Chester M. (“Coondog”) Conrad
Maj. Chester M. Conrad (right), in command of the 3rd Bomb Squadron at Moran Field in Upper Assam, India, consults with Capt. Louis F. Graves Jr. (left), squadron navigator and acting historical officer. The two men had previously served together in the 2nd Bomb Squadron, the first squadron of the Chinese-American Composite Wing to be activated. Note the perforated steel strips, called “Marston mats,” that allowed the squadron’s B-25s to take off and land, even during monsoon season.
Capt. Chester M. Conrad arrived at Malir Airdrome on March 1, 1944, soon after the Third Bomb Squadron was activated. Capt. Conrad, former 1st Bomb Group assistant operations and training officer at Kweilin (now Guilin), was promoted to major and placed in command, as other personnel arrived to fill the squadron’s ranks. Known as "Chet" back home in Sikeston, Missouri, he had picked up the sobriquet "Coondog" somewhere along the way (his radio call sign, according to my father, who was attached to the squadron the following month).
Conrad had enlisted in the Missouri National Guard on February 6, 1933. He gave his date of birth as July 3, 1914; he was born on that date in 1917. He served until May 1938. As left tackle on the school’s football team, he had been a star player at Sikeston High School and graduated about 1935. He graduated in May 1940 from Southeast Missouri State Teachers College at Cape Girardeau. An All-Star lineman on the football team, he later became an assistant athletic coach. He was employed by Southeast Missouri Telephone Company after graduation.
Conrad enlisted in the US Army Air Corps as an aviation cadet in March 1941. Primary flight training was at the Missouri Institute of Aeronautics in Sikeston. After completing advanced flight training, he served as an instructor at various airfields throughout the South. Promoted to captain, he reported for duty on July 21, 1943, at HQ 2nd Staging Squadron, Floridian Hotel in Miami Beach. Conrad was part of a group sent by air to the China-Burma-India Theater soon afterward. At Malir near Karachi (then in Pakistan but now part of India), he was attached to the Chinese-American Composite Wing’s first Operational Training Unit and began instructing Chinese pilots to operate the American-made B-25 bombers, using the latest in American standards and procedures. Attached to the 2nd Bomb Squadron of the 1st Bomb Group as a pilot, he moved to China in October 1943. He returned to Karachi the following spring, when his expertise was required for leading the CACW’s final of its four bomb squadrons.
Maj. Conrad had repeatedly proved his capabilities before his appointment as squadron CO. In January 1944, while serving with the 2nd Bomb Squadron, Conrad took off from Erh Tong Airfield at Kweilin aboard a B-25H to search for enemy shipping south along the coast. Near Maoming, he encountered a Japanese “Sally”—a Mitsubishi Ki-21 heavy bomber—and a fierce exchange of gunfire ensued. Because tracers from both turrets hit the “Sally,” and it apparently never pulled up after diving away from the B-25, Conrad and his crew claimed it as probably destroyed. TSgt. John P. Hanrahan, operating the top turret guns, was given credit for the kill, qualifying him for membership in the prestigious "Pistol Packin' Papas"—those members of the bomb group credited with shooting down an enemy aircraft.
After completion of training in May 1944, Conrad’s squadron moved to Moran Field, in the Brahmaputra River Valley of Upper Assam, at the foot of the Himalayas. Beginning in June, squadron planes crossed the “Hump” into Japanese-held Burma (now Myanmar) to bomb and strafe railroads, bridges, and storage facilities. One of the squadron’s most significant contributions during that period was providing air support to Chinese and American ground forces in the recapture of Myitkyina (pronounced MIT-chi-nah), the largest town in upper Burma. Using it as a base of operations, the enemy had assembled a strong force at Myitkyina and used its airstrip to launch attacks against Allied planes crossing the Himalayas. The airfield was captured on May 17, but the city still held. During the seventy-eight-day siege to take the Japanese stronghold, the railroad line south of the town, by which the enemy received troops and supplies, became a primary target of the 3rd Squadron. Maj. Conrad led many of those attacks.
A mission on the evening of August 3 was typical. Crews were briefed to hit separate targets: the Pangkham Bridge, Wanting supply area, and Myitkyina. The B-25s carried an aggregate bomb load of 24,400 pounds.
The element led by the squadron commander proceeded to the Wanting supply area, but one aircraft failed to reach the target because of engine trouble. It was probably this mission that Lou Graves (Capt. Louis F. Graves Jr., squadron navigator and historical officer) mentioned in a letter to Jim McCann (SSgt. James E. McCann, armorer-gunner) many years later: "If my memory is sound, you and I shared a B-25 experience with an engine afire coming back from a low-level mission into Burma, with old Coondog Conrad at the stick. Obviously we survived, but there were moments I had doubts.” The two Chinese gunners flying with them had doubts too. McCann told his family about this mission on which one of the B-25's engines caught fire. Because the gunners spoke little English, they did not understand when he explained that the plane could fly with only one engine. As they repeatedly attempted to bail out through the escape hatch, he grabbed them by their harnesses and hauled them back in. His concern was that they might encounter headhunters if they succeeded in bailing out since the plane was passing over Naga territory on its route back to base.
