Don Flickinger, the making of Blackie's Gang and the birth of para-rescue

(and how a C47 armed with a Bren gun came to shoot down a Japanese fighter...)

I spent yesterday with members of the 352nd Special Operations Wing at RAF Mildenhall, a guest of Colonel McGill and his men. I went with Rob and Sylvia May of the Kohima Educational Trust, and we were given a warm and expansive welcome.

Rob May had brought with him a piece of aluminium from a C46 which had crashed over a remote part of eastern Tuensang in Nagaland in August 1943, beautifully mounted on a piece of American hardwood. It was the aircraft that, nearly 81 years ago, had given rise to the birth of Colonel McGill’s remarkable outfit.

The birth of para-rescue can be placed in operations across the Hump airlift in 1942 and 1943. The story of the crash of Flight 12420 was a central part of the story.

The story itself is extraordinary. In 1943 a Soviet spy inside the predecessor organization to the CIA and a proud descendant of the famous Southern leader General Robert E Lee, on his way to China to meet General Dai Li, the mysterious and secretive Kuomintang intelligence chief; a celebrated American journalist sent by President Roosevelt to ascertain the “truth about China”; and General “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell’s political adviser; together with eighteen others—American and Chinese —survived an C46 air crash on the mountainous and remote border between India and Burma. It was, and remains, the largest evacuation of an aircraft by parachute, and, given the fact that even the crew had never been trained in the technique, it was a miracle that so many survived. But they fell with their crippled plane from the frying pan into the fire. On disentangling themselves from their parachutes, the twenty shocked survivors soon found that they had arrived in wild country dominated by a tribe that had an especial reason to hate white men. The Nagas of the Patkoi Hills on their remote and unsurveyed land were notorious headhunters, who continued—despite the feeble wrath of distant British imperial authority—to practice both slavery and human sacrifice. Their specialty was the removal of the heads of their enemies—often women and children—achieved with a swipe of ugly, razor-sharp daos. On two occasions in recent years their village, or parts of it, had been burned to the ground and their warriors killed in running battles with sepoys sent to teach the villagers a lesson and to exert the authority of the Raj.

Nevertheless, and against all the odds, all but one of the twenty-one passengers and crew on the doomed aircraft survived. The story of the extraordinary adventure of those men among the Nagas of Pangsha and of their rescue by the young representative of the distant imperial power, the British deputy commissioner who arrived wearing “Bombay bloomers” and stout leather walking shoes, carrying a bamboo cane, and leading an armed party of “friendly” Nagas, is told in my book Among the Headhunters. In their meeting in some of the world’s most inaccessible and previously unmapped terrain, three very different worlds collided. The young, exuberant apostles of the vast industrial democracy of the United States came face-to-face with members of an ancient mongoloid race, uncomprehending of the extent of modernity that existed beyond the remote hills in which they lived and determined to preserve their local power, based on ancient head-hunting and slaving prerogatives. Both groups met—not for the first time for the Nagas, whose village had been burned twice, in 1936 and 1939, because of persistent head-hunting—the vestiges of British authority in India, disintegrating as the Japanese tsunami washed up at its gate.

One of the reasons for the survival of the men who’s aircraft fell to earth that tumultuous day was the quick thinking, rapid action and spontaneous sacrifice of a group of US servicemen at the airbase from whence the aircraft departed that morning, Chabua. One in particular needs calling out, thirty-six-year-old ATC wing surgeon Lieutenant Colonel Don Flickinger. He had been duty medical officer at Pearl Harbor during the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941 and in 1943 found himself stationed in the upper reaches of Assam as part of the mammoth Hump airlift to China.

A C46 similar to that of Flight 12420

On the day the C46 went down over the rugged Paktoi ranges, the dividing line between astern India and Burma in the first leg of the journey to China, a C47 sent up to see if it could find the wreckage, and found the survivors waving from a remote village high in the hills. Using ground signalling panels the C47 dropped to the survivors they indicated that at least one of the party was badly injured. When the C47 returned to Chabua with the news that survivors were seen in the sprawling village and its location pinpointed on the map, the British deputy commissioner gave the Americans the grave news that the men were likely to be in grave danger. The villagers were, unknown to the survivors, the most practised headhunters of the region, a powerful and unruly tribe who were notorious for their violence. It was unlikely that the men would survive the encounter.

