John Moriarty 3rd Combat Cargo Air Force

Over time I gradually collected something of my own air force. We had picked up a PT-19 primary trainer- (Ryan low--wing monoplane), later we picked up an AT-6 advanced trainer, and later on a P-38 (below) which was found abandoned at an airfield in China and brought home over the Hump to India. Later, while the 3^rd Combat Cargo Squadron was again stationed in China, my squadron maintained the B-25 that belonged to the Commanding General of the Combat Cargo Task Force, and I could fly this whenever I wished. I even tried to get a Japanese "Betty" medium bomber after the Japanese surrender--but in the words of Kipling, that's another story.

The PT-19, though it probably cruised around 65-75 mph and had no flight instruments except "needle-bal1-airspeed" and a magnetic compass, was fun to fly and I used take it up and fool around with it. I decided that if I kept the magnetic compass on a heading of east or west (where it is pretty stable) and watched the airspeed carefully. I could fly it on instruments, and used to fly it into clouds--starting with smaller ones and then ever larger. It turned out I could fly it on instruments, and after a while--just for kicks--I decided that I could snap roll it on instruments, if I timed the roll right, and then I could quickly get on the magnetic compass again for attitude stabilization. It worked and I was quite proud of myself

Actually, this helped me quits a bit once when I had decided to take the PT-19 from Hathazari, on the eastern side of the Bag of Bengal, across to the Theater Headquarters at Calcutta. The visit took longer than I expected, and I took off again about dusk. In that slow airplane, the trip was going to take well over an hour, and I realized quickly, as darkness came on, that I wasn't going to be able to see the horizon at all. Aside from the constant haze everywhere around Calcutta, there were scores of islands in the bay with fires everywhere as the natives prepared meals, and these fires were indistinguishable from stars I was going to be totally on instruments. I decided quickly that if I looked only at my magnetic compass (luckily I was heading close to due east) I could fly the thing. So I simply put my head down in the cockpit and flew it until I got back to our base, where I landed without difficulty. I don't believe the PT-19 had landing lights, but I had practiced landing without lights so this was no problem.

P-38

Our squadron, stationed in Kunming. China, and as I remember, the Japanese had just surrendered. We were flying missions over most of China at the time, and on one of these that I took, the destination was an airfield several hundred miles to the northeast (I've forgotten just where) which had formerly been the base for a P-3 8 Fighter Group before it moved out. While my C-47 was either being loaded or unloaded (for whatever reason the flight had been sent there). A Warrant Officer who with some half-dozen airmen constituted the only Americans left at the field, told me there was a P-38 there that he wanted to get rid of so that he could go home. He said it had been left there by the Group, for some reason that had since been fixed, that he ran it up each day as he had been taught to do, but it was the main thing keeping him at the base. I told him I would do what I could, and resolved later that I would pick up the aircraft myself

The next time we had a flight going that direction, (though not to that base) I took the flight and brought along a senior pilot whom I could trust to continue the flight alone. When I got to the P-38 base it was totally overcast up to at least 10-11,000 feet, the altitude at which I was flying The airfield was located in the center of a bowl with mountains several thousand feet all around it, and there was no let-down procedure because the radio beacon was located in the center of the field itself in some building down there. I decided to work out my on my let-down, making a circular pattern round and round the beacon as I let down (I believe I knew that they had something like a thousand foot cloud ceiling at the base.) I first had to decide the radius of the circle I wanted to describe, in order to stay within the bowl--and out of the mountains. As I approached the beacon at my flight altitude, I decided the number of miles I wanted the radius to be, then converted this to minutes (and seconds?), at my flight speed. I then went into a left turn, keeping the radio compass pointing at 90 degrees to my left. There was a pretty good wind blowing so I had to steepen up the turn on the downwind side of the turn (to keep from being blown way out of my circle), and shallow it up on the upwind side (to keep from being blown quickly over the center of my circle). I made the letdown all right and broke out over the field.

When I landed, the Warrant Officer told me what he knew about the airplane (which wasn't much). I had never flown an aircraft with an inline engine (liquid cooled) before. But I figured I could work out how to fly it. I read all the placards, ran up the engines and studied things- then took off--having figured out in the meanwhile how to get the gear up, handle power and prop settings, etc. I used my same let-down procedure in reverse, climbed back out and headed for Kunming over the mountains. One problem was that there were gas tanks in both wrings, and the Warrant Officer in running up the engines for some: weeks had been using all from one side. I believe this was the problem; in any event the fuel level on one side was much lower than the other, and I could just see myself running out of gas for one engine.) I read more placards (brushing leaves off, as I remember) and saw how to transfer fuel from one side to the other. I accomplished this, everything equalized. and we arrived in great shape at Kunming.

The aircraft was what they called a P-38L-O1 with a lot of communications equipment behind the Pilot's seat. Our engineering people took this out, as well as the armor plate which left room for a little jump seat. I flew this aircraft around to several places, including Hanoi a couple of times to which I remember taking my first Sergeant. The P-38 was a great airplane to fly, easy to land, and I got a lot of fun out of it.

Major John K. Moriarty, Commanding Officer, 3rd Combat Cargo Squadron, 1st Combat Cargo Group CBI 1944-1945. January 2000

I am looking for former members of the 3rd Combat Cargo Group, 1st, Combat Cargo Group, 2nd Combat Cargo Group and the 4th Combat Cargo Group. In fact I would like to hear from anyone who flew over the Hump during WW II, or flew any Combat Cargo Missions at any time (Berlin Air-Lift, Korea, etc.)

Please e-mail comment, suggestions, corrections,etc to: bill@comcar.org

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