Wont go into that. I was lucky enough to be able to interview several of those veterans. Pretty remarkable bunch. They were started by arnold, some of you may have heard of him, at the behest of franklin roosevelt, who was requested by the guy named church hill. Winston i think was his first name. There were some flyers out there, i dont know if you all got any. If you didnt, i dont know what to tell you. I dont have any more. But it tells you about this book, project nine, both of the air commandos in world war ii. Propublished by the university f any soury press, and let me point out to you that if you call this number or order online from the university of Missouri Press and give them the secret code of afs 14, afs 14, youll get 20 discount. Thats six bucks. Okay. So let us begin. For those of you who are really sharp eyes, you might take a look at that numeral one. What can i say . These guys were young guys a long way from home. Im not going to say anything else. There were three main figures in this air commando operation. The first was Major General orin wingate, and colonel cochran. And ill tell you just a little bit about them. Wingate was brilliant, he was pretty unorthodox. He was the leader of a group known as the british hicks, and you can look that up and see what that means. Its not dirty. Then there is phil cochran, char mink, charismatic. He was the real life character for, if you remember the strip cherry and the pirate, thats phillip cochran. There he is right there. Okay. Okay. John alison was a pintsized guy. He had seven victories over japanese planes flying with the 14th air force. He was considered a natural pilot, a pretty good stick. He was the cocommander of his group. There were others. There was a movie star turned pilot, jackie coogan. Some of you may have heard of that. Biggest child actor of the 20s and 30s, starred with charlie chaplain and the kid. A whole lot of others. There was another one, dick cole. I dont know what i just did. Were going to go back. Were going to go back. I think i pushed the wrong button. Im going backwards im pretty sure. There it is. There it is. Okay. So thats dick. See if i can do it right this time. Right there. Yeah, hes here tonight. And this handsome young man right there is here tonight. That looks like he has a pretty good ride going for himself there. This guy, charlie turner, i was with him last weekend. You can kind of see the way these guys looked and acted. I think i can say this, he called that hat his go to hell hat. Can i say that . Okay. Im not any good with this stuff because i just skipped one that i wanted to show you. I can do it. I know i can. And some of you baseball fans may remember a guy named john lewis, the allstar third basement for the washington senators, and he was a commando pilot. By the way i think it was in 1947 world series, had a guy named dimaggio, another guy named williams, and john kellys buddy lewis in the outfield for the allstar game. He was pretty good. Im not going to talk about it again. Im going to skip this, soree. And charlie. All right. Okay. So this operation involved quite a variety of pilots. Service pilot, liaison pilots, glider pilots, its an interesting organization. They flew a variety of planes, including 100 stinson l5. They had 12 b25 h medium mitchell bombers, little bit different. They had a 75 millimeter canon in the nose of those. Some of the people who were in the airplane when it fired said it sure felt like it stopped midair, even if it didnt they had 30 p51 a mustang fighters. The one with the alison fighter. They had a dozen c47 sky planes that they used as glider tugs. They had 100 cg 4 a cargo gliders. It was a big thing, looked like a boxcar with big, fat, ugly wings. You can get some idea of the size of it there. Thats what they called the glider pilot, it means no fan man. They didnt have any engines. You can load a small piece of artillery, 12 or 15 fully armed combat troops. And the commandos had the four of these helicopters, the first operational choppers, and they had the first combat rescue during their time in burma. They had 12 stinson l1 flying ambulances. Another dozen of thats a really ugly plane but i think it did some good. Of the 523 original air commandos, 300 of them were pilots. Those of you who are particularly who served know that thats an outrageously high number of pilots for the small number in that original unit. And ill point out, here is dick cole. This is a guy named jake sarts. This is a guy named bill cherry. Bill cherry was the pilot of the aircraft that was flying around the pacific, and they ended up having to ditch and they floated around for 24 days. But i guess he didnt have enough of it because he came back to join the air commandos. And this guy right in front, thats buddy lewis, the baseball player. Okay. Operations stop that. Operation thursday, im going to try on get it to go back. Operation thursday was launched from basis in india on march the fifth, 1944. C47s towed and double tow gliders over the 8,000foot chin hill, and they landed 150 miles behind japanese lines, an unmarked jungle clearing in burma. Oh, yes. It was at night. But 15 minutes before launch, photos showed that they had two places to go and logs were scattered across one of the two. They didnt think they could land there now. Alison, on the left, and wingate, who is on the right, they said you know what, we got into a lot of trouble, a lot of training, we need to go ahead and do these