The American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews The Museum of Flight Seattle, Washington
Charles H. Older (Part 2 of 2)
Interviewed by: Eugene A. Valencia
Interview Date: circa 1960s
2
Abstract: In this two-part oral history, fighter ace Charles H. Older is interviewed about his military service during World War II. In part two, he continues to describe his experiences as a fighter pilot with the American Volunteer Group and the United States Army Air Forces in the China- India-Burma Theater. Topics discussed include his aerial victories and notable encounters with Japanese forces during his combat tours. He also touches on his postwar career as a lawyer and his service in the Air Force Reserve.
The interview is conducted by fellow fighter ace Eugene A. Valencia.
Biography:
Charles H. Older was born on September 29, 1917 in Hanford, California. He joined the United States Marine Corps as an Aviation Cadet and completed his flight training in 1940. Initially assigned to Marine Fighting Squadron 1 (VMF-1), Older opted to resign his commission in order to join the American Volunteer Group, then forming in Burma. He served with the AVG until the group disbanded in July 1942, after which he returned to the U.S. and joined the Army Air Forces. For his second combat tour, Older returned to China and served as group operations officer and deputy commander of the 23rd Fighter Group. After the end of World War II, Older joined the Air Force Reserve and went on to serve with the 452nd Bomb Wing during the Korean War. As a civilian, he pursued a law career and in 1967 became a superior court judge in Los Angles, California. In the early 1970s, he served as the presiding judge in the Charles Mason trial. Older passed away in 2006.
Biographical information courtesy of: Boyce, Ward J., ed., American fighter aces album. Mesa, Ariz: American Fighter Aces Association, 1996.
Restrictions:
Permission to publish material from the American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews must be obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives.
Transcript:
Transcribed by Pioneer Transcription Services 3
Index:
Thoughts on Japanese aircraft ...... 4
First encounter with Japanese forces ...... 4
Other encounters and aerial victories ...... 5
American Volunteer Group reunions ...... 7
Post-war career and personal life ...... 8
More on aerial victories and aerial tactics ...... 9
Operational logistics with the AVG and other notable missions ...... 9
Thoughts on fighter pilots ...... 12
General Claire Lee Chennault ...... 13
Typical duty day ...... 13
AVG record and legacy ...... 14
Brief overview of service in Korea ...... 15
4
Charles H. Older (Part 2 of 2)
[START OF INTERVIEW]
00:00:00
[Thoughts on Japanese aircraft]
EUGENE A. VALENCIA: I was going to ask what enemy aircraft caused you the most concern. From your experience, I guess all of them. In the P-40, Chuck, what particular plane…?
CHARELS H. OLDER: Oh…
EAV: If you met them on equal terms?
CHO: I’d say the Oscar or the Zeke [unintelligible 00:00:24]. They were their standard fighters at that time.
EAV: And they were the same type, basically, that you encountered when you came back in the 51?
CHO: Yes. They, of course, had advanced their—probably had more power.
EAV: Did you run into any Jacks or Georges or—
CHO: Yeah, we ran into Jacks and, last part of 1944, 1945, also the Tojo, which was a—
EAV: Yeah.
CHO: …looked a little bit like a Jug.
EAV: Something came up yesterday. Bob DeHaven mentioned that he had a number of encounters with the Cherry Blossom Squadron. That’s the first time I’ve heard the reference.
CHO: I’ve never heard of that before.
[First encounter with Japanese forces]
EAV: I hadn’t either, Chuck. Do you recall any particular event concerning your aerial victories that you recall more than the others?
