I Thought a little history on how Photo Recon came to the Pacific would be good along with a little history of the Jolly Rogers. The experiences are fairly common to all of them who served with the Jolly Rogers and give a much better picture of what life was like it the Best Damned Bomber Group in the World.
Before Pearl Harbor the Generals etc. thought Japan would over run most of the Pacific but after Pearl they were determined to at least defend the Philippines. With the B-17s becoming available air power would be the key to the Pacific.
The war with Japan was unlike the war in Europe, we were fighting in four different areas of the Pacific. Each area or theater was a group unto themselves with different methods of doing things. But by the end of 1941 they were no closer to getting a plan together and the new B-17s were still in short supply. Right after Pearl Harbor, within days the Japanese attacked the Philippines, Malaya and the Chinese coast. MacArthur was forced out of Manila, Wake Island and Hong Kong fell. In the face of these losses Gen. Marshall suggested rather than 4 separate commands to instead have a single unified force. It would be split between South Pacific and South Western Pacific and include Australian, Dutch and British forces.
We and our allies were stunned by the rapid advance of the Japanese thru the Pacific islands, soon they would be a real threat to Australia and New Zealand and able to cut off our supply lines. In the spring of 1942 MacArthur completely revamped the command of Southwest Pacific and moved his head quarters to Melbourne and then to Brisbane. Shortly after arriving it becomes clear to MacArthur that an Intelligence group would be needed ASAP and they should do their work there first instead of sending everything to Washington for interpretation.
The battle worn remnants of Allied forces made their way to Melbourne among those men were a few trained in Intelligence gathering which became the basis of the Photo-Recon-Mapping group and the Allied Intelligence Bureau.
On 9 August 1942, the American Chief of Staff, General Marshall gave orders to establish the 5th Air Force and gave George C. Kenney immediate command of this new air force and all other Allied air units in the South West Pacific Area (SWPA). Kenney's headquarters were located in Brisbane.
The 5th Air Force USAAF was established in Australia on 3 September 1942 under the command of Major General George Kenney who had arrived in Brisbane, in the State of Queensland in Australia on 29 July 1942. Kenney made a lightning tour of bases in northern Queensland and summarily fired the entire command air staff.
At the time that Kenney had arrived, there were three fighter groups, 5 bombardments groups, two transport squadrons and one photographic squadron operational in the SWPA comprising 1,602 officers and 18,116 men.
General Kenney became General MacArthur’s air commander in the Southwest Pacific. MacArthur had not, so Kenney believed, fully understood and appreciated the potential of air power. To make matters worse, MacArthur and his previous air commander, General Brett, were estranged, hardly ever speaking. The Allied ground and air units in Australia and New Guinea were tired from the fighting and retreats of early 1942. Kenney believed that he could reverse the dispirited state of the airmen; he was a confident, experienced flyer who sought subordinates that he called “operators.”
By that term he meant a flyer who understood airplanes, who would take risks, break the rules when an advantage was to be gained by doing so, and would not ignore the opportunity if some modest thievery would benefit the man’s squadron or group. Kenney greatly appreciated someone who could use air power in bold, unexpected, and successful, ways.
George Kenney soon became the dominant AAF commander in the region (his public stature approached only by that of Maj. Gen. Claire L. Chennault), and he remained so throughout the war. General Hansell, one of Arnold’s closest advisors in planning the war’s operations and immensely influential in organizing the B-29 force, said of Kenney:“ He did things with air forces that left airmen gasping. MacArthur owed much of his brilliant success in the Southwest Pacific to General Kenney’s imaginative performance.”
Ennis Whitehead, who was Kenny’s Deputy was chosen to command the advance base at Port Moresby. Immediately Kenny started the construction of a central depot at Townsville and the replacement of the rag tag remnants of the 19th Bomb Group with the 90th — the Jolly Rogers. By the first part of November 1942 the Fifth Air Force was beginning their sustained attacks on the Japanese at Papua, New Guinea.
The 310th Bomb Squadron "Asterperious" was the first to arrive in late October 1942. They had made an 11 hour trip from Fiji. Over the next week the 321st "Bombs Away" arrived from New Caladonia and the 320th “Moby Dick” flew from Long Beach to Hawaii and finally touched down in Australia along with the 400th “Black Pirates”. The 90th BG was complete with their 48 B-24 Liberators after a 5,000 mile journey and not a single lost plane or mishap.
