Steamed_Banana
Senior Airman
- 327
- Sep 29, 2025
After reading a thread here which brought me to Claringbould's new Pacific Adversaries books about fighting in the Solomons in 1943, I notice once again the 44th FS flying missions out of Guadalcanal with P-40Fs, and later (though Claringbould misidentifies them a few times as Fs) P-40Ms, which they seem to have switched to in later 1943 probably due to the Fs running out. There are a few photos of 44th FS and some other mysterious unit's P-40Fs (identifiable by the lack of an intake scoop on the top of the fuselage) with the vertical white stripe camouflage marking.
I've been curious about this unit for a long time because it seems to be the only Pacific Theater unit that flew the merlin engined F (and maybe L) but the information about the unit is very sketchy, at least from what I've been able to find. Claringbould's books renewed my interest because one of these squadrons - 44th FS in particular, seems to have done quite well against the Japanese in each of the several engagements he researches. Better than the F4U units in the battles Claringbould covers, though he always treats their role in the battles as an afterthought at best.
I'd seen this squadron attributed to the 18th FG, which was a unit that got wiped out during the attack at Pearl Harbor and then reformed, and I've also seen these identified as part of a 347th FG. But when I look both 18th FG and 347th FG up, what (very little) information I can find seems to indicate they were flying P-39s and P-38s during 1943-44, and yet here are various missions of 44th FS in these operational histories showing them flying P-40Fs and then by the fall, P-40Ms and later Ns.
Does anyone have a good source on either of these units or know more about the Guadalcanal / Solomons USAAF Warhawk units?
What I wan to know is, was it just the 44th FS? Each of those two fighter groups had three squadrons but I can't find much about them and only see P-40F photos attributed to 44th FS. Which if either of these FG was based at Guadalcanal / Espiritu Santo and later further up the island chain heading toward Rabaul. Or was it some other unit or was 44th FS just detached?
Also anything else anyone can find about the operational history of 44th FS or any other Solomons P-40 units would be very appreciated. There seem to be a few aces with 44th FS but I don't know how many and couldn't find a list.
While we are at it I'm also interested in the RNZAF units (was it more than one squadron?) though I do have some data on those guys.