CHO: Well, my first combat was at Rangoon on a day when I was not even on duty. Another fellow, Ed Overend, and I were off that day. We heard the—first thing we heard were the Buffalo scrambling off of Mingaladon, which was the RAF base there where we were stationed. And we heard the 40s going off. We figured something was up. Had no idea what. We were just 5
getting ready to go into town, so we grabbed a couple of bikes and rode down to the field to see what was cooking. There was nobody around, but there were two 40s sitting on the field there. They looked all right. I said, “Ed—” I said to Ed, “Let’s climb in and get going.” He said, “All right, fine.” So we cranked them up and roared off, not knowing exactly where we were going but figuring we could tag up with somebody.
We finally picked up a flight of 40s climbing to the east, and when we got up about 9,000 feet east of Rangoon, for the first time I saw the Japs. They were coming in from the east. There were 60 bombers in a “V of V” formation and about 25 or 30 fighters up behind them, way up, probably 3,000 or 4,000 feet and back a mile or so. So we started making underneath passes on the bombers and keeping our eyes on the fighters. After about my third pass, I got the leader of the 60-plane formation. He just blew right up. The bottom blew right out of the thing. And the thing that interested me about that was, apart of getting out of the way of the debris, was that as soon as he started to go down, the number-two man just slid right over and took the lead with no delay at all and they continued right on their run. And they never did break their formation, although a number of them were shot down out of that formation. They were very well disciplined.
EAV: And when you two attacked, you were against the whole incoming flight?
CHO: We had, I think, 13 or 14 planes in the air that day. That was all we had. And two flights. The flight that Ed and I joined on had about seven airplanes in it when we—including us.
EAV: How many did you get that day, Chuck?
CHO: I got two that day. One other bomber.
[Other encounters and aerial victories]
EAV: Was that your biggest tally in one flight?
00:04:38
CHO: No, I got three on two different days. And the next raid was—that was on the 23rd of December 1941. Then the Japs announced on the radio that night that they were coming back on Christmas Day, two days later, and leave us some presents.
EAV: Is that right?
CHO: So we had 15 planes, as I recall, ready that day. They came in this time with 110 bombers and, oh, 30, 40 more fighters in two formations: one over the city and the other one 6
over Mingaladon. Incidentally, we lost two pilots on that first mission and, oh, three or four airplanes.
EAV: Were they lost to fighters or bomber [unintelligible 00:05:34]?
CHO: Both lost to bombers, as I recall it.
EAV: Is that right?
CHO: Yeah, the Japs could put out a pretty murderous crossfire from those bombers when you were coming in in a big V of V like that. And one of the reasons we attacked from underneath was to avoid the fire. But you had to make a—had to dive down, make a—practically a vertical approach up to this—as much as you could, to stay out of—stay below the angle of their lower guns.
EAV: That’s interesting, Chuck.
CHO: But anyway, on Christmas Day we were a little better organized, and we didn’t lose anybody. And we got 25 of them, so we were—
EAV: Is that right?
CHO: …in pretty good shape that day.
EAV: Gee, that’s great. The ordnance you used were 50-calibers in the 40s?
CHO: The 40 had two 50s and four 30s.
EAV: Two 50s and four 30s.
CHO: Hm-hmm [affirmative].
EAV: That was the early model? That was the B?
CHO: That was the B.
EAV: Chuck, were you ever shot down?
CHO: No.
EAV: Do you recall any other events, say, when you came back the second time? Of course, that 17 January raid, I think, is probably one of the greatest.
00:06:53
CHO: Well, I think probably the mission that impressed me most the second time, outside of that Shanghai strike, was one that we ran in December of 1944. And it was a coordinated effort 7
of the entire Fourteen Air Force, and it was more airplanes than I’d ever seen in the air at any one time in China. It started about 11:00 in the morning. The target was Hankou and also [Wuchang?], which is across the river from Hankou. Hankou is the big Yangtze River port in central China, and it was also the—had more concentration of air power in the Hankou area probably at that time than anywhere else in China. The Japanese, I mean. This was a coordinated raid that extended over several hours, included the B-29s, the B-24s, B-25s, Chinese-American composite wings flying 25s and also fighters, included the 51s, P-47s from Jack Chennault’s outfit in North China. Everything they could get in the air that day was over Hankou or [Wuchang?].
