Hewitt T. ‘Shorty’ Wheless and Boyd T. ‘Buzz’ Wagner: World War II Fighter Pilots

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That night, 300 B-29s bombed Tokyo, resulting in more than one-fourth of the city’s being consumed by fire. From that night on, the strategic bombing of Japan was done differently. Although credit for implementing that strategy went to General Curtis LeMay, the concept had actually originated with Brig. Gen. Thomas Power and Colonel Hewitt Wheless. The two men had gotten the idea after studying a strike photo of Tokyo, where several blocks of the city had burned after the last high-altitude raid. LeMay listened intently to their idea, then gave them 24 hours to put it into practice. The rest is history.

The other American airman who became a war hero early on in the conflict had quickly made a name for himself as a fighter pilot in the Pacific. In fact, 26-year-old 1st Lt. Buzz Wagner was described by those who knew of his exploits as the best fighter pilot they had ever seen. He was admired for his combat skills as well as his flying prowess.

Wagner was serving as commanding officer of the 17th Pursuit Squadron, stationed at Iba airfield, on the west coast of Luzon, when the Japanese struck the Philippines on December 8, 1941. By the end of that fateful day, only five of 18 Curtiss P-40Es of his squadron were left, and Iba, as a functioning base, had been mostly destroyed.

Early on the morning of December 12, Wagner — who up to that time had not seen any action — took off on a lone reconnaissance mission to observe the enemy ships off Aparri, where the Japanese had landed two days earlier. Because of the devastating losses suffered by the U.S. fighter force between December 8 and 10, orders had come down from headquarters restricting American fighters to fly reconnaissance only. Any confrontation with enemy fighters was to be avoided if at all possible. But Buzz Wagner was just about to be confronted with several very tempting targets.

The morning was overcast, forcing Wagner to rely on his compass to lead him to Aparri. Estimating that he was close to his objective after approximately 200 miles, he descended through the overcast, only to find himself practically on top of two Japanese destroyers. His appearance brought a quick response from the anti-aircraft gunners on the two ships, forcing Wagner to, as he later said, ‘turn nose-down and dive within a few feet of the water’ to avoid the heavy barrage.

Flying inland, directly into the morning sun, he was startled moments later by tracer fire zipping over his canopy. Looking back, he spotted a pair of Japanese fighters on his tail and three more above him. Surprised by how quick they were to respond to his presence, he ‘pulled nose-up…directly into the sun at full throttle. The two Nippos…lost me,’ he said, ‘[and] I went into a half barrel roll onto their tails….They were in close formation and both burst into flames almost simultaneously’ from the hammering by his six .50-caliber guns. According to author Walter Edmonds’ version of Wagner’s exploit in his book They Fought With What They Had, the Japanese aircraft were Nakajima Ki-27 ‘Nates,’ and on finding them on his tail, the American pilot’suddenly throttled back and let the astonished enemy flash past’ — which contradicts Wagner’s own account.

Looking down, Wagner found himself directly over the Aparri airfield, with 12 enemy fighters neatly lined up on the edge of the runway. ‘I made two passes at the field,’ Wagner said, and’saw five of them burst into flames.’

Just as he pulled up from his second pass, the American saw the three enemy fighters boring down on him. ‘I dropped [my] empty belly tank…and dived close to the ground, then gave it the needle and easily outdistanced them,’ Wagner recalled. ‘The last I saw of the field was two columns of black smoke.’

Not long after Wagner returned from that eventful mission, word of his foray reached the news-hungry correspondents hanging around General Douglas MacArthur’s headquarters in Manila. Wagner, it seemed, was well worth watching. Four days later, he proved that he was the fighter pilot hero they had been hoping to find.

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Tags: Aerial Combat, Aviation History, Historical Conflicts, World War II

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