Bertie County NcArchives Military Records.....Army Air Corps, Leicester - Cobb 1941
WWII 
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Gerald Thomas gerald_thomas00@comcast.net November 24, 2017, 3:45 pm

TECH. SGT LLOYD TYLER LEICESTER
AND
PFC KENNETH MILLS COBB

VOYAGE TO DEATH
ON A JAPANESE "HELL SHIP"

by
GERALD W. THOMAS
Lloyd Tyler Leicester and Kenneth Mills Cobb were born during the 1910s in
Bertie County, but were reared in the extreme western and eastern areas of the
county, respectively. Leicester, the son of Paul Leicester and Ella Tyler, was
born August 11, 1912, at Kelford. Cobb, the son of Peter F. Cobb and Sally
White, was born January 24, 1918, at Merry Hill. The distance between their
homes and the difference in their ages make it appear unlikely that the two
individuals interacted with each other during their childhoods. However, their
lives would become closely connected as adults during World War II.
On Friday, September 1, 1939, Germany’s military forces invaded Poland and
ignited World War II – the largest armed conflict in world history. Lloyd T.
Leicester had enlisted as a private in the army on August 18, 1939 – a mere two
weeks prior to Germany’s aggression against Poland. He was twenty-seven years old.
United States officials, anticipating that the country might be drawn into
hostilities, began plans to enlarge and enhance the nation’s armed forces.
Volunteers would not provide sufficient manpower for the military, so the
Congress passed the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940. Enacted
September 16, 1940, the statute was the first peacetime conscription in the
United States. The act required men who had reached their 21st birthday, but had
not reached their 36th, to register with local draft boards for potential
military service. The first men inducted pursuant to the law entered military
service on November 18, 1940. 
	Kenneth M. Cobb – required to register for selective service – enlisted as a
private in the army on April 1, 1941. He was twenty-three years old. At the time
he joined the military the United States was not a party to the global war. 
	Leicester and Cobb were assigned to the Army Air Corps. In September 1941, the
19th Bombardment Group was formed at Clark Field in the Philippines. The 28th
Bomber Squadron, which had been a constituent unit at the field for
approximately two decades, was assigned to the group. Thirty-four B-17s ("Flying
Fortresses") were flown from other United States air bases to Clark Field for
the use of the 19th Bomber Group. Lloyd T. Leicester and Kenneth M. Cobb were
assigned to the 28th Bomber Squadron.
	On Sunday, December 7, 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor,
Hawaii. The Japanese intended to destroy the United States’ Pacific Fleet. The
next day Japanese aircraft attacked Clark Field and virtually damaged or
destroyed all the military assets. The entire 28th Squadron was ordered to
evacuate the field. Leicester and Cobb were caught up in the evacuation. There
were little mission-oriented actions that squadron personnel could undertake due
to the heavy destruction of the air field. Members of the squadron evacuated
Clark Field on Christmas Eve, 1941, and traveled by train to Bataan. On December
28, military authorities ordered the 28th Squadron to travel to the port of
Mariveles where the unit’s members boarded a ship for passage away from the
immediate combat zone. Under the cover of nighttime darkness, the ship sailed
out of Mariveles harbor and at daylight anchored off the Island of Mindoro. But
Japanese patrol aircraft spotted and attempted to bomb the ship, but failed to
hit the vessel. The next evening the ship again sailed and arrived at the port
of Bugo, Mindanao the following morning. At Bugo the members of the 28th Bomber
Squadron were issued Enfield rifles – they were no longer functioning as air
force personnel but as infantrymen. The enlisted men, with a few officers, were
bused to Carmen Ferry on the Pulangi River and ordered to guard the ferry and
patrol the river. The Battle of Bataan, the most intense phase of the Japanese
invasion of the Philippines, was underway. The personnel remained at Carmen
Ferry until April 16, 1942, when most of the members of the 28th Bomber Squadron
were ordered to Maramag, Mindanao. Military authorities intended to activate a
secret air field for the United States Air Corps at Maramag. Japanese offensive
operations prevented the intended activation. On May 7 most of the personnel of
the 28th Bomber Squadron, along with servicemen from other units of the 19th
Bomber Group, were ordered to embark for Alanib in central Mindanao. The men
