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14th Air Force Scorches Siangtan In 6-Hour Raid HQ., 14th AIR FORCE, May 24 (Special to The China Lantern) - Already disorganized Japanese forces in Central China took a merciless pounding during the week of May 14 through May 20 as Fourteenth Air Force bombers and fighters blasted newly-established supply bases, troop concentrations and shipping on the Hunan and Honan fronts while encountering only one enemy aircraft, a Val bomber, which was shot down. With the Japanese forced to re-route supplies and troops through rearward bases after Paoching, principal funnel for the Chihkiang front was bombed into uselessness as a military installation on May 9, the Fourteenth's striking forces lashed at the new bottleneck, Siangtan, on the Siang river. SIANGTAN SCORCHED Hit by staggered waves of Mitchell bombers in a strike which began at midnight, May 18, and did not end until the city was in flames at daybreak, half of Siangtan was either burned out or blasted out as secondary explosions touched off hidden stores of material intended for use by troops operating against Chihkiang. Throughout the area, fighters and medium bombers flying at tree-top level routed and destroyed enemy troops caught on open highways and in railroad cars, as well as individual units which had been pocketed by pursuing Chinese ground forces and made vulnerable to strafing and fire-bombing. JAP BOMBER DESTROYED The lone Jap Val bomber encountered during the week was intercepted and destroyed by Mustangs operating southwest of Yangchi on the Chihkiang front. While operations in the Honan sector were concentrated against demoralized supply bases and troop reinforcements, after Fourteenth Air Force missions smashed bridges, railroad line and shipping along the Yellow river. In this area, too, fighters and medium bombers destroyed hundreds of enemy troops caught in the open, or in isolated pockets by the low flying strafers and fire-bombers. 1.300 ENEMY TROOPS DESTROYED On the Honan front, between the Han and Yellow rivers, Jap columns which had been driving west from Hsihsiassuchi were forced to withdraw in that city under pressure from ground troops which were supported by the Fourteenth's medium bombers and fighters. Operations on this front also were concentrated against railroad lines, locomotives, rolling stock and bridges. From May 14 through May 16 more than 900 pocketed enemy troops were destroyed and, three days later, 400 of a force of 2,000 were killed by strafing thunderbolts. |
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* * * * * Leader of “Dunning’s Demons” Emerges As One Of The Leading Air Tacticians In China By CLYDE A. FARNSWORTH CHIHKIANG (AP) - Col. John A. Dunning, 31, of San Antonio, Tex., and the United States regular Army has, through the success of aerial intervention on the Chihkiang front, established himself as one of the leading air tacticians in China. For months now he has been commanding the "Little Airforce" on West Hunan front, an assemblage of medium bombers and fighters drawn mostly from Chennault's Chinese-American Composite Wing in which Dunning was a group commander. "THE MOSTEST WITH THE LEASTEST" The strength of Dunning's "Little Airforce" obviously cannot be disclosed but it is worth noting that Chennault's VE Order of the Day made public for the first time that the whole Fourteenth started with less than 70 combat planes. Dunning's tactics undoubtedly helped precipitate the Japanese offensive to knockout the Chihkiang base. The Chinese officer commanding troops there pointed out this fact to the colonel one day when it still was a question of whether the Japanese could hold. "NO - NOT THAT!" A few day later it became apparent that id Dunning's Demons were strong enough to convince the Japanese of the necessity of knocking out of Chihkiang they also were strong enough to set the enemy back on his heels when they tried it. That's what has been done in collaboration with the attack-minded Chinese troops. Dunning's Demons had been smashing at the Japanese corridor through southeastern China in a manner that threatened to choke it completely unless the enemy did something drastic. Before the Chihkiang offensive, supplies over this river-road route from Yangtze to French Indo-China had been reduced to a trickle. BRIDGES DESTROYED METHODICALLY The Siang river was likewise safe only in darkness. In the daytime sampans and other river craft were sitting ducks for Dunning's slugging P-40s and P-51s. Truck traffic for the enemy was reduced to nocturnal operation. Then Dunning and his B-25 pilots worked out night-time intruder tactics against convoys and went out, preferably on moonless nights, when Japanese trucks had to run with lights on, opening themselves to low level bombing and strafing by the mediums. The hazards of such flying along valley roads flanked by mountains cannot be overestimated. It is possible only with consummate daring and thorough knowledge of the terrain. Dunning had also evolved a block system of railway bombing. B-25s systematically covered the railways, section by section, day by day, strewing bombs between rails with Norden bombsights. Railway steel became one of the most critical shortages of the enemy in southeastern China. Railway raiders went out singly, but each with a pair of fighters, not for protection against counterattack by air, for Japanese air force, then as now, is no longer a factor in southeast China but rather to suppress gun positions along the railway. P-40s or P-51s dove in with guns spitting at the first winking flash of Japanese guns. When the Japanese, having massed Paoching fanned out with Chihkiang as their goal, Dunning streamlined his "Little Airforce" into a compact front fighting team to give them a fight such as they never had before in China. CCC ADVISES CHINESE In collaboration with CCC Chinese commanders, the Fourteenth Air Force swiftly placed radio teams on the front, each equipped with transmitter and receiver weighing about 50 pounds, easily transported through rough terrain by pack animal or in a pinch on the back of a soldier. Teams included Chinese interpreters to talk to Dunning's Chinese fliers. Results achieved with radio direction of air attacks were astounding. THOUSANDS OF JAPS KILLED FROM AIR It must be remembered that the Chihkiang campaign was essentially a contest over the security of the Japanese communications corridor through southeast China, the extension of which reaches through southeast Asia to the tip of Malaya. That is the strategic yardstick with which the work of Dunning's Demons must be assessed. The Japanese needed not only a knockout forward base for air assaults on the corridor, but also felt that they must secure a favorable position deep on their flank for the protection of the corridor against an offensive by the resurgent Chinese army along the Chihkiang, Paoching, Hengyang approach. Dunning's CACW command is shared by a Chinese opposite number, that being the system throughout the composite wing, but the tactical direction is left to him. Noteworthy, in conclusion, Dunning is no swivel-chair airman. Recently he flew his 101st fighter mission and he will be around the 110 mark before this dispatch is published. |
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