A Hero to the End

Ed Dyess was a REAL hero

(This article was published in WW II History. This is unedited original)

Since the 1980s the word “hero” has been loosely bestowed on young men and women simply for serving in the US military, particularly on those who have lost their lives, no matter what the circumstances. This has not always been the case. Until the word was cheapened by modern politicians and members of the media, in order for a person to be identified as a hero they had to have done something that required something other than just taking an oath of military enlistment or, for that matter, simply setting foot on a battlefield. Heroes most often received the accolade from those who witnessed their heroism and who as often as not were beneficiaries of the act that led them to recognize their friend, peer or leaders as one who stood out above the rest. World War II produced many heroes, men who as often as not performed a single heroic act. There were some, however, who came to be recognized as heroes because of the way they conducted themselves, men whose character led them to undertake missions that required sacrifice beyond military duty and/or who put the welfare of those they led above that of their own. One such man was Lt. Colonel William Edwin Dyess, a US Army Air Corps pilot and squadron commander who was identified as a hero by men who served under him in the Philippines and who felt they owed their own lives to Ed’s sacrifice.

Ed Dyess was a Texan in the truest sense of the word. A member of a family with strong Southern roots – his ancestors arrived in Georgia before the Revolution – he grew up in the small town of Albany, a plains town about 25 miles northeast of Abilene and some 30 miles across the field from the modern Air Force base that bears his name. His father was a local judge and tax assessor who had migrated to Shackleford County to take a position as a school teacher just before his son was born. Yet even though his father was an educator and politician, Ed’s family had a strong military tradition dating back to when Georgia was a colony when Dyess men fought in the Indian wars. Both of his grandfathers fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War and one had been captured and sent to a POW camp from which he escaped to fight again, thus setting a precedent his grandson would follow nearly a century later. His paternal grandfather had been captured by Union troops while on a scouting mission in Pennsylvania and incarcerated in a notorious Union prisoner of war camp near Chicago. After refusing an offer of parole because it would prohibit him from rejoining his unit, Dyess’ grandfather managed to overpower a guard and escape, then made his way south through Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee to rejoin the Confederacy and fight until the end of the war. It was a remarkable escape and journey through two Northern states and across Union-held territory – not to mention an exercise in determination that Ed inherited. As a boy growing up in a small town on the plains of West Texas, he was as at home in the outdoors as his Eastern peers were in their family parlors. His heritage and upbringing instilled in the young Texan qualities common among many young Southern men of the early Twentieth Century, qualities that were also common in a military officer corps that included large numbers from the South, and which impressed the reporter who interviewed him after his escape from Japanese hands and compared him to the young Southerners who had fought with Stonewall Jackson and rode with Forrest in the 1860s. 

Edwin’s interest in aviation was typical of many young men of his day. He and his father were inspired by Charles Lindbergh’s flight across the Atlantic along with the rest of America as the country became air-minded. His dad took him up for his first airplane ride when a barnstormer stopped for a few days in their community to carry passengers. Yet even though he came from an air-minded family, aviation was not originally his first choice. At first the boy wanted to join a carnival, but as a teenager he started taking some bootleg flying lessons from another passing barnstormer although not with the intention of becoming a professional pilot. His father’s position as a county judge and tax assessor led him toward a career in the legal profession and after high school he attended Tarleton College in Stephenville, Texas in preparation to study law at the University of Texas in Austin. He spent the summer before he was to begin studies at Texas working as a roustabout in the oil fields. One of his coworkers had recently washed out of the US Army aviation program at Randolph Field, Texas and their conversations caused Dyess to remember the flying lessons he had taken a few years before. He began having doubts about the legal profession and decided he wanted to go in the Army and become a pilot. He told his father he wanted to get an appointment to the Army’s “West Point of the Air”. Instead of expressing consternation, Judge Dyess was pleased with his son’s decision and told him “Son, if it can be got, we’ll get it.” He got the appointment as an aviation cadet and reported to Kelly Field at San Antonio for flight training.

