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Contact Info
Home Town Quitman, Arkansas
Last Address Manila, Philippines
Date of Passing Oct 11, 1957
Location of Interment Barrancas National Cemetery (VA) - Pensacola, Florida
Col. Paul I. "Pappy" Gunn was one of the true characters and heros of World War II. When the war broke out, he was a retired US Navy enlisted pilot living in Manila, along with his wife and four children. Immediately after Pearl Harbor and the attack on Clark Field, he was inducted into the Army with the rank of captain and placed in command of an air transport squadron consisting of his own airplanes and others that had been confiscated by the military. For the first few weeks of the war he flew cargo and passenger missions all over the Philippines in his Beech 18. Just before Christmas he was ordered to fly a load of Far East Air Force staff officers to Australia and when he arrived, he was ordered to remain. Frustrated that his family was still in the Philippines and in Japanese hands, he began a one-man war to liberate them. He flew missions from Australia to Mindanao and on to Bataan. He reportedly flew fighters with the Royal Australian Air Force during the defense of Rabaul and was shot down and spent two weeks walking out of the jungle. When he returned to Australia, he was put in command of all air transport aircraft in Australia in the 21st Air Transport Squadron, which was later designated as "troop carrier." In March 1942 literally stole enough B-25s that had been consigned to the Dutch to equip a squadron of the 3rd Attack Group, which had arrived in Australia without airplanes. He was transferred to the 3rd Attack to lead the Royce Mission of ten B-25s and three B-17s from Mindanao and reportedly sank a Japanese freighter using the new technique of skip-bombing.
A mechanical genius, he modified the 3rd Attack Group's Douglas A-20 Boston bombers by packing the noses full of surplus .50-caliber machineguns. He was working on the project when Lt. General George Kenney arrived in Australia to take command of US air operations in the Southwest Pacific. Recognizing genius, Kenney immediately transferred Gunn, now a major, to his staff and put him in charge of special projects. The A-20s proved so successful that Kenney gave Gunn permission to convert a squadron of B-25s. In March 1943, the modified A-20s and B-25s literally won the Battle of the Bismarck Sea in what historian Samuel Eliot Morrison described as "the most destructive attack on ships by air" (except for Pearl Harbor. He was an inspiration fo the young airmen in Fifth Air Force and kept them entertained with his tales.
For the invasion of the Philippines, Kenney put Gunn, now a Lt. Col, in charge of a special battalion of airplane mechanics and engineers who went in with the invasion fleet. It is believed that Gunn went in ahead of the invasion from a submarine and organized Filipino guerrillas. He was put out of action when a piece of white phosphorous from a Japanese bomb imbedded itself in his arm. He was air-evaced to Australia, where he remained in a hospital until the end of the war. When Allied troops landed on Luzon, General MacArthur dispatched a special mission to free the internees at the camp where the Gunn family was held. MacArthur personally greeted the Gunns and had them flown to Australia to join their father in his personal C-54.
After the war Colonel Gunn returned to the Philippines and after the Philippines Air Lines was nationalized, he started his own air taxi company with the US government as his biggest customer. He and his pilots flew guns and other cargo all over the Southwest Pacific supporting US interests, including the overthrow of the Dutch in Indonesia. After the communist victory in China, he flew Nationalists to Formosa and later flew non-communist Vietnamese to Saigon from Hanoi. He died in 1959 when his Beech 18 apparently flew into a mircoburst and was forced into the water. Although he recovered from the strike with the water, he lost his life when the airplane struck a mango tree and flew into the ground.
Col. Paul I "Pappy" Gunn will be inducted into the Arkansas Aviation Hall of Fame in November.
WWII - Pacific Theater of Operations/Air Offensive Campaign Japan (1942-45)
From Month/Year
April / 1942
To Month/Year
September / 1945
Description (Air Offensive Campaign Japan 17 April 1942 to 2 September 1945) The United States strategic bombing of Japan took place between 1942 and 1945. In the last seven months of the campaign, a change to firebombing resulted in great destruction of 67 Japanese cities, as many as 500,000 Japanese deaths and some 5 million more made homeless. Emperor Hirohito's viewing of the destroyed areas of Tokyo in March 1945 is said to have been the beginning of his personal involvement in the peace process, culminating in Japan's surrender five months later.
The first U.S. raid on the Japanese main island was the Doolittle Raid of 18 April 1942, when sixteen B-25 Mitchells were launched from the USS Hornet (CV-8) to attack targets including Yokohama and Tokyo and then fly on to airfields in China. The raids were military pinpricks but a significant propaganda victory. Because they were launched prematurely, none of the aircraft had enough fuel to reach their designated landing sites, and so either crashed or ditched (except for one aircraft, which landed in the Soviet Union, where the crew was interned). Two crews were captured by the Japanese.
