Air Force the Official Service Journal - Air Force Historical Studies ...

A jeep, laden with leftover explosives, scurried lIke'
frightened rabbit from the deserted runway of Hengyang
Air Field. Demolition bombs were set, fuzes were burning;
in a matter of seconds, huge charges of TNT would crater
the airstrip.
Safety precautions had been taken, but even the battlehardened
officer in charge of the little party was apprehensive
when the roar of an airplane engine came out of the
overcast sky. Almost certainly it was another [ap, and the
demolition crew was out in the open with a jeep full of
potential destruction. To be safe from the explosions, they
were putting distance between themselves and the field. To
escape imminent strafing, they would have to seek shelter
in a nearby revetment located so close to the mined field
that falling rocks might do as much damage as Jap bullets.
Choosing between certain and probable death, the officer
swung the jeep recklessly into the revetment. 111e plane
screamed low across the field and the crew, hugging sides
of the revetment, sighed with relief as tho field was blasted
by three heavy bombs and the plane zoomed away. It
meant just that much less work for them to do.
In charge of the crew was Lt. Col. Richard \V. Treiber,
Airdrome Defense Officer of the China Air Service Area
Command, and twice wounded veteran of two world wars.
All day long, with the enemy pounding the field relentlessly
from the air and ground attack a decided possibility, he and
his crew of 11 men had worked like demons to complete
the job of mutilating Hengyang.
Demolition of airbases was one job the China Air Service
Area Command had hoped never to carry out, but the Japanese
drive to control the Hunan Kwangsi railway and establish
a line of communication to French Indo-China has
slowly driven back Chinese ground forces and necessitated
abandonment of several forward bases of Maj. Gen. C. L.
Chennault's 14th Air Force.
Colonel Treiber and his men at Hengyang were the first
to carry out the demolition phase of the CASAC's Airdrome
Defense plan for all China bases. But trained crews, prepared
well in advance for such an eventuality, have proved
their worth again and again as the [apancsc push onward
through China. The Air Service Command has never left a
base behind without mutilating it thoroughly. Buildings,
machinery, bomb and arnmunition slits. runways-c\"(?ry
man-made implement of war has been blown to piece~ o'
hammered into useless junk. It is almost impo .-render
runwavs permanently useless, but CAS;'
achieve t;lC impossible.
r ....... ..
It. It It
Runwav somewhere in Cluna being mined with an ingenious pattern
of bombs. Here coolies dig hole at point marked with white circle
Demolition bomb is placed ~ hole dug bv eoolics.r..~!~Col. Richard
\Y. Treiber shave. hloek fTNT which will he pllt.iri~bSc of bomb.
58 AIR FORCE
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