The American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews The Museum of Flight Seattle, Washington John S. Stewart (Part 2 of 2) Interview Date: August 1989 2 Abstract: In this two-part oral history, fighter ace John S. Stewart discusses his military service with the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. In part two, he continues to describe his wartime experiences as a fighter pilot with the 76th Fighter Squadron in the China-India-Burma Theater. Topics discussed include his training and service history, notable combat missions, and stories about fellow servicemen. Special focus on a combat mission over Lingling on July 23rd, 1943 in which Stewart scored several aerial victories while suffering from hypoxia. Biography: John S. Stewart was born on September 13, 1919 in Basin, Wyoming. He joined the United States Army Air Corps in 1941 and graduated from flight training the following year. After serving briefly in the Panama Canal Zone, Stewart joined the China Air Task Force, the successor of the American Volunteer Group. He served with and eventually commanded the 76th Fighter Squadron, flying missions over China, Formosa, and other areas of the China-India- Burma Theater. Stewart remained in the military after the end of World War II and went on to serve as command director of the North American Air Defense Command Combat Center. He retired as a colonel in 1970. 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: Introduction and flight training ....................................................................................................... 4 Deployment to Karachi and assignment to the China Air Task Force ........................................... 5 Arrival in China .............................................................................................................................. 6 Suffering from hypoxia during a Japanese bomber attack (July 23, 1943) .................................... 7 Other service details ...................................................................................................................... 10 4 John S. Stewart (Part 2 of 2) [START OF INTERVIEW] 00:00:00 [Introduction and flight training] JOHN S. STEWART: To Eric Hammel from John Stewart. Initial orientation, Eric, for your information. I will start just prior to entering service with my background as a junior majoring in Animal Husbandry at Colorado A&M at Fort Collins, Colorado. I entered the Civilian Pilot Training Program in January of 1941. By April, I had completed that training and received a private pilot’s license. I immediately went to Lowry Air Force Base and applied for Aviation Cadets. I was accepted, and they notified me of such and that they would advise me of when to report. I then went home for the summer and finally, in mid-August, received a letter to report to Fort Francis E. Warren in Cheyenne, Wyoming, which I did, and signed in on the 15th of August 1941. Apparently, they had started some sort of a war bond drive anticipating World War I—or World War II coming along because there were 11 of us, which is a goodly portion of the population of the State of Wyoming at that time, in—we entered class 42C, Aviation Cadets. We went by train to San Francisco, then by bus down the coast to King City, California, where we entered primary training. Completing that along in October, we—back up the coast a short ways to Moffett Field at the foot of San Francisco Bay, an ex-Navy base, where we entered basic flying training, flying the BT-13, the old BT Vulvibe—the Vultee Vibrator, it was nicknamed. We completed that in that delightful cool climate the latter part of December of ‘41, and a goodly share of us reported to advanced flying training at Luke Field, Arizona, at Phoenix, reporting to Colonel Ennis C. Whitehead, then the commander, and the adjutant, Captain Barry Goldwater, later senator and presidential nominee for the Republican Party. In fact, Barry pinned the wings on most of us. They graduated us in two different groups, according to Jerry Collinsworth, another ace out of that flight who lives in Phoenix, but his story is the more advanced— graduated a week ahead of us dummies. But at any rate, Barry Goldwater pinned my second lieutenant’s bars and wings on on the 16th of March of 1942. I immediately was transferred to Tallahassee, Florida, where I checked out in six different fighters. If I can remember all of them: YP-39, the YP-40, the YP-43—which is the baby sister of the 47 and the first supercharged engine I’d ever flown and I nearly killed myself—the P-36, the P-35, and I forget the other one. A total of seven hours of flying time and checked out in six different aircraft. It was very difficult to get checked out at that time. 00:04:41 5 [Deployment to Karachi and assignment to the China Air Task Force] I had no more than completed checking out in all the airplanes than I got transferred to Charlotte, North Carolina, where I married my wife, Marilyn Ethel Miller of Worland, Wyoming, my hometown, on the 17th of May 1942. And after a long honeymoon of two days, I boarded the transport to go to Panama on one of those secret missions to an unknown destination that was common in those days, war having just started. I was in Panama until mid-August, when another set of orders came in transferring us to a top-secret, codenamed destination that nobody knew what it was. But being smart second lieutenants, it had a foreign name and we guessed that it was India, which turned out to be correct. After three weeks at Miami Beach getting shots and being issued two sets of khakis, two shirts, two pants, a baseball cap, and a set of headphones—that was our total flying gear—oh, I guess we got an A-2 jacket, excuse me—we loaded in the C-54 and headed south. We eventually got to Natal, Brazil, where we transferred to the old Pan Am flying boat to cross the South Atlantic, landing at Fish Lake, Africa. From there, we transferred to a C-47, and of all the small world, the pilot of that C-47—or “gooney bird,” as we called it—was a classmate of mine in high school at Worland, Wyoming: Roger [Bower?]. After four or five days across Africa, over to Khartoum, up to Cairo, we landed at Cairo. And at that time, you could see the German armies from 5,000 feet coming in from the northeast, having come down from Russia. And you could see them to the west, having come in from the foot of Italy or the African coast, Tripoli and Libya. They just about had cut the Mediterranean in two. They were about to take Cairo. They were defeated. They never did, but they were within 40 or 50 miles of each other. We spent a day or two at Cairo, then back into the gooney bird, down to Aden, then across Saudi Arabia, and ended up at Karachi. At Karachi, we spent a couple, three days in tents. And then, at a formation one morning, they brought in a truckload of GIs, took each lieutenant—most of us were second lieutenants. There were a few first lieutenants. Some 40 of us had come out of China to replace the AVGs, who had been deactivated on 4th of July. And each squadron—or each of the four fighter squadrons and the one B-25 squadron in China at that time, called the China Air Task Force, had about six or eight pilots. They were trying to fill it up, and we were it. Well, they assigned one officer and—or one enlisted man to each officer and said, “All right. Now, there’s the crates. Those are P-40Ks crated, and the engines are in those crates over yonder. As soon as you get those airplanes assembled, the engines in them and the engine’s running, you make a test flight, why, there’ll be somebody in from China to lead you to Kunming.” So we finally knew where we were going. We were joining the China Air Task Force. 00:08:57 6 [Arrival in China] Well, some three weeks later, with all that great training we all had in maintenance—and these guys—the enlisted men had joined the service December the 8th and had been trained all evening the—December the 7th, I guess. They had a crescent wrench, a screwdriver, a pair of pliers, and that’s about it in the way of tools. Anyhow, we finally got our bird put together and test-hopped them and they flew. So Squeaky Turner came in to lead Jim Williams [James M. “Willie” Williams], myself, and—I forget the third guy—into China. After a four- or five-day trip across India, we ended up in Dinjan. And getting ready to take off, we had, of course, bought everything we could find in Karachi: beer, sulfanilamide pill, whiskey, whatever you could find—food, you know, canned food or anything. We’d taken all the ammunition out except for one belt leading to each gun out of the ammo trays, but we’d emptied the ammo boxes and put a wool sack in the tail from the tail wheel up forward to the baggage compartment. Held about 700 pounds. And those old P-40s flew like porpoises because we had the CG way aft with all that loot. We had no more than taken off—and just ahead of us, a flight of four had taken off.