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Show W -FHILCDT Wf S?kC,o. Robert L.Scoff w.nu release . This story is sponsored by the Eddington Canning Company for the enjoyment of our men and women in the armed forces and their friends here at home. ens. These 1,000, to 2,0)0 foot sen- tinels gave the valley an eery appearance ap-pearance that always subdued my general feeling of cheerfulness. As long as I went to Kvveilin, I dreaded dread-ed the extra nervous tension that I knew it would produce. Added to this a summer temperature of over 100 degrees, a humidity of almost al-most 100 per cent, and a fine powdery pow-dery dust . that gagged you. and you can realize that Kweilin was not a summer resort. There was just the single runway run-way for the planes, cut there between be-tween those silent needles of stone. We had operations office in one of the natural caves; and the radio set in another. As I climbed out he had built this air-warning net A had caused to be constructed many strategic airdromes in China, and had preached the doctrine of pursuit pur-suit aviation. The warning net is of course secret se-cret and cannot be discussed in detail. But if you imagine two con centric circles, one with a radius of 100 kilometers and the other of 200 kilometers, around each of most of the fields and large cities in Free China, you have a general picture. In these circles are thousands thous-ands of reporting stations some within the enemy lines, some right on the enemy fields themselves. There may be a coolie sitting on a city wall watching for ah-planes or listening for engine noise and reporting it with a visual signal. There may be a mandarin in a watch tower; a soldier in a field with a walkie-talkie hadio. All reports re-ports finally get in to the outer circle, where some of the information infor-mation is filtered and finally it goes to the plotting-board in our cave or operations shack. There Chinese interpreters get the reports re-ports and move little pin flags along the map of China and we know where every enemy ship is in our territory and can see where ours are. The net works so efficiently effi-ciently in certain areas that we dont take off until the Japs are' within the 100-kilometer circle' this gives us more fuel with which ,s to fight. When the Japs come we know 5r at what altitude they are ap- "vis, proaching and from exactly what ll direction. We know their speed 4Ze and their numbers. It's kind of a 'J of joke, too, that in several places we ' a s know when the Japs roll their Vfl ships from their hangars or re- itgr-vetments, itgr-vetments, when they start their i tati engines, and when they take off. :sS--Also it not only works for the obvious ob-vious purposes of defenses but has permitted us in many cases to lo- (jioP (Continued on page eight) fojal I CHAPTER XIV: Col. Haynes is moved to China to head the bomber bomb-er command under Gen. Chennault and Scott is left alone as commanding com-manding officer of the Ferry Command. Com-mand. Scott is ordered to report to Gen. Chennault in Kunming, China Chi-na as commanding officer of the 23rd Fighter Group. CHAPTER XV These were led by five of the best men of the AVG and there was one great ace-in-the-hole that only the General and the AVG could have arranged: Two squadrons squad-rons of these Flying Tigers had agreed to stay behind for a two weeks' period to help the newly formed 23rd Fighter Group. I think this gesture by those men such as Eob Ncal, Charley Bond, George T. Burgard, Frank Law- up on the Yangtse. Their prime job was to escort a few B-25 medium med-ium bombers against the docks of Hankow. This objective of mission mis-sion with our China force was never nev-er all we considered to be the duty of our fighters, for if any other target presented itself after the bombers were on the way home we'd have some fun. Tex Hill led his flight along with the bombers who were led by Col. V. C. Haynes. After the bombs had been released and the B-25's were heading back for base with their oomb-bay doors closed, Tex called for an attack at-tack by the fighters on the enemy shipping in the river. One of the bomber pilots said that Tex rolled his ship over from 16,000 feet and streaked down for the Jap gunboats below. The lit- had remained for the purpose of training the new pilots and his job was that of airdrome defense. He was killed on this offensive mission. mis-sion. It was one that he could have refused with honor; instead, he had volunteered for this dive-bombing dive-bombing flight and had been killed in carrying it out. It was the most inspiring thing he could have done. I kept sweating out the organization organi-zation of 'the Group and finally on July 17, I received orders from the General to proceed to Kweilin area and take charge of fighter operations. opera-tions. I know my heart nearly beat my ribs to pieces, for I was at last being ordered to go out and lead the fighting. Just as I landed on this airdrome in the Kwansi province I saw the remainder re-mainder of the AVG get into a oi my jr-iu, i couia see neiuier. Here in Kweilin I first had explained ex-plained to me the air-raid warning system on which we depended. It was of course a working dream that General Chennault had developed. devel-oped. Many times it has saved our fighter force in China, and