Military flight training was a dangerous proposition in the 1930s and Dyess soon came to know death firsthand as some of his classmates “bought the farm” in training accidents. The day to day exposure to danger caused him to develop a stoical attitude toward death and his own mortality. Having been raised in the Presbyterian faith, he had been schooled in the tradition of Calvinism which teaches that man’s destiny is predetermined by the will of God. Upon graduation from pilot training and commissioning as a second lieutenant in the US Army reserve, Dyess was assigned to the 20^th Pursuit Group at Barksdale Field near Shreveport, Louisiana. In November 1939 the 20^th Pursuit was transferred to California and Lt. Dyess went with it. After his transfer to California he met Marijean Stavik, a young woman from Champaign, Illinois whose family published the Champaign newspaper. They were married in the fall of 1941, only a few days before Edwin’s departure for the Philippines. America was gearing up for imminent war with Japan and his transfer was part of a major buildup of the US Army Philippines Department.

Ed Dyess sailed for Manila in the fall of 1941 on the US transport Winfield S. Scott when the 35^th Pursuit Group deployed two of its squadrons to a classified overseas destination. A first lieutenant, he had been elevated to commanding officer of the 21^st Pursuit Squadron. They set sail from Hawaii on November 6, not knowing where they were bound until the ship was out of the harbor and at sea, at which time they were told that the code word PLUM that had been stenciled on their baggage stood for the Philippine Islands, where they were to join the 24^th Pursuit Group. The news shouldn’t have been a surprise. War clouds had been gathering in the Western Pacific for several months and the Army had begun a buildup of forces in the Philippines that included a number of pursuit squadrons. The movement was part of a major reinforcement that was underway for the Philippines in anticipation of imminent war with Japan. Although the 21^st and its sister squadron, the 34^th, had their full complement of ground personnel, each squadron was only at half strength in pilots. Additional pilots were expected to arrive on other ships that would be following, but as events unfolded over the next few weeks the other ships never reached the islands and the latecomers ended up in Australia.

The two squadrons also sailed without airplanes. They were expecting to receive brand new Curtis P-40Es when they arrived in Manila but when they reached their new assignment at Nichols Field they found that their airplanes, which had been shipped separately, had yet to arrive. Instead, they were given Seversky P-35s that had recently been replaced by P-40s in the 24^th Pursuit Group. The 21^st operated the obsolete P-35s for a couple of weeks but on December 5 – only three days before the outbreak of war – the squadron equipped with brand-new P-40Es that had just been assembled at the air depot at Manila.  The P-35s went to the 34^th PS which relocated to Del Carmen, a newly constructed airfield north of Manila, while the 21^st remained at Nichols. Nichols was also home to the 17^th Pursuit Squadron, commanded by 1^st Lt. Boyd “Buzz” Wagner. Wagner had been in the Philippines for a year and Dyess turned to him to learn the ropes. Wagner’s squadron had equipped with P-40Es in October, but the 21^st’s airplanes were right out of the shipping crates. The mechanics and pilots worked feverishly to prepare their new airplanes for operational use, but they were up against a timeline they weren’t aware of. Since their new airplanes were being delivered straight from the factory, most of the engines needed slow-timing (operations at reduced power for a specified time to allow the piston rings to seat) and some of the guns had yet to be bore-sighted. There was a shortage of oxygen on Luzon which restricted high altitude operations to 15,000 feet. America was preparing for war in the Philippines but was lacking in an important commodity – time. Equipment that was necessary to bring the pursuit squadrons up to full combat ready status was still at sea when war broke out – if it had even left the depots in California – and would be diverted to Australia.       

