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Show h ' . THIS FAR: Ltout. Col. ?R ,,, of a Flyln F"-trcss, 4 Cl day 'Mn ,he ,aps swing '"r sheIt" and fortress... et oir ,he rcapins to Australia, f le Muadron flies to Java on many mission, , ,Ls Six Fortresses go it Macassar Strait her. ?C, concentration of Jap V.ke their bomb runs and Ttrlp Major Robinson', fl dive nd crashes In-S In-S 1 Planes circle over the Chapter xih i latched this last four fall-In fall-In what was practically a i Jg inade by Jap pom-poms at us. We could see the Iding the rails, trying to s 4-board as the bombs gath-1 gath-1 I The first bomb plunked ' Lter alongside, but the L went smack! smack! r f-ht down what had been jnade deck, and it looked ku coughing up into the Li of confetti made up of Alters and Jap infantry, 'j a wing man, who was re's re-'s I bombs synchronized with i i four hits across the back fght to hear Beardshear, - f nner, tell about it. Not gr Zeros to keep him busy, - i jcyir.g the scenery and tankee Doodle' on the deck frith his .50-calibers. He ipssed over so close that i down the funnels, and he It us over the interphones sjJd see what they were go- morning I was at the KN'ILM Airfield Air-field at Surabaya, checking on a transport plane which was supposed to be bringing in ground crews for Bud Sprague's fighters, when at Operations Op-erations they reported in great excitement ex-citement that a Jap bomber force was over Java itself, headed down the island. (Abbreviation for "Koninklijke Vc.r. landseh lndisclie l.mhtcwt Mmitvh,,, pi;'," meaninf Royal Dutch Indu; Airplane Air-plane Company.) "I was panic-stricken for fear they might branch off at Making and catch our Forts on the ground there. Luckily the pass was bottled up with fog, so they came on down toward us at Surabaya. "At almost exactly eleven o'clock we could hear them hitting the city off in the distance. We know they wouldn't miss us. I'll never forgot poor old Baalerts, the head of that KNILM Field. He'd never been bombed before, and asked me what to do. He had already crawled into his car. I told him that was the worst thing he could do, that we should run for the concrete slit trenches at the edge of the field. "As we ran; we could hear the second wave coming over the harbor har-bor next to our airdromehear the hollow echo as the bombs crashed into the oil storage base. They practically leveled Moro Kamban-gem, Kamban-gem, the Dutch naval base there, coming in out of the sun it was really real-ly a beautiful job from the professional profes-sional standpoint. It's second in size only to Singapore. The docks were left a shambles. Our American Navy's Na-vy's PBY's of Patrol Wing 10 were anchored there. One or two were burned on the ways, but the rest managed to take off, although the I f!C,,!:R f"r t'H'ir homeland, and sev ! ('n p- nos rre lost that morning .1 ! ''"l luv!ve wh'ch hid been Java'i only defending Dutch fighter force " I 'limbed out I realized tin Picture v as darkening fast. We wen depen -l;n? on our Fortresses to keei the. Jap transpo,.1s nwnv from j., hut we had to have lighters to de fond our flying fields. "lut it wasn't until later in thi Xv that I foU:.d out the Zeros hat S"t Major Straubel. one of our owt squadron Commanders. He'd beer , Pdoting a B-18 we used for transpor tation, and was coming from Malanj t" Surabaya to talk with Genera Brett. The Zeros hit. and from tin ground they saw him go over tin hill on fire. "They brought him into Surabayi hospital, and of course I went righ "lit. It was in confusion because o the raid, but tiptoeing down thosi dim corridors. I finally found Strau bel's room. He was burned black and there was no hope, but they'c given him morphine to put him t( sleep, and he was groaning in hi; sleep, nut until then, when he'e been conscious, he hadn't let out I groan had just been anxious tha the nurse let his wife know he was all right. He died at three in thi morning. "While the liaison work lasted was quartered at the big hotel h Surabaya, and the whole thing didn' feel right. You weren't sure of thesi natives as you had been of the Fili pinos. That night a few were sho who were caught flashing lights inti the air. And at the hotel the bare footed waiters, who slipped silentl; between tables and in and out of thi i high-ceilinged rooms, began to dis appear. e for chow rice and fish pm we made our turn, (on back to Batavia, which tied with refugees from (this time," said Frank got word from the Colo-: Colo-: last some American P-40 tere on their way up from equipped with belly tanks jculd take it in hops, land-id land-id at Kupang airdrome on land. It was part of my to get them settled with i fighters at their airdrome It was another beauti-tn beauti-tn field. The Dutch had to to it with an escort plane, they landed I found there ', led by my old friend J Sprague, whom I hadn't the Philippines. I asked e Buzz Wagner was, and ku just hadn't been lucky. 1 d them in Australia that j f em had to stay behind jthe newly arriving fighter l:tle extra training, while iwuld lead the squadron in ia and Bud had tossed fian shilling to decide it, had lost; he was stuck ftraining job. itch fighter pilots, who are ancy as ours, were all ex-tog ex-tog their stuff. They'd formation, and now they !ng on a show for him. "My own boy turned up a couph of days later, however with tean in his eyes. Said he was back ant to stay. Ke wasn't sure what this war was about, tut he'd taken hii mother and sister to the country and was back for the rest of the war "Jap Intelligence must have beet very good, because one bomber hat peeled off the formation and madi a direct run on the newly complet ed Dutch Army-Navy building (the; had just moved in), scoring a near miss. "Meanwhile there was something else to straighten out. The Dutcl fighters alone had been defendinj Surabaya where had our P-40'i been? Well, it turned out that ii that Dutch fighter-control room the; hadn't been able to speak Englisl clearly enough for our boys to un derstand over the radio, so they't been off in another corner of thi sky. Getting someone in there whi could talk with an American accen was another job for me. "The Forts of course had beei pounding away at the Japs, and hat come back with ominous news-they'd news-they'd spotted a Jap carrier out ii the Java Sea and sent it away limp ing. If they'd had more strengtl and could have laid down a dense bomb pattern, they'd have sunk thi damned thing. The Navy's PB flying boats of Patrol Wing 10 wen doing a wonderful reconnalssanci job finding targets for us ever; morning or so you might wake u ? u"iu me neia in an at-; at-; and just before they hit, IN almost straight up in 'd then, a few thousand lt string opened out in IJ"S like the petals of a i to admit the Dutch were ' be said he had to take Planes up for a test that and show 'em how to fly. 