The ground echelon of the 90th Bomb Group left Honolulu Harbour at 11:00am on 8 November 1942 on board the SS Republic and SS Torrens. They were escorted by the battleships USS Colorado and USS Maryland and four destroyers. They arrived off Townsville in north Queensland on 24 November 1942. SS Torrens docked at the Townsville wharves on 25 November 1942. The men disembarked and were taken to Armstrong's Paddock, a US Army Staging area in Townsville.
The 90th BG first home was at the Iron Range near the top of Cape York Peninsula. When they arrived in 1943 the two air strips named Claudie and Gordon were still being completed. It took Two Battalions of Pioneer Engineers 3 months to build two 7,000 feet runways and 13 miles of sealed taxiways at the Iron Range. There were no buildings and they lived in tents in the jungle, it was pretty miserable. Accidents, lost planes and dead buddies tore at their morale, some how given the mortality rate 820 men between 1943 and 1945 they had to get past it and do their jobs the very best way possible.
Twelve B-24 Liberators of the 90th Bomb Group, including seven from the 320th Bomb Squadron, taxied into their takeoff position at Iron Range's "Gordon" airfield just before midnight on 16 November 1942. Each B-24 was carrying 31,000 gallons of fuel and six 500-pound bombs for a bombing mission on Rabaul.
Takeoff arrangements were disorderly due to confused briefing instructions, some mechanical problems, and a lack of coordinated night time dispatch communications.
B-24 Liberator #41-23942 "Bombs to Nip On" piloted by Lt. Paul Larson of the 400th Squadron of the 90th Bombardment Group clipped B-24 "Big Emma" and crashed during take-off. The dust blown up by the first B-24's taking off had obscured the dim airfield lights. The eleventh B-24 in line veered off the runway into two parked B-24 Liberators and a B-17 Flying Fortress.
The B-24 caught fire and its bomb load exploded. Casualties were eleven US Service personnel killed and four aircraft written. The remaining four aircraft did not take off. One of these #41-23765 "Connell's Special" was materially damaged while #41-23751, "Big Emma", was only slightly damaged.
On 16 November 1942 a Liberator crashed during take-off (see above) killing 11 men and damaging four aircraft. The first B-24 that took off on this raid on Rabaul, #41-11902 "Punjab", vanished without a trace on this mission. It was piloted by the Commanding Officer of the 320th Squadron, Major Raymond S. Morse. Also on board was the Group Commander, Colonel Arthur W. Meehan, who was co-pilot. This loss in combination with the above crash caused some significant morale problems amongst the men of the 90th Bomb Group.
They were good and they were brave and they were also very resourceful, this is the story of an ill-fated mission.
USAAF B-24 Liberator, #41-23762, known as "Little Eva", of the 321st Squadron, 90th Bombardment Group at Iron Range was returning from a bombing mission. "Little Eva" and 4 other B-24's had taken part in a high-level bombing raid against a Japanese troop convoy about 80 kms north of Buna. "Little Eva" piloted by Lieutenant Crosson, became separated from the others and returned towards their base at Iron Range by itself.
"Little Eva" was caught in a severe thunder storm and went off course. Its radio was disabled during the storm and it eventually ran out of fuel. Lieutenant ordered his crew of nine to bail out. Six crew members parachuted safely. Four other crew members, who did not bale out, were killed when the aircraft crashed at about 2:45am on 2 December 1942 in the Moonlight Creek area north west of Burketown near the Gulf of Carpentaria coastline. The wreckage was eventually found near Burriejella waterhole.
Four crew members who did not parachute perished when the aircraft crashed. Their names are as follows:-
Lt. Workman
Lt. James Hilton
Lt. McKeon
Cpl Gurdas
On 14 December 1942 two survivors, Lieutenant Norman Crosson and Sergeant Loy Wilson, were rescued by the manager of Escott Station, 15 kms west of Burketown. They had survived for 13 days after the crash with very little food and water. The wreckage of "Little Eva" was located some 60 kms north west of Escott Station. Their discovery started a search for other survivors which lasted for almost 5 months.
Crosson had instructed his crew to regroup at the crash site. Crosson met up with only Loy Wilson at the crash site. The four other survivors decided that it was too difficult to reach the crash site from where they were so they headed for the coast which was about 24 kms away. They were:-
Staff Sergeant Grady Gaston
2nd Lieutenant Arthur Speltz
2nd Lieutenant Dale Grimes
2nd Lieutenant John Dyer
Between these four survivors they had four bars of chocolate, a jungle knife, a fish hook and fishing line, and a few matches in a waterproof container. The two groups of survivors thought they were on the east coast of Cape York, south of Iron Range, closer to Cairns. Crosson and Wilson, decided to walk east towards what they thought was the east coast of Cape York. This proved to be a good decision as it lead them straight to Escott Station. They arrived with badly blistered feet and they were exhausted due to lack of sleep and food.
