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Show GOD IS MY k CO-PILOT Col. Robert L. Scoff WNU RELEASE so dark that my tracers burned brilliant bril-liant to the ground and .hen ricocheted rico-cheted away into the air again, still burning. I think it was in my third pass, as the Japs seemed to be giving giv-ing up the effort to climb off the road, that I decided my ship would be called "Old Exterminator." Their officers must have called double-time, for they spread out as much as they could and ran South on the road through the rain. I kept on cutting them to pieces until my ammunition was gone; I fired 1,890 rounds into those three or four hundred hun-dred Japanese, and I don't think more than a handful escaped. As the May days drifted into weeks, I made up little schemes to fool the Japs. Perhaps the schemes worked, perhaps they didn't anyway any-way they eased the disappointment of not getting letters from my wife and little girl and from the other folks back home. During this month I went to China as much as possible to talk to members mem-bers of the AVG. Some of these pilots pi-lots I had taught to fly in the Army Schools back home. I had checked quite a few of them and I was older, old-er, but I'm glad I realized then Tbe story thus (ar: Robert Scott Is graduated from West Point as a second lieutenant, and after winning his wings at Kelly Field takes up pursuit flying. Wben the war breaks out he Is an instructor in California and told he Is too old (or com- i bat flying. He appeals to one General after aft-er another (or a chance to fly a combat plane and finally the opportunity comes. He says goodby to his wl(e and child and flies a (our-motor bomber to India, where , he becomes a (erry pilot, flying supplies to Burma. After Burma (alls he visits General Chennault and tells him his story. Chennault promises that the first P-40 c. arrive (rom A(rlca will be bis. Scott soon gets a Kittyhawk and flies the skies over Burma. He gets his first Jap. CHAPTER XII After following the Salween to the South until I could see Lashio, I turned West for the field and came in right on the treetops, strafing the anU-aircraft guns in two passes. On the second run across the field I felt and heard bullets hitting my ship, but didn't see their origin until nearly near-ly too late. Down close to the West end of the field, almost under the trees, were Japanese ground soldiers. sol-diers. They were grouped into two squares like the old Macedonian phalanx, pha-lanx, and were firing rifles at me. I turned my guns on them and could see the fifty-calibre fire taking good toll from the Jap ranks. But even after I had made three runs on them, I noted that they continued to hold their positions, an excellent demonstration of perfect battle discipline. dis-cipline. Later on one of the AVG aces, Tex Hill told me that he had seen the same thing down in Thailand, Thai-land, and that after he'd strafed one bf the squares of about a hundred men and there were only two or three on their feet, those few still were shooting at him when he left the field. Leaving Lashio, I went to Katha looking for a Jap train on the railway, rail-way, but succeeded only in gathering gather-ing a little more ground-fire. From there I went back North to Bhamo, and seeing no barges, continued on to Myitkyina, keeping very close to the surface of the Irrawaddy, and strafed the gun positions of the enemy ene-my on the field with the last of my ammunition. When I landed I had made almost eight hundred miles, which is just about the limit for a fighter ship, especially since I had strafed at full throttle for several minutes. There were a few holes In my ship, but mostly In the fabric of the rudder and the flippers. The Japs couldn't learn to lead me He fought his way partially out of the trap, but two of them right on his tail literally shot him to pieces. George's ship was seen to trail smoke and dive straight down, from about fifteen thousand feet. Doctor Gentry said they watched the stricken strick-en Forty and knew who It was by the number. As it disappeared behind be-hind the trees they mentally crossed the boy Paxton off their list of living liv-ing men. But George and the sturdy P-40 were not through. There was the surging scream of an Allison engine's en-gine's last boost, and the ship skimmed over the trees and made a belly landing on the soft part of the field. Even then, considering the number of Japs who had been using George for target practice and the way the ship looked, with big holes in the tail, wings, and fuselage, fuse-lage, as they drove out for him in the jeep they expected to find just a body. Instead, they found George Pax-ton Pax-ton standing by the side of his ship, swearing and shaking his fist at the sky. Doctor Gentry said he looked into the cockpit. The instrument panel was just about shot