Escape From Davao (3 page)

Perhaps the most acute shortage affecting USAFFE in late 1941 was that of time. MacArthur thought the chance of offensive action by the Japanese before early 1942 highly unlikely. Not only did he exaggeratedly assure Washington that the training of his Filipino recruits was proceeding ahead of schedule, he also thought that the B-17s would prove an effective deterrent. “The inability of an enemy to launch his air attack on these islands is our greatest security,” he told British Admiral Sir Thomas Phil ips during a conference in Manila.

Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo, however, had its own timetable. An unidentified plane had been discovered over Luzon in the early morning hours of December 4. Throughout the next two days, the oscil oscope of the Air Warning Service’s new SCR-270B radar unit at Iba Field had registered additional blips, bogeys thought to be enemy reconnaissance planes. Since the blips meshed with intel igence reports of Japanese fleet movements, a state of alert was declared. Leaves were suspended and MacArthur ordered his B-17s to the distant safety of Mindanao, but less than half had gone south.

The remaining bombers, unpainted, gleaming metal ic silver, were scattered about Clark Field.

In the eerie, blacked-out quiet of Manila, tropical tradewinds sighed through palms, diffused fleeting scents of hibiscus and sampaguita across Luneta Park, and fluttered American flags. Months earlier, the

“Pearl of the Orient” had been a bustling, multicultural historical intersection where Pan American’s Clipper flying boats skipped across the harbor while the calesa ponies and carabao carts symbolic of a colonial past stil traversed the streets. Now, as searchlight beams swept the skies, the city seemed almost devoid of its soul, its future in doubt.

As George’s briefing continued, Ed Dyess surely sensed that war was on the way. It was something for which he had rehearsed his entire young life.

It was hardly a surprise that Ed Dyess chose to fly. A lust for adventure and mobility seemed to be a hereditary trait in the Dyess clan. John Dyess, a Welshman who crossed the Atlantic to stake out land in Georgia in 1733, was the pacesetter for two centuries of westward migration. Dyess’s father, Richard, son of a Confederate Civil War veteran, landed in Albany, Texas. Two years after the August 9, 1916, birth of his son, he took an oath as the judge of Shackelford County, a position he would hold until 1928.

Thereafter, in various roles as a public servant, he would continue to be known as Judge Dyess.

Hal ie and Richard Dyess raised Edwin and his sister, Elizabeth Nel , in a yel ow and white house on Jacobs Street, a long block from the same Main Street that Doc Hol iday and Wyatt Earp had tramped only a few decades earlier. Father and son were inseparable, sharing a love of hunting and sports and also a fascination with flight that began with a ride on a rickety de Havil and biplane when Edwin was four years old. The al ure continued with news of Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic crossing in 1927. As a teenager, Dyess starred on the Albany High footbal and track teams, but his love for flying flourished and he worked several jobs to pay for secret lessons from barnstorming pilots.

At John Tarleton Agricultural Col ege in Stephenvil e, Dyess was the school’s ranking ROTC officer, student president, and one of the most talented actors in the campus theater troupe. He graduated in the spring of 1936, intending to enrol in the law school at the University of Texas. But while working on the Humble Oil pipeline that summer he thumbed a ride with a wash-out from San Antonio’s Randolph Field.

He became entranced with the idea of becoming an Army pilot and al but guaranteed his father that he could succeed at Randolph, the “West Point of the air.” Al he needed was an appointment. “Son,” Judge Dyess promised, “if she can be got, we’l get her.”

Dyess graduated from the advanced school at Kel y Field in 1937. He was a gifted pilot. Hal ie Dyess, however, did not share her husband’s enthusiasm and chided Edwin each time he buzzed Albany. But Dyess shrugged off her concerns. A Presbyterian who had embraced the church’s doctrine of predestination, Dyess had developed a keen awareness of what he felt was his destiny, a decision from God that had led him to flight school. “Mother,” he would reply after each admonition, “if I only have so long to live I’d rather spend that time in the air.”

Tal and lean, he stood six foot one and was proud of that last inch. With recruiting poster good looks, Dyess was a young comet in the AAF. One of the service’s youngest squadron commanders, he married Marajen Stevick, a pretty socialite whose family owned several Il inois newspapers and radio stations.

