The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. 1 (archived PDF)

T H E A R M Y A I R F O R C E S I N W O R L D W A R I 1
bat were cherished for transport purposes. For inter-island air trans-
port, principal reliance was placed on two Navy PBY’s and a motley
collection of craft-“a Duck, a Bellanca, and a Fairchild,” two Beech-
craft, a Waco, and two decrepit P-35’s-which had been dubbed the
“Bamboo Fleet.” But one by one these transports, like the combat
planes, were lost to enemy action, to accident, or simply to wear and
tear and the necessity of using for purposes of evacuation any plane
that could fly to Australia. The Wac0 was shot down with loss of
all its passengers near Del Monte; the Duck was forced down and
destroyed by the enemy, as also were both of the P-35’s; by the time
of Bataan’s fall in April, only the Bellanca was left. Flown by Maj.
William R. Bradford, it made its last flight from Mindanao with a
cargo of quinine for relief of the garrison on Corregidor, where it
crashed in attempting a take-off for yet another mission of relief.’
If the Americans on Bataan and Corregidor symbolized a will to
resist the Japanese aggression at all cost, those on Mindanao repre-
sented a lingering hope that reinforcements could be gotten through.
Early in January, General MacArthur, who clung to the belief that
even with defeat on Luzon it might be possible to build up strong
forces in Mindanao preparatory to a reconquest of all the Philippines,
had directed that airfields be constructed with all haste throughout
the Philippine Islands. Available air base personnel were sent out to
enlist the aid of local leaders and to provide supervision for construc-
tion undertaken. As a result, by I March the Americans had a t least
seven all-weather-type fields capable of receiving any kind of aircraft
on Mindanao, four on Negros, three on Cebu, and one each on Panay
and Bohol. In addition, there were nine fields on Mindanao, two on
Negros, and one each on Panay and Leyte suitable for use by pursuit
aircraft, not to mention others recommended for use only in dry
weather or for an emergency landing.8 The most extensive effort, as
the above-given figures indicate, had been made on Mindanao, where
Maj. Ray T. Elsmore subsequently reported a total of forty-two fields
that had been completed between the opening of hostilities and I
April 1942. Del Monte itself had been expanded into a complex incor-
porating eight outlying fields, one of which had its operations control
in a tunnel driven sixty-five feet into a neighboring mountain side.
Another of the Del Monte satellites provided a 3,000-foot runway
leading into a tunnel capacious enough to receive and park five P-40’s
at a time, Other bases on the island offered facilities for distribution
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