World War II: Dick Suehr Flew to Defend Port Moresby

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For every thoroughbred World War II fighter that engendered fond memories for its fliers, there is another whose pilots may feel lucky just to have survived flying it. Among the latter was the Bell P-39 Airacobra, a promising high-performance design with the engine mounted behind the pilot and a 37mm cannon firing through the propeller shaft. By the time Bell had completed the P-39’s development to meet U.S. Army Air Corps requirements, however, the Airacobra had lost its turbosupercharger and was overweight. Its performance was inferior to that of most of the aircraft it would have to fight.

‘I’ll give Bell credit for going to the nose wheel — you could drive a P-39 just like a car, from the landing field to the hangar,’ recalled Thomas L. Hayes, who had flown Curtiss P-40Es over the Dutch East Indies and P-39Ds over New Guinea in 1942 before scoring 8 1/2 victories flying North American P-51 Mustangs with the Eighth Air Force over Europe in 1944. ‘Like the P-40, however, the P-39 had little high-altitude capability, and the Japanese were always above us. The P-39 was very demanding; its high wing loading made it less maneuverable than the P-40. With the engine behind the pilot, it could easily spin flat or inverted.’

Although Soviet pilots did well with Lend-Lease P-39s in the low-level environment in which they typically fought over the steppes, American pilots generally found themselves at a severe disadvantage in the Pacific, engaging Japanese Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero fighters at intermediate altitudes. Moreover, the Airacobra jockeys serving in New Guinea found themselves up against some of the best pilots in the Japanese navy — the aces of the Tainan Kokutai (naval air group), based at Lae. On top of all else, while the P-39’s 37mm cannon could be murderous to anything it happened to hit, not all Airacobras had them. Many of the Bell fighters were P-400s — export variants with a 20mm cannon in place of the 37mm weapon, shipped to Britain, only to be rejected and returned. They were then shipped off to American units in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, where a P-400 came to be defined as ‘a P-39 with a Zero on its tail.’

Surviving in an Airacobra was something of an accomplishment in the Pacific. Scoring a victory in one was an even greater achievement, and it is little wonder that several of those pilots who did so went on to become aces once they got their hands on a better fighter. One of that ‘rare breed’ is Dick Suehr, who while flying a P-400 managed to open his account with one of the dreaded Tainan Kokutai’s Zeros and went on to become an ace in the Lockheed P-38F Lightning.

Born in Crafton, Pa., on May 4, 1917, Richard Charles Suehr graduated from Marquette University in 1940 with a degree in biology. He promptly joined the Army Reserves and served as a flying cadet from March 17 to October 31, 1941. Commissioned a second lieutenant and rated a pilot at Craig Field, Ala., at the end of October, he joined the 66th Squadron of the 57th Pursuit Group, but after Pearl Harbor he requested a combat assignment and was shipped out to Darwin, Australia, with the 33rd Pursuit Squadron (Provisional). By the end of December 1941, Lieutenant Suehr had accumulated 217 hours 15 minutes of training time and 14 hours 30 minutes of pursuit time — all of which nearly came to naught when he was forced to crash-land while en route to Darwin.

After spending some time in the hospital, Suehr transferred to the 39th Squadron of the 35th Pursuit Group in April 1942. Equipped with P-39s and P-400s, the 39th was based at Port Moresby, on the southern coast of New Guinea, helping to defend that vital sea and air base from the threat of Japanese invasion by both land and sea. Between offensives, Port Moresby was the constant target of Japanese air attacks, at the same time launching strikes of its own against the enemy air bases at Lae and Salamaua. It was at that time, too, that the 39th Squadron was suffering its heaviest casualties at the hands of crack Tainan Kokutai pilots such as Junichi Sasai, Toshio Ota, Saburo Sakai and Hiroyoshi Nishizawa.

In spite of the shabby reputation the Airacobra acquired in the Pacific, Suehr got along fairly well with his aircraft. ‘I never got into an inverted spin in all the time I flew it,’ he said. ‘I figured the answer to that was to keep the needle and the ball in the center. As long as you did that, you didn’t have any trouble. I thought it was a beautiful airplane and I loved to fly it, but I didn’t love to fly it in combat. It just looked nice, but when you got to 20,000 feet, forget it. You [chose] between a stall and maximum speed — there was no in between. The Zeros were always above us and we couldn’t touch ‘em in a 39 until they came to engage us. You could do one thing with a P-39 — if a Zero was on your tail, you pushed the throttle forward and you dove. Charles King and I disagreed on the P-39. Charlie King flew the thing long before I did. Whenever he heard me cursing the Airacobra as no good, he’d say, `No, it was good airplane.”

As it happened, Suehr’s first combat in an Airacobra brought him his first victory. At 0851 on the morning of June 9, 1942, 11 Martin B-26 Marauders of the 22nd Bomb Group departed Port Moresby’s Seven-Mile Airdrome to attack Lae. One plane — The Heckling Hare, piloted by 1st Lt. Walter H. Greer and carrying a congressman and future president, U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Lyndon Baines Johnson, as an observer — developed generator problems, compelling its pilot to drop its bombs 80 miles short of the target and return to base. The other Marauders were intercepted by elements of the Tainan Kokutai and pursued to Cape Ward Hunt, where a Zero pilot, Petty Officer 1st Class Saburo Sakai, claimed two of the B-26s. One, The Virginian, crashed in the sea off Salamaua, killing 1st Lt. Willis G. Bench and his crew. The other, Rum Runner, was badly shot up but managed to reach Seven-Mile Airdrome before crashing, and was later made airworthy again.