Although he and his men had only been in the Philippines for a few days, Ed Dyess was well aware of the severity of the situation they were in. On Saturday, December 6 he made a bet with squadron-mate Lt. Sam Grashio, who had commented that the US wouldn’t go to war with Japan at all, that not only would they go to war, it would start within a week. Col. Harold George, the commander of V Interceptor Command, talked to the young pilots that day and advised them that when war came, they would be fighting a holding action until reinforcements could come in from Hawaii and the United States. He told them that they had about 70 first-line fighters available to defend against attack and admonished his charges that he thought they could put on a good performance. The colonel made no bones about their situation as he advised his young pilots that while their mission wasn’t exactly suicidal, it wasn’t far from it. It was not comforting news and the young men were sobered by the reality of their situation, but none of them comprehended just how desperate their circumstances really were. Dyess’ 21^st Pursuit Squadron received the last four of its eighteen P-40Es that evening. All of the airplanes were brand-new and had just been assembled out of the crates they had been shipped in from the factory. None of the engines had been slow-timed and with less than four hours average flying time on them, none of the fighters had been properly broken in before they were thrown into combat. There was no oxygen available for high altitude flight and the radio sets were poor. No ground control network had yet been set up and there was only one operational radar site in the islands – and it would be destroyed by a Japanese air attack during the opening hours of the war.

A popular and oft-repeated myth holds that US forces in the Philippines were caught by surprise by the Japanese attacks. Nothing could be further from the truth; every man in the Philippines knew that war was on the horizon, but the United States had yet to adequately prepare for it. Although the attack on Pearl Harbor in far-away Hawaii came as a surprise, US forces in the Philippines were feverishly preparing for war. A secret message was been sent from the White House to military commanders in the Pacific in mid-November advising them that war with Japan was imminent. The message also stressed that it was imperative that Japan be allowed to strike the first blow, an admonition that led to confusion at the higher command levels as to how to deal with Japanese aggression such as reconnaissance flights and whether or not to conduct reconnaissance of their own. The message was clear in one regard; it instructed commanders to bring their forces to alert status and to prepare for war. The Air Corps, in particular, had been on full alert for several days and at 0230 hours on December 8 the pilots of the 17^th and 21^st Pursuit Squadrons at Nichols Field were scrambled to their airplanes. The same thing had happened for the preceding six mornings. After about ten minutes they were told to stand-down and most of the men returned to their quarters. Two hours later Dyess received the first news of the attack on Pearl Harbor when the phone in the squadron orderly room rang at about 0430. Word of the attack had first reached the islands through a commercial radio station an hour and a half before and Navy commanders had been notified shortly thereafter, but official notification did not come until later. General MacArthur’s headquarters received word of the attack about 0400 but it wasn’t until 0530 that the news was officially verified with a message from the War Department. By that time the men of the 21^st PS had returned to their operations building; they were immediately ordered to report to their airplanes and start engines. After about ten minutes with no takeoff order forthcoming, Lt. Dyess instructed his pilots to cut their engines and stand-by. The pilots climbed out of their cockpits but remained close to their airplanes. Lt. Boyd Wagner’s 17^th Pursuit Squadron was ordered to take off but the 21^st waited – and continued waiting for the rest of the morning. (Wagner’s squadron had an unfruitful mission as they were ordered to patrol just north of Clark Field. They saw nothing.)

At about 11:30 Dyess was ordered to take his squadron airborne and head north to cover Clark Field while the fighters based there were refueled after having landed from a fruitless mission to northern Luzon. A formation of Japanese bombers had been detected but the P-40s failed to make an interception and returned to Clark to refuel. (They had completed refueling and were lined up at the end of the runway preparing to takeoff when bombs began falling on Clark Field. A few P-40s got off the ground but most of the squadron was caught by the falling bombs and their fighters were destroyed or severely damaged.) Shortly after takeoff Dyess received instructions to patrol between Corregidor and the naval base at Cavite, some distance to the south of Clark. The second flight was late taking off and failed to get the message to divert to the south, so they set off for Clark by themselves. Almost immediately two of the new Allison engines began throwing oil, forcing the pilots to turn around and head back to Nichols. The four other P-40s continued north toward Clark. They arrived overhead but saw no indication of enemy activity so they turned west after some fighters they could see in the distance, probably P-40s from the 3^rd Pursuit which was based at Iba on the other side of the Zambaleses Mountains from Clark. A few minutes later the call went out for “all pursuit to Clark” and they turned around. A third engine started throwing oil and the pilot turned south to return to Nichols. The three remaining pilots arrived over Clark in the middle of the attack, and one, Lt. McGown, disappeared after possibly witnessing a fellow pilot under attack by Japanese fighters while descending in his parachute and going to assist. The other two, Lieutenants Sam Grashio and Williams, managed to shoot down one Zero, then came under attack themselves. They managed to evade the Japanese fighters and make their way back to Nichols, where they found Dyess waiting for his men with cold Coca-Cola and sandwiches from the squadron mess.

