Sam McGowan

The Story of Pappy Gunn, Hero of the Southwest Pacific Sam McGowan

In December 1941, retired US Navy enlisted aviator Paul I. "P. I." Gunn was living in Manila with his wife and their four children and was general manager of Philippine Airlines. Immediately after the attack on the Philippines, he and his airline were impressed into the US Army Air Corps. On Christmas Day he was ordered to fly a load of Far East Air Force staff members to Australia. When he got there, he was ordered to stay and organize an air transport squadron. His family was still in the Philippines, and soon fell into the hands of the Japanese. For the next three years, P. I. Gunn, who became well known as "Pappy," waged his own private war against the Japanese to free his family. After two squadrons of A-20 and B-25 bombers that he had modified played the major role in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, he was ordered to the United States to show US Army Air Forces and factory engineers how to make his modifications. The Navy decided it wanted him back, but he chose to remain with the Army. When Allied troops landed t Leyte, he went in as commander of a special battalion of Air Corps maintenance and engineering personnel to set up an airfield at Tacloban. Unfortunately, a piece of shrapnel from a Japanese white phosphorous bomb knocked him out of the war and he was in a hospital in Brisbane when 1st Cavalry troops liberated Santo Thomas and set his family free. No less a personage than General of the Army Douglas MacArthur went to the camp to put the Gunn family on a C-47 and on their way to join their husband and father. This is his story.