The key development for the bombing of Japan was the B-29 Superfortress, which had an operational range of 1,500 miles (2,400 km); almost 90% of the bombs (147,000 tons) dropped on the home islands of Japan were delivered by this bomber. The first raid by B-29s on Japan was on 15 June 1944, from China. The B-29s took off from Chengdu, over 1,500 miles away. This raid was also not particularly effective: only forty-seven of the sixty-eight bombers hit the target area; four aborted with mechanical problems, four crashed, six jettisoned their bombs because of mechanical difficulties, and others bombed secondary targets or targets of opportunity. Only one B–29 was lost to enemy aircraft. The first raid from east of Japan was on 24 November 1944, when 88 aircraft bombed Tokyo. The bombs were dropped from around 30,000 feet (10,000 m) and it is estimated that only around 10% hit their targets.
Raids of Japan from mainland China, called Operation Matterhorn, were carried out by the Twentieth Air Force under XX Bomber Command. Initially the commanding officer of the Twentieth Air Force was Hap Arnold, and later Curtis LeMay. Bombing from Japan from China was never a satisfactory arrangement because not only were the Chinese airbases difficult to supply—materiel being sent by air from India over "the Hump"—but the B-29s operating from them could only reach Japan if they traded some of their bomb load for extra fuel in tanks in the bomb-bays. When Admiral Chester Nimitz's island-hopping campaign captured Pacific islands close enough to Japan to be within the B-29's range, the Twentieth Air Force was assigned to XXI Bomber Command, which organized a much more effective bombing campaign of the Japanese home islands. Based in the Marianas (Guam and Tinian in particular), the B-29s were able to carry their full bomb loads and were supplied by cargo ships and tankers.
Conventional bombs from B-29s destroyed over 40% of the urban area in Japan's six greatest industrial cities
Unlike all other forces in theater, the USAAF Bomber Commands did not report to the commanders of the theaters but directly to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In July 1945, they were placed under the U.S. Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific, which was commanded by General Carl Spaatz.
As in Europe, the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) tried daylight precision bombing. However, it proved to be impossible due to the weather around Japan, "during the best month for bombing in Japan, visual bombing was possible for [just] seven days. The worst had only one good day." Further, bombs dropped from a great height were tossed about by high winds.
General LeMay, commander of XXI Bomber Command, instead switched to mass firebombing night attacks from altitudes of around 7,000 feet (2,100 m) on the major conurbations. "He looked up the size of the large Japanese cities in the World Almanac and picked his targets accordingly." Priority targets were Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, and Kobe. Despite limited early success, particularly against Nagoya, LeMay was determined to use such bombing tactics against the vulnerable Japanese cities. Attacks on strategic targets also continued in lower-level daylight raids.
The first successful firebombing raid was on Kobe on 3 February 1945, and following its relative success the USAAF continued the tactic. Nearly half of the principal factories of the city were damaged, and production was reduced by more than half at one of the port's two shipyards.
Much of the armor and defensive weaponry of the bombers was removed to allow increased bomb loads; Japanese air defense in terms of night-fighters and anti-aircraft guns was so feeble it was hardly a risk. The first raid of this type on Tokyo was on the night of 23–24 February when 174 B-29s destroyed around one square mile (3 km²) of the city. Following on that success, as Operation Meetinghouse, 334 B-29s raided on the night of 9–10 March, dropping around 1,700 tons of bombs. Around 16 square miles (41 km²) of the city was destroyed and over 100,000 people are estimated to have died in the fire storm. The destruction and damage was at its worst in the city sections east of the Imperial Palace. It was the most destructive conventional raid, and the deadliest single bombing raid of any kind in terms of lives lost, in all of military aviation history. The city was made primarily of wood and paper, and Japanese firefighting methods were not up to the challenge. The fires burned out of control, boiling canal water and causing entire blocks of buildings to spontaneously combust from the heat. The effects of the Tokyo firebombing proved the fears expressed by Admiral Yamamoto in 1939: "Japanese cities, being made of wood and paper, would burn very easily. The Army talks big, but if war came and there were large-scale air raids, there's no telling what would happen."[179]
In the following two weeks, there were almost 1,600 further sorties against the four cities, destroying 31 square miles (80 km²) in total at a cost of 22 aircraft. By June, over forty percent of the urban area of Japan's largest six cities (Tokyo, Nagoya, Kobe, Osaka, Yokohama, and Kawasaki) was devastated. LeMay's fleet of nearly 600 bombers destroyed tens of smaller cities and manufacturing centres in the following weeks and months.
Leaflets were dropped over cities before they were bombed, warning the inhabitants and urging them to escape the city. Though many, even within the Air Force, viewed this as a form of psychological warfare, a significant element in the decision to produce and drop them was the desire to assuage American anxieties about the extent of the destruction created by this new war tactic. Warning leaflets were also dropped on cities not in fact targeted, to create uncertainty and absenteeism.
