Gramps is 93 and failing health prevents him from traveling now. I had written to a couple of you that he would visit in July and VOX him some questions but that is no longer a possibility. The guys and gals of this game are some of biggest fans of the men that flew all of these fantastic aircraft in combat during WW II. Of all of the folks I know, I thought you all would appreciate the accuracy of his flight record more than anyone else. His flight record was accumulated by a gentlemen that is writing the definitive story of the 38th Bomb Group (Sun Setters) during WW II. Because Gramps was in that bomb group, his record is being included in the manuscript. This is the author's note to me regarding the 38th's mission and Gramps participation in the 38th Sun Setters/71st Squadron - The Wolf Pack. I hope you enjoy reading as much as Gramps enjoyed doing it and knowing its posted here...he was very flattered.
A Condensed History of the 38th Bomb Group:
The 38th Bomb Group, known as the “Sun Setters,” entered combat on September 15, 1942. The Group initially operated out of Horn Island, a small island off the northwestern tip of Australia's Cape York Peninsula. A month later the unit moved up to Port Moresby, along the south coast of New Guinea. Port Morseby was at that time under direct threat from a Japanese land force pressing down from the north via the Kokoda Trail, which crossed the mountains of the imposing Owen Stanley Range making up the spine of New Guinea. This was not the first time the Japanese attempted to wrest Port Moresby from the Allies. In May 1942 they attempted to capture it by sea. This is what the Battle of the Coral Sea was about—Port Moresby. Had the Japanese succeeded, they would have been able to strike mainland Australia.
When the 38th Bomb Group entered combat, it did so in support of the Allied operations against the Japanese at Buna. It was from here that the Japanese sent troops across the Kokoda Trail towards Port Moresby. Buna fell to the Allies in January 1943. During the first week in January, the Japanese sent a convoy of reinforcements down from Rabaul to Lae, west of Buna and a major Japanese base due to its deep-water harbor. The whole of Fifth Air Force (of which the 38th was part) was tasked with taking out this convoy. It failed to do so, but General Kenney, commander Fifth Air Force, did learn a valuable lesson. One squadron from the 3rd Bomb Group had attacked the ships of the convoy at masthead level, which proved effective, and thus Kenney decided to modify the B-25s in the theater to carry .50-caliber machine guns in their noses and along the sides of the forward fuselage. This development meant that, in the future, B-25s would have eight .50-caliber machine guns fixed to fire forward, allowing pilots to suppress whatever anti-aircraft fire they encountered when attacking ground or shipping targets. These modifications would not be made until the spring (405th Squadron) and summer (71st Squadron) of 1943. In March 1943, however, the Japanese made another attempt to reinforce Lae. The 71st Squadron would attack the convoy from medium altitude, but the 405th Squadron, as well as all the aircraft from the 3rd Bomb Group and some Australian squadrons, would attack at minimum altitude. The Japanese lost the entire convoy in what became known as The Battle of the Bismarck Sea.
Activity for the Group slowed down considerably after the Bismarck Sea battle, largely due to the weather in New Guinea during what is their winter. As the year went on, the 38th continued to participate in the campaign to wrest Lae from the Japanese, which finally happened in September 1943. In the meantime, two new squadrons, the 822nd and 823rd, were in Australia finishing up their training before joining the 38th Bomb Group. During World War II, a bomb group consisted of four squadrons. Two of the 38th's Squadrons—the 69th and 70th—were detached from the 38th shortly after the battle of Midway, in which two planes (B-26s) from the 38th participated. Thus, for the entirety of its combat operations overseas until this point, the 38th was only at half strength (which, incidentally, made my job of writing the history much easier). The 822nd and 823rd Squadrons joined the rest of the Group in September 1943 and continued training for a few more weeks before entering combat.
At the same time as the 822nd and 823rd were training in Australia, the 71st and 405th Squadrons were participating in yet another effort to eliminate Japanese resistance on New Guinea, this time at Wewak, an enormous complex of four airfields the were home to the bulk of Japanese air strength. In other words, gaining air superiority over New Guinea skies required that the Japanese at Wewak be eliminated. Wewak was a long way from Allied lines, but an extra fuel tank was added to the B-25 which gave it the needed range to make it there and back. The Japanese did not know Fifth Air Force's strafers could make it to Wewak, and were thus completely surprised by the first attack. Wewak would continue to occupy Fifth Air Force well into 1944.
In the meantime, the capture of Lae allowed the Allies to continue forward with their campaign to control both Papua New Guinea and the vital sea lanes to the north of the island. The next step in that effort was to neutralize Rabaul, thus preventing the Japanese navy from sending any more reinforcements to New Guinea or other parts of the theater. The first major attack on the base was on October 12, 1943. Heavy bomb groups had been striking the Japanese bastion since 1942, but it was not until late 1943 that Rabaul began to really feel the brunt of Fifth Air Force's efforts. The attack came as a complete surprise to the Japanese, though once the attack came they knew it was a prelude to invasion. The Allies had decided months before that invading Rabaul would be far too costly, and were content to isolate it and let the Japanese starve to death. Another large strike against Rabaul occurred on November 2, 1943. This attack, however, was directed at the shipping in Simpson Harbor in an effort to keep the Japanese navy from sending a counter-invasion force to push the marines off of Bougainville, an island east of New Britain.
James Shurig entered combat shortly after that engagement. It was a pretty a pretty inauspicious start. He piloted a plane across the Owen Stanley Range to Dobodura on November 10, 1943. Dobodura was the base from which the 38th staged for operations further afield (Rabaul, Wewak, etc.). The rumor was that another strike on Rabaul was in the works. It didn't materialize, and the crews returned to Port Moresby the next day.
The next campaign for the Allies on New Guinea was to invade southern New Britain in an effort to control both coastlines of the Vitiaz and Dampier Straits. By capturing Cape Gloucester and Arawe in southwestern New Britain, the Allies would accomplish this, in turn easing their advance further west on New Guinea. Shurig's first combat mission came, to the extent that our records indicate, on December 14, 1943. It was a strike on Arawe Island. The marines hit the beach the next day. Shurig was the co-pilot of B-25 #41-12938, which was formerly known as “Ole Cappy” and now carried the nickname “Gregory.” There is a profile painting of this aircraft in the book, and coincides with a detailed history of the plane in Appendix five.
Shurig spent the first 20 or so of his 52 combat missions with the 71st Squadron as a co-pilot, many of them in support of the Western New Britain campaign in one way or another (missions 12/14-29/43, see attached chart). The marines hit the beaches at Cape Gloucester on Christmas Day 1943, and later said it was the easiest landing they ever made during the war.
With the success of the Western New Britain campaign, the Allies continued their push west across Papua, beginning with Saidor. Saidor was surrounded by mountains and immediately bordered by swamps. The soil did not support roads; stones covered most of the beaches, and reefs off the coast made shipping prospects tenuous at best. In other words, Saidor was a terrible place for a base. Further southwest (about 50 miles), however, was Gusap, which the Allies wanted to turn into an advanced airbase. The Allies couldn't control Gusap with Saidor (and its airfield) in Japanese hands, and so it had to be taken rather than isolated. The Invasion was scheduled for January 2, 1944, and the 38th Bomb Group flew a mission to take out whatever defenses it could the day before. Shurig flew as a co-pilot on that mission, and continued to fly in support of ground forces fighting the Japanese at Saidor and the surrounding area for the next three weeks (missions 1/1-20/44).
