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Show IPROTBEY -S3F .WHITS. 6'Wr-7PAife W.N.U.TEATUREJ , rAB: Lieut. Col. h lyl Fort""' ' ihat fatal day f AMer fjs ,s,and "nU1 S evacuate to AM-M AM-M .r from there. 5 Group U back ta Kurtt once more BWaer.hero ar- rt0" ttt Nlpa. . tte'real truTh is he "sent Army fighters fast enough, or high w don't have the Jap knows this, II J, home don't. Maybe f tneir morale to tod it ' thinking of the .pilots.' That's why he ' ' . Poor euv. building dispersal fields, but they weren't done yet, so that the aircraft had to be lined up along the side of that gravel runway and of course were slow in getting off, which made it a setup for the Japs. Also, our equipment was flown by green youngsters from the States. The big problem was supply. Moresby is as far from Melbourne as Los Angeles Ange-les is from Pittsburgh. Then at every ev-ery state line the Australian railroad changes gauges, so ai the freight cars had to be unloaded. We had about a dozen B-24's to bring supplies sup-plies In over the water from the end of the railroad at Townsville, but only about four of these were operational; the rest were under repair. "And the Japs were stilt a nuisance nui-sance at Moresby dropping down from the overcast to strafe our field at 40 feet altitude. We spent a lot of our time there, and had some close calls getting out to save the Swoose." "I'll never forget our closest one," said Master Sergeant 'Red' Varner, fhem back, and as between the bombs and the head-hunters, the na-twes na-twes chose the bombs, so we got Plenty of work done. "By now we weren't worried about Port Moresby. We had that in fair shape, and our bombers were going over almost every day to pound the Japs. But we were uneasy un-easy about the other shore of New Guinea The Japs had already dug in at Lae and Salamaua suppose they came on down the line and put in an airfield at Buna, right opposite Moresby? they could cause us plenty plen-ty of trouble, intercepting our bombers bomb-ers on the way out and back. "General Brett was particularly anxious, and wanted to move in and tr.ke Buna in May. There was nothing noth-ing there then but a native village and an old Catholic mission. But Melbourne said no, because it would mean landing troops to defend our airdrome there. "But the Air Force knew if the Japs ever got Buna it would take a first-class expedition to get them out. Finally General Ralph Royce, nu"'c- - - - e Florida played on in Said Margo, "and I i write letters to some girls we knew whose uld never come back. t letters I wanted to :dBt For a while I exhibition because my , ,Upposed to be dead ,d they'd look at me , 4 patriotic sympathy, , to work planning the irnament. I'd look at healthy young golf pro-igching pro-igching flabby men on r-eens, and wonder why 'in uniform. Only that !3g attitude; they'd tell j recreation now, more to keep our morale up war. I suppose it was kept wishing the weary lorra I knew could be t of it, instead of these intented men." ire some more names to that list of letters," said with us the feeling had t was wonderful to be ; to smash them back, in had done at Darwin, s base in North Austra-3!h Austra-3!h Bombardment Group laded the 7th now was er New Guinea and New ands, landing heavy them at Lae and Sala- '"if (r. '! ' ( vn: wno was ueneral Brett s operations chief, flew out over northern New Guinea on a personal inspection of the whole coast, and sent to Melbourne Mel-bourne a detailed report, endorsing a field at Buna as vital to our future fu-ture air operations. "Presently his reply came. In reference ref-erence to his report on the establishment estab-lishment of a landing field at Buna, Melbourne headquarters commended commend-ed him for his initiative in making the reconnaissance, but found that owing to lack of facilities, it wasn't possible at this time. "But this friendly little ground-air argument over Buna was soon settled. set-tled. The third week in July our reconnaissance spotted a Jap Naval task force moving toward the north coast of New Guinea, and now just off Rabaul. We weren't sure where they were headed maybe around the island, to capture Moresby itself. "We were taking no chances, so on July 24 General Brett hit them with everything he had, little as it was medium and light bombardment. bombard-ment. Forts and obsolescent dive bombers. "But for twenty-four hours the fog closed in, hiding them. When it lifted they were sixty miles off Buna. Now we knew the Jap High Command was thinking in the same strategical terms as we were in the Air Force. "Even though the weather gave us this very short time to pound them, we made them pay for their Rnnn landinff. But still they could Jap lines of communica-s communica-s far extended as ours now we had something luipment they had put We knew, of course, j-jsy digesting Java and Lies. But we felt now never knock us back on igain, because we were ily dug in so we could Ir punches and put out a own. It was a nice feel- ! Japs were getting a spect for the E-model ! after the Olympics, I Ishl had entered the Jap After that I thought of Kobi Ishi, a pretty good some fair tricks and a e, but nothing you can't ou train for it. Maybe fanatics, craving to die Por, but I remember a 'h told me in Australia, ur Forts were coming in "1 to give the Japs a :a one lone Zero showed t Forts were all brand-kls, brand-kls, and the Japs had it them. The Forts con- I The cannibal head hunters who lived in the jungle used to stalk the tame village natives. the Swoose's crew chief. "We got just a minute and a half s notice that the Japs were