EAV: I’ll be darned.
CHO: And you really felt like you were on the winning side for a change.
EAV: That must have been [unintelligible 00:08:28]. Chuck, you mentioned that your greatest number of aerial victories are two—on two occasions, you shot down three planes—
CHO: Yeah.
EAV: …each flight. When were they? Do you recall?
CHO: The first one was on Christmas Day in 1941. That was two bombers and a fighter. And then on the Shanghai raid, I got a bomber, some kind of a two-place—I think it was a torpedo plane. And—trying to remember what the other one was. I think it was a—it was either another bomber or a transport that was motoring around Shanghai in the middle of this raid.
00:09:32
[American Volunteer Group reunions]
EAV: I’ll be darned. Do the AVGs get together often? I understand you have a very, very fine organization. Dick Rossi—
CHO: Yes, we meet quite often. Dick Rossi’s the president of our group. In fact, we got together the other night on Wednesday. We meet every three or four months.
EAV: Is Ed over in—down at El Toro?
CHO: Ed, you mean?
EAV: Yes.
CHO: No, Ed works for the State Department. He’s in Tehran.
EAV: Oh, I see. So did he go back into the Marines? 8
CHO: No.
00:10:14
[Post-war career and personal life]
EAV: Well, Chuck, your present occupation and profession, of course, is a lawyer here in town. Is that—
CHO: Yes.
EAV: I think that’s interesting. After the war, you went back, did your graduate work.
CHO: Yes. I had planned to go to law school when I was in college, and then I got interested in flying. And there was a brief interim of ten years before I got back to law school.
EAV: I’ll be darned. May I ask what—[telephone ringing]—civic activities you’re concerned with now?
CHO: Well, I’m fairly active in Bar Association activities.
EAV: Excuse me.
[recording stops and starts again 00:10:56]
EAV: Chuck, we mentioned your civic activity—or activities here in Los Angeles.
CHO: [laughs] Well, apart from Bar Association activities, Gene, I don’t think of anything else that I’m active in.
EAV: Any hobbies that you have time for, Chuck?
CHO: I have hobbies, but I don’t seem to have much time for them. I love to play golf. I read a lot when I get a chance. I read a lot anyway professionally, but I like to read for pleasure. I like outdoor activities, and whenever I get a chance I like to go camping. We have a group that goes down the Colorado River once a year in canoes, too, for—over the Memorial Day holiday.
00:11:54
EAV: That should be interesting. Chuck, I understand you’re married and have three children.
CHO: Yes. Yes, my oldest daughter just started at the University of Colorado. She’s a freshman. I have one daughter at University High in Los Angeles, and my youngest daughter is at Emerson Junior High here in Westwood.
EAV: Are you doing much flying Chuck? Or do you have time for that? 9
CHO: No.
EAV: Well, Colonel Older, I sure want to thank you very much for taking time from your busy schedule and come up here and help get this program off the ground. And I’m sure General Holloway [Bruce K. Holloway] will thank you personally, who I find you flew with during your China campaigns.
CHO: Glad to do it, Gene.
[recording stops and starts again 00:12:46]
00:12:47
[More on aerial victories and aerial tactics]
EAV: Chuck, of your total of 18 planes, do you recall what they were?
CHO: Well, they were both bombers and fighters, Gene. In the AVG, the bombers were all Betties—correction, Sallies. And the fighters were Zekes and Oscars. I got ten in the AVG and eight later in the 23rd Fighter Group on the second tour.
EAV: For a total of 18, which certainly places you amongst the top aces in the country. Chuck, another thing, did you get a phase of gratification your second tour, knowing that it was you and the AVGs that set up the tactics that we later used?
CHO: Well, I don’t know that I ever thought of it that way, but I was just glad that we were able to evolve some tactics that seemed to work while we—before we got ourselves shot down, which wasn’t too difficult to do in the early stages.