away, the rudder rud-der pedals were partly shot to pieces, the armor of the pilot's seat was badly bent but Paxton was out there yelling: "I still say those little snakes can't shoot!" Even his Texas boots were practically practi-cally shot off. Two doctors picked rivets from George's back all the afternoon, and Jap explosive particles parti-cles from his feet, legs and hands. The worst injuries had been caused by the Japanese explosive bullets hitting the seat armor and driving the rivets through into George's back. But for the armor, those explosives ex-plosives would have been in Pax-ton's Pax-ton's back, instead of just the rivets. On May 17. I flew with the AVG on a mission from Kunming into Indochina. Indo-china. Squadron Leader Bishop led the attack. I flew the wing position with R. T. Smith, one of the aces of the Flying Tigers and one of the pilots I remembered checking during dur-ing his training days at Santa Maria, Ma-ria, California. We got off the Kunming field with our fighters and headed South over the lakes at twelve thousand feet. In a few minutes we passed Meng-tze Meng-tze and the clouds thinned out and the weather got pretty clear. We Symbol of the American Volunteer Volun-teer Group "Flying Tigers" which made aerial combat history over China and Burma when the Japs were having their inning. The AVG was later inducted Into the Army Air Corps, with General Claire Chennault as commander. that these younger pilots knew a million times more about combat than I did. I'd corner some of these Flying Tigers and ask them questions, ques-tions, for I loneed for the day when went just about over Laokay, on the Chinese-Indo-China border. Then we followed the River Rouge through the very crooked gorge in the mountains, on South towards Hanoi. Ha-noi. --- Just about halfway between the border and Hanoi we saw a train coming North on the railroad. Bishop Bish-op led four of us down to strafe it while the other four stayed at twelve thousand' for top-cover. We circled over the train as we spiralled down to attack, and while the speed of the dive built up I got my gun-switch gun-switch on and tried to trim the ship for the increasing speed. As we levelled off and went in for the kill, I saw Bishop's tracers hitting the engine. By the time I got there in number two position, on Bishop's wing now the white steam was spraying from the punctured punc-tured boiler. I saw the engineer and fireman jump from the locomotive, and as we went on down the cars, j shooting into them, I saw Jap sol- j diers and probably Vichy French j civilians jumping off too. We came back and set some of the cars on fire. It was a cinch now. for the enough; I guess they'd never hunted game birds. In less than an hour I took off again and made a shorter trip to Mogaung and Katha, searching without success for a train. After getting more fuel I went back and strafed Myitkyina, turned South, and caught a barge of enemy equipment at Bhamo. Though I didn't sink this river boat, I put at least eight hundred hun-dred rounds of ammunition in it, and left it settling in the water and drifting slowly with the current. The crew either were killed or jumped Into the river. And now, to close the big day, I got in the air again and set my course for the bridge on the Salween Sal-ween about twenty miles West of Paoshan. I had received a radio report that the AVG under Tom Jones, Bishop, and Tex Hill were dive-bombing the Japs who were constructing a pontoon bridge there. Reaching the rendezvous point, I couldn't see a thing except some burning trucks that the AVG had strafed on the Jap side of the Salween; Sal-ween; evidently I had got to the battle bat-tle too late. I had turned South towards Lashio and was flying through a moderate rain when, down below on the Burma Bur-ma Road, I saw a troop column marching South, probably towards Chefang. At this point the Burma Road is about eight thousand feet above sea level, rising nearby to its ceiling, just over nine thousand feet. The troops below me were Japanese Japa-nese soldiers, evidently retreating from the mauling they had taken back there on the river, when the AVG had bombed them with five-hundred-pound bombs. I turned to the side, to watch them they were In heavy rain, and from the standpoint stand-point of their own safety they were in the worst possible place on the road. The Burma Road was cut out of red Yunnan clay, and there were steep banks on both sides of the column besides I don't think they had heard me over the roar of the rain, and I know they hadn't seen my ship. I turned my gun switches on and 't dove for the kill, sighting carefully I through my lighted sight. My tracers trac-ers struck the target dead center, I for I had held my fire until the last moment. There was no need of doing this job at high speed, for if I merely cruised I'd have longer to shoot