thing. I dont think the japanese will be waiting for us but obviously we dont know. They were at a briefing just before they launched, the operation known as thursday. These are some of the british hicks that i was talking about. Theyre boarding one of the gliders on march the fifth. Wingate just kind of liked mules. This is actually the second for ray. He had done it earlier and they walked in. The mules carried their heavy equipment. He thought it would be a good idea a. Even being taken in by gliders, they could have a few of those, as well. They ended up taking something close to 1200 mules. They towed them on double tow, in operation thursday. You can see the two gliders being towed by that c47. Here is a you know, you drop them into a little clearing and think how am i going to get back out . Because they needed a lot of room to be able to take off a c47 with a glider towed behind it, so they worked out a think called snapping blinders. And youll hear about that, well have dick cole talk to you about that. It was a precision kind of flight where they had to fly down and snag the tow rope, and you can just imagine that was kind of a jackrabbit start for the guys in the glider because they werent from zero to 100 in a couple seconds. Here is one of the gliders being towed over the chin hill. Im not pose tough but i think theres a real good possibility thats dick cole there. Unfortunately when they got there, remember i told you it was at night. Well, what looked like a really nice field, a clearing called broadway, turned out to have been stumps, and a few water buffalo, and they wrecked almost every glider that went in, a number of people were killed. Many more were injured. But in the end, they were able to take in a small bulldozer and they made a Landing Strip out of nothing, and the very next night they began hauling in c47s to land on that strip and bring in the remainder of all of those british troops and supplies. So despite the loss of the glider, the u. S. And british troops zero brail ited the invasion of burma that night. I think t theyre lacking because they survived that one. There was a pretty good chance they might not. Okay. So if youre interested in this book, you know, its here, i might leave this up for a little bit. Its on the threeer we passed out. Remember about that 20 discount, unless you like to throw money away. There are some interesting things. Let me im going to read just a little bit, ill let you meet these guy, i promise you, but you have to put up with me for a little while. I told you wingate was a little bit eccentric. Hes being visited, this es1937, he has been stationed by the british army in palestine. And theyre having problems. They became the israeli ambassador to the u. S. , was a young jewish activist in early 1937, and he had been invited to a discussion with a newly posted british Army Campaign named wingate, who spoke arabic. So he is there, he knocks on the door, hes waiting, and he hears people moving inside. Theres a knock on the door. And instead of waiting on the doorstep, the sweet aroma drifted over him. He fingered the knot of his tie as the door bolt was released inside. There stood a short dark haired englishman with a welcoming smile and intense dark eyes. It was wingate. He was stark naked. And he didnt get dressed for the next two hours. Well, so they were tasked they were tacked by to take the british into burma any way they could and support them. It was an idea that they were going to kind of show off what the u. S. Army air force could do, and he said, to cook written and alison, who didnt want to do this, they were Fighter Pilots, and he said he enticed them into doing this by saying to hell with paperwork, get out there and fight. And they did take him at his word. There is very little in the way of actual paperwork, which made researching this kind of a challenge. As i said they were kind of young, young guys. They just they had all these planes, anything that they wanted they got. They not only got the planes but anything else that they wanted. Some of you military buffs may have heard of the m1 a 1. That was designed specifically for paratroopers. The very first ones of those went to the air commandos because they found out they had them and they wanted them, and they said okay, you got them. They also demanded that each person in that air Commando Group be issued a 45 sidearm, and either the. 45 caliber thomson sub machine gun. They didnt stop there. They also got the jackets some of you may be familiar with those, they got two little flat pockets in front, they dont hold much. They thought we need something with a whole lot of pockets because bad things can happen in the jungle. And we would like some gear. So they put in a requisition for the paratrooper uniforms, the kind that look like a i dont know, like a bush jacket, got all the big pockets in the front and the big pockets on the pants, and the paratroopers werent happy about that, but they still got it. And they said were going to be in the jungle, i think we ought to have some of those marine boots, and the marines said no way. They got them. And then they said, you know, theyre testing that, that new thing called a helicopter, and they said we could use that, and he said absolutely not. They got them. They were the first to use them. And then they began collecting men and they called people who they had served with in prior campaigns, and the early part of world war ii, and they called