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
they moved into Bhamo, and on 8 May the enemy climaxed his north-
ward drive by capturing Myitkyina, key base in the current plan for
maintaining an air cargo line to China. With this defeat, Allied re-
sistance on the ground for all practical purposes ended, the AVG
squadron withdrew to Kunming, and Stilwell began his famous walk
out of Burma.
T o the Allied defense against this drive, the Tenth Air Force had
been in no position to make a direct contribution. Conferring with
Stilwell on 24 March a t Magwe, near the current fighting, Brereton
had reported that his air force would not be ready for combat for
another month, an estimate which proved in fact to have been opti-
mistic. Its assistance in combat was necessarily limited to the indirect
aid provided by a few bombing missions which, considered either
individually or collectively, can be regarded as having little more than
a nuisance value.
The first combat mission of the Tenth was flown on the night of
2 April. Brereton planned two missions for that date, one against the
Rangoon area and another against shipping targets in the region of
the Andaman Islands, where a Japanese fleet that included carriers
was reportedly assembled for an attack on Ceylon. At Asansol one of
the two B- I 7’s assigned to the Rangoon mission cracked up on take-off
with loss of its entire crew, and though the second took off well
enough, it was forced by mechanical failure to turn back to base
before reaching the target. That night the second mission, led by
Brereton in person and flown by two B-17’s and one LB-30, success-
fully attacked enemy shipping near Fort Blair in the Andaman Islands.
Having dropped eight tons of bombs from 3,500 feet, the crews
claimed hits on a cruiser and a transport. Antiaircraft fire both from
the ships and from batteries on shore was encountered, and the planes
subsequent to the bombing were attacked by enemy fighters. T w o of
the bombers received damage, but all returned to base.45
At General Stilwell’s insistence, the Tenth thereafter devoted its
attention to the Japanese in On 3 April six bombers took off
from Asansol to strike a t docks and warehouses in Rangoon. In-
cendiary and demolition bombs were used to start three large fires;
no resistance from enemy pursuits developed; one B-17 was lost on
the return trip, cause By 1 6 April the planes had been put
in good enough shape to send again six bombers to Rangoon. Having
taken off this time from Dum Dum near Calcutta, they first dropped
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