page_title: Paul Wurtsmith
section_title: New Guinea
hierarchical_section_title: Paul Wurtsmith / World War II / New Guinea
caption_attribution_description: English: First Allied pilots to try out airstrip built by engineers of No. 62 Works Wing RAAF at Tadji greeted by Air Commodore F. R. W. Scherger (extreme left) who will control all Allied air operations from captured strips at Aitape. Left to right: Brigadier General Paul Wurtsmith, Commanding General, V Fighter Command (pilot of first Allied combat plane to land); Colonel Jack Sverdrup (who squeezed into General Wurtsmith's single-seated Lightning aircraft); Wing Commander W. A. C. Dale, Task Force Engineer, and Colonel Robert Morrissey, Chief of Staff, V Fighter Command (pilot of second Lightning to land). General Wurtsmith's plane is in background.
context_page_description: Paul Bernard Wurtsmith was a United States Army Air Forces general during World War II.
  Enlisting in the United States Army Air Corps as a flying cadet in 1927, Wurtsmith was commissioned in 1928. Over the next 13 years, he served in instructional and command positions.
  He took over command of the 49th Pursuit Group in December 1941 and between March 1942 and January 1943, his fighters downed 78 enemy aircraft in the defense of Darwin in northern Australia, against Japanese air attacks.
  In 1943 he assumed command of the V Fighter Command, part of Major General George Kenney's Fifth Air Force.
  In 1945, he commanded the Thirteenth Air Force in the Southern Philippines and Borneo campaigns. After the war Wurtsmith served with the Strategic Air Command.
  Wurtsmith was killed when his North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber crashed near the summit of Cold Mountain near Asheville, North Carolina, on September 13, 1946.
  In February 1953, the United States Air Force named Wurtsmith Air Force Base in Oscoda Township, Michigan, in his honor.
context_section_description: In August 1942, Major General George Kenney assumed command of the Allied Air Forces in the South West Pacific Area, becoming the senior Allied air officer under the theater commander, General Douglas MacArthur. Kenney split the Allied Air Forces into Australian and American components, with the American part becoming the re-formed Fifth Air Force in September 1942. Kenney concurrently commanded the Fifth Air Force, with Brigadier General Ennis Whitehead as his deputy. The major commands of the Fifth Air Force were the V Service Command under Major General Rush B. Lincoln, V Bomber Command under Brigadier General Kenneth Walker, and the V Fighter Command. Activated at Fort George Wright in April 1942 as V Interceptor Command, it was redesignated V Fighter Command in August. Wurtsmith assumed command on 11 November, with his headquarters at Port Moresby. Kenney told him that if he "made good", he would be promoted to brigadier general. If not, he would be sent home on a slow boat.
  By early 1943, Kenney was convinced that Wurtsmith had "made good" in the Papuan Campaign, and he took the papers recommending Wurtsmith's promotion to MacArthur, who promised to approve it and sent it in to Washington, DC. One of MacArthur's staff quipped that he hoped Wurtsmith was over 21. Wurtsmith was actually 36; but MacArthur, who had been promoted to the rank of brigadier general at age 37, icily replied, "We promote them out here for efficiency, not age." Wurtsmith was duly promoted on 8 February 1943. He also became one of a handful of American officers to be decorated by the Australian government, being awarded the Commander of the Order of the British Empire for "excellence of training and direction of fighter operations in New Guinea". The award was eventually presented by General Sir Thomas Blamey on Leyte in March 1945.
  The first long-range American fighter was the twin-engined P-38 Lightning but none reached the South West Pacific Area until October 1942 and, beset with a host of mechanical difficulties, it was not until December 1942 that they flew their first major combat mission over New Guinea. Deliveries were suspended in January 1943 owing to the requirements of the North African Campaign, forcing Kenney to accept the P-47 Thunderbolt, the first of which arrived in Australia in July 1943. Early model P-47s had less range than P-40 Kittyhawks until 200-imperial-gallon (910 l) fuel tanks could be manufactured for them in Australia. These enabled the 348th Fighter Group to become operational in August 1943. While the tanks were very successful on the P-38s and P-40s, overloading the P-47s caused numerous crashes, and the pilots were reluctant to fly with more than 505 US gallons (1,910 l) of fuel. In 1945, the P-47s were replaced by P-51 Mustangs. By September 1943, Wurtsmith's five fighter groups had 598 aircraft but this included 70 P-39s, 30 P-400s and 118 P-40s, half of which were in the depots. The technical representative of Bell Aircraft reported that the P-39s and P-40s averaged 300 combat hours. That of Curtiss-Wright similarly reported that the P-40s had from 300 to 500 combat hours, which was equivalent to about 2,000 normal hours. General Kenney wrote to General Henry H. Arnold that "With the possible exception of Chennault, I do not believe that anyone else is flying stuff as old and worn out as these youngsters out here."
  In New Guinea, the main role of the fighters was escort—something not foreseen before the war. Early losses of bombers made fighter protection the rule rather than the exception, and if fighter cover was not available, the bombers flew by night. During the last half of 1943, V Fighter Command flew 6,607 sorties in support of bombers and 10,215 to protect transports, out of 24,397 sorties for the period in total. These missions often depended upon securing forward fighter fields, particularly for long missions. Wurtsmith made what he claimed was the "shortest landing ever made in a P-40" at Marilinan in order to see if it could serve as a forward fighter strip. He proved that it could, although a
caption: The first Allied pilots to try out airstrip built by engineers of No. 62 Works Wing RAAF at Tadji are greeted by Air Commodore F. R. W. Scherger (extreme left) who controlled all Allied air operations from captured strips at Aitape. Left to right: Brigadier General Paul Wurtsmith, Commanding General, V Fighter Command (pilot of first allied combat plane to land); Colonel Leif J. Sverdrup (who squeezed into General Wurtsmith's single seated P-38 Lightning); Wing Commander W. A. C. Dale, Task Force Engineer, and Colonel Robert Morrissey, Chief Of Staff, V Fighter Command (pilot of second lightning to land). Wurtsmith's plane is in background.
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