EAV: Well, you certainly did in the AVGs. I know that Admiral Thach [John S. Thach], in our case, picked up a weave. It was certainly basically the same thing that General Chennault [Claire Lee Chennault] and your AVG group developed. As the faster planes came in, Tommy Blackburn modified it a bit and another gent improved it a bit, but basically it was that same, basic, one-two punch that you people developed that saved an awful lot of carrier boys’ lives. This I know. Again, thanks, Chuck.
CHO: Okay, Gene.
[recording stops and starts again 00:14:33]
00:14:35
[Operational logistics with the AVG and other notable missions]
EAV: Well, Chuck, how did they work? Various areas? 10
CHO: Well, we all started out in 1941, when we first arrived in Burma, at a place called Toungoo, I think I mentioned the other day—
EAV: Yes, sir.
CHO: …120 or so miles north of Rangoon. It was an RAF base, and we trained there during October, November, and the first part of December 1941. Formed the squadrons and the group headquarters. The original squadron commanders, as I recall it now: Sandell [Robert Sandell] was leader of the first squadron, Jack Newkirk had the second squadron, and Arvid Olson was the squadron commander of the third squadron.
EAV: Is he from—I understand he’s from the Hollywood or Southern California area. Is he still alive, Chuck?
CHO: Arvid?
EAV: Yes.
CHO: Oh, yes. Yeah, he’s in Germany now. He works for Northrop.
EAV: I’ll be darned.
CHO: Yeah, I see Ole frequently when he’s out in this area.
EAV: Then you had three squadrons.
CHO: Three squadrons. Right.
EAV: And what was the average complement?
CHO: Well, the group started out with 100 airplanes, which had originally been destined Lend-Lease for Britain and then were diverted for our use. This was the P-40D Tomahawk. They dropped one in the bay at Rangoon, so that left 99. Our squadrons had about roughly 25 airplanes apiece in them, plus this extra pool. And we had roughly the same number of pilots.
EAV: I see. Chuck, very little has been said about the ground crews. Is there anything that you might add about their work?
CHO: Yes. We had a—by Air Force—by present Air Force standards—or by Navy or Marine, for that matter—our ground crews were very small in numbers. But what they lacked in numbers, they more than made up for in efficiency and overall morale and spirit. And I became convinced at that time that most of these military outfits were overloaded with people and that if they cut them about 50%, they’d have done a better job in less time.
00:17:11 11
EAV: Now, were they a composite organization? Air Corps—
CHO: Yes, they came from everywhere. Army, Navy, Marine Corps. And of course, they were all pretty experienced.
EAV: A tribute to their efficiency was, at one time the Japs tried a one-two punch, in the words of General Chennault, expecting to get you into the air, which you did the first time, and to come back with another wave and catch you while on the ground. Your ground crews had the planes back in the air in very, very short order, and you actually neutralized the Japanese.
CHO: That happened at Loiwing. I think it was in April 1942. [telephone rings]
EAV: [background conversation on telephone]
[recording stops and starts again 00:18:12]
CHO: Yeah, that incident that you mentioned, Gene, happened at Loiwing. I think it was in April 1942. By that time, the Japs had moved up pretty far in Burma. Most of the warning net, which consisted of isolated observers out in the hills—sometimes with telephones, sometimes with the shortwave radio—was pretty much gone, so we had very little warning. And at Loiwing, we kept our planes lined up wingtip to wingtip so we could get off in a hurry. There wasn’t time to disperse them and get them in the air. We just had to rely on the net and hope we had enough time to get them in the air.
So on this particular morning, I was driving down the runway about dawn with Tex Hill [David Lee “Tex” Hill] and a couple of other guys in a jeep, and we looked up and saw 20 Zeros peeling off in a pattern. We had absolutely no warning at all. All we could do is hit the ditch, and they strafed up and down there until they ran out of ammunition and went home. They got a few, but they shot up a lot of the others. And it was this group that was shot up and not destroyed that the General was talking about, that the ground crews got back in shape very quickly.
