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The RCAF in Alaska
EDITORS NOTE:
That the following story appeared in the English aviation weekly, the Aeroplane, for, 5 January of 1945 "I explain the style with its insistent optimism and ready propaganda, both very typical of published wartime material. Also typical is the studied omission of any identification of actual squadrons - even at such a late date, well after the event. It is felt that the wartime favour iteslf will be of interest to members and the article is also a factual account of one of the lesser known aspects of RCAF participation in World War II in the Pacific. Reference to 'RCAF Squadrons and Aircraft' by Kostenuk and Griffin informs us that six RCAF units were involved. Nos. 14(F) and 111(F) Squadrons both flying Curtis P-40 Kittyhawks were the only units to operate from forward bases in the Aleutian chain such as Umnak and Adak Islands. Nos. 118(F) and 135(F) with Kittyhawks and No. 149 (TB) with Beauforts operated from Annette Island in defence of the Alaska mainland as backup to the American units which had moved closer to the enemy occupied islands. No. 8 (BR) Squadron, with Bolingbrokes, functioned similarly from Anchorage. The earliest units arrived in June, 1942, and all had returned to Canada by November, 1943.
FOREWORD
As the war spotlight focussed on the drive against Japan during 1942 and 1943, a special chapter in the Pacific war developed which is little known in this country - the part played by the Royal Canadian Air Force in driving the Japanese from the Aleutian islands. This article is a condensation of a book written by an RCAF Public Relations officer, F/O David Griffin, stationed in the Aleutians at that time. This section was published in a special RCAF issue of THE AEROPLANE in 1945 and we thank that magazine and the Canadian Forces for the use of this excellent story. Unfortunately, Flying Officer Griffin was killed in an air crash in Labrador, while returning to Canada from another assignment in Iceland.
This is the story of the Royal Canadian Air Force adventure in Alaska and the Aleutian Islands in 1942/43. The RCAF rushed North from Canada at a time when it was badly needed to plug gaps in the United States North Pacific defence, and the RCAF pilots dealt the last blows at the Japanese before the little brown men retreated from Kiska, their last foothold on American continental soil.
Canadian airmen went to the Aleutian Islands in June 1942, just after a Japanese task force had tried to capture Dutch Harbour, the big United States naval base on Unalaska Island. Had the Japs succeeded in taking it they could have based here a battle fleet to cover progressive invasions that might have taken them as far as California. And their plan, as visualized in the famous Tanaka memoranda, would have been to colonize and exploit the American coastal area, using the Rocky Mountains as a barrier against counter-attack.
In short, had the Japs succeeded at Dutch Harbour, and had they not been held in check later, with the help of the Royal Canadian Air Force, the Pacific Coast of the North American continent might some day have been a Japanese province.
These Canadian youngsters of the RCAF helped write a new page in the history of aviation, for they flew and fought in one of the strangest parts of the World. They braved fog and storm, hardship and appalling isolation. They had to fight in a part of the World that might have been the other side of the moon, so little connection was there between it and the world they knew. And all the time they kept smiling and battling. Few people have any real conception of the Aleutian Islands. They probably think of icebergs, polar bears and seals, with maybe a few quaint Eskimos thrown in for local colour. They have somehow gotten the idea that the Aleutian Islands are in the Arctic Ocean-but they aren't at all.
Take your map and look at Alaska. Sticking out from what could be called the North-West corner of Alaska is the Alaska Peninsula. It goes West, away out into the North Pacific Ocean, pointing like a finger towards Asia. Off the end of the Alaska Peninsula the Aleutian Islands start. And they keep on going, like stepping stones, until they reach nearly to Japan. Attu, which is the farthest out on the chain, is within 750 miles of Paramushiro, at the North tip of the Kuriles Islands which are part of Japan proper. The Aleutian chain, therefore, points South-West, and the farther you advance along it from the American mainland the farther South you get.
Attu and Kiska, where the Japanese put holding forces when when they failed to snatch Dutch Harbour, are actually almost on the 52nd parallel of latitude. Amchitka and Adak and Umnak, used as bases for the recapture of the two outposts, are just bordering the line between 52 and 53 degrees North latitude. That is hardly the Arctic Circle. The Canadian city of Edmonton, Alta. - or in Britain the city of Newcastle - is about 55 degrees North.
But terrain and weather are terrible, particularly for flying. The islands themselves are volcanic, thrown up by some terrible disturbance of Nature not so very long ago, if you figure time by Nature's eternal clock. Some of them are just heaps of volcanic ash, covered with a thin layer of rotted vegetation. They have no trees, grow no food, and in peace-time they supported few people. Hunters and fishermen visited them, and Aleut Indians lived there, eking out some kind of an existence.
To help protect this string of islands, the Canadians went there in June, 1942. The U.S. knew that the Japs would try to take Aleutian bases, and General Simon Bolivar Buckner, who was in command of Alaska's defence, took positive steps. Even before the Jap sneak attack on Pearl Harbour, he had quietly brought equipment into the North and had it freighted out along the chain. He picked Umnak as the place from which to fight off a Japanese stab at Dutch Harbour, and on Umnak he set up a secret air base. When the Jap bombers came over Dutch Harbour on 2 June they did not reckon on opposition. Imagine their surprise when land-based fighter planes intercepted their bombers as they headed back to their carriers. The bombers took an awful beating. The Japs fell back on Kiska and Attu, nearly 1,000 miles away from Dutch Harbour, and there they dug in with 18,000 troops.
There they remained a constant menace, and the United States was not yet fully prepared for war.
Canada was prepared. The stepped-up production of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan had yielded a reserve pool of air crews. And the Royal Canadian Air Force "Home War" establishment was reasonably well equipped. Washington appealed to Ottawa and Ottawa passed the job to the RCAF's Western Air Command which already had pushed ahead our own Pacific Coast air defences, Air Vice-Marshal Leigh Stevenson, then the Air Officer Commanding on the West Coast, acted quickly.