without with-out it our chances there against the Japanese would have keen hopeless. It seems that the General had always known that Japan was our natural enemy. When he was retired re-tired from the Air Corps, instead of staying on his farm in Waterproof, Water-proof, Louisiana, for the rest of his life and living an easy life shooting ducks and fishing, he had gone to China. Here in a rugged existence, he had told his story to the Generalissimo. With the approval of high Chinese officials lor, jonn m. ijeiacK, Jim nowaru and others who were suffering from combat fatigue and ill healh was one of the bravest and most self-sacrificing incidents of this war. In the two weeks that they remained, two of them gave their lives, and their sacrifice was beyond be-yond the call of mere duty. These men with those five who stayed with us to lead our squadrons Hill, Rector, Schiel, Bright and Sawyer and the AVG radio engineering, en-gineering, armament, and ground personnel, were our backbone and our inspiration. We of the 23rd Fighter Group salute you. That Fourth of July, as the overconfident ov-erconfident enemy ships came in over Kwleilin, they brought a new twin-engined fighter that was supposed sup-posed to murder us. They came in doing arrogant acrobatics, expecting expect-ing to strafe the Chinese civilians in the city without opposition. General Chennault watched them with field glasses from outside the cave and called directions to Bob Neal, Ed Rector, and Tex Hill, who were sitting with their ships "in the sun" high overhead, at the 21,000. At his radio order of "Take 'em", the newly formed 23rd with the AVG attached dropped down and massacred the Japs. There were soon thirteen wrecked Zeros and new twin-engined I-45's about the field for the Chinese to cele- hrntft over. tie gunooais were suuuiuig cvciji-thing cvciji-thing they had at the American fighters but that, I've learned since, was what Hill liked. Tex Hill's guns were firing even as he pulled out right on the water, and they swept the decks of the enemy gunboats. The bomber pilot said that as the fighter ships would turn low to the water and come in, each concentrating on one of the little Jap warships, he could see the six lines of 50-calibre tracers cutting across the water. At long range they seemed to meet out in front of the fighter and then fan out and cover the deck of the target. tar-get. Then, as the speed of the fighter narrowed the range, the point where the fire crossed the zero or convergence point of the gun was right at the waterline of the Jap boat, and it must have knocked in a hole that crippled the boat right away, On the second sec-ond attack one of these gunboats was sinking and on fire. Hill's four fighters sank all four of the little metal gunboats. Next day, on another flight such as this one, Hill led eight fighters, four with wing bombs, for dive-bombing dive-bombing Nanchang. While these four went down with their bombs, Hill was to stay aloft with the other four to act as top-cover just in case some Zeros tried to surprise the dive-bombers. Ajax Baumler said he saw the whole Ll ailpUl L LVJ Hlil lUllg home to the U. S. A. They called to me as they got aboard and I saw Bob Neal, their greatest ace, wave from the door as he stepped in. We were on our own now, except for the five AVG veterans who had accepted induction in China, and the thirty-odd groundmen. As the transport got away and the dust settled down, I climbed out of my fighter and looked around at the country. I could but marvel at the geographical situation. situa-tion. Colonel Cooper and I Cooper Coop-er had been in the movie production produc-tion business used to discuss the peculiar beauty of the place, and he'd say that it would make the greatest location in the world for a moving picture. It was a flat, tableland country, and over the ages it must have been under water. From the level plain rose vertical, rocky hills, like stalagmites. These were honeycombed honey-combed with caves where water, when they were submerged, must have dissolved the limestone that had been in the pockets. Evidently Evident-ly the glacier period had planed the valley flat as the glacier moved mov-ed south but the jagged rocks had withstood the pressure. Then, as the glacier melted, the caves had formed under water. Now the gray pinnacles of lava-like rock pointed straight towards the heav- Out of this initial air battle for the new Group came one of the best nicknames of the war. Gen. Chennault told me that after the Jap attack had been broken he saw a lone Zero tear across the tops of the hills that jutted up all around Kwelin, and far behind it he heard the unmisaakable rolling thunder of six fifty-calibre guns. The hurrying Jap kept going in that direction of Canton and home and had just about disappeared in the Southeast when the General saw a shark-nosed P-40 roar out of the west, with its six guns going steadily, the tracers drop- thing: Johnny Petack dove for his target, one of the gunboats on the lake, but as his bomb hit the boat the P-40 was seen to explode, ex-plode, evidently .hit by the ground fire. Ajax followed the burning ship almost to the ground and saw it strike in a rice paddy near a Buddhist temple. 