others, and word got around like that. I just need to tell you these guys who did this, theyre young, and they get a phone call wherever theyre stationed, and say hey, how would you like to be part of a top secret project that you cant talk about, youll get absolutely no rewards from it, its dangerous as can be, and youll probably see heavy combat . And you know what those 523 guys did . They said sinus up. I think its the same spirit that brought two guys up from florida and georgia. Its a road trip, yeah, lets do it. So one of the guys that they recruited was buddy lewis. And somewhere i have something about him. There it is. Bill cherry, dick cole and jake joined project nine. And one of those guys was buddy lewis. John k. Lewis junior was best known as the player for the washington senator. He had gone through training as an infantryman. When posted ove overseas to flye hum, he had a game to say goodbye to his teammates. Luckily no one thought to get the tail number of the plane that zoomed low over center field before disappearing. Lewis ended up flying more than 350 missions over the him alaias into china. It would have to be planned for before they headed out. Bill cochran said we had to figure out what aircraft we wanted, what we warranted them for, how many pilots we needed, how many mechanics we needed and how much ammunition you need because there and any animal like this in the air force. We were inventing a whole new animal for the air force zoo. There was no precedence, he said. The mule, im not going to read that. Its too long. I want to this is interesting. I did tell you that these guys were fairly young. Let me just tell you, that some of you may have heard of a guy named lord lewis montbatto no. He came out where these guys were training with the british troops prior to going into burma, and he was asked to speak, okay. Let me address the man. And they said how about standing up on the hood of this jeep over here . So he was addressing the men well, cochran in his usual pants, rolled past his ankles looked up intently. Next to him was Johnny Alison sporting a colt 22 pistol and a shoulder holster. He wore that because he couldnt hit anything with a 45. A faint buzz caught their attention. The american generals looked at each other. They both saw at once a b 51. They had forgotten, rt smith had taken off in his fighter. Tadpole smith, he was a condition sue mitt Fighter Pilot, smith turned down from his cockpit at the crowd of soldiers in the field, and deduced that cochran was addressing the group. He couldnt resist. He pulled up, winged over and came in low and fast heading straight for the jeep, at something more than 400 miles an hour. He pulled up at what must have seemed only an inch over the head of month, cochran who was never a stickler for military protocol was appalled at this. The damn fool just arrived. He was away and didnt know you were here. Cochran wondered what kind of courtmartial would he face . Montbatton was angry with his aid for placing him in such a position. When smith landed, cochran ordered him to the operations basha, a little shack, and laid into him. Fiercely berating him for nearly bee heading the commander. But last he began to taper off and smith was finally able to offer an explanation of sorts. Im sorry, phil, i didnt know it was montbatton, honduras owes, i thought it was you. Cochran laid into him a second time. These guys were young. He was he was barely 25, and a major. The war introduced so many young officers that at a field in puerto rico there was a sign over the bar in the Officers Club that um sed up the new reality. It said no liquor will be served to lieutenant kerr nails between the ages of 18 and 21 unless accompanied by parents. Im just about to the end of what im going to read to you. If you want to read more, you have to buy the book. At the end of this campaign, the monsoons came in and they had to leave, and its an interesting story by far. But eventually the second air Commando Group will deploy to the region, and the third would be active in the philippines. The highly unorthodox method of the group wouldnt be used again during world war ii. The cross channel invasion of france, as well as in holland during market garden, included gliders, but the risky night tow of gliders into jungle clearings would never be duplicated and the world would never again see such a group of highly group of men, glider, helicopters, never again would a demander declare to hell with paperwork, get out there and fight. Research and development all neatly detailed by paperwork in triplicate has become the hallmark of modern industrialized warfare. Theyre gone forever. A new breed of irregular war fighters, soldiers, mariners, replaced the devil may care charm of these early air commandos. This new breed is no less dedicated or fearless but far more anonymous. And more highly trained in unconventional and asymmetrical warfare. And weapon on drones go anywhere without putting a pilot in harms way. No doubt this will prove both more lethal to our enemies and more protective of the warriors we send in our name to far off places. But audacity and in the face of adversity its hard to beat the true story of the air commandos in the invasion of burma by glider at night. Okay. I told you that i would have some people that i wanted you to meet, and im going to introduce them now. Three of these air commandos are with us tonight. Patt meara, bill cook right, and dick cole. Im going to ask