't off with them right fe Praised the camouflage field. When he came back 1 1 heard him take his own :'s 'n hand. Of course it -hooey, but he gave them ts warning. 1S the best-camouflaged 1 ev" operate on,' he told remember-l don't want .cross this field with a Zero " Bail out, beach it, but e back here with, com- a result, the Japanese 13 wioro Field until two 'e the end. Rafter they came, I rang 1U1 queer assignment for we were doing every-! every-! ' to stop the Japs from v onto Sumatra from fning barges morning we were using them I , ,eaVy Pursui-skim-;er the weather to b"ges going up the jAejBud to deliver a lit-f lit-f ey went, car-tan car-tan s to get them there (i0'" Andir. They ZL W'th 30-Pd frag-J?egot frag-J?egot back Bud I? barges in full field kih Sank quite a few u ot back to Java. C directin. We Eel, atTra!e from those s, lKeTndari and Sam- U vS 3 Sea- The e!noed into Borneo and o we waited for what ! bombers onto what irane of Java. ve to wait long. One He had been anxious that his wife know that he was all right. He died at three in the morning. Japs strafed a dingy full of sailors rowing out to them. They also scored a direct hit on the barracks thev. so for the second time those poor guys of Patrol Wing 10 lost all they had the first had been at Cavite in the Philippines. "Now came the third wave, headed head-ed right for our airdrome. Echoing around in the cement of our slit trenches, the sound of the crashes was terrific. Poor old Baalerts was down there lying on the concrete floor, his white bridal suit soaking up half an inch of dirty rain water. We were all thankful when we heard that bomb pattern moving away. They'd laid a nice strip across the field, but only one bomb happened to hit the macadam strip. "I was just hoisting out of the trench what was left of our bridegroomthere bride-groomthere had been a lot of noise and I'm afraid his condition was pretty grave when the Zeros hit, so we got Baalerts back down again. "All the Dutch had to meet them were twelve export-model Curtiss pursuits. They had little motors and were hardly better than advanced trainers. The Dutch had come to America in 1939 with nice shiny new-mined new-mined gold In their hands, begging to buy fighters. But this was all we could spare them, and it was the entire Dutch fighter force, ex-cept ex-cept for another dozen which finally got back from Samarinda. Well, this brave dozen was up to do what it could against about ten Zeros. "We watched one Dutchman coming com-ing in for fuel when two Zeros crossed his tail, their guns going full-blast, hammering tracers into his tail-watched his plane roll over and dive into the red dust at the edge of the field. "Now another Dutch pilot comes in. with a Zero streaking for his tail, the Dutchman dodging all the way to the ground. Fifty feet from the ground he slips to the right to avoid that stream of tracers but it s too late. Flames come gushing out, yet he manages to land and jump out of the burning plane. It s a terrific ter-rific fight overhead: we can hear the faraway rattles ey clear their guns-the brave Dutch kids are to find a Jap carrier at almost an; corner of the island. The PBY'i would sight a little task force ii the evening, but by the time I go word to our Forts to be out then next morning, often it had slippet away. "Most important of all, ten mon fighters presently arrived hoppini up from Australia via our stepping stones of Timor and Bali. The; were led in by Captain Will Con nolly, a commercial pilot, who flev a Beechcraft and did the navigatini for the fighters that isn't part o their training. He reported they'i only lost one, which cracked up ii landing at Timor Field. "But they'd had plenty of excite ment. Just as they were approach ing Timor the boys had engaged ant shot down a Jap fighter. It madi Connolly plenty, jittery. He was ai old hand at flying, but his littl Beechcraft had no guns, am wouldn't have lasted a minute ii combat. So he hurried on out o there to land at Bali for lunch. Bu en route he sighted what was eithe. a twin-tailed Messerschmitt 110 or t twin-engined Mitsubishi bomber, oi patrol, which altered course ant was coming toward them. "Will Connolly had no radio in hi: Beechcraft to warn the ten P-40'i in the formation he was leading, si he started going up and down fran tically to signal them. Sure enough the kids got the idea, and the twi fighters on his wjng peeled off ant j headed for the Jap. The first on. put out his port engine, but the Jaj feathered it and kept on going. Bu then he was hit by the second P-40 which, in spite of the fact that onl; two of its six guns were working knocked out the starboard motor And just to make sure of him, i third P-40, which by now had ar rived, dived in to chew his wing off You should have heard thos American kids when they got in j Most of them were just out of flyinj school, and had never before flowi a p-40 except for the three-houi , practice Buzz Wagner had been ablt , to give them as they passed througl Brisbane. But now they had drawr first blood, and they were exci et and yipprng like a bunch of fo terrier pups chasing their first rab bit. (TO BE CONTINUED! |