155th COMMANDO SQUADRON Not all U.S.A. combat area pilots in World War II were officers.
In the 155th Commando Squadron, formed to be exclusively a liaison unit, the rank of pilots ranged from that of Technical Sergeant, Staff Sergeant to Master Sergeant. "For some reason," writes Lawrence M. Holzapfel in the February issue of "Ex-CBI ROUNDUP "or oversight, they were the only pilots in the Air Corps who were not commissioned."
Although Holtzafel doesn't suggest such a thing, it would seem to me -after reading his notes detailing the groups special achievements - a belated bit of Congressional time and effort would seem to me to be very much in order ,any time now to confer due rank upon each and every 155th pilot in relation to the length of time served from the 1944 start date. All were volunteers. There were two other commando groups within the 2nd Air Command and, I assume, they too deserve such recognition - belated and overdue - but well deserved.
Hollywood has missed an opportunity in failing to film the exploits of the 155th forces group and TV producers missed a series which could have been outstanding as well as true. It is to not too late for Fox Network to get Oliver North to retell the story for all Americans to know. Contact: Dwight O. King, Editor of "Ex-C BI Roundup", 4810 Park #101, Newport Beach, CA 92660. The stories of the 155th deserve a far wider telling than the fine Holzapfel article in in the China-Burma-Indian nostalgia publication.
The 155th flew just three types of aircraft - the, low-fly L-5 reconnaissance, search planes, larger U-64's for troop transport and some C-47's. All planes were unarmed except for sidearms carried by the pilots. L-5 pilots were skilled at full flap landings over barriers, with limited runway lengths available they were trained to land with brakes full-on, on wet grass; slide until flip-over imminent and then release the brakes in time to settle the tail end down - just short of a flip flop end to end. They seemed to specialize in doing the impossible.
The squadron was organized and trained at Aiken, South Carolina in the spring of 1944, served in the C China-Burma-India war zone and was de-activated on Okinawa and reassigned to be members of the 157th Squadron in Tokyo. There were thirteen officers and sixty-sixty enlisted men and they were flown to Japan and assigned to the 157th Squadron in Tokyo. Among many other honors the small group had garnered forty-seven air medals with sixty-eight medal clusters and thirty-nine Distinguished Flying Crosses with eight associated clusters, as well as numerous letters of commendation honoring their superior flying feats.
A few of those combat conditions includes: during the March 11 to May 19, 1945 period alone their combat missions totaled 7,923 hours; over 2,869 casualties were rescued and evacuated from front-line positions and over two hundred tons of cargo delivered to countless operational sites, many in desperate need.
To which we add our words of appreciation.
Thank you, Sergeants - all!
A.L.M. March 26, 2005 [c534wds]
