Diary pages from this date

My birthday and I received your lovely loving letter of 1st November '42 and jolly nice it was too. I was grateful for your news and pleased to know that you were keeping well and fit. The letters arrive just any old how but nevertheless a letter is a letter and much appreciated. We are to be allowed to send a postcard this week.

The Amoy people who are now in Shanghai transferred end of May were lucky in being able to get a group photograph taken in the grounds of the Hope Hospital, photographs here are absolutely taboo, the only people to have cameras are the Jap. Superintendents. However events are moving quickly and our incarceration may not be so long now.

Hot, fine. Wind E with cloud.

Voting for Council.

((G)).

Lots of aerial activity but we cannot tell who they were.

Convoy had to return?

Talk with Steve pm. ((G)).

OBJECTIVE: Skip-bomb ships in convoy near Hong Kong.  This is the first time that American fighter pilots in the China theatre attempt skip-bombing, which will become a widespread tactic used by 14^th Air Force pilots to attack Japanese ships. 

TIME OVER TARGET: ~1:15 p.m.

AMERICAN UNITS AND AIRCRAFT: Four P-40s from the 74^th Fighter Squadron (23^rd Fighter Group, 14^th Air Force)

AMERICAN PILOTS AND AIRCREW: 1^st Lt. Davis G. Anderson; 1^st Lt. Paul Bell; Lt. Thomas P. Bennett; 1^st Lt. William B. Hawkins

ORDNANCE EXPENDED: Two 500-pound bombs and 2,000 rounds of .50-caliber heavy machine gun ammunition

RESULTS: A small naval escort vessel and three small merchant ships are bombed and strafed as they leave Hong Kong.  Pilots report that the escort and freighter are set afire and another freighter is left burning and listing.

JAPANESE UNITS, AIRCRAFT, AND PILOTS: None

AIRCRAFT LOSSES: None

SOURCES: Original mission reports and other documents in the Air Force Historical Research Agency archives at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama.

Information compiled by Steven K. Bailey, author of Bold Venture: The American Bombing of Japanese-Occupied Hong Kong, 1942-1945 (Potomac Books/University of Nebraska Press, 2019).