The US 24th Pursuit Group Philippines

The origins and how the 33rd Pursuit Squadron ended up in Australia begins with the battle to defend the Philippines and subsequent loss by the United States.

 The 24th Pursuit Group started the war in the Philippines after being activated there in October 1940. The 17th Pursuit, 20th Pursuit and the 3rd Pursuit Squadrons were reassigned from the 4th Composite Group and initially flew Seversky P-35s which were extremely outdated at the time (Bartsch 2012 pp36) The new P-40 fighter started arriving and the three squadrons were eager to swap their outdated aircraft for these much more modern aircraft. (Bartsch 2012 pp36) In November the 21st and 34th Pursuit Squadrons were added to the group. (Bartsch 2012 pp169-170) The 21st was Jack Peres's intended squadron before the Philippines fell.

After numerous interceptions and a few ground accidents by the 10th of December 24th Pursuit group was down to thirty aircraft of which eight were the inferior P-35A's a loss of sixty aircraft, two thirds of the group. (airforcehistoryindex 2019) Orders were given for the Fighters to perform reconnaissance missions as the 2d Observation Squadron were inoperative due to aircraft loss and lack of armament. For the next few weeks the group performed recon and the occasional ground strafing to some success. Parts availability and battle damage meant patching, improvising and scavenging parts from wrecks to keep aircraft flying. On the 23rd of December 1941 the Japanese landed an invasion force on the east coast and all remaining aircraft were loaded with fragmentation bombs and ordered to attack the landing parties. By this time the entire group were down to just twelve P-40's and six P-35's and lost a further two P-35's to anti-aircraft fire in this mission. (Bataan Campaign 2019)

Eventually all remaining crew and aircraft were forced to build a makeshift airstrip at Bataan and throughout January to March flew ground attack missions until they were reduced to one flying P-40 only although a little while later a second P-40B was rebuilt using P-40E parts and jokingly called a P-40Something. Eventually over the next couple of months the last few aircraft plus three new P-40E which were delivered in crates and hastily built were pushed to Mindanao Airfield and continued the fight right up to the surrender by the US of the Philippines. (Bataan Campaign 2019) Some Pursuit pilots were evacuated to Australia to join other squadrons, but many were captured and taken prisoner by the Japanese.

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