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OSPREY AIRCRAF T OF THE ACES

• 3 5

P-40 Warhawk Aces

of the CBI

Carl Molesworth

SERIES EDITOR: TONY HOLMES

OSPREY AIRCRAF T OF THE ACES • 35

P-40 Warhawk Aces

of the CBI

Carl Molesworth

SPREY

PUBLISHING

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE

CHINA AIR TASK FORCE 7

CHAPTER TWO

JUNGLE FIGHTERS 43

CHAPTER THREE

CHINA BUILD-UP 61

CHAPTER FOUR

THE LONG WITHDRAWAL 73

APPENDICES 86

C O L O U R P L AT E S C O M M E N TA R Y 9 0

INDEX 96

INTRODUCTION

ilitary historians have not always been kind to the Curtiss P-40, the US Army Air Force’s frontline

fighter at the start of America’s involvement in World War 2. The P-40 was caught on the ground at

Pearl Harbor and was badly mauled by Japanese A6M Zero fighters over the Philippines and Java. In

the year that followed, P-40 pilots barely managed to hold the line in northern Australia and New Guinea until

new fighters with higher performance became available.

Yet in one remote corner of the war the P-40 Warhawk compiled a combat record as good as the finest fighter

types of its era. In so doing, it captured the imagination and adoration of the American public as few warplanes

ever have. These P-40s were, of course, the ones flown in the China-Burma-India Theatre. Operated first by

Claire Lee Chennault’s legendary American Volunteer Group (AVG), and later by American and Chinese pilots

of the Tenth and Fourteenth Air Forces, the P-40 simply dominated the skies over Burma and China. They were

able to establish air superiority over free China, northern Burma and the Assam Valley of India in 1942, and they

never relinquished it.

This book will not cover the AVG in detail, for that is a subject worthy of its own volume in this series. If, how-

ever, one includes the AVG’s score in a tally of confirmed aerial victories in the CBI, P-40 pilots were credited

with 973 kills – 64.8 per cent of all the enemy aeroplanes shot down by American pilots in this theatre.

Numbers such as these are important in any discussion of fighter aircraft and pilots. Strategies, tactics, condi-

tions and personalities all have their place as well. But in the final analysis, it always boils down to the same ques-

tion for a fighter pilot returning from a mission – ‘How many did you get?’

Unfortunately, answering that question accurately wasn’t always easy for a tired pilot just back from the

swirling confusion of an air battle. What he thought he saw and what he remembered might not even agree with

an account of the same engagement given by his wingman. It was left to the squadron intelligence officers to

gather the stories and try to sort them out. The Tenth and Fourteenth Air Forces adhered to the same standards

for confirming aerial victories as were used in other theatres of war, but the confirmation process was an inexact

science at best.

Knowing that, the historian must view the numbers of confirmations credited to individual pilots, and their

units, with caution. Those numbers give us a relative scale by which to judge performance, but that’s about as far

as they go. For instance, a list in the appendices of this book shows that three pilots tied as the top-scoring P-40

aces in the CBI with 13 confirmed victories apiece. In truth, it is impossible to establish that each of those men

shot down precisely 13 aeroplanes, but there is no doubt in the author’s mind that all three were superlative

fighter pilots.

Likewise, the title ‘ace’ requires careful handling. In the USAAF, it was conferred unofficially on pilots with

five confirmed aerial victories. The number is arbitrary, yet it bears up very well statistically as a measure of

achievement in air-to-air combat. On the other hand, ace status cannot be taken as the full measure of an Amer-

ican fighter pilot in the CBI, because a large percentage of them had little or no opportunity to engage enemy air-

craft in the sky. The CBI was primarily a fighter-bomber show. Even the most successful aces in the theatre spent

more time bombing and strafing ground targets than in air-to-air combat.

Fortunately for the fighter pilots of the Tenth and Fourteenth Air Forces, some of the same traits that ham-

pered the P-40’s performance in air-to-air combat made it an excellent ground-attack aircraft. Even the fighter’s

detractors acknowledge that it was fast at low altitudes, heavily armed and extremely tough. More importantly,

the Curtiss P-40 was available in quantity at a time when other American fighters were not. Whether the pilots

liked the P-40 or not, it was the aeroplane they had to fly, and they flew it gloriously.

Carl Molesworth

Washington

August 2000

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