When he heard that there were injured men at the village, Don Flickinger hurried away to find a parachute. The wing surgeon at the airbase at Chabua was Lieutenant Colonel Don Flickinger, a Stanford-trained surgeon who had considerable experience of flying on search-and-rescue missions. Flickinger had been told that the men on the ground had indicated that they needed medical assistance. But what sort? Would it be sufficient to merely drop medical supplies to them and issue instructions by radio? It was agreed that Flickinger and two of his medical assistants would return in another C47 and assess the situation from the air. As they were discussing the options the Chabua commander – fearful perhaps of losing his wing surgeon, given all of the other medical needs at Chabua – gave Flickinger an explicit order: “You are not to parachute in there. That’s official!” Without committing himself either way, Flickinger replied that he would let him know what he came up with when in the air.

Flickinger had in fact decided that he would parachute in to join the survivors and administer the medical help that they had requested. No one else could do it, and he had no way of assessing from a distance how serious the injuries on the ground were. It was an extraordinary decision. As the wing surgeon Flickinger had no need to risk his life in such a manner, but he unhesitatingly decided to jump. He indicated to his two assistants in the sick bay at Chabua that they didn’t need to accompany him, but he would be pleased if they decided to do so. Flickinger had parachuted before—in Hawaii before the outbreak of war, and had torn the ligaments in one of his knees in so doing—but neither Sergeant Richard Passey nor Corporal William McKenzie had ever done so. They nevertheless accepted the challenge. After being briefed on the dangerous nature of the village, knowledge of the true nature of the Nagas of the Patkoi Hills made Flickinger’s decision to jump even more admirable. He knew he would be jumping directly into danger. But was not to be diverted from his course.

Don Flickinger in later life

Dusk was now settling over the Patkoi Hills when the weary survivors heard the sound of a C47 yet again. Looking up they saw an aircraft at a much higher altitude than it had flown at earlier in the day and three parachutes descending in a neat clump. It took a few seconds to realize that each of the packages had legs. Flickinger had jumped quickly and calmly when signalled to do so and had been quickly followed by the slightly less sanguine Passey and McKenzie, who later admitted to much nervousness about the prospect of leaving a perfectly good airplane and committing themselves to parachutes without ever having received any training.

On the ground one of the survivors, the journalist Eric Sevareid, was astonished at the sight, instantly recognizing the significance of what he was watching. Men were coming, of their own volition, to help them! He had not considered, in his wildest dreams, this outcome to their predicament and was humbled by the personal commitment men were making to those whom they didn’t know, yet who needed their help. Running excitedly out of the village, he met Don Flickinger as the surgeon landed. Unlike Sevareid, Flickinger was the epitome of calm, as Sevareid wrote:

I got to the crest of the steep slope as the first jumper floated past, missing the summit by a scant few yards. I could see the insignia of a lieutenant colonel on his jacket shoulders. He grinned at me and I shouted foolishly: “Here! We’re here in the village.” He held up a finger in a crisp gesture, like a man strolling past on a sidewalk, and said in a conversational tone: “Be with you in a minute.” Half weeping, half laughing over the wonderful absurdity of the meeting, I scrambled down the slope and slid to a halt before him as he was brushing dirt from his clothes and beginning to unwrap protective bandage from his knees. He was a slim, closely knit man of about thirty-five, with cropped hair, and vivid dark eyes in a brown, taut face. He smiled easily as we introduced ourselves. “I’m Don Flickinger” he said. “I’m the wing surgeon. Saw you needed a little help.”

