http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/819407153

Every day a nightmare : American pursuit pilots in the defense of Java, 1941-1942

In December 1941, War Department sent two transports and freighter carrying 103 P-40 fighters and pilots to Philipines to help Gen. Douglas MacArthur's Far East Air Force. They were diverted to Australia, with new orders to ferry P-40s to Philippines from Australia through Dutch East Indies. On January 12, 1942, the first of key refueling stops in East Indies fell to rapidly advancing Japanese forces, resulting in a break in their ferry route and another change in their orders. This time pilots would fly their aircraft to Java to participate in Allied defense of that Japanese objective. Except for pilots from the Philippines, almost all of other pilots assigned to five provisional pursuit squadrons ordered to Java were recent graduates of flying school with a few hours on P-40. Only forty-three of them made it to their assigned destination; the rest suffered accidents in Australia, were shot down over Bali and Darwin, or lost in sinking of USS Langley as it carried thirty-two of them to Java. Even those who did reach the secret field on Java wondered if they had been sacrificed for no purpose. As the Japanese air assault intensified, the Allied defense collapsed. Only eleven Japanese aircraft fell to the P-40s. William H. Bartsch pored through personal diaries and memoirs of participants, cross-checking primary sources against Japanese aerial combat records of the period and supplementing them with official records and other American, Dutch, and Australian accounts. His thorough research situates the Java pursuit pilots' experiences within context of the strategic situation in early days of the Pacific theater--Publisher's description.

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