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Show . CLPHILT & sV.i2 Col. Roberf L. Scoff wmu. release inC. 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. moon, with our lights out. On this particular night Johnny Allison was at 13,000 feet, and a thousand feet lower we had Ajax Baumler. I'll tell you about Johnny now, but we'll take up more on Ajax later lat-er for this was mostly Johnny's fight. Alison was a superior airman, fighter pilot, and officer, and was the ideal combat leader. A Florida boy, he knew the Allison engine well enough to have designed it. He knew the P-40's better than anyone I have ever seen, for he had instructed the British in their use in the United Kingdom and then had gone over to show the Russians how to fly and repair them near Moscow. Tonight he was about to carve his name with his six fifty-calibre guns in such a manner that few of us would ever forget it, and certainly no Chinese in the city of Hengyang would ever forget the night, air at staggered altitudes. We We got our four ships into the heard the radio reports from Richardson giving the latest positions posi-tions of the Japs. Reported over Changsha. Then north of the field. Then all was silent while we waited. wait-ed. In our positions over the field we placed ourselves down-moon that is, where the bombers would have to fly between us and the moon and thus silhouette themselves them-selves against the full orange light. T hen I saw the five bombers the bomber coming off and going back into the slipstream, reflect- ing the glow of the fire that came with the explosion. Then the whole sky lighted as the first one plunged plung-ed to the earth, with the fire making mak-ing a queer sound as the wreck- I age fell. The lone fighter was now sliding over behind the other bombers, and the second one was exploding and turning over. The third one tried to turn, seemed to hang for seconds against the full moon, then dove in flames in a pitch that got steeper and steeper. Several thousand feet below our level it exploded and burning gasoline fell with it. The light of the three burning bombers combined with the brillian moonlight to make the night like day. The number four enemy ship had turned back now, with an engine en-gine shot out, but Ajax Baumler got it ten miles north of the field. The last enemy dove out and turned turn-ed for home when he saw his three leaders burn, but Braumler followed fol-lowed him thirty miles north and shot him down in flames. From the ground, the watchers told us later, they could hear the fifty-calibre guns above the noise of the smaller calibre Jap guns. Within seconds after the attack, there were three ships burning around the city walls, and none of the formation got home. The Chinese people in the town had been watching the battle in awe. CHAPTER XVI: He intercepts a flight of Jap planes and downs a bomber. His tank is empty but he succeeds in landing it dry. CHAPTER XVII The surprise was tftat another plane had now been found several miles from the bomber. It was supposed to be a fighter, being smaller, and it had burned upon credit for two enemy planes de-cnishing. de-cnishing. I therefore received credit cre-dit for two enemy planes destroyed destroy-ed on July 1. It had been my first aerial combat, and I felt very proud. We found the reported prisoner, but he was dead. While being Questioned he had tried to escape, and watching with his cold, blue eyes some "villain" that was approaching ap-proaching the other way. I could almost hear the hot lead spitting from those guns as the two shot it out, and I could always see the villain fall, with Tex standing there looking at his smoking guns. Tex would always have won, for he was the greatest fighter that I ever saw, the most loyal officer, and the best friend. I'd seen Tex shoot down Japs in the sky and I had followed on his wing to learn the tactics of the AVG. I know that if there is any man I owe my life to during the months I fought in China, it is Maj. Tex Hill. Seeing what he did in combat and how he handled his shin, nnfl seeinp- his coolness on fryang. Hill and the Jap had shot it out nose to nose, and once again I thought of the days of Western gunplay. We landed and waited for Tex to come over. As we stood around the burning enemy ship, I saw Hill striding across the field from his fighter. Hanging low on his right leg was his army forty-five. Subconsciously Sub-consciously I looked at his other leg as if I expected to find the mate hanging there. Tex's blond hair was blowing in the wind, his eyes were looking with venomous hate at the Jap, his jaw was set. I had opened my mouth to congratulate him, for he had shot down two enemy sihps that day, when I had a closer look against the moon. They were at 13,000 feet. I know I swore because be-cause they were below me, and I could imagine the cursing of every oneof the others who were at the wrong altitude, for we could not change altitude until the first attack. at-tack. But they were at Johnny's height, and I listened for him to say that he saw them. Down the field they told us later that you could hear the moan