1 So Petack, one of the AVG who had stayed for the extra two weeks, was killed in action. It's peculiar how a man could fight all through those last nine months and then go down from a lucky anti-aircraft shot. John Petack Plllg Idli J.l UCiV. tl.. wv... the fleeing Zero. Well, the Jap got away and when the American ship had finally gotten his guns stopped and cool enough to land, the pilot was found to be Lieut. Dumas just an eager American pilot who had seen the Jap at too great distance and had opened up. Dumas laughingly told us, during dur-ing the usual kidding that came that evening that it had been the first time he had seen an enemy plane and he had gotten so excited excit-ed that he fired too soon. All he did was shoot but when he got the trigger down and saw the tracers out in front he couldn't turn it loose. He felt about the same way that all of us feel in our first combat. But this escapade esca-pade earned for him the title of "Long Burst Dumas." Thus was the 23rd Fighter Group organized, initiated and ac-tivitated ac-tivitated in combat. When I took over things at Kunkinm there were three fighter squadrons and one headquarters squadron. Major Tex Hill had one squadron at Hengyang, China, and with him were such deputy leaders as Maj. Gil Bright, Maj. Johnny Alison, and Capt. Ajax Baumler. Maj. Ed Rector had another squadron at Kweilin with Capt. Charlie Sawyer Saw-yer for his assistant in leadership. These outlying stations are about 500 miles in the direction of Japan Jap-an from our headquarters on the plateau of Yunnan at Kunming. The third unit was the squadron under Maj. Frank Schiel, who was very busy training the most junior members of this new fighter fight-er group in the way of fighter aviation. av-iation. I got the Group headquarters headquar-ters to running and stood by for orders to begin leading the fighter forces in action to the East. On July 10, Tex Hill led a small flight, including Baumler, Alison, Lieut. Lee Minor, and Lieut. Elias I GOD IS MY C0-PIL0T By COL. ROBERT L. SCOTT WNU Ftatursa. Continued from page six) cate lost pilots, for the navigation facilities in China are not the world's best. Of course the locating of lost, friendly ships took another element ele-ment besides the warning net. It required the existence of intelligent intelli-gent radio operators who knew the country and had common sense. These men, like Richardson, Richard-son, Mihalko, Miller and Sasser, with others, stayed out there with us, and if you count the AVG aces as the first factor that permitted us to carry on in a manner that didn't discredit the Flying Tigers, then these men who helped us by radio were the close second factor. Suppose that one of our pilots, returning from a flight, lost his position on his map because of a crosswind, because of unfamiliar-ity unfamiliar-ity with the country, because of his own stupidity which we call a "hort circuit" between the headphones, or just because the maps of China are very inaccurate. inaccur-ate. In many such instances we would have lost an airplane worth virtually millions in our combat zone, and perhaps the pilot too. The pilot who is lost calls the radio stations that he thinks is closest to him and in code tells ' the trouble. The radioman tells him to circle the next town he passes for a few minutes. Down in that town, marked on his map with an unknown Chinese character, char-acter, some member of this warning warn-ing net sees him and reports one P-40 circling. In a few minutes the radio operator gets the report and tells the pilot: "You're reported report-ed over Lufeng fly 58 degrees at 200 miles an hour and we'll have supper ready we've got grits tonight yeah." One amusing but near-tragic instance in-stance of this orientation by the means of the air warning net, happened hap-pened about the time the AVG induction board came to China. Another fighter group commander command-er had waited for several days over ov-er in India to come into China with a large flight' of P-40E l's. He finally fin-ally came over on a transport and eventually got tired of waiting for the fighters. He didn't know that the weather was very bad in Burma, and that the monsoon winds from the south could take them so far off course in a few minutes that the entire flight might easily get lost. After a long wait he came back to Assam in the transpot and led his pilots towards Kunming. First of all, he corrected too much for the southerly wind, and in a very short time he was fifty miles south on his course and near two Japanese Japa-nese fields. His unbashful deputy leaders herded him, to the north. And then the monsoon wind from out the Indian Ocean began to work on his navigation and in I another hour he was lost far to the north of the course. Night was falling and the hills of North China were ' rising threateningly. Then the net, if it hadn't justified justi-fied its existence long before, would have begun to pay for itself. it-self. The leader called Kunming, and the operator there, a tough old former Navy man, heard him and gave the instructions : "Circle the first town you see." The -group commander began to argue at once, said he didn't have enough gas to waste circling; but the AVG radio man talked him into doing it. Then the net reported, and Kunming operator said: "You are over Yangpi fly 240 degrees for 20 minutes and you'll see the lake Kunming is on." (Continued next week) |