The Far East Air Force (FEAF) was the only American air unit to be wiped out in combat. It fought to the last aircraft in a desperate war. Its pilots performed heroic actions despite being overwhelmingly outnumbered. Young, recently graduated pilots became expert fighters in just two months, sick, without rest, without food, without hope, and yet they still managed to inflict a heavy toll on the Japanese invaders.
Their planes had just arrived at the end of November, with the most recent pilots from the academy, but those were different times; there was no experience in sending planes overseas. They went unassembled, untested, fresh from the factory. When they were assembled, it was discovered that they were missing essential parts: collimators, firing pins for the weapons, and the antifreeze was still in America because some logistics genius decided that in a climate like that of the Philippines, it wasn't necessary. The planes were delivered as best as possible while they waited for the parts to arrive, which they never would.
The FEAF was being built; the three original squadrons were equipped with old P-35s and antediluvian P-26s. The Severskys would be replaced in January with state-of-the-art P-40Es. The P-26s were transferred to the nascent Philippine Air Force, and they switched to the new P-40Cs, so new that they hadn't even received a complete paint job; not a single one had the squadron emblem painted on it. There was only time for the rudder codes. In early December, the first aircraft entered service, and the pilots began to fly them. The transition requires retraining, and that takes time.
And time was what they lacked. On December 8th (7th in Hawaii), news of the attack on Pearl Harbor arrived. The fighters that could fly took off immediately, but the Japanese attack never came. The units based in Formosa, intended to carry it out, had to remain grounded. Bad weather prevented them from taking off, delaying them for hours. When the weather cleared, the planes took off. This time, plus the flight to Clark, was coincidentally the same as the fuel tank capacity of the P-40s that were beginning to land when the Japanese arrived. It was a massacre. Those not shot down during the landing pattern either ran out of fuel or were destroyed on the ground. The FEAF was practically exterminated in the first attack.
The few surviving P-40s fell one by one. Clark was killed in a Japanese landing. The planes were forced to retreat to makeshift airstrips in the countryside, cleared with machetes, and constantly under pressure: air raids, surprise landings on the nearest coast, Japanese troops in the rear, pilots without food, to such an extent that a doctor diagnosed: "These lads should be forbidden even from getting on the wing of an aircraft on the ground."
They continued fighting until the last plane, which was destroyed attacking a Japanese merchant convoy. Some pilots were fortunate, evacuated to Australia to recover from their wounds or to pick up the new P-40Es from the Pensacola convoy, which would never arrive. Those who weren't so lucky fought as infantry until the surrender. Most were taken prisoner; many died on the death march at Bataan or escaped to become guerrillas.
MODELISM
This is the Academy model, the magnificent New Tool from that company, the first of the new generation, with a good interior, proportions and quality, recessed, with excellent decals for a Flying Tigers aircraft, in my opinion the best P-40 of its time.
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| No Squadron insignia in the fuselage side |
GALLERY
The model is painted based on assumptions; not a single photo of an aircraft from the squadron has survived. The insignia was the famous White Owl. Since these were newly received aircraft, it is very unlikely that they had received the squadron's emblem, or even the complete insignia. Even so, I will probably paint the Owl on the fuselage.