It was a bizarre, deeply melodramatic moment, and in a heartbeat Sevareid realized that here was the man who would take charge of the party, not just bind up their wounds. Before long they were safely in the village, Flickinger setting one of the passenger’s whose leg had been badly broken with bamboo splints by the light of a torch, surrounded by curious natives while most of the other survivors lay on mats, mentally and physically exhausted by what had turned out to be an extraordinary day. In the centre of the building a fire burned, villagers eating the remains of an unidentifiable animal whose remains lay on the embers. Sevareid looked around him, his composure recovered. All was well with the world.

Meanwhile, Captain John “Blackie” Porter, a twenty-seven-year-old pilot from Cincinnati, Ohio, based at Jorhat, heard of the crash of Flight 12420 first with anxiety and then with relief. By means of enormous effort twenty men had been rescued from one of the most inhospitable places on earth. But the effort had been pulled together in an ad hoc fashion, using volunteers, to the detriment of the airlift to China. When aircraft went down over the Hump the crews’ friends were sometimes allowed to look for them. But the regular flights didn’t have the equipment or training to do much more than make a token attempt to find a downed aircraft lost under a canopy of green. What if rescue efforts were planned and used specially trained men and appropriately equipped aircraft?, Porter mused. He decided to lobby to set up a discrete team to search and recover downed aircrews. After several weeks of waiting, permission was finally granted, along with the allocation of two ancient C-47s and two sets of dedicated air crew specially recruited for the task. The small team was soon known across the Air Transport Command in Assam as “Blackie’s Gang.” What Porter established in 1943 as a result of the crash of Flight 12420 proved to be the forerunner of the sophisticated search-and-rescue mechanisms adopted by US forces during the remainder of the war and into the postwar world. Whereas 62 percent of personnel missing from flights over the Hump were rescued in 1943, this number would increase to 77 percent by mid-1944 as a direct result of the achievements of Blackie’s Gang. By the end of the war the percentage was even higher.

Porter’s search-and-rescue team began to see immediate success. He tried to have at least two aircraft available for operations each day, and ground-crew mechanics worked through the night under floodlights to ensure that no day went by without aircraft available to fly. Procedures were developed to professionalize the business of search and rescue, and the crews began to train to operate in this distinctive new role. Porter recruited Oswalt to his team. Pilots began to fly routinely just above treetop level, with everyone on board looking for the tell-tale signs of a crashed aircraft—signs that from a greater height would be impossible to see against the backdrop of continuous vegetation. Once the general area of a crash had been identified, and if the crash site was not immediately visible, crews learned to conduct pattern flying, checking the ground below in a systematic fashion, section by section, with all eyes in the aircraft looking hard at the ground for signs of disturbance that might reveal the place where a stricken aircraft had entered the jungle canopy.

Many of the procedures that had been employed at Pangsha were refined further. Once survivors had been found, notes providing initial instructions were dropped to them on yellow streamers, followed by radios, weapons, and survival equipment. Where possible rescuers were dropped by parachute in order to provide aid to the injured and guide the survivors in the direction of friendly villages or to places where the light aircraft could recover them, a couple at a time. In 1944 the first helicopters were deployed in this role. The USAAF had ordered its first production helicopter, the Sikorsky R-4, in January 1943 and deployed a small number in Burma in early 1944. The first use of the new aircraft for search and rescue took place between April 22 and 23, 1944, when the composer Carter Harman, a helicopter pilot in the US Army, rescued the pilot and three wounded British soldiers from a downed L1 light aircraft. Don Flickinger’s selfless act in parachuting in to help Oswalt at Pangsha became the inspiration for a new procedure that involved dropping specially trained volunteer medics to survivors whose injuries could not be treated without expert help, including plasma and blood for transfusions in the field.

Back at Chabua Blackie’s Gang was given its own warehouse, which the men filled with material they could drop to downed air crews. It was “run by a former New York nightclub operator named Joe Kramer,” observed Theodore White. Kramer organized the dropping of material required for immediate survival—“food, medicine, bandages, boots, clothes, compasses, maps, signalling panels, playing cards, books, Bibles and goods to barter with natives.” Thereafter, as the survivors walked or were led to safety, Kramer would organize the loads that were dropped to them on daily supply runs until they had returned to a place of safety.