them to come out. [ applause ] thank you. Thank you very much. Have a seat, guys. Welcome to kansas city. I told you that were the heart of the country and thats not just because were in the middle. It means we got the biggest heart and a lot of love. You just experienced some of it. Okay. Let me just kind of start out tonight by asking, how did you guys get hooked into the air hand ohs in the first place . Anybody want to answer that . Patt, talk to me. I wasnt in the original group until after we got to india. And i was sent up to a place called tesgon air base, the home base of the 54th service group. And there were three other guys who were friends of mine that were kind of known as im being outhadnt dish and thats another statement, and they came in one day and asked for volunteers to for hazardous duty and again couldnt talk about it, didnt know what it was, didnt know where we were going, didnt know anything, and all four of us jumped up. And they put us in l5 airplanes, with a rifle and a bag across our laps, and flew us up into the valley, and thats when i became that was in february of 44. I was a pilot for some years back in the states working different jobs. I was in texas at the time, and i just went over from there, flew over to india, and joined the First Air Commando. So i should have told you that patt was a b25 gunner, and bill was a l5 pilot in burma. And dick cole, some of you may have heard of him, theres a raid on japan earlier in april of 42, sometimes called the doolittle tokyo raid. He was the first plane off the hornet. And then, you know, that wasnt enough, he stayed in india for a year as a hump pilot, came home and was home for a couple months and they said hey, you want to go to burma . And join the Strange Group of air commandos . And he said, sign me up. So thats kind of that. Did you guys ever see wingate, the british general . Okay. Did you see him, patt . What were your impressions of him . I didnt see him long enough or well enough to really form an impression, but he looked a little weird. He did. And i heard stories about him having briefing sessions, sitting stark naked with the helmet on. He also liked to eat raw onions. And i heard stories that he had a large alarm clock that he strung around his wrist, and you know when a meeting was over, when that went off the meeting was over and he would run to the next meeting. Yeah, okay. Dick, did you ever see wingate . Did you ever see wingate . Im sorry . Did you ever see wingate . Yes. Okay. What were your impressions . Well, the impression was that he was a member and invited to the canadian meeting of churchill, roosevelt, and stalin. All right. Well, dick, if you dont mind, i talked to these guys about snatching gliders. They would leave the gliders in the clearing and now they had to get them out, wasnt big enough to hook up and pull behind a c47, so they had this device in the c47s, the fd 80, the glider pick up system. What was it like to come down and snatch a glider out like that . Can you talk to us a little bit about that . Well, it took a little training, took a little technique, because we had two ropes about 12 feet apart, with with an arm sticking out of the c47. But the worse thing was doing it at night. Unfortunately, or fortunately, we were able to do what we were supposed to do, and everything came out all right, i guess. They did they put the heavy two polls out there, and at night they put flashlights on top of the poles so they could see them. They had to slide down precisely at a given speed, put that thing like a navy carrier landing, and then what was it like when you knew you had hooked them, and youre flying out and you got power glides and youre flying up and you wonder whether you actually snagged that glider, how did you know you had snagged it . When you picked up, it was a reel, and it was installed on the airplane. As the hook hooked on to the wire, or the rope, the tension began to decrease, and all you would feel in the cockpit was maybe like a little lunge. And after that the tension took care of it. It was steady. And you could you climbed on out. Well, what was it like to fly a l5 . Can you tell them we saw one picture of it. A l5 is not a very big airplane. You probably wouldnt necessarily think of it as a compare airplane but it was used that way. What was it like to fly l5s . This is 180horsepower, two place airplane. And the air force had several of these different aircraft down to 65horsepower, which is more the most favorite one of the army. But the air force used them for evacuating the wounded primarily in this particular operation were talking about, so you could only get one wounded person in the back. And later on they developed one where they could open a door on the side of the aircraft instead of could have one patient. The First Air Commando had anyone who was wounded had to sit up in the back until they got them out of there. When they went in behind the lines they cleared enough runway so the l5s could get in and out to carry the wounded out, and they kept on working until they could get a c47 in there, and get a lot of them out. I should say that the chindrits force under wingate had done this previously in 1943 when there were 3,000 men. They had to walk in, and they took those with them, and they were worn out by the time they got there a couple hundred miles through some of the worlds worst terrain. And thats when this idea of taking them in by aircraft glider or otherwise first