From General Kenny's post-war book, "General Kenney Reports":
That same day the P-47s for the new fighter group began to arrive at
Brisbane on the same boat that brought Lieutenant Colonel Neel Kearby,
the group commander, and the rest of the squadron personnel. Kearby, a
short, slight, keen-eyed, black-haired Texan about thirty-two, looked like
money in the bank to me. About two minutes after he had introduced
himself he wanted to know who had the highest scores for shooting down
Jap aircraft. You felt that he just wanted to know who he had to beat. I
told him to take his squadron commanders and report to General
Wurtsmith at Port Moresby for a few days to get acquainted and then
come back to Brisbane, where we would erect the P-47s as fast as we got
them off the boats.
I then went out to Eagle Farms, where the erection was to be done, and
found that no droppable fuel tanks had come with the P-47s. Without the
extra gas carried in these tanks, the P-47 did not have enough range to
get into the war. I wired Arnold to send me some right away, by air if
possible. About a week later we received two samples. Neither held
enough fuel, they both required too many alterations to install, and they
both were difficult to release in an emergency. We designed and built one
of our own in two days. It tested satisfactorily from every angle and could
be installed in a matter of minutes without making any changes in the
airplane. I put the Ford Company of Australia to work making them. We had
solved that problem but it would be another month before we could use
the P-47s in combat. In the meantime, everyone in the 5th Air Force, from
Whitehead and Wurtsmith down, except the kids in the new group,
decided that the P-47 was no good as a combat airplane. Besides not
having enough gas, the rumors said it took too much runway to get off, it
had no maneuverability, it would not pull out of a dive, the landing gear
was weak, and the engine was unreliable.
I sent for Kearby and told him I expected him to sell the P-47 or go back
home. I knew it didn’t have enough gas but we would hang some more on
somehow and prove it as a combat plane, especially as it was the only
fighter that Arnold would give me in any quantities for some time. I told
Kearby that, regardless of the fact that everyone in the theater was sold
on the P-38, if the P-47 could demonstrate just once that it could perform
comparably I believed that the “Jug,” as the kids called it, would be looked
upon with more favor. I told him that Lieutenant Colonel George Prentice
would arrive that afternoon from New Guinea to take command of the new
P-38 group which I had formed and had started training out at Amberley
Field. He would probably celebrate a little tonight. I told Neel to keep away
from Prentice, go to bed early, and the first thing in the morning to hop
over to Amberley in his P-47 and challenge Prentice to a mock combat. Neel
Kearby was not only a good pilot but he had had several hundred
hours’ playing with a P-47 and could do better with it than anyone else.
Prentice was an excellent P-38 pilot, but for the sake of my sales argument
I hoped he wouldn’t be feeling in tiptop form when he accepted Neel’s
challenge.
The “combat” came off as I had hoped. Prentice was surprised at the
handling qualities of the P-47 against his P-38 and admitted that
Kearby “shot him down in flames” a half dozen times. He still preferred his
P-38 but began warning everyone not to sell the P-47 short. At the same
time he wanted to go to bed early that night and “have another combat
with Neel tomorrow.” I interfered at this point and said I didn’t want any
more of this challenge foolishness by them or anyone else and for both of
them to quit that stuff and tend to their jobs of getting a couple of new
groups into the war."
My regards,
Widewing