But the couple’s plans for children were put on hold because Dyess felt immediately responsible to his surrogate family of pilots.

He preferred to lead by example, and in the air the daring pilot was tough to keep up with. At Hamilton Field, he was frequently observed slow-rol ing his P-40 just above the ground, banking between trees, his trademark burnt orange flying scarf flapping from his cockpit. As his pilots flew through the dust clouds and dancing leaves in his wake, he exhorted them to tighten their formations. “You look like an old maid’s sewing circle,” he howled over the radio. It was a combination of that folksy sense of humor and his talent with the stick that made Dyess’s pilots—most were recent flight school graduates—regard him like a beloved older brother. According to 2nd Lt. Sam Grashio, who knew Dyess as wel as anyone, Dyess possessed a magical aura and a mesmeric hold over people he encountered. “He was intel igent, magnetic, and fearless,” said Grashio. “A natural leader who commanded respect without being intimidating … but you knew he was the leader. It was something you felt in your bones … his pilots and enlisted personnel revered him and would have fol owed him anywhere.”

On the starlit evening of November 1, 1941, the
President Coolidge
, a 21,936-ton American President liner, passed beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. Dyess, like many of those gathered on the ship’s afterdeck watching the ocean darkness swal ow San Francisco, had no idea where he was leading his squadron. His orders gave his destination as “PLUM.” Some pilots were certain that the
Coolidge
would drop anchor in Trinidad. Jack Donohoe, a mechanic in the 21st Pursuit, firmly believed that the squadron was headed to Jamaica. At Pearl Harbor, the
Coolidge
coupled with another transport and a Navy cruiser escort to resume its journey. The blacked-out convoy had wended along its westward course for several days when the men final y learned their secret destination; someone had correctly deciphered PLUM as an acronym for Philippines-Luzon-Manila.

As the
Coolidge
’s smokestacks poured smoke into the air across the Pacific, several pilots, Sam Grashio included, sat in on discussions headed by recent graduates of the National War Col ege. The Japanese, declared the officers, would not be so stupid as to start a war they would surely lose within a few weeks. The pilots were convinced that the Japanese were Lil iputians who could not hope to prevail over the industrial might of the United States.

The reasons by which Americans had assured themselves of a quick victory were numerous and absurd: Japanese pilots possessed poor eyesight and could not fly their shoddy planes proficiently; the Japanese soldier’s standard-issue .25 caliber rifle couldn’t stop an American adversary; Japanese ships, with their pagoda superstructures, could barely float. A victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 had heralded Japan’s arrival as a world power, but the U.S. military establishment, as wel as Americans in general, remained unimpressed. Few knew that Japan had never lost a war and that the sacred home islands had not been threatened since a pair of failed invasions in the late thirteenth sacred home islands had not been threatened since a pair of failed invasions in the late thirteenth century by Kublai Khan’s Mongol hordes.

As Colonel George explained in his Nichols Field briefing, the AAF pilots were in peril. He concluded with an estimate of the number of planes that would be necessary to defend the Philippines—five to eight pursuit
groups
, of which Nichols Field had only one. “We were shocked,” Dyess would say. Everyone, that is, except for Sam Grashio. Grashio sidled up to Dyess as the latter strode urgently toward the hangars. He had a mischievous smile on his face and a betting proposition for his commanding officer.

“I’l bet you five pesos that there wil be no war with Japan,” said Grashio, echoing the smug words of the officers he had listened to traveling on the
Coolidge
. “What do you say, Lieutenant?”

“I say you’re on, Sam, and I’l lay another five down that the war wil begin within a week.”

At 0445 on Monday morning, Grashio had just fal en back asleep when he heard the officer of the day banging on the doors again. The pilots of the 21st Pursuit had been roused from their bunks a little more than two hours earlier, only to rush to Nichols Field where an enigmatic Ed Dyess spoke of an emergency, then ordered them back to their quarters. This time, the knocks were fol owed by a command: “Get dressed! Pearl Harbor has been attacked!”