EAV: How many planes did you lose, Chuck? Do you recall?
CHO: Oh, I don’t think we lost over three or four, actually.
EAV: Well, that was one of the few times you were caught, as I believe. It was axiomatic with—or was with the General, that he never wanted his planes caught on the ground, but as you mentioned—
CHO: That was the only time we were caught on the ground, and we were never surprised in the air. The Japs tried the same thing again at Loiwing a couple of weeks later. This time we were sitting at 27,000, and they came in on the deck, and we came right down on them and shot 11 of them down right around the field. 12
00:19:57
EAV: For goodness sake.
CHO: So they never tried that again.
EAV: Chuck, what about the—your incident when you picked up the recco plane?
CHO: Well, that was also at Loiwing, Gene. We used to—once in a while, we’d hear a Jap photo plane go over at high altitude. Occasionally, when the haze wasn’t too bad, we could see them. But we never had enough warning to catch them. One time, I did meet one at about 24,000, but we saw each other about the same time. He turned away, and I chased him all the way back into Thailand for a couple hundred miles and never gained an inch.
The other time that I ran into one was when I was with Paul Greene. He was flying on my wing. We had about 20 minutes’ notice that something was headed that way. We headed for 27,000. The haze was extremely bad. You could only see right straight down. And I was very lucky to catch sight of this Jap photo plane go right underneath us about 3,000 feet below when I was looking back to see where Greene was. And we came right down on him, straight down in a dive, and right up his tail. And one blast and that was it.
EAV: Parachute?
CHO: One crew member bailed out that I could see. His parachute opened partially. And the others I don’t think got out of the airplane.
[Thoughts on fighter pilots]
EAV: Well, Chuck, like you mentioned earlier, that it would be hard to say that a man with the highest tally of planes was the greatest fighter because it is a matter of luck. And you, as one of the high-ranking AVG and Air Force aces, I certainly agree with you.
CHO: Yes. I certainly think that’s true, Gene. I don’t think you can judge a pilot’s qualifications as a fighter pilot by the number of planes he shot down. That’s a pretty good test of his gunnery, but it also means that he was in the right place at the right time and that he had a lot of luck riding with him, too. And there were many equally capable pilots who just didn’t find themselves in the same situations.
EAV: Well, Colonel Older, can you recall some of the top aces or fighter pilots of the AVG who were not necessarily the high scorers, but people that you looked up to during your tour?
CHO: Well, it’s pretty hard to pick names, Gene. 13
EAV: Sure is.
00:22:38
CHO: I mean, they were all top rate. Certainly Tex Hill, Ed Rector, Kenny Jernstedt, Tom Haywood in our squadron. And if I leave anybody out, it’s purely unintentional. I might just as well name them all because they were all tops.
EAV: [unintelligible 00:23:01]. I certainly agree. The record, incidentally, can certainly attribute to what you have just said, Chuck. To find a squadron with—that has—that has an overall kill factor of 299 aircraft destroyed, 153 probable, 61 destroyed on the ground, with a loss of 12 P-40s lost in combat—it’s certainly a test to what you just said, Chuck.
[General Claire Lee Chennault]
EAV: Getting back to General Chennault, was there any one incident that remained indelible in your mind concerning his leadership, all around greatness?
CHO: I don’t recall any one incident, Gene, but the overall impression that the General made with practically everybody was one of resolute determination to do everything possible to beat the Japs in any way he could do it. And he coupled that with a high degree of intelligence, a hell of a lot of hard work, and he had gathered information on the Japs from—well, I don’t know what his sources were. But principally from the Chinese, which at the time that we were operating in early 1942, so far as I know, was—that same intelligence was not in the hands of anybody else that was fighting the Japs. It just hadn’t been obtained.