at them and could also look out for the hills hidden in the rain tnd the clouds. This time there was j no dust, but the red, muddy water j went up like a geyser. The six ! Fifties femed to cut the column to j bits. As I passed over, I could see J those who hadn't been hit trying j desperately to crawl up the muddy bank to the safety of the trees and slipping back. Turning very close to the hills, I j same back over. Every now and 1 then I'd lose them, for the rain was heavy and it was dark in the clouds, I'd get to fly on attacking missions with them. At first they were hard to know. The men they had met as representing represent-ing our Army in China had been pretty harsh with these high-strung flyers, who after all had done the greatest job in the war against the enemy. In the beginning they were reluctant to answer my questions or tell me the secrets of their success in combat. They couldn't understand why a Colonel in the Army Air Corps had to know anything. As George Paxton put it: Didn't the Army know everything? "Seems like to me," he said, "every army officer we've seen out here knows all the answers." When he found out that I was serious, se-rious, and that my ambition was to get over there and fly with them, and learn combat from them, so that in the end I might teach it to our younger pilots who would be coming out, he told me things that I would never have learned otherwise. "First," he said, leading me off under the wing of one of the P-40's, "first, the Old Man says, never turn with one of the Zeros. He says that's bad." I learned that the Jap ship would outmaneuver anything and would outclimb the P-40 four to one. "But that doesn't matter," Paxton said. "The P-40 is the strongest ship in the world. It's heavy as hell, but that makes it out-dive just about anything, and it'll out-dive the Jap two to one. With those two Fifties and the four thirty-caliber guns in the B's we have done pretty good. Now with the six Fifties in the new Kittyhawks we out-gun anything." He told me that Hill, Rector, Bond, Neal, Lawler, and other aces had seen Zeros disintegrate in front of their six Fifties, and went on to advise ad-vise that I use the good qualities of the P-40's against the bad qualities of the Jap, but never try to beat him at his own game climbing and maneuverability. ma-neuverability. Paxton did me a lot of good he got me my first flight with the AVG on the Emperor's birthday. But the Jap didn't come in. We were the most griped bunch you've ever seen. Everyone up and waiting at three a. m. and then the dirty so-and-so's didn't have the guts to come in! I heard a story on George Paxton that will show you the kind of tough Texan he was. It was down over Rangoon, near Mingaladon airdrome, air-drome, in the early days of the Burma Bur-ma war. Doctor Gentry, who told me the story, said that the squadron George was in was aloft and engag- ! ing the Japanese over the field. Looking Look-ing upstairs, you could see the condensation con-densation streamers criss-crossing the sky, and every now and then a trail of smoke as a Jap Zero burned and plunged towards the earth. Finally eight or nine Zeros ganged up on George Paxton. They got on his tail and they got all over him train had stopped and was no longer weaving through the narrow curves of the gorge. While the boys talked to one another, an-other, we re-formed and I heard Bishop say, "Let's bomb the railroad rail-road yards at Laokay with our frags." (Fragmentation bombs.) I thought then that was wrong, for we had alerted Laokay as we flew over and they were probably listening to us and would be waiting for us. That didn't matter, though; we'd get the railroad yards and some of the anti-aircraft crews too, if they didn't look out. We spiralled down to bomb the target and I saw Bishop's bombs hit dead center on the round-house. I Then I dropped mine. Just at that I instant Bishop's fighter belched fire and smoke, and I saw him slide his canopy open and jump His chute ! opened so close in front of my ship that I pulled up for fear I'd run into it. I hung there for what seemed i like hours, with my air speed indi- eating three hundred miles an hour, while black bursts of anti-aircraft fire broke all around me. The ship just seemed to stand still, but I saw Bishop floating down towards the river that was the boundary between China and Indo-China. At the very last moment, as I got my nose down and got out of the cen- j ter of the anti-aircraft, I saw an unlucky wind blow the chute back I to the Indo-Chinese or Jap side of j the river, and Bishop was captured. I We heard from him later that he ! was really a prisoner of the French j and was getting along all right. We re-formed North of Laokay and went back to Kunming. General Chennault said that the train wasn't worth Bishop we should have left Laokay alone. (TO BE CONTXNUEDi |