turned in their Enfield rifles for shovels. At Alanib the men were directed to
trek to Bosok twenty-three kilometers (approximately fourteen miles) from Alanib
and prepare entrenchments for Filipino troops to guard a trail that authorities
surmised might be utilized by Japanese troops. When less than a mile from Bosok
Japanese ground forces ambushed the Americans. Tech. Sgt. Lloyd T. Leicester and
PFC Kenneth M. Cobb were captured. The Americans – without weapons to defend
themselves – immediately began backtracking to Alanib. At Alanib, on May 10,
1942, the members of the 28th Bomber Squadron learned that all the armed forces
in the Philippine Islands had been ordered to surrender. All squadron personnel
had become prisoners of war. 
Cobb was initially listed by the military as missing-in-action, but subsequently
the War Department determined that he had been captured. Surely, he and
Leicester "leaned on" each other for motivational support so many thousands of
miles from their rural Bertie County homes. The American and Filipino prisoners
were forced into the "Bataan Death March," a 55-mile trek from Mariveles to San
Fernando during which at least 5,600 prisoners (including 600 Americans)
perished due to inhumanely cruel treatment by the Japanese. Sometime after his
capture Cobb was able to send a card to his parents which noted that he was
"well and uninjured." 
Leicester and Cobb remained captives at the prisoner-of- war camp at Davao,
Mindanao, the Philippines. Japanese guards held life-or-death power over the
prisoners. Various members of the 28th Bomber Squadron died while prisoners
because of torture, starvation and brutally inhumane treatment. By 1944 Gen.
Douglas MacArthur was on the verge of invading the Philippines. To preclude
liberation of prisoners of war, the Japanese began transferring the captives
from the Philippines to other locales in the Japanese empire. The prisoners were
placed aboard merchant vessels called "hell ships" by those persons being
transported. "Hell ships" were notorious for their inhumane quarters and the ill
treatment afforded prisoners while confined on the vessels.
On September 7, 1944, Leicester and Cobb were aboard the Shinyo Maru, which was
being used to transport prisoners of war to mainland Japan. The "hell ship" was
travelling in a convoy with seven other vessels and was situated at a point
several miles off the Zamboanga Peninsula of the island of Mindanao. During the
day an American submarine, the USS Paddle – whose crew had been informed that
the Shinyo Maru was transporting Japanese soldiers – located the "hell ship"
sailing in the small convoy. The Paddle fired two torpedoes into the enemy
vessel, unaware that 750 American and Filipino prisoners were on board. The
submarine also torpedoed a cargo ship in the convoy.
	The Japanese commander ruthlessly had ordered his guards to begin killing the
prisoners in the event of an attack on the Shinyo Maru. The Japanese crewmembers
of the convoy began launching boats to pick up Japanese survivors and to kill
remaining prisoners. Two machine guns – one on the crippled cargo ship and the
other incapacitated "hell ship" – opened fire on the Allied service personnel.
Six hundred sixty-three Americans, including Tech. Sgt. Lloyd T. Leicester and
PFC Kenneth M. Cobb, were killed during the attack and subsequent executions.
Leicester and Cobb were lost at sea and their names are memorialized on the Wall
of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery, Taguig City, Philippines.
Leicester and Cobb’s military tenures entailed service under horrific
conditions. Both men escaped the destruction of Clark Field in December 1941.
They survived the "Bataan Death March" and twenty-eight months in a hell-hole
prison under the overbearing control of ruthless Japanese guards, only to be
killed as passengers on a prisoner-of-war ship sunk by the United States Navy.
Their patriotic service is vivid testament that the cost of American freedom is
not cheap.
Navy officials did not inform the crewmembers of the USS Paddle that they had
sunk a ship transporting hundreds of American prisoners of war until after the
conclusion of the war.
?	?
(Left) The Japanese prisoner-of-war "hell ship," Shinyo Maru. (Right) The USS
Paddle.
Images from NavSource Online: Submarine Photo Archives, Paddle (SS-263),
http://navsource.org/archives.


The names of Tech. Sgt. Lloyd T. Leicester and PFC Kenneth M. Mills, both of
Bertie County, are inscribed on tablets of the Wall of the Missing at the Manila
American Cemetery. The tablets contain the names of 36,286 individuals. Image
from American Battle Monuments Commission, www.abmc.gov. 

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