Within minutes, Grashio and the other groggy, half-dressed pilots assembled in the operations tent at Nichols Field. Silhouetted by the glow of a blacked-out gas lantern, Dyess confirmed the sensational news of Japan’s surprise attack on the other side of the International Dateline and then ordered them into their new P-40Es—so new that none of the eighteen planes had logged more than two hours of flying time. Four, in fact, had never even been in the air.

With throbbing hearts and dry mouths, they clambered into their cockpits. As the sounds of whirring propel ers and clicking parachute harnesses floated along the flight line in the predawn darkness, Grashio somberly reflected on the gravity of the situation.

Strangely, no orders from Far East Air Force Headquarters were forthcoming. After several tense minutes, the pilots cut their idling engines, vacated their cockpits, and sat, stunned and bleary-eyed, beneath the wings of their planes as the first spokes of sunlight poked over the horizon. The standard operating procedure of the U.S. military, noted Grashio, remained the same. The 21st Pursuit Squadron had no choice but to hurry up and wait.

For the ABCD powers—America, Britain, China, and the Dutch East Indies—confusion reigned supreme as Imperial forces struck simultaneously at Hawaii, Guam, Wake Island, British Malaya, Singapore, Thailand, and Hong Kong. Yet nowhere was this confusion more devastating than in the Philippines. Unbeknownst to the pilots at Nichols Field, a historic series of events was transpiring in the higher echelons of the USAFFE command, a blur of blunders, poor decisions, and bad luck that would yield terrible results in the Philippines.

Word of the Pearl Harbor attack first reached the Philippines at 0230 hours on Monday, December 8

(approximately 0800, December 7, on Oahu), when a Navy radioman at Asiatic Fleet Headquarters in Manila’s Marsman Building picked up a startling message: “Air Raid on Pearl Harbor. This is no dril !”

One hour later, MacArthur’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Richard Sutherland, woke the USAFFE commander in his Manila Hotel penthouse. By 0500, FEAF chief Maj. Gen. Lewis Brereton was in MacArthur’s office seeking permission to launch a retaliatory raid on Formosa at first light, but the autocratic Sutherland refused Brereton’s request for an audience with MacArthur. Brereton was given permission to prepare his bombers for offensive action—nothing more.

At 0715, Brereton returned to Intramuros and was again ordered to stand by. It has been speculated that during these crucial hours, an overwhelmed MacArthur, much like Napoleon at Waterloo, had lapsed into a semi-catatonic state, unable to command. As Brereton’s car navigated Manila’s empty streets—it was the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and many Filipinos, devout Roman Catholics, would be attending mass and fiestas—back to FEAF Headquarters at Nielson Field in Makati, the storm clouds darkened.

Shortly after receiving a transoceanic telephone cal from Air Force chief Gen. Hap Arnold at 0800, Brereton hurriedly ordered his B-17s aloft, bombless, to keep them out of harm’s way. As the morning progressed, Japanese planes raided Baguio, the summer capital in northern Luzon, and American instal ations near Davao City, on Mindanao. But these were merely feints. At 1015 Formosa time (0915

Manila time), the main strike force of the Japanese navy’s 11th Air Fleet, 108 twin-engine bombers and eighty-four Zeros, after waiting for a thick fog to lift—the Japanese had feared the fog would leave them susceptible to an American attack, the attack Brereton had wanted to launch at dawn—took off from their bases. Their mission: to destroy the largest concentration of American airpower in the Far East. Their primary target: Clark Field.

At 1145, the phone rang in Dyess’s operations tent. Enemy planes had been detected and the 3rd and 21st Pursuits were being scrambled for interception. Dyess eagerly relayed the message: “Tal y ho, Clark Field!” Within minutes, the P-40s’ supercharged 1,150-horsepower engines hurtled the the olive-drab Warhawks—which Dyess had divided into three six-plane flights, A, B, and C—into the sky.

While Dyess led A and B flights in a climb for higher altitude, some planes from C Flight discovered that they were unable to locate Dyess and, perhaps because of atmospheric conditions, were out of radio contact. Therefore, when Dyess received a message advising him of a change in orders—the planes were to assemble at a point above Manila Bay to intercept Japanese bombers en route to Manila—the C