THE OFT-REPEATED TRUISM THAT AMERICA WAS ILL-PREPARED FOR WORLD WAR II MANIFESTED ITSELF STARKLY AT PEARL HARBOR IN THE EARLY MORNING HOURS OF DECEMBER 7, 1941.
During the surprise attack launched from Japanese aircraft carriers, barely a glove was laid on the enemy airplanes while 18 U.S. vessels were either sunk or run aground, including five battleships. No less than 347 U.S. Army and Navy aircraft were destroyed or damaged. The American death toll was 2,403.
Japan’s rampage continued at strategic locations across the Pacific in the days that followed. Indeed, the very next day, the Japanese attacked Clark Field, the American air base about 40 miles northwest of Manila in the Philippines. Despite advance warning of the outbreak of hostilities, 18 B-17 Flying Fortresses were destroyed on the ground. Fortuitously, other B-17s had been dispersed elsewhere in the Philippines at the time.
B-17s of the 19th Bombardment Group’s 14th Squadron were at Del Monte Field on Mindanao, 600 miles south of Clark. One of the unit’s pilots, Captain Colin Purdie Kelly Jr., was a highly regarded 26-year-old West Point graduate and former B-17 instructor. He and his squadron mates were hopelessly outnumbered and outmatched by the Japanese forces but would soon begin striking back.
On December 9 the squadron’s commander, Major Emmett “Rosie” O’Donnell, led a small contingent of B-17s to a barebones airstrip closer to Clark. By some accounts this was San Marcelino Airfield in Zambales province, but by another telling it was Mariveles Airfield in the adjoining province of Bataan. Regardless, conditions were austere, food had to be flown in and the crews slept that night in their bombers or under the wings.
Before sunrise on the rainy morning of December 10, Major O’Donnell flew into Clark to obtain orders.
