Robert Charlwood Richardson III (January 5, 1918 – January 2, 2011) was an American military officer of the United States Army Air Corps, and subsequently the United States Air Force, eventually attaining the rank of brigadier general. A leader in the early days of the US Air Force, he was a renowned expert in tactical nuclear warfare, NATO, and military long range planning.
Early career
Richardson was born in Rockford, Illinois, the son of (future) General Robert C. Richardson Jr. In 1932, he attended the Gunnery School in Washington, Connecticut, and in 1933, entered Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania, graduating in 1935. He received a congressional appointment from Pennsylvania to the United States Military Academy and graduated in June 1939. He joined the expanding US Army Air Forces attending pilot training schools in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Randolph and Kelly fields, Texas, graduating in June 1940. In July 1940, he was assigned as a flight instructor at Randolph Field flying AT-6 Texan and AT-7 Navigator training aircraft and subsequently in the advanced twin-engine school at Barksdale Field, flying Martin B-10 bombers. In September 1941, he was transferred to the 52nd Fighter Group, Selfridge Field, served as squadron commander and group operations officer flying P-40 Warhawk pursuit aircraft, and went with the Group to Norfolk, Virginia, and Florence, South Carolina.
On Ascension Island
In April 1942, he took command of the 1st Composite Squadron, a unit of 18 P-39 Airacobras pursuit aircraft and five B-25 Mitchell bombers being organized at Key Field, Meridian, Mississippi. He deployed, in August 1942, to the newly constructed and secret Wideawake Airfield on Ascension Island in the South Atlantic Ocean. Their function was to patrol the sea around the island, to detect and destroy any enemy submarines and surface raiders, and to protect Allied ships in the vicinity of the island. Wideawake Airfield was a key refueling base on the only air resupply route in 1942–1943 connecting the United States to the Allied Western Desert Campaign raging in North Africa and the Soviet forces through the Persian Gulf and the Caucuses.
The air route stretched from Florida and Texas across the Caribbean region, down the South American east coast to Natal and Recife Brazil, across the South Atlantic through Ascension Island to the British and Belgian colonies in West Africa, across the bottom of the Sahara Desert to Khartoum Sudan, and up the Nile to Egypt and Allied forces in the Middle East and beyond. This was the only way to get large-to-medium aircraft and urgent military supplies to the British Middle East Command in Egypt (for which the U.S. Ninth Air Force was providing air support) in the Allied 1943 Egypt–Libya Campaign leading up to the defeat of Rommel and securing North Africa following Operation Torch and the Tunisia Campaign in late 1943.
Laconia incident
On early 15 September 1942, while senior operations officer at Ascension, then-Captain Richardson was notified by the island's British liaison that had been torpedoed. Later that morning a transiting A-20 reported sighting and taking fire from two German U-boats. Two dispatched B-25 bombers found neither the submarines nor Laconia. Later that night at about 10 p.m., Richardson was asked to assist in rescue efforts by providing air cover for the en route merchant ships, the nearby Empire Haven and HMS Corinthian at Takoorida. The next day a transiting B-24D Liberator from the 343rd Bombardment Squadron was sent to investigate and found four U-boats displaying the Red Cross flag engaged in rescue operations from the sinking of Laconia.
U-boat commander, Lieutenant Commander Werner Hartenstein, had secured permission to conduct rescue operations after discovering that the ship he had just torpedoed, RMS Laconia, carried 1,800 Italian prisoners, a few hundred British and Polish soldiers, plus some number of civilians including women and children, British dependents from Egypt. U-156 was crammed above and below decks with nearly two hundred survivors, including five women, and had another 200 in tow aboard four lifeboats. On 16 September at 11:25 a.m., U-156 was spotted by an American B-24 Liberator bomber flying from a secret airbase on Ascension Island. The submarine was travelling with a Red Cross flag draped across her gun deck. Hartenstein signalled to the pilot in both Morse code and English requesting assistance. A British RAF officer also messaged the aircraft: "Laconia survivors on board, soldiers, civilians, women, children"