted up the ladder to major.

Daniel Jackson: Well, I appreciate your time sir, and I appreciate you giving me a call back in response to my query.

Samuel Soulis: Can you hear me, Dan?

Daniel Jackson: Uh-huh.

Samuel Soulis: Can you hear me alright?

Daniel Jackson: Yes. Yeah, I can hear you okay, can you hear me?

Samuel Soulis: Yes. The phone is fading a little bit, so you’ll have to make it fast, if you have any other questions, I’d be glad to talk to you.

Daniel Jackson: Okay. I was just saying thank you very much for your time and letting me interview you over the phone. And I appreciate you giving me a call back in response to my query that I sent you.

Samuel Soulis: Yes. Okay. I’m glad I could help you.

Daniel Jackson: Well, thank you very much.

Samuel Soulis: Stay with it.

Daniel Jackson: Okay, thank you.

Samuel Soulis: Okay, Dan? Best of luck to you. Bye-bye.

Daniel Jackson: Thanks.