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The Jackal Squadron
Avoiding Catastrophe
 The idea for the Jackal Squadron originated in early 1942, when several allied personnel commands threw a combination cricket test match/weenie roast. At this event, several officers from the branches of various nations’ militaries agreed to pool their “surplus” personnel, primarily those who fell into the hard-to-place STFU (Sarcastic, Truculent, Foulmouthed and Unruly) classification, into a single unit to be placed under the direction of whichever command came in last in the weekly horse betting pool. The presence of the Jackal Squadron quickly convinced most responsible commands to withdraw from the pool, leaving the Jackals detached to commands which were either run by degenerate gamblers or by officers too dumb to catch on.
The unit was first sent to participate in Operation Kumquat, the invasion and seizure of Reykjavik, Iceland. This was only a provisional plan in case the citizens of Reykjavik collaborated with the occupational government of Denmark; when Iceland instead threw its hand in with the allies, the plan was cancelled. Nevertheless, the Jackal Squadron executed its designated part of the mission, strafing the fishing fleet and causing a critical shortage of salted cod and Lúousúpa. This forced the allies to import a great deal of non-fish-flavored food, which endeared the Jackals to the people of Iceland and resulted in the national holiday of KvuosparraJackalendettúerda, or “Hooray for Disoriented Jackals and to Hell with that Goddamn Salted Cod Day.”
When the USAF’s Fifth Air Force commander George Kenney lost a drunken bet, the Jackal Squadron found a new home in the Pacific. Operating from advanced bases throughout New Guinea, the squadron was noted for its ability to locate heretofore-unknown Japanese outposts. They accomplished this primarily through the use of extraordinarily bad navigation which took them away from heretofore-known targets. One memorable mission saw them destroy three aircraft during a fighter sweep to Choiesul; unfortunately, the flight leader had his map upside down and the attack was actually made on the allied base of Vella Lavella. The downed C-47s were quickly replaced and Kenney immediately began looking for another command that needed the sort of reckless bravado and ignorant valor exhibited by the Jackal Squadron.
That command was found in the Mediterranean, where 15th Air Force Maj. Gen. George Twinning was photographed in a compromising position with several scantily-clad and swarthy local women, and suddenly agreed that Jackal Squadron was just what his forces needed. The unit flew many missions up and down the Italian coast, including a mission to Anzio that confirmed the complete absence of German resistance in the proposed landing areas. Later, after a ground support mission that was called off for weather, the unit jettisoned its bombs in the vicinity of Mt. Vesuvius’s crater. The resulting eruption brought the allies advance to a halt and seriously damaged many of the 15th Air Force’s aircraft.
Clearly, a unit that could wreak such destructive havoc was needed to support the D-Day invasion. The Jackal Squadron was sent north and attached to Second Tactical Air Force when Air Marshall Sir Arthur Coningham was caught up in a scandal involving the hoarding of hundreds of tins of contraband hair tonic. The Jackal Squadron was turned loose to wreak havoc against ground targets. After several hugely destructive sorties, the men of the squadron were ordered to stop this and instead get into their aircraft and fly to German-held territory. Their tally of destroyed targets included 150 trucks, 80 tanks, 15 artillery pieces and the other cargo aboard the six unlucky transports the squadron spotted off the Normandy Beachhead on June 15, 1944. They also succeeded in battling horrible weather to destroy a huge concrete artificial harbor to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Canadians.
The unit was dispatched to the continent, where it weathered the chilly winter of 1944 and gave support to allied troops trapped in Bastogne by air-dropping vast quantities of ice cream, popsicles, frozen waffles and bagged ice to the paratroopers dug in around the town. On Jan. 1, 1945, the squadron opposed the German Bodenplatte offensive, battling the enemy fighters so intently that witnesses said the Jackals’ withering fire often did more damage to allied facilities than did the Germans. This action saw the group’s fourth victory, when one member was told to shoot the German off his wingman’s tail. Instead, the dyslexic pilot shot his the tail off his own wingman, successfully spoiling the German pilot’s chance for a kill.
This series of impossible-to-overlook performances again captured the attention of the brass, and soon after the end of the Battle of the Bulge they were again on the move, this time to the newly-formed 20th Air Force under Hap Arnold, who had made some off-color and potentially career-threatening comments at the All-USAAF Christmas Party After repeatedly voicing his concerns at taking such a crack unit away from Europe, Arnold reluctantly accepted the transfer of the Jackals to Guam, where they flew long-range missions in support of B-29 strikes against the Japanese home islands. At times, the squadron even flew in the same direction as these strikes, again hinting at the unorthodox navigational skills that helped them cement their reputation.
With the war’s conclusion, the Jackal Squadron was disbanded as a formal unit, but its spirit lives on in or near the website you are now reading.
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