coming. Now the General could have stepped down into a foxhole and been perfectly per-fectly safe there, watching the Japs pound the field. But not our Generalhe Gen-eralhe wanted to save that plane, and we had to run like hell to jump In, the General leading everybody, slam the doors, and lam out of there. We had to take off down wind, which was bad, missing a little hill by a lot less than 100 feet. We wouldn't have missed it if it hadn't been for those smart trees they have on New Guinea growing on top of that hill the most intelligent ones I've ever seen. Because they saw us coming and ducked. I happened to be looking out and saw them. Then I looked back, and bombs were already breaking on the field right in the dust of our take-off. "The Colonel here, who of course was doins the piloting, pulled a sneak a transport through during the night to put troops ashore. Had we had only a little infantry and artillery at Buna, they could have held them off, giving the Air Force a chance to pound their landing barges at dawn. But we didn't have, and when morning came their transport was steaming away empty. "In only two days the enterprising enterpris-ing little devils had chopped a landing land-ing strip out of the jungle. A few days later their fighters were rising off it to attack our bombers as they took off or returned to Moresby after aft-er pounding the Jap base at Rabaul. "It took almost six months of hard fighting by both Australian and American Infantry, down over the Owen Stanley range finally led by General MacArthur himself to clear the Japanese out. What we have now is real co-operation. The ground forces know the vital importance impor-tance of airfields, and I hope we in the Air Force have come to appreciate appre-ciate the tremendous importance of the unity of air, land, and sea." "A man doesn't know what distance dis-tance means until he flies that end of the world," said Red. the crew chief. "Remember the time we had to make a forced landing right in the wrmation, but keeping 'rained on the Zero. Now 1 Pilots, whether they're Jsp, or German, are i ?uick like fox terriers, gap between thinking and TO can almost watch a w and read its pilot's bow it was with this He starts in, thinking ;aa to pick oft a Fort, JWealy he sees all those imks how sweet and cute oond-eyed geisha is back nice it would be to kr.so about half a mile out in a turn, out of l continues parallel with thinking it over. Well, 8e'sha finally wins out .Emperor, because he but he thumbs his nose ay: flying alongside, gang watching, he ;5 tamelmann turns. It's which brings you out I? 0I"y flying backward. by a half-roll, J right side up again. . 01 fte hardest tricks in properly-beautiful , yi "id, and he kept and over, just out of .uch as to say, 'Boys, in, but don't think . KePt it up for fifteen ; latest-model super- and just as he flipped our gang waved ;e for the flying circus, -J ftem the high sign -Be was Kobi Ishl. I'd m after the war. 4 PrU Port Moresby on a our problem child. mere was a single jun- ng strip with nQ ade. craft guns. We were smart one. The Japs were right on top of us, so he hugged the ground - figuring then the Zeros couldn't dive on us without mash-ing mash-ing their own propellers into the bush We went hell for breakfast, wiggling in and out of gullies hardly 40 feet off the ground, and then out over the sea, where we could see a cloud cover to hide in. We , had all kinds of rank aboard that day-Australian day-Australian Air Force generals and other visiting firemen-and some of mem weren't used to scuttling Egh gullies in a four-motor Sanefand by the time we got into Sat cloud they were sprouting some gray hairs." -By May, though," said Frank, ..we began to get the situation m hdatWsby Wegotsomedis- Tarsal fields back in the hills ior S pLes and an operational alarm Z so now we can intercept and raids ny "'fa fighters are tear up empty jungles. orawhilewehadalaborprob- lem The tame village native. d the bombs, and when the a sounded, instead of upingmto me foxholes they'd beat i jtato ttj 1 g,C- an?emoafydeays Sethis "S heem anJase miuQie ui uic "I'll never forget," said Charlie, the bombardier. "It was about the time of that Buna business." "We had left Darwin," said Red. "and were flying across the Australian Austra-lian desert headed for Cloncurry. We had umpty-ump rank aboard, about sixteen in all-General Royce, General Perrin, General Marquat, and some Australians-Air Marshals they probably were and also Lyndon Lyn-don Johnson, a big lanky guy from Texas a real Congressman, only now he was out inspecting this area as a Navy Lieutenant Commander. "Well we're flying along over this wilderness which looks like the rumpled rum-pled parts of New Mexico or Arizona Arizo-na heading, we think, for this Cloncurry, Clon-curry, only our arrival time goes by, and no Cloncurry. "Harry the navigator, begins to check things, and dis covers that hi, octant has gone out on him-it s IiKe I sextant on a ship, only you use " air bubble instead of the horizon. It wasn't Harry's fault-the prism turning all right, but now he could see the recorder wasn t He came up out of the navigator's com-C!mment com-C!mment into the cockpit shaking fs head and told Frank here what hid haopened-that he had no idea the Swoose was. 'You can veereh now, Major,' he say, She's all yours!' -Well, first the Major got our radioman ra-dioman to working, trying to wake "oL Australian station which P m rive us a bearing. But I W0 5 were all asleep. Our guess they we 1(wer fnd Sun sinking, too. And And the sun rum. SupeLhadsieptini, P (TO BE CONTINUED) |