The squadron spent the rest of the day on fruitless patrols. As evening approached, Dyess was told to move to Clark since Nichols Field was expected to be the next target for a Japanese attack. The main runway at Clark had been cratered by bombs and the fighters were forced to use the dirt auxiliary strip. It was the dry season and the runway was covered by dust which rose in a cloud after each landing. Darkness was falling, and the combination of reduced visibility and dwindling light prolonged the time necessary to get all of the fighters on the ground. Engine failure had reduced the squadron’s strength from eighteen to eleven fighters. Its strength was further reduced early the next morning when one pilot hit a B-17 while attempting to takeoff and another crash-landed when the pilot became disoriented after taking off into the cloud of dust that had been stirred up by the propellers on the dirt runway. A third P-40 lost an engine at 7,000 feet and had to glide back into Clark, only to be fired on by friendly antiaircraft. Dyess now had only eight serviceable fighters left, but his mechanics at Nichols were working feverishly to repair the ones that had aborted the previous day.

The next day, December 10 and the third day of war, was the worst day for the Interceptor Command, although the culprit wasn’t the superior numbers and skill of the Japanese fighter pilots but rather another stroke of the bad luck due to poor timing that plagued the Air Corps in the Philippines. Late that morning the young Texan encountered enemy aircraft for the first time and saw his fire rake one from nose to tail. But he was concerned about two others that were in the area and didn’t see what happened to his quarry. Later that afternoon he was eating lunch with 17^th Pursuit Squadron commander Lt. Boyd “Buzz” Wagner when they were notified that enemy bombers were approaching Clark Field. They made their way to the strip and took off separately into a cloud of dust. They were both shocked when they emerged from the dust cloud and discovered that only inches separated their wing tips! The bombers had turned toward Manila so Dyess and the other pilots were ordered to head in that direction. When he saw the bombers in the distance he pressed his gun button to warm up his guns, but nothing happened! After several fruitless attempts he descended to land at a nearby auxiliary field where he managed to charge his guns with a screwdriver and help from some soldiers. It was a common problem – for some reason an order had been put out to disconnect the electrical wiring to the recharging mechanism in the P-40 wings. By the time he took off the enemy formation had vanished and Dyess thus missed out on the one major air battle of the Philippines. On December 8 the Interceptor Command counted approximately 70 operational fighters. The action on December 10 severely depleted the 50 or so that were left after the engine failures and combat losses on the opening day of the war. Only a handful were shot down – and the fighters accounted for a large number of Japanese aircraft – but by the time the fighters engaged, many of them had been aloft for some time and were running low on fuel. Three P-40 pilots were killed and at least eight bailed out, while most of the rest were forced to crash-land wherever they could as their engines coughed their last due to fuel exhaustion. By the end of the day total American fighter strength was down to 30 airplanes, of which only 22 were P-40s. The other eight were P-35s, which were all nearly worn out. Four P-40s were being assembled at the air depot and were completed as Manila was being abandoned on Christmas Day, but the Japanese navy had blocked the surface resupply routes into the islands and future resupply had become nearly impossible.

