WWII: How did you get to fly?

Scott: Well, word got around that I was trying to get into the war, and one day I got a call from what today would be military intelligence. I was told to report to March Field. I drove 90 mph; it was the closest I came to death in the whole war!

WWII: [Note: Scott was tapped for a special mission as a member of Task Force Aquila, which was to bomb Japan. Asked if he had ever flown a B-17, he replied in the affirmative, although at the time he had never even been in one. He was chosen for the special mission; however, after flying to Burma via South America and Africa, the men of the task force learned that Bataan and Corregidor had fallen and that the plan had been disrupted. He was then assigned to flying 'the Hump' over the Himalayas to supply the Chinese forces of Chiang Kai-shek at Chungking.] What was flying the Hump like? Surely the Japanese tried to disrupt your supply flights.

PRIMEDIA Archives

Assigned to the Assam-Burma-China Ferry Command in the spring of 1942, Scott befriended Brig. Gen. Claire L. Chennault of the China Air Task Force. Here, Lt. Col. Herbert Morgan, Chennault, Scott and Colonel William E. Basye confer before a CATF raid.

Scott: Of course they did. We flew Douglas C-47s without escorts until I started escorting them with a plane loaned to us by Colonel Claire Chennault. When we flew unescorted and saw a Japanese plane, we simply flew into the clouds. Sometimes those clouds had what we called ‘hard centers.’ We were told that if we flew at 16,000 feet we would be okay, even though we couldn’t see. One time I came out of a cloud bank at 16,500 feet and stared right into one of the Himalayan mountains. I had to climb to more than 17,000 feet to get over it.

WWII: But this was not what you wanted to do in the war.

Scott: That’s right, but we had no formal American fighting units in the area at that time. The only unit was the American Volunteer Group organized by Chennault. It had been operating in China about two months. The AVG, as it was called, was the famous Flying Tigers. To the Chinese, AVG stood for ‘America Very Good.’ They never had more than 55 planes, but they ultimately shot down almost 300 Japanese aircraft. I wanted so much to get with that group so that I could fight. I met Chennault while flying him supplies. They weren’t sending him what he needed — bombs, ammunition, proper clothing — but whatever odds and ends they had in supply. I managed to get him a load of gasoline, and while I was in supply I saw hundreds of cases of Camel cigarettes. I knew that he smoked Camels, so I stole a number of cases. I could have gotten into real trouble. When we landed at his base at Loiwing in Burma, I had the cigarettes positioned so that they could be easily seen when the cargo door was opened. He came onto the field when my plane landed, and although he saw the cigarettes, he shouted ‘Get that plane off the field!’ He had received warning of an imminent Japanese attack. There was an old P-40 on the field, and I thought that the Japanese would probably attack that first. I told him that I would move the P-40. Then he saw my colonel’s eagles on my collar and said, ‘You’re too high a rank to be flying a fighter.’ I replied, ‘I didn’t think that you cared what rank someone was, just so they would fight.’ I went and jumped into the P-40, and it cranked immediately. I decided to take it up and show Chennault what I could do against the Japanese. It was a stupid thing to do. The plane ran very rough, but I got her up. Then I decided to try the guns, but there was no ammunition. Fortunately, the alert was false. After I landed, Chennault came up to me and said, ‘You’d better come with me.’ He took me into his basha [mud hut] and gave me a drink of Haig and Haig. Then he said to me: ‘How in the hell did you get that plane started? We’ve been trying for months to get it going.’ About a week later he loaned me a plane, but only if I agreed to use it. I was so afraid that he would take it back that I took it up five times a day.

WWII: What was Chennault like?

Scott: He was great! A wonderful leader! He himself did everything that he expected of his men. He did not have much tact, though. At the beginning of the war when he asked General ‘Hap’ Arnold for 500 planes, Arnold said, ‘I don’t have 500 planes.’ Chennault then curtly replied, ‘Then, General, you don’t have an air force.’ He had collided with General Clayton Bissell earlier in life, and there was constant friction between the two men. All of Chennault’s men also disliked Bissell. They taught the Chinese gasoline truck driver to greet anyone disembarking from a plane with the words ‘piss on Bissell.’ These were the only English words he spoke, and he did not know what they meant, but the word got to General Bissell and he knew its origin.

WWII: Did you personally ever run afoul of Bissell?

Scott: Yes. When I was being sent back to the United States, I was expected to tell Bissell goodbye. It was military etiquette to do this when you left a post. One of his officers came to me and asked, ‘When are you coming to tell the general goodbye?’ I told him that I didn’t intend to come at all. He went back and told Bissell. He returned later to say that I would appear at General Bissell’s office at a certain time to perform the formalities. When I went to Bissell’s office, he was counting his pay voucher. I saluted, but he didn’t return it. In the military, a junior officer must maintain a salute until his superior officer returns it. He kept on working for a time, ignoring me. Then he asked why I was telling jokes on him, referring to the words the Chinese driver was repeating. He thought that I had started it. I told him that I had not, that it had been started by Chennault’s men, but since I had laughed at it, I was as guilty as they were. Then I made a reference to his flying citations in World War I and said that I had always wanted him to lead my squadron in a mission. He looked up and pleasantly asked why. And I replied, ‘So that I could shoot you down!’ Years later, General Chennault was visiting my wife and me in Florida, and when my wife went to fix lunch, he asked me if I had really said that to Bissell. I replied that I had, and he then told me that he had warned Bissell not to go up with me because ‘that son of a bitch will shoot you down!’

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