of one Alison Ali-son engine as a P-40 moved in for the attack, could hear it above the sound of the ten radial engines en-gines on the enemy bombers. The seconds dragged, and then we heard Johnny say, "Okay, I see 'em." And now we saw their exhausts, ex-hausts, looking like ten bushel-baskets bushel-baskets of blue fire. For a full second, as the enemy bombers moved towards the target that was our field, all was quiet, and I wondered if Johnny had lost them in the darkness. Then I saw him, so close to the enemy ships that he seemed to be in formation with them and clearly over my radio I heard Johnny Alison say, "Watch the fireworks." Six lines of tracers went into one of the bombers and glowed brighter than the two bushel-baskets of exhaust fire. The first Jap bomber trailed fire, slowly turned wards Hengyang, right over the on its back, and spun crazily to-town. to-town. Below, I could see a few flashes from the exploding enemy bombs, but most of them seemed short of the target area and very scattered. , Johnny's tracers were still going into the enemy's ships and I could see their return fire now, but it seemed to go in no had killed several Chinese, had wounded others, and in turn had been mortally wounded. Lieutenant Lieuten-ant Cluck got to him before he died, but was unable to get any valuable information. My first aerial engagement started a story in Delhi I found out about four months later. The story told there was to the effect that I had engaged an enemy bomber over China, and regardless of its escort of two Zeros, had shot it down. It had crashed into the ground and when they located locat-ed it, they also found the two Zeros, Ze-ros, which had dived into the rice paddies at the tail of the bomber, one on each side. Thus had the embarrassed pilots committed hari-kiri, for they had lost face by having the ship that they were escorting destroyed. Well, it was a laugh. But I'm fairly certain the one Zero didn't commit suicide I'm prone to believe be-lieve that some good, honest lead-poisoning lead-poisoning from six fifty-calibre guns had a lot to do with it. Major Tex Hill was the Squadron Squad-ron commander of the outfit I had come to live with at Hengyang. He was a blue-eyed Texan, lean and lanky, 6 feet-two of fighting blood. I imagine if he had lived in the frontier days of the American West, he would have been a gunman gun-man over there around the Pecos River but a gunman on the side of the Law. I used to shut my eyes out there, sitting on the alert in Hunan, and think about him. I could picture that drawling Texan walking slowly through a border town with two pearl-handled 45's swinging low at his hips. Walking Walk-ing with his arms stiff at his sides the alert, and his keen desire for action. I can ear Tex now, after he had studied the plotting board that the interpreters were covering cover-ing with little red flags showing the positions of the approaching Jap fighter ships. I can hear him saying: "Well, gentlemen, I think we'll take off." And he would smile as he pulled on his helmet and goggles. Tex was the son of the Chaplain of the Texas Rangers. Before the AVG days he had been a Navy pilot flying off carrier decks, and in the Flying Tigers he had been second only to Bob Neal as the leading ace. Tex was the most truthful man I ever met even his subconscious subcon-scious thoughts were truthful. He used to tell me that one day after Madame Chiang Kai-shek had pinned pin-ned a medal on him for shooting down some Japanese planes over Toungoo, she had asked him the next time he shot down one of thpse Japanese planes to please think of her and dedicate it to the people of China. Tex of course said "Yes, Ma'am." I imagine that most any man among us would have said "Yes" to the Madame, and the next time we shot down a Jap- we would have told the great lady all about it. We would have remembered after the fight what we had promised prom-ised her, and we would have gone in with a romantic story of how we had met the barbaric Japanese and had seen the Madame's face in the skies as we shot the enemy down . . . and had thought of her and the people of China. But not Tex Hill he was too honest for that. He told me, "Colonel, I promised prom-ised her that, and I really meant it And I've shot down about 1 2 aL ins eyes ... j. ex suoue over close to the fire and looked at the mutilated Jap where he had been thrown from the cockpit. Then without a change of expression, expres-sion, he kicked the largest piece of Jap the head and one shoulder shoul-der into the fire. I heard his slow drawl: "All right, you sonofa-bitch sonofa-bitch if that's the way you want to fight it's all right with me." Tex calmly left the group and walked back to ship and into the alert shed for his cup of tea. None of us said anything. The Chinese coolies who usually yelled "Ding-hao "Ding-hao ding-hao" saw his eyes and the set of his jaw, too and just waited until later to congratulate him. Things kept right on happening at Hengyang, for after all there Japanese bases fanning out in many directions East, North, Northeast, South, and Southeast. Some of them were