With fighter strength severely depleted, General MacArthur’s headquarters decided it was foolhardy to continue risking the precious fighters against over-whelming odds, but rather to conserve them for reconnaissance and attacks on ground targets “when the time is right.” Dyess was ordered to take the remnants of his squadron back to Nichols Field where the pilots were reunited with their ground crews, at least for a short time. With their aircraft depleted, the need for pilots had decreased so some of Dyess’ men were transferred into the Signal Corps to serve as aircraft observers. The rest of the squadron was ordered to move to a new airfield that was still under construction at Lubao, a town north of Manila on the edge of Manila Bay. The Lubao strip had been cut out of a sugar cane field and the Filipino and American troops used the cane to good advantage as camouflage. Japanese bombers frequently flew over the field but never managed to spot the well-concealed P-40s. The remaining twenty-six P-40s and a single North American A-27 flew in late on Christmas Eve, and although the men were quartered some distance away the crew chiefs refused to leave their airplanes, but stayed on the airstrip performing badly needed maintenance. Dyess and his men had a sumptuous meal on Christmas Day as they feasted on turkey and trimmings that had been trucked out from Manila, which was in the process of being evacuated. It was a meal they would look back on in their dreams and discussions as supplies on Bataan dwindled and after they became prisoners of the Japanese. As the last trucks rolled out of the city, General Douglas MacArthur declared Manila an “open city,” a political declaration designed to dissuade the Japanese from launching a military attack that could cause heavy casualties among the civilian population.

The day after Christmas Dyess again engaged in aerial combat and shot down a Japanese dive-bomber, the first he was able to actually confirm, although none of his aerial victories were ever formerly credited to his record. Two days later he was nearly shot down himself by an aggressive Japanese in a Zero who caught him unawares. After his airplane was struck by a burst of fire, Dyess began a dive to build up speed, then pulled up into a zoom and came out of it ahead and above the enemy fighter. The Japanese turned toward him and they rushed toward each other head-on until the heavier .50-caliber fire from the P-40 blew the top off the Zero’s engine and set it on fire. Dyess would later report that several of his pilots got their first Japanese aircraft during this period. On December 30 Dyess and his wingman had a field day when they spotted a convoy of Japanese trucks. The Japanese vehicles were American-made and difficult to distinguish from US military vehicles, but one had the large red meatball on its hood that identified it as the enemy. The two P-40s made two strafing passes on the seven trucks and left three burning and the other four shot to pieces. Pursuit pilots such as Dyess, Wagner, Lt. Russell Church and Captain Grant Mahoney wreaked a heavy toll in Japanese lives and equipment that illustrated how effective the Interceptor Command could have been with the reinforcement and resupply that never came.

On New Year’s Day Dyess and his ground party completed work on the new field at Lubao. They had no more than finished when they got word that advancing Japanese troops were threatening the field and they were to move. General Douglas MacArthur had ordered a general retreat onto the Bataan Peninsula and the Air Corps was to move with the troops. The combination of combat losses, accident and dwindling spare parts had reduced fighter strength to only eighteen P-40s, which were divided between the 17^th and 34^th Pursuit Squadrons and initially sent to two airfields on Bataan, one at Pilar and the other at Orani. Half of the P-40s were later ordered to Mindanao, an island in the Southern Philippines that was still in American hands and was serving as a delivery point for transports bringing in supplies from Australia. Personnel and aircraft from other squadrons were rolled into the two squadrons and a contingent of pilots, including Lt. Boyd Wagner and Captain Grant Mahoney, were sent to Australia to pick up some P-40s that had been on a ship at sea when war broke out and had been diverted to Brisbane – they would not return. Ed Dyess’ 21^st Pursuit Squadron gave up its airplanes and was reorganized as a ground battalion. The new battalion was initially assigned as the base defense force at Lubao while the air units packed up and moved to Bataan. They were thus the last Air Corps unit to move onto the Bataan Peninsula.

Over the next three months Dyess would gain a reputation as one of the most effective officers on Luzon. He and his men scrounged up an assortment of weapons including .30 and .50-caliber machine guns that they took from wrecked fighters to supplement their rifles and submachine guns. The airmen modified the salvaged machine guns with homemade mounts so they could be used as infantry weapons. They also had a few Browning Automatic Rifles and four Bren Gun carriers, along with an assortment of submachine guns, modified Lewis guns and hand grenades. When the battalion/squadron first moved to Bataan, they had an abundance of rations and supplies, but about two weeks after the move the quartermaster ordered that all surplus supplies be turned in. After that the men subsisted on what they were issued, supplemented by what they could find or kill, including horses and mules that had served as cavalry mounts and beasts of burden.

