Colonel Phillip Adair

December, 1943 and May, 1944

Burma
By Ayanava Ganguly M104

I was born in Virginia, America, and they werent involved in the war until after Pearl Harbor. I only joined the war cause a year later. My highest rank was Colonel in the Army Air Forces. When I was a young officer in 1942, I and some other people were taken to the Chinese-Burma-India (CBI) theater. The CBI was an allied force including whose commander was General Joseph Stilwell. Our job was to protect the bases along the Burma road. Burma was Chinas main supporters. So the Japanese would hide near the bases and shoot down the transports and go back to their base. After we took out the supplies that the Japanese took up into Kamang, Burma and into Myitkyina, Burma they got a little bit slowed down. This happened in October, 1943. The Japanese got a little upset. And they began retaliate. On what I think is December 10th, they struck back and shot down one bomber and four fighters. We thankfully didnt lose any planes, even though one of them got shot pretty badly. Well, three days later, it was the 13th of December, and I had just come back from one of the patrols. I just began to relax and then the red alarm sounded. 24 Japanese bombers and 40 fighters approached our base. I scrambled into the fighter plane, the rest of my flightcrew wasn't able to get up to join me in time, so I was the only one that could intercept this force of Japanese before they hit the 10th Air Force headquarters, which I did. It was a bit of a mess. And we did have a little chaos going on. I shot down one bomber and one fighter and probably two more before they shot up my plane so bad that I couldn't do much with it anymore, so I went on back to our base. In early 1944, General Stilwell's forces with two Chinese divisions and Merrill's Marauders started from Ledo Road to come down Hukawng Valley. They were on their way to Myitkyina. Our big job in addition to their defense became close air support for Stilwell's forces and Merrill's Marauders, and we flew all kinds of missions day after day, and these are some of the missions I took with the Generals forces and the Merrills Marauders. Our planes in the beginning were small and could only hold one bomb. But then we got upgraded to a three bomb plane. We always followed the Merrill Marauders and Stilwell's forces

all the way down. And we did cause sufficient damage to the Japanese, even though we were not the main planes dropping them. Everything went quiet for a couple of months and then we had a big battle in May. On the 17th of May 1944, Merrill's Marauders captured the airdrome at Myitkyina. Well, the next day on the 18th, the Japanese came up with the force of Zeros (the fastest plane in Japan. A fighter plane), and they did a fighter sweep on Myitkyina. They destroyed four planes on the ground, two in the air, and one of our pilots was flying an L-5 (a plane from US) as a courier to take some stuff down to the base there. They shot him down and killed him as well. That same day I was over here near Kamang with a flight of four P-40's that was trying to get some support to Stilwell's forces there around the Kamang area. We dropped bombs and just as when I was pulling up, I saw 15 Zeros. I knew immediately that they were professionals and they knew what to do in this situation. And, to make things worse, they had cornered us. When I saw what was happening, I told my guys to drop their bombs and try to get in the clouds as quick as they could, which they did. The guy behind me, when I turned around to look, there was a Zero on his tail as he was heading in the clouds. I started to shoot but when I came out, I just saw lots and lots of Zeros. I knew we were in big trouble. That battle went on for 25 or 30 minutes, during which time I shot down two Zeros. The leader also shot down two Zeros. After we had been in the fight there for quite a while, I reached an open area. The only thing I could see besides myself was five other Zeros, and they were all on my tail. I was headed south, and home was north, so I went in the clouds again. I knew I would be safer at home. When I came back out, there was nobody around me, so I felt pretty bad about that time, because I had never lost one of my flight members before, and I thought, "Here I am. I have lost three men. Why am I still alive?" Well, I stuck around a little bit. When there was obviously no use to hang around anymore, (which was the whole time I stayed there) I headed towards our base. I got about maybe 15 miles north, and I could see an airplane circling. I didn't know what it was, so I approached it pretty carefully. I didnt want it to be the Japanese because, believe me, I had enough of them. When I got close enough, I could see it was my own man, and he was flying in a circle. So he was looking for help, is what he was doing. So I pulled up alongside, and I could see that he had taken a 20-millimeter bullet right behind his left shoulder in the cockpit, blew that whole part of the cockpit away. The airplane looked like a plastic mesh.. I don't know how it was flying, but it was. His radio was gone. And he obviously was wounded. So I looked him over and signaled "thumbs up" as best I could and went to rescue him. We headed back to our base shortly after that.

From my experience I know that war kills people, enemies, allies and the innocent. That its bloody and violent. But I had nothing to regret. I mean, the world did suffer, but they got back

on the right track. (After the war). My only hope is that theres no World War III.