At 1040, just as the Zeros were breaking off their engagement with the fleeing B-26s, one of their flights was suddenly jumped by eight P-400s of the 39th Squadron. ‘We didn’t have the range to go over the target with the B-26s,’ Suehr explained,’so we made arrangements to meet them when they were on the way back and escort them home. They were already being shot at when we got there, so we bugged on in there.

‘The Zeros were down below us,’ he continued, ‘and that’s the only time they were down below us. They were shootin’ the hell out of those B-26s, and they weren’t paying attention to us. We got down to their level, and I started shootin’ right away. I’d have to admit I was scared, and I was firing out of range. I soon got hold of myself, though, and waited until I got closer before I fired again, and I got one of the Zeros. It was my first combat mission in a P-39, and I got scared, just like a lot of people, but that’s the only time I was ever scared.’

Two Japanese airmen paid the price for underestimating Airacobras. In addition to Suehr’s success, 2nd Lt. Curran L. ‘Jack’ Jones shot down the Japanese flight leader. Jones, born in Columbia, S.C., on October 4, 1919, had attended Clemson Agricultural and Mining College but left the school in his senior year to join the U.S. Army Reserve. He became a flying cadet on October 14, 1940, and qualified as a pilot — and received his commission as second lieutenant — at Maxwell Field, Ala., on May 29, 1941. He was then assigned to the 39th Squadron of the 31st Pursuit Group, which was transferred to the 35th Group on January 15, 1942.

Jack Jones was leading a four-plane element in 1st Lt. Robert ‘Joe’ Green’s flight when he spotted a Zero below and radioed, ‘Joe, I’m taking my four and going down.’ Jones later recalled, ‘All four of us took a potshot at him,’ but the Zero was still twisting away when Jones sensed something coming up on him and radioed, ‘Is that you behind me, Bartlett?’ The reply from 2nd Lt. Price Bartlett was ‘No,’ and Jones looked back to see another Zero about to attack the rearmost Airacobra. ‘I made a turn and shot that one down while he was still approaching my No. 4 man,’ Jones recalled. As the Zero made its final 5,000-foot descent, Jones remembered seeing the pilot — who had no parachute — slide back the canopy and step out onto the wing. The Japanese airman was still forlornly holding onto the side of his cockpit as Jones watched him go the rest of the way down and hit the water.

Many years later, on meeting Jones at a symposium in Fredericksburg, Texas, in 1988, Saburo Sakai — who had survived the war with 64 victories — told Jones that his victim had been Warrant Officer Satoshi Yoshino, credited with 15 Allied planes at the time of his death. ‘You must have been a great pilot yourself to have downed my comrade,’ Sakai said. ‘Yoshino was one of our outstanding pilots.’ Japanese records also identified Dick Suehr’s victim as Petty Officer 1st Class Sakyo Kikuchi.

Five days before Suehr and Jones scored their first successes, the U.S. Navy had won a far more significant victory, sinking four Japanese aircraft carriers for the loss of one at the Battle of Midway. The Japanese had lost the initiative in the Pacific, and the United States tried to seize it by invading the island of Guadalcanal on August 7. As the Japanese strove to retake the island, activity shifted to the Solomons, including the transfer of the Tainan Kokutai from Lae to Rabaul, New Britain. During that relative lull over New Guinea, Suehr was promoted to first lieutenant on September 3.

In the following month, the 39th became the first squadron in the Fifth Air Force to be re-equipped with Lockheed P-38F Lightnings. The new fighter was intrinsically a vast improvement over the Airacobra, but its highly sophisticated systems were at first a challenge to the ground crewmen — especially when operating in the tropical heat and frequent rainstorms they had to deal with in New Guinea. Once the maintenance crews had ironed out the initial bugs, such as superchargers that had to be constantly synchronized and fuel tanks that leaked after expanding under the sun, the P-38s flew their first combat sortie, a raid on the airfield at Lae, on November 26.

Suehr recalled that the Lightning’s most obvious improvement over the Airacobra was its high-altitude performance. ‘When we got the P-38s,’ he said, ‘[Lt. Gen. George C.] Kenney ordered us to fly them no lower than 25,000 feet until we were in combat. The other squadrons that were still flying P-39s and P-40s used to call us the `high-altitude foxholes,’ because we weren’t allowed to go below 25,000 to 30,000 feet.’

Other changes took place in December 1942. On the 4th, Jones, who had been promoted to first lieutenant on July 3, became a captain. On the 18th, a Japanese army fighter unit, the 11th Sentai (regiment), arrived at Rabaul to assist the straining Japanese naval squadrons with their duties over New Guinea. The 11th Sentai’s experienced pilots had distinguished themselves over China in 1938 and against the Soviet army air force over Nomonhan in 1939. The unit’s aircraft, however, was the Nakajima Ki.43, called Hayabusa (peregrine falcon) by the Japanese and code-named ‘Oscar’ by the Allies. Although it was even more maneuverable than the navy Zero, the Hayabusa was some 30 mph slower, structurally weaker and — equipped with two 7.7 mm or 12.7mm machine guns — less well-armed.

Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Aerial Combat, Airborne Operations, Aviation History, Historical Conflicts, World War II

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