The other two elements successfully hit the Pangkham bridge and “Target #1” in Myitkyina. The once-prosperous city, formerly a thriving river-trade and resort town but now burned and gutted, officially fell at 1545 hours on August 3, when Chinese troops who volunteered for the duty forced their entrance.
Conrad received orders for the squadron’s move to China soon afterward. The first elements arrived by air transport at Erh Tong on August 30, and the B-25s, led by Maj. Conrad, arrived a week later. Located on the Li River in Kwangsi Province, Kweilin was one of the newest and most beautiful cities of Free China, and its three airfields significantly hindered Japan’s imperialist plans.
The Japanese had launched a major offensive called Operation ICHIGO in April 1944. Utilizing 400,000 men organized into seventeen divisions and supported by 12,000 vehicles and 70,000 horses, it formed a gigantic pincer movement designed to split Free China. Kweilin lay directly in the path of the enemy drive.
Conrad led two of the squadron’s four missions out of Kweilin, before orders for evacuation were issued. Squadron personnel began leaving by rail on September 12. The air echelon led by Maj. Conrad, which had remained "until the last minute,” took off for Peishiyi (Baishiyi) on the morning of the fourteenth. Carrying equipment and supplies, the truck convoy left that afternoon. Demolition of Erh Tong began as personnel departed the field.
After a brief stopover at Chihkiang (Zhijiang), the squadron’s B-25s made their way to Peishiyi, about thirteen air miles northwest of Chungking (Chonqing) in Szechuan (Sichuan) Province. When Maj. Conrad attempted to land his B-25J, A/C #715, he discovered that his nose wheel would not lock. Aware that a wheels-up landing on the crowded field would lead to disastrous results, he flew on toward Chungking and bellied in on the sandbar airstrip in the Yangtze River at Chiuling Po (Jiulongpo), south of the city center. There were no injuries to his crew, but Conrad's plane received significant damage and remained there for repairs. It crashed into the side of a mountain on a “test hop” to check out repairs the following month.
Although gasoline shortages and “unflyable” weather limited operations throughout that fall, monthly historical reports demonstrate that Conrad utilized every opportunity to take his aircrews up for practice flights in a vigilant effort to keep them combat-ready. On January 15, 1945, he led an element of three B-25s in the successful Hankow storage area raid. (See “Willard G. (‘Tex’) Ilefeldt,” February 1, 1945, for details.) Conrad received orders to move his squadron to Liangshan, farther to the northeast, immediately after completing that mission.
On February 5, Maj. Conrad received the startling information that he was scheduled for immediate return to the United States. The news came as a shock to him, as well as to the entire squadron, since they had all been under the impression that he would remain for at least another year. He left the following afternoon for Peishiyi to assume duties as Acting Group Commander until his orders came through to start home. Before his departure, Maj. Conrad assembled his men, wished them good luck and success, and thanked them for their cooperation. He left for the US by air transport by way of Casablanca soon afterward.
Conrad was awarded special recognition for his service in cooperation with the Republic of China Air Force two months later. The accompanying certificate was translated as follows:
April 13, 1945
Honor Certificate (Tiger no. 446)
The Republican Government has honored Major Conrad with the medal of special award, based on the provision no. 6 of the awarding rules for the Army, Navy and Air Force.
President
Chiang Kai-shek
Conrad returned to Cape Girardeau for a visit with his family. In May, he married his sweetheart, Barbara. Following a brief honeymoon, he then reported for duty at Santa Ana, California. He was assigned to bases in Greenville, North Carolina, and in Columbia, South Carolina, where he continued training Chinese airmen.
Although American training of ROC airmen had been halted in China at the end of the war, the mentor relationship continued in support of the Nationalist government. In spring of 1946, a special military program was instituted to train Chinese flyers as troop carrier pilots and crews. Five hundred Chinese officers and enlisted men, making up more than one hundred complete air crews, were moved to Bergstrom Field near Austin, Texas, where they were trained to fly Curtis Commando planes to be used for transporting troops. In charge of this detachment were Maj. Chester M. Conrad and his co-commander, Maj. Ku C. C., both 14th Air Force veterans. Many of the trainees were decorated combat veterans who had served in the CACW. Graduation ceremonies were held on July 13.
Soon afterward, Conrad became a professor of military science and air tactics at Kansas State College in Manhattan, Kansas, and he later had command of the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) of St. Louis University. He served in the Korean War from December 1950, assigned to 5th Air Force Headquarters. He was stationed in Karachi in the late '40s and early '50s, according to his family. Promoted to lieutenant colonel, Chester M. Conrad died unexpectedly due to heart disease on October 29, 1955, in Tokyo, Japan. He was thirty-eight years old. Burial was at San Francisco National Cemetery, San Francisco, California.
Read more of this intriguing story in The Spray and Pray Squadron: 3rd Bomb Squadron, 1st Bomb Group, Chinese-American Composite Wing in World War II.