Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [68]
This did not, however, make the assignment risk-free. Beyond the hazards of mechanical failure, the Japanese could spring unwelcome surprises. Over Bangkok, Allied aircraft weaved to avoid barrage balloons. At 6,000 feet above Karneburi on 3 April 1945, Linamen’s Liberator was hit by enemy anti-aircraft fire which inflicted punishing damage on its systems, severed an aileron cable and removed the starboard wingtip. They fell 4,000 feet before the pilot regained control, and then he had to nurse the plane every mile of the way back, for seven and a half hours, to the RAF emergency strip at Cox’s Bazaar. Over the base, he invited the crew to jump. A gunner asked: “What you doing, Curly?” “I’m going to ride her down,” responded the pilot. The gunner said: “What are we waiting for, then?” The other nine men took up crash positions. Unable to slow the plane for landing without losing control, Linamen settled for a high-speed skid onto the beach, touching at 150 mph, frantically shutting down fuel, power, systems until they shuddered to a halt. The crew, terrified of fire, bolted out of the hatches. One man found himself lying on the sand inches from a propeller that was still windmilling and could have removed his head. “You laugh about these things afterwards, but any of them can cost a life.”
Another day, over a target, the co-pilot suddenly shouted, “Yowie!” Linamen turned in bewilderment, demanding: “What’s your problem?” A 20mm cannon shell had clipped off part of the man’s leg, mercifully without damaging the aircraft systems. They hastened home, to deliver their casualty to the medics. If Linamen loved to fly, others did not: “A hell of a lot of people were pretty despondent. They didn’t like India, they didn’t like the job.” One day, “The colonel leading the mission screwed up. The wing found the target fogged in, but farted around waiting for visibility to clear, and got a few shot down.” Among the pilots lost was a Californian named J. C. Osborne, one of Linamen’s closest friends.
During the monsoon, when the weather was unfit for bombing, the Liberators were transferred to transport duty, carting fuel over the Hump into China. One night on the ground at a Chinese airstrip, they found themselves in the midst of a Japanese air raid. The airmen crowded onto the roof of a revetment to watch the fireworks, until a stick of bombs landed a few yards away, driving the Americans hastily into cover. Linamen exclaimed: “My daddy always taught me179 that it is more blessed to give than to receive, and he sure was right!” Yet he felt no great animosity towards the Japanese: “They were just there, they were the enemy. I had volunteered to fly, I was doing a job.” Linamen achieved some fame, as one of the airmen who attacked the bridge over the river Kwai, built by prisoners on the ghastly Burma–Siam railway. Yet they felt little emotion even about this mission. They knew that Allied prisoners were on the ground, but had heard nothing of their unspeakable sufferings. Bombing the bridge was just another mission.
Tactical air support was a critical force in the British advance, rendered even more formidable by the fact that Japanese fighters had almost disappeared from the sky. Day after day, Fourteenth Army situation reports—“sitreps”—recorded: “Enemy air activity: NIL.” Hurribombers—Hurricanes adapted for ground attack—mounted over 150 sorties a day, aided by American Thunderbolts. Strafing was always hazardous. Even when enemy resistance was slight, the perils of the jungle and mechanical failure persisted. A Beaufighter crew of 211 Squadron once jumped from a damaged aircraft over their base in the Arakan, rather than risk a landing. Their parachutes drifted into a rain forest of 150-foot trees. Though within a mile of their airfield,