within an hour's flight of our field. Hankow was the one to the north on the Yangste. The Japs sent their bombers to worry us from up there, and before we caught on how to do it, they made life miserable mis-erable for us. They had gotten tired of sending their bombers down, for they lost too many; so now they had resorted to a period of constant night attack. Just when the full moon in the clear sky would begin to light the ground like daylight, the telephone would start ringing, the Chinese interpreters would begin to stick the little flags into the map, and we'd know that the Jap was on the way. We'd be just about to sit down to supper after a hard day's work on the alert. We'd leave the rice and fish and squash, They had always had to just sit and take Jap bombings, especially night attacks, and this was something some-thing they had dreamed of. They were cheering now, and were out looking for enemy survivors with hoes, scythes, knives, and any weapon they could find to cut the Japanese to pieces if any of them should escape. But something was the matter with Alison. We could see his ship and it was not flying normally. Every now and then it would stream fire that was more than just a backfire. On the ground they could hear his engine missing badly. Alison called in that he was hit, but would , try to land his ship on the field. To land a crippled fighter in daylight is quite a feat but to attempt at-tempt to land one at night, one that has been shot to pieces and may burst into flames any second, is more than that. We knew why Johnny was taking the chance: we needed that ship if he could get it on the field, even if it was shot to bits we needed the parts that could be salvaged. It would have been perfectly all right if the pilot had gone over side as soon as that engine began to fade out that night. Whether or not he had shot down three bombers, he could have "hit the silk" and floated float-ed to safety in his chute. But he must have said, "To hell with that, we need this ship we always need ships." To keep old P-40's that we flew in flying condition we had' to rob parts from every airplane we could salvage after every crack-up. crack-up. This is called "cannibalizing" in the lingo of field depots in the Air Corps and covers a multitude of sins. certain direction. I had moved in closer, trying to get to the altitude alti-tude of the fight. On the ground the mechanics and the Chinese interpreters had a grandstand seat for one of the best moving pictures that has ever been except that this was real. They too had heard Johnny say, "Watch the fireworks," and had seen and heard the heavy guns of the P-40. They could see pieces of Japs since that promise 4 months ago. But you know I never can remember to think about her when I'm in a - battle, I'm too busy." Well now, you hold that picture of Tex for a minute while I show him to you in another light. One day over Hengyang, after we had broken the Japanese wave with our assault and support and there were some fifteen Zeros burning around among the pagodas pago-das of this Hunan capital, I saw an odd sight down below. There vwas one lone Jap, doubtless of the suicide Samurai school, for though his buddies had either been shot down in their attempted strafing attack or had turned for home, this arrogant follower of the Shinto Shin-to Shrine was strafing the field alone. Two of us rolled to go get him, but from the end of the field towards the river I saw a P-4 pull opt of a dive and head for the Jap. It was Tex Hill. As the two fighters drew together to-gether in this breath-taking, head-on head-on attack, I saw their tracers meeting and for a second I didn't know whether the ships ran together to-gether or both exploded in the air. As the smoke thinned I saw the P-4 flash on through and out into the clear, but the Jap crashed and burned on the field of Heng- CLIlllll UUUSCUUO Odll Ul 0 111- bao " (air raid), and we'd rush for our planes that had been assigned as-signed to night duty. Sometimes the attack was a harassing one only, and we'd return without seeing them and go wearily back in the moonlight to the hostel, get some tea and a cookie, and crawl into bed. Just about the time the head hit the pillow and the body felt a little lit-tle comfortable the alert would go again. I'd hear the tinkle of a small dinner; bell and the plaintive voice of one of the houseboys "Pin-bao, Jin-bao please get up, master Jinbao." Off we'd go, again and into the sky. Sometimes Some-times the Jap would feint two or three times to make us use valuable valu-able gasoline. Sometimes he'd circle cir-cle Hengyang by fifty miles and then go back to Hankow. We'd spend the night between the hostel and the alert shack; but after all, as we used to say, you weren't supposed to be comfortable in a war, and we were no exception. Sometimes, though, the Jap did not feint. General Chennault got us to pick the best and most experienced experienc-ed pilots for the night interception intercep-tion missions. We'd use two to four ships and place them at different altitudes over the field, and wait for the Jap in the light of the |