On January 17 Dyess was notified that a Japanese landing party had come ashore at Agoloma Bay. He and his men were loaded into trucks and driven seven miles to engage the enemy force. Initial estimates were that the landing party was small, about thirty men, but it turned out to be at least twenty times that size and the resulting battle lasted for several weeks. The airmen joined some Filipino constabulary forces and a few engineers from the 803^rd Engineering Battalion to meet the attacking Japanese troops. The Japanese overestimated their opposition and retreated, and as they were pushed back toward the cliffs overlooking the bay, they began digging in, turning the engagement into a siege. Dyess and his men remained in opposition to the Japanese for a week, then were temporarily withdrawn for a six-day rest and replaced by Philippines Scouts. During the week they had been there, the airmen-turned-infantry managed to push the Japanese back toward the cliffs some 150 yards. During their respite from combat the airmen were afforded little rest, but were engaged primarily in fighting forest fires. When they returned they found that the Filipinos had gained additional ground of about fifty yards, but at tremendous cost. The Scouts had suffered nearly fifty percent casualties.

The Air Corps troops reinforced the Philippines Scouts and pushed the Japanese further back until they were only about 400 yards from the cliffs by the bay. By the fifth day the line was down to about 300 yards, and four American tanks arrived to provide support to the infantry. The Japanese were now up against the brink of the cliffs and could be seen easily. Suddenly they began ripping off their uniforms and leaping over the fifty-foot cliffs onto the sandy beach. Some went over the side to descend to prepared positions on the side of the cliff, but large numbers evidently simply jumped to the beach in an attempt to escape. As the Americans advanced, they could see their enemy on the sand below. They were running up and down wildly and some were running into the surf in an attempt to swim away. The American airmen and Filipino soldiers raked them with automatic weapons fire, killing everything that moved. The Japanese that had taken shelter on the side of the cliff continued to hold out, and were practically impervious to the dynamite, grenades and mines that were lowered on ropes and exploded next to the cliff face.

On the eighth day after Dyess’ men returned to the battle, they finally wiped out the Japanese force with assistance from the Navy, who supplied two armed Boston Whalers and two armed longboats. Some of Dyess’ men went out in the Whalers while Dyess, who had been promoted to captain and then to major, was in one of the longboats to direct fire. The sailors raked the cliff-side defenses with machineguns and captured 37-MM cannon. The attack continued even as a flight of Japanese dive-bombers came in and dropped bombs that knocked out all four boats, but not before they had destroyed the Japanese defenders. The Army personnel stormed the beach and finished off the survivors. Only one Japanese was taken prisoner. Dyess and his men counted over 600 bodies after resistance ceased; countless others had been swept out to sea. After the battle the men of the 21^st Pursuit Squadron were visited by Colonel George, who told them they were returning to aviation duty. Dyess presented the colonel a captured Japanese sword.        

Dyess’ new assignment was as field commander for the Bataan and Cabcaben Airfields. A third airfield was under construction at Marivelles under the supervision of Captain Joe Moore, who had managed to get in the air during the attack on Clark Field. US air strength on Bataan had risen to ten airplanes, but only five were first-line P-40s and those consisted of two different models. The other five included a Bellanca, a Beechcraft, an Army O-1 and a couple of other ramshackle light transports that made up what the men had begun to call The Bamboo Fleet, which was under the loose command of Major William “Jitter Bill” Bradford, a former civilian air taxi pilot who had joined the Army before the war as an engineering officer. Colonel George had limited the fighters to reconnaissance and resupply missions while holding them in reserve to be used to meet large-scale-ground attacks. The ground crews worked on the fighters to maintain and improve their combat capabilities, including developing a bomb release mechanism that allowed the P-40s to carry 300 and 500 pound bombs.  The main problem for the airmen on Bataan was food, or the lack of it. Although large supply dumps remained, there was practically no meat or other sources of vital protein. By the end of February all of the horses and mules had been slaughtered for food. Bradford volunteered to fly to Cebu and bring back supplies. After he made two successful round trips, other pilots went out in other airplanes to pick up food. Dyess made at least one trip himself. But the cargo capacity of the small transports was limited and even though their loads were appreciated, it was hardly enough to supply the men on Bataan.

