Ilion High School - Class of 1938

Ilion Sentinel - August 5, 1943

Flyer, Luck and the Pilot Brought Pacific Air Force Veteran Safely Home

Article 11

Flyer, Luck and the Pilot Brought Pacific Air Force Veteran Safely Home

Back in 1938, Donald Mitchell, son of Mrs. James Mitchell, 60 Elm St., graduated from high school. Jobs weren't very plentiful then for boys just out of school, so he hung around awhile then joined the Air Force. That was in 1939. Today, Master Sergeant Donald Mitchell is back in Ilion for a 15-day furlough, a member of the now famous 5th Air Force, which taught the Japanese that courage, skill and quality could win superiority over quantity, and a veteran of six major engagements: Coral Sea, Bismark Sea, Milne Bay, Raboul, Buna and Lee.

Twenty hours after the news of Pearl Harbor, a bomb group shipped out from Langley Field, Va., bound for the West Coast and eventually the South Pacific. With them as photographer and tail gunner, flew Don Mitchell. His was the second bomb group to leave the coast and his crew flew their own B-26 Marauder medium bomber.

In the early days out there, in Australia and later New Guinea, death or injury came to be almost the rule rather than the exception when air engagements were fought against an enemy who was often ten and many times times twenty to one superior in numbers. But this was a lucky crew and every man has come through safely. They flew together in every battle, aided according to Mitchell by lots of work, plenty of praying and a great pilot. The pilot was Col. Brian O'Neil of New York City, and Mitchell has been flying with him since 1940. Their plane was badly shot up in the battle of Raboul, but Col. O'Neil brought it safely home on one engine. "I don't know how we made it but we did," Mitchell said a little grimly.

"It was in this engagement that luck and pilot kept them from crashing into the sea as they were very close to the plane wHich crashed, and three OF whose crew survived and came back safely after 11 months in the jungles of New Britain, according to the story in Life magazine of June 28, this year.

Once they lost their plane through enemy action, but only because it was caught on the ground to an air raid, Mitchell was a little insistent on that point and you had the feeling that if Col. O'Neil could have been at the controls somehow, he would have avoided the danger.

Mitchell's plane had eight Japanese Zeros to its credit and we wanted to know if his gun had actually shot down any which he was sure. Again, that fleeting grim look before he said briefly, "Yes, three." He explained that anyone who shoots down an enemy ship must actually see it go down and that fact must toe sworn to by the entire crew before official credit is given.

This brought up the question of medals, and it was fairly obvious that he had been hoping that we would skip that one, but he finally admitted that the whole crew had been recommended for the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Silver Star. He tossed that off, "O, they give 'em out for anything now."

All of the crew, except the pilot are back in this country now and will be sent to training bases to act as instructors. When his furlough is up, Mitchell will leave for Colorado Springs. The pilot is in command of a bomb group now, still in New Guinea, and will flying, although, according to his tail gunner, he isn't supposed to be in the air.

"Do you suppose you'll ever fly together again," I wanted to knew. He shrugged. "The Colonel said when he got back to the States he'd look us all up and get us back together again, but" --- The shrmg and the incomplete sentence told all that was necessary.

A local boy is a member of the 5th Air Force. As to what that really means, an Australian writer, George Johnson, tells in a few paragraphs from his article in the current issue of "Pic."

"I am an Australian. I have seen much air fighting. I have seen the American Air Corps, the RAAF, the RAF and the naval and army fliers of Japan in action. And I just want to go on record that there is no air fighting force in the world, in any Country, that has a better record than that of Kenney's Fifth Air Force. Those of us who have seen the toughest fighting in the world for fifteen desperate and bloody months in the Southwest Pacific, don't need standards of comparison. We know perfection when we see it. We've seen perfection come the hard way.

It was a tough fight all along for these youngsters of the American Air Corps, thrown overnight into a major air battle over flying country regarded as terrible even by peace-time standards. Always they were outnumbered by the Zeros and Mitsublshis and Nakajimas, but their task was to win control of the New Guinea skies. They couldn't do it with numbers, so they were forced to do it with superior courage, better airman-ship, better planes and higher morale. Often the odds were ten to one against them. Their bases were bombed day after day, their scanty stock of aircraft was whittled down.

Young Americans went up in their Marauders and Airacobras white and sweating in those dark days of March and April and May of last year. BUT they went up . . . and that was the supreme expression of their courage. The official communiques didn't dare admit the extent of the losses we were suffering. The only comforting fact was that, against overwhelming enemy air superiority, we had a qualitative superiority that had bumped the ratio of Japanese combat losses up to five of theirs to one of ours.

But, in dying, they took, a lot of the enemy with them, and in doing that they magnificently upheld the unspoken tradition of the most magnificent air fighting team I have ever seen: "Its worth dying if you can only take two or three of the little sonsabitches with you!" That's the spirit of Kenney's fighters."