Colin Kelly, USAAC, kia 10 Dec. '41

CaptainLewis · 10 December 2003, 12:03 PM

Today marks the 62nd anniversary of Capt. Colin Kelly's sacrifice... our first hero of the War in the Pacific. A few points, if I may:

1) He did not ram his plane into a Japanese battleship; even my mother, who was a teenager at that time, repeated this story for me, well into the 1990's. He and his crew did hit a Japanese warship; the identity of which, to this day, is still disputed. A best guess is that the ship was hit, but did not sink, although Kelly's crew did report major damage was inflicted...

2) While approaching Clark Field on his return, his plane, a B-17c, was shot down (by Saburo Sakai, in fact!); Kelly's heroism was that he kept the plane flying and steady after ordering his crew to bail out...

3) The Japanese pilots, after shooting down the B-17c, attempted again and again to machine gun the parachuting crew (they were not successful in this, fortunately)...

4) He was not awarded the MOH, but a DFC instead (despite the efforts of his surviving crew to have the medal upgraded)...

Lastly,
5) To this day, there is still some dispute as to whether or not Kelly's B-17 broke up in the air, or crash landed more or less intact (for it suffered two explosions, one in the nose, the other amidships); it just proves how unreliable eyewitnesses and participants can be...

Since this is a website dedicated to WW1 aviation, are any Forumites aware of a connection between our presence in the Philippines and the USAS? Well, on Corregidor, you'll find Kindley Field-- named after

Field Kindley ("Field Kindley Field"?); interestingly enough, Kindley Field was designed for airships!

Respectfully submitted,
Captain Lewis

TrueDogfighter · 10 December 2003, 02:27 PM

Sakai states in his memoir "Samurai!" that, contrae to popular belief, that they did not attempt to machine-gun the survivors as they hung in their cutes. He says it was pure propaganda.. in which I believe Sakai in his statements. I just got past this part in his memoirs, in which im reading. I believe if they attempted to machine-gun them in their parachutes.. they would have succeded in killing them because of their superior training.
These are my beliefs but I could be wrong (when is a 17 year old ever right anyways?

).
Tony

Barrett · 10 December 2003, 03:38 PM

Nobody seems to know how the Medal of Hono(u)r rumo(u)r got started, but in fact Kelly received the Distinguished Service Cross vice DFC. The US awards system is typically mismanaged even more than most countries', as several MoHs later were presented for exactly what Kelly did. I believe that if the event had occurred later in the war, MacArthur's PR shop would've ginned up the MoH, but he was losing big-time in December 41 and had other concerns.

Shooter · 10 December 2003, 05:20 PM

I have no dog in this fight. Kelly was an Army Air Force driver. But I think that he was a real hero. The Army and the nation as a whole did him great discredit by deceiving us as to what he did. His confirmed actions were heroic. The bull**** that ensued was unnecessary.

Some of the data was exaggerated, as is often the case. Some was fabricated, as is often the case. Whether he deserved the MoH is a matter that I will not explore.

Kelly remained with his stricken a/c to enable the rest of his crew to escape. He died in that effort. That is by any definition, heroic.

Shooter sends

PS: Should this not be in the Off Topic section?