In early March the modification of Dyess’s P-40 to carry bombs was completed, and almost immediately lookouts reported the presence of a large number of ships in Subic Bay. Dyess asked for permission to mount an attack but Colonel George was reluctant to authorize the mission. However the next day, March 3, Dyess got word to come to the airfield, where his airplane was being loaded with a 500-pound bomb. Colonel George advised that Japanese ships were unloading supplies at Olongapo and he thought they should be discouraged. Another P-40 had already gone out with a load of fragmentation bombs and came back to report that he had dropped them, but was unable to assess the damage. Dyess took a wingman and headed for Subic Bay, where he found the largest concentration of ships near Grand Island in the bay rather than at Olongapo. Dyess identified his wingman only as “Shorty” in his account after his return from the Philippines because he was still a prisoner of the Japanese.  

Ed Dyess made three attacks on the Japanese ships in Subic Bay and the supply dump on Grand Isle before the day was out. On each occasion he went out with a 500-pound bomb which he delivered by dive-bombing from about 10,000 feet. The bomb he dropped on his first attack missed the ship he was aiming at but after the drop, he went down low and strafed it three times. After his third pass he saw the ship stop dead in the water. It never moved again for the rest of the day. He expended his ammunition on four warehouses and one of two vessels he estimated at 100-tons. The vessel was severely damaged by the concentrated fire of his .50-caliber machineguns. He was joined in the attack by other pilots from his squadron and from Joe Moore’s squadron at Marivales. After refueling and rearming he returned for a second attack and even though his bomb again missed the transport he was aiming at, it exploded among several smaller vessels which were tossed into the air by the geyser of water. He then went in for another strafing attack on the warehouses and vessels in the harbor. One of his targets was the second of the two 100-ton vessels he had spotted on his first strike. Dyess raked it from stem-to-stern with his guns then watched it sink.

Colonel George did not want to let Dyess go back for a third sortie but finally relented and gave permission. Lt. John Burns went along as his wingman. It was near dusk when they approached the target, but there was still plenty of light for the attack. Two large freighters had been tied up at the dock during the previous attack, but they had both shoved off and were maneuvering in the bay so Dyess chose the supply complex on Grand Island as his target. He dropped his bomb at 1,800 feet and saw it score a direct hit that set off a series of secondary explosions that started a fire that burned into the next day. Large, soft-ball sized tracers were coming up at him from the fleet of cruisers and destroyers that filled the bay. Observers situated on Marivales Mountain reported that a large transport was slipping out of the bay so Dyess elected to by-pass the ships in the harbor and the tracer-filled sky and flew toward the direction of the transport until he could see it silhouetted against the sunset to the west. He made two passes and saw fires breaking out all over the ship. He was at 1,800 feet in a 45-degree dive for another pass when the ship blew up. It was getting dark but the light of the fire and the remnants of the sunset allowed him to spot another large ship that was throwing up a tremendous amount of automatic antiaircraft fire (Triple-A.) After his second pass the Triple-A ceased and fires were breaking out all over the deck. He concentrated his fire on the bridge on the third pass and attempted to cause an explosion, but ran out of ammunition. The ship had been severely damaged by his attack and ran aground on the beach, where it burned for two days.

Dyess was not alone in the attacks on the ships and supply dump but his attacks were the most successful. One pilot and airplane were lost early in the day, and was believed to have flown into a barrage of Triple-A. Darkness would claim three of the remaining four. Dyess wingman, Lt. Burns, ground-looped during landing and his guns went off and sprayed tracers around the airfield. Two pilots who had taken off from Marivales landed with a tailwind and cracked up both airplanes, leaving the operational P-40 force on Bataan as Dyess’ single fighter. Over the next few weeks the ground crews managed to assemble another P-40 out of the three wrecks. Since it was made from parts from different models, the pursuit airmen referred to it as the “P-40 Something.”  The attacks had been costly for the Americans, but in terms of actual damage it was far more costly to the Japanese. Tokyo Radio reported that Subic had fallen under attack by three flights of four-engine bombers with fighter escorts. Ed Dyess would later comment that the problem was that the Japanese could easily replace their losses, but the Americans could not.