began to develop, and the idea then that this oh ton must force of air commandos would totally support by bringing in supplies, by taking out wounded and ill, and they would provide aerial all untile in the form of these fighters and the bombers. During wingates first foreray into beer may they went in with 3,000. At the end of that expedition only about 650 were fit to fight. They lost about 900 of them, about half of that figure were killed. The other half had to be left behind. If they were wounded or became ill they left them propped up against a tree with ammunition and a little bit of food and a note saying please treat these men with respect due gallo galat warriors. We through what would happen if they were captured by the japanese. Is there any incident in particular that stands out in your minds about your service in burma . Keep it clean. I cant use all the language that was used. But you show the picture of bill cherry, who we called wild bill cherry. On the first night of the invasion, i was sitting in an ambulance with my buddy, who was the ambulance driver, in front of our bamboo tower, was our operations tower, and there was a three way radio, not two way, it was Radio Communication between the ambulance, the planes and the tower. We had a sergeant who was the tower operator, and i dont know what happened or i have no history of that at all, except that late in the evening, i heard his call sitting there in the ambulance, not i should preface this by saying im a long him ham radio operator. This call came in, said 696, block check tower, this is 696. And nobody answered. And that was repeated about three times, and then his voice says blackjack tower where the hell are you . And i jumped out of the ambulance and ran up a bamboo tower, ran up there, and a radio was sitting there but nobody was there. So i grabbed the thing and i said 696, this is blackjack tower come back. And he said what the hell is going on here . And i said im sorry, sir, im not the tower operator. The tower operator isnt here but i can help you get in. He said can you turn the lights on . And theres a switch, i said yeah. So he said can you tell me how to get in . I had been there long enough, there were only two directions that i chew of, and landing to the left, landing to the west or Something Like that, but the other one was traffic to the right, landing to the east. So i said the traffic to the left, landing to the west. Give me a call when youre down. And he said you stay right there until i get there. And i stayed there. He came roaring up the ladder, and he said who the hell are you . And i said pfc moray, sir. He said youre not a tower operator . And i said no, sir. And he said well you are now. Stay here until somebody comes to relieve you. About, i dont know, when we had our the annual reunion, i ran into bill again, and i walked up and he looked at me and said who are you . And i said you remember the night of the invasion when you came up to the tower and chewed out this guy . And he said yeah. And i say im him. He said can you still use the radio . And i said yeah. That was the last time that i saw bill. He made his last flight shortly after that. But he was a character. None of the rest of you were though . You got any stories . All of the stuff, retire general, and i met him and hes the greatest hero that i know of personally from world war ii. I have his picture in the living room at home. Im only 57. He was a tough guy. He was a Fighter Pilot when he got over there. He went up twice in a glider, twice. His training was a long time. He was only taken up twice, and, of course, he did it twice. And he went in, as dennis explained, at night, behind enemy lines, and a field full of something, and his third glider landing, was under these conditions. And thats a pretty tough guy. [ applause ] what do you remember most about this operation in burma . The night that we were exposed to march the 6th, it was the tension that took place when they found out that it had been covered with logs, and they thought that jack had gotten wise to what was going on, and they were debating whether to change over from broadway. And and they finally decided that there wouldnt be a japanese at went out and decided to go in, cochran and alison were debating whether to if it wouldnt be a trap, not going in to and everything we knew, and it would be a trap there by the japanese. Well, i wonder if anybody in this audience has any questions for these guys. I hope you do. We got a couple microphones right here at the end of the aisle. And dont be shy. Get up here and ask some questions. Of any of them. Here is one. You talk about broadway. Now was that a clearing, a runway that had been there before or what . Whats the broadway was just a clearing in the jungle. It was code named broadway. They landed all the gliders there, found out it was pretty rough. One of those gliders had a miniature bulldozer, and they were able to build a rough strip, enough to land people on the following night. That looked like the best spot to try to and that be but [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2014] you are watching American History television all weekend, every weekend on cspan3. Cspanis on facebook at history. Next, civil war historians talk about the 1864 Overland Campaign in virginia. Learn the tactics of robert e lee and ulysses s grant. This event was part of the Civil War Institute annual summer conference. It runs about one hour. Good evening