RUFF STUFF

Memories of an early war South Pacific fighter pilot

- JAMES P. BUSHA

BY THE TIME NEWLY MINTED U.S. fighter pilots entered WW II in late 1941, they faced a Japanese adversary whose pilots had been flying combat since 1937. Not only were these "flying Samurai" pilots old hats, but they also flew a trump card in the form of the Zero. As the rays of the Rising Sun extended over the vastness of the South Pacific, the two things that stood in their way of reaching the Australian shores was a jumping-off point near the southern tip of New Guinea and the untested, untrained and out-gunned fighter pilots of the Army Air Corps. Follow along as a farm boy turned fighter pilot slugs it out with the Japanese in a life-and-death struggle to hold New Guinea at all costs.

Rough, tough and ready? 

December 6, 1941, was a day I would never forget. After months and months of enduring the various rants and complaints of my Army Air Corps instructors, most of whom had shouted at me from the backseats of PT-17s, BT-14s and AT-6s, I turned the tables on them as silver wings were pinned to my chest. A brand-new second lieutenant, I carried a set of papers that proclaimed I was to be sent to Selfridge Field in Michigan to learn how to fly fighters. Less than a day later, my whole world, along with everyone else's, was turned upside down.

We received word that the Japanese had bombed a place called Pearl Harbor; I thought it was up near Alaska. What did I know I was just a farm kid from Wisconsin. I realized it was serious when they told us to report back to base, and I knew these were desperate times when they sent me to Florida to learn how to fly P-40s with the 49th Fighter Group.

But by Christmas of 1941, having yet to sit in a P-40 let alone fly one, our airplanes were created, and we were told we were being sent to California for deployment to a combat area; the military could not afford to wait to train us while the Japanese were ravaging the Pacific.