EAV: Chuck, this is true. I read in one particular chapter, where it was offered to the War Department in the fall of 1940, in fact, information on the Zero—which, as he said, we never learned about until we saw the Zero. And this is very, very unfortunate.
[Typical duty day]
EAV: Chuck, could you give us a normal day of the AVG? A typical duty day, on and off- duty day, without too much effort?
CHO: Well, I don’t know that there was any typical day of—if you were on duty. If you were on day duty, it would start before dawn. You’d be on the flight line before dawn to relieve the night crew. Now, in some cases, we didn’t have night crews. As I recall, the only place where we used night crews was at—in China. When we were in Burma, we didn’t use them. There wasn’t 14
any point to it. They weren’t doing any night bombing at that time, and we didn’t have the facilities, and so we forgot about it.
But the day crew would come on at dawn, and it was just simply—it was a question of sitting around waiting for the word to scramble, hoping you had enough time to get the thing cranked up and in the air. And most of our missions were defensive, in the sense that we were protecting a place or an area, so that we didn’t have the usual briefing that you would get on an offensive mission, where you knew where you were going and then you had some definite mission to perform. We never knew where we were going, except we were going to get them off the ground and in the air, and we just hoped that we would get some kind of a clue as to which way they were coming and what altitude they were at before we actually met them. The rest of the day was pretty boring. You sat around and waited for something to happen.
EAV: Acey Deucey.
CHO: Acey Deucey, poker. [laughs] Anything you could—
EAV: Chuck, what about the day off?
CHO: Well—
EAV: If you got one.
CHO: We got days off, but unfortunately there were few places to go. You could go and visit the local villages, if you were—in Rangoon, of course, it was an opportunity to see the town. Up in China, at Kunming, which is a large city, you could go in and do a little shopping or sightseeing, whatever you wanted to do.
00:27:31
[AVG record and legacy]
EAV: Chuck, speaking about Rangoon. The ten weeks that the AVG spent at Rangoon averaged about five to twenty pilots, availability-wise, per day. And of that number, they met a total of over 1,000 Jap aircraft in the Burma/Thailand area, 31 encounters, and destroyed 217 aircrafts with four AVG losses. I think you mentioned the two on the first bomber attack that— you were bicycling and determined it was an air raid. That is certainly a fantastic record.
CHO: Well, it was one of those situations, Gene, where we didn’t have to go out looking for them. They came to us. And it was just a question of getting in the air, getting in position, and keeping one eye on the fighters and trying to knock down the bombers.
EAV: Getting back to determining any one—or group of AVGs that were of the top bracket, when you justifiably said that they were all top, recalls Winston Churchill’s statement that, “The 15
victories of these Americans over the rice patties of Burma are comparable in character, if not in scope, with those won by the RAF over the hop fields of Kent in the Battle of Britain.” And this was further amplified by Air Vice Marshal D. F. Stevenson in January of ‘41, when he said during the Battle of Britain, the ratio of kills was in the order of one-to-four, where the AVG’s record of one-to-fourteen was truly amazing. And I think this bears out exactly what you have said, Chuck.
[Brief overview of service in Korea]
EAV: Well, Colonel Older, one thing you didn’t mention, and I had to find out after we started this, was that you went to Korea, too.
CHO: Yes, I was in the Air Force Reserve after the war, Gene. And in fact, I was in the 452nd Bomb Wing at Long Beach. Unfortunately, the Reserve didn’t have fighters, so we had to settle for B-26s. That’s the Douglas.
EAV: Yes, sir.
CHO: A fine airplane and probably the closest thing to a fighter, but it still wasn’t a fighter. And I was on the wing staff in the A-3 section, so I got not very much flying in in Korea, but I was over there.
EAV: Well, it’s certainly a tribute to you and your fighting hard. Chuck, I—
00:30:02
[END OF INTERVIEW]