Gaston and his three other companions headed west when they hit the coastline of the Gulf of Carpentaria. They followed the coastline. They sucked on leaves and chewed on green bark to quench their thirst. On the fourth day they killed a young bullock with one of the two .45 calibre pistols they had with them. They cooked pieces of meat on the ends of sticks on an open fire. They ate as much as they could and pressed on. They did not take any meat with them in an effort to lighten their load. A day later they had to throw away their pistols as they had rusted so much and were rendered useless.
They came across a number of rivers as they headed north to north west along the beach. They tried to find shallow crossing for them all but were faced with having to swim across some of them. The rivers in the Gulf country are full of crocodiles, but luckily for them none were around when they swum these rivers. They were often waist deep in mud and on other occasions they had to travel through dense tropical jungle.
On 15 December 1942, seven members of "C" Company of the Northern Australian Observer Unit (NAOU), fifteen local VDC members, a local policeman and two aboriginal trackers rode out from Escott Station to locate the wreckage. It was eventually located almost 40 miles from Escott station.
Lieutenant Stan Chapman of "C" Company drove the two survivors to the four bed Burketown hospital for treatment. A week later they were picked up by an American aircraft at Burketown and flown back to Iron Range.
Stan Chapman established his search headquarters at Burketown. After 5 days of fruitless searches he asked Ian Hosie, the Flying Doctor pilot to help locate the B-24 Liberator wreckage. He landed in the main street of Burketown to pick up Chapman. They flew to the search area where a rough bush airstrip had been cleared by the ground search party. After a cup of tea at the bush strip, they took off and it didn't take too long to find "Little Eva" about 5 miles away. They directed the ground party to the wreck site.
At the site, the ground party found 6 parachutes, two charred bodies and many tracks of some survivors. After burying the dead, NAOU Lieutenant Frank Comans led a small group to follow the tracks of the four survivors. They persisted for over 130 kms. In the wet conditions they would often lose the tracks particularly when crossing streams. They eventually lost the tracks at Settlement Creek just short of the Queensland and Northern Territory border. They could not find any tracks on the other side of Settlement Creek and they assumed that crocodiles must have taken them in the creek. Comans and his small party returned to Burketown.
Gaston and his three companions had in fact crossed Settlement Creek and continued into the Northern Territory. US aircraft continued to search the Gulf Country for the missing four airmen. On 18 December 1942, Gaston remembered seeing three B-24's crossing at 1,000 feet directly overhead. They tried to signal the aircraft but were unsuccessful.
On 24 December 1942 their hopes were raised then they found a small paperbark shack but they found that it was deserted. They found a watermelon vine at the shack and "feasted" on some small melons that night. They realised that it was Christmas Eve and decided to sing some Christmas carols and say some Christmas prayers.
After that night it rained for several days. By this time Speltz whose feet were in a very poor condition. The other three left him at the shack and headed north to look for a homestead. They reached the Robinson River which was flood bound following the recent heavy rain. They made a makeshift raft by tying small logs together using strips of material obtained by tearing up their shirts. They managed to cross the river safely on the unsteady raft.
At another flooded creek they spotted some fruit bearing trees on the opposite bank. Grimes decided to swim the creek fully clothed to get some fruit. He got into difficulties. Gaston tried to reach him but was called back by Dyer. Grimes drowned on 27 December 1942. Gaston and Dyer walked another 40 kms that day along the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria, towards the mouth of the Wearyan River, near the delta of the McArthur river.
Amazingly almost five months later Grady Gaston staggered into Seven Emu Station with some aborigines who had found him on 23 April 1943. Grady had managed to survive on wild berries, crabs, snakes and dead fish and animals he found. He lost 68 pounds as a result of his ordeal. The other crew members did not survive the harsh wilderness of the Gulf country.
The above account of this incident was written by Sergeant Grady Gaston while he was recovering at the hospital in Townsville.
Two of the large Pratt and Whitney engines, along with their mangled propellers, the rear gun turret, and two huge main under-carriage wheels from "Little Eva" are now on display at Syd Beck's Military Aviation Museum on the Kennedy Highway near Mareeba.
This is the indoctrination film my father saw when he got to Photo-Recon school.