Escape From Davao Read Online Free Page A

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
    Flight pilots were unaware. When engine