While Porter and his gang had to take constant care in flying because of the obvious dangers of the mountainous terrain, another continuing danger were the predatory Japanese fighters operating from Myitkyina airfield. At low altitude, lumbering along the treetops looking for crashed air crews, the search-and-rescue aircraft were especially vulnerable to the pack-hunting Zeros that daily patrolled these angry skies. For self-protection the gang’s aircraft were armed with British Bren light machine guns, which they poked out through the aircraft doors and windows. Porter himself used a Bren on one occasion—November 6, 1943—to destroy a Japanese fighter on the ground. With the co-pilot flying the plane, the unwieldy C47 flew past the Japanese plane at its slowest speed, firing thirty-round clips of .303 ammunition into the enemy aircraft. After several passes they left the enemy fighter a wreck and its pilot dead.

Porter was not averse to attacking Japanese ground positions when he saw them. The ATC daily tactical summary for December 9, 1943, recorded that Porter’s B-25 had come under machine-gun fire. Porter had turned to look for the enemy: “Sighting two Jap emplacements, Porter and his crew strafed and silenced both positions. Sometime after a Japanese encampment … and three trucks were spotted. The trucks and party were thoroughly strafed.” But the Japanese got Porter in the end. On  December 10, 1943, Porter’s B-25 was shot down by a clutch of Zeros near Fort Hertz. Only one man managed to parachute to safety before the aircraft crashed. Yet the system Porter had begun to establish continued to flourish. In the three months before his death Blackie’s Gang had found and recovered 127 Allied aircrew from 58 downed planes. By the end of the war search and rescue had contributed significantly to the 1,171 lives saved from 590 crashes in this theater of war.

The twenty American and Chinese survivors of Flight 12420, together with three USAAF servicemen who parachuted into Pangsha to provide medical care to the injured, pose for a photograph on their way out of the jungle. It is August 26, 1943, twenty-four days after they took off in their C-46 transport plane from Chabua airfield in northern Assam. Many are holding native spears obtained in trade with the Naga warriors of Pangsha village. Philip Adams, the British district officer who supervised their march out, is at far left.

Left to right, back row: Philip Adams; Technical Sergeant Evan Wilder, Levelland, Texas; Colonel Wang Pae Chae, Chinese Army; Eric Sevareid, CBS radio journalist; William T. Stanton, Board of Economic Warfare; Staff Sergeant Joseph E. Clay, Monticello, Iowa.; Corporal Basil M. Lemmon, Tulsa, Oklahoma; Sergeant Glen A. Kittleson, Ballantine, Montana; Sergeant Francis W. Signer, Yonkers, New York; and Corporal Lloyd J. Sherrill, Burlington, Iowa.

Middle row: Second Lieutenant Roland K. Lee, Hicksville, Long Island, New York; Lieutenant Colonel Kwoh Li, Chinese Army; John (“Jack”) Paton Davies Jr., US State Department; Staff Sergeant Ned C. Miller (crew chief), Ottumwa, Iowa; Flight Officer Harry K. Neveu, pilot, Coleman, Wisconsin; Sergeant Joseph J. Giguere, Auburn, Michigan; Private William Schrandt, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Corporal Edward Helland, Cleveland, Ohio; Corporal Stanley Waterbury, Blue Hill, Nebraska; Captain Duncan C. Lee, Haddon, Iowa, OSS.

Kneeling: Sergeant Richard Passey, Provo, Utah; Lieutenant Colonel Don D. Flickinger, ATC wing surgeon; and Corporal William G. McKenzie, Detroit, Michigan, the trio who jumped from the rescue plane to aid the crash victims. In front on a stretcher is Sergeant Walter R. Oswalt, radio operator, Ansonia, Ohio, who broke a leg when he parachuted from the stricken plane. (Photo by Frank Cancellare, war pool photographer)