[TCTAAmembers] Pappy Gunn

[Sam McGowan]

I got a copy of an article from an Arkansas paper from Nat Gunn about the induction of his dad, Col. Paul I. "Pappy" Gunn into the Arkansas Aviation Hall of Fame last weekend. I knew he was being inducted this month but thought it was the weekend we were in San Antonio. Pappy Gunn was a retired US Navy enlisted pilot who was living in Manila and running Philippines Airlines when World War II broke out. He and his airline were impressed into the Army as an air transport squadron, with him in command (the troop carrier designation didn't come along until the following April.) He was ordered to Australia and his family was left behind in the Philippines and were interned in Santo Thomas University for the duration. He was put in command of what later became the 5th Air Force Troop Carrier Command, but transferred to the 3rd Attack Group after he found a bunch of B-25s that had been consigned to the Dutch. He went on to fight his own war against the Japanese until he was finally put out of action by a piece of white phosphorous from a Japanese bomb. In the meantime he converted a squadron of A-20s and another of B-25s into ground/sea attack planes and they pretty much turned the war around in the Southwest Pacific.

Sam McGowan
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