Commandos behind enemy lines thery
Phil Cochran’s written orders posted on the Headquarters bulletin board, requiring that the beards come off. The actual moiling, on one occasion, was reaction to one of Col. Had an unbriefed officer penetrated into the area of first 1st Air Commandos near Hailakandi in Assam, just west of the Burmese border, in the winter of 1943-44, he would have found what appeared to be a pirate crew moiling about the place in apparent indiscipline of both person and arms. Guts, of course, but guts that derive from thorough training, a knowledge of one’s job, and a dedication to the dictum that “in war there is no substitute for victory.”
Cochran, they were equipped with P-51 fighters and B-25 attack bombers for the traditional missions of air superiority, interdiction, close support, and reconnaissance.
There were 523 men in the original 1st Air Commandos-all volunteers who left the US by air late in 1943. Today the lineal military descendants of these units-after a nineteen-year period of deactivation-are operating again in the jungles of Vietnam and are training for their work-on a worldwide capability basis at the Special Air Warfare Center, Eglin AFB, Fla. Phil Cochran, immortalized by cartoonist Milton Caniff as “Flip Corkin.” Here James Warner Bellah, a well known military writer who was himself a member of the Burma invasion team, tells the story of that operation and discusses the Air Commando tradition.Īt the Quebec Conference, in August 1943, General “Hap” Arnold came up with the original concept of air commando units for use in Burma. The first 1st Air Commandos were led by Col. Orde Wingate’s Chindit Raiders far behind Japanese lines in central Burma. This modern 1st Air Commando Group is in the tradition of a World War II unit which, in March 1944, took part in a daring airborne operation that landed some 10,000 of Gen. Today some of USAF’s Air Commandos are in Southeast Asia, training South Vietnamese to fight guerrilla warfare.