OCR Text |
Show oV Col. Robert L. Scoff vmu. release. s&. 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. t couldn't get off the road, and I exhausted my ammunition on them in two more passes. One truck I cauld dead center with a full two-second two-second burst that seemed to blow up. When I left, I knew that four of the trucks were buring and farther to the South I could still see the smoke of my first Jap plane rising high above the trees. Straight back to the base I went feeling very intoxicated with success. suc-cess. At last I'd been able to see Japs and draw blood. In thi case they had been treated just as they had been treating Allied ground troops, and I was happy. That afternoon I went back on my second mission. I found the wrecks of four trucks and baggage, bag-gage, and objects that could have been men, scattered all over the road. The place where I had caught the troop column showed about forty dead men. The grounded ground-ed plane had burned and with it had burned about ten acres of jungle. I fired a long burst into the truck and into the four fuel drums in front of the debris of the enemy bomber, but they didn't burn; I guess the morning fire had finished them. I searched the country to the North for more troops, but didn't intercept any. I went back home highly elated elat-ed I had drawn my first blood. I felt that the world was good again. With pride I radioed General Gen-eral Chennault that his "shark" had been in use, that I had caught lots of rats walking along the Burma Road, and that one Army 97 bomber would fly no more for the Japs. t Well, at last I'd seen an enemy, ship. It was a grounded bomber but after all, I've learned since then that these planes on the ground are sometimes pretty rugged rug-ged business to get when you're flying down on them with all the anti-aircraft fire in the world seeming to converge on you. You have got to worry about small-arms small-arms fire from every enemy soldier, sol-dier, too, and it takes only one little slug in the prestone radiator radia-tor or the oil-cooler to stop you mighty sudden. The next day I went to Lashio again and strafed the hangar that had once been used by China National Na-tional Airways Corporation CN-CA CN-CA but I couldn't burn it. There were no ships on the field except an RAF Blenheim that had been strafed by the Japs on the ground on the North end of the runway. I turned back to the North to look for the gasoline stores that I knew had been at Myitkyina- I was determined they were not going to fall into Jap hands. Not finding thorn, I spent the rest of my time flying low on the Irra-waddy, Irra-waddy, looking for enemy barges. It was a pretty unprofitable day. When Myitkyina fell, I went over there every day to burn the gasoline that had been stored in tins ir. the woods to the Northeast of the end of the runway. I had found out its location from British Brit-ish Intelligence, but the RAF Group captain had enacted a promise pro-mise from me that I would not fire into it until he gave me the word. It seems that he was afraid that the firing and the burning of the fuel would excite the native Bur- mese who were in the village. I couldn't see what difference that would make, for after all the Japs would capture the thousands of gallons of aviation gasoline, and the natives were more than likely helping them anyway. Although Al-though I held off, every time I saw the shiny four-gallon cans in the trees my fingers itched to burn the cache before the enemy could use it. I passed the three days of waiting in burning three barges barg-es on the Irrawaddy, South of Bhaiio, arH. in setting a fuel barge on fire down on the Chindwin. In this last raid my ship picked up a few small holes; evidently some Jap sympath:'rrs had managed to get my range. Later in the week, the RAF Group captain told me that his Commandos in Myitkyina were going go-ing to knock holes in all the fuel tins with picks before they left the field to the Japs. Nevertheless I kept watching the gasoline stores while the Japs moved to the North. On May 8, when I got in my ship and started the Allison, my friend, the Group Captain ran across the field to tell me that the Japs could not get the gasoline it had been destroyed without fire, and thus the villagers would not be panicked. pan-icked. Over the roar of the engine en-gine I yelled that in- that case it would not burn when I fired into k. Fjr I had waited long enough, wasn't taking any chances on their acquiring over 100,000 gallons gal-lons of aviation fuel less than 200 miles rrom our base. When I came over the field at Myitkyina, the enemy fired at me while I was yet ten miles away t could see the black bursts of t'h ' ;;7 mm AA in front and below I started "jinking" and moved to the Northeast, so that I could come from out of the sun and be as far as I could from the field ! With my first burst the whole ' woods seemed to blow up I have never seen such i flash as that which came when that veritable powder-tn- in of high octane :uei ciug. fire from the tracers. I Hi30 fired at two of the gun installations installa-tions on the field. But the bursts from the Jap guns were so close to me that I decided to let well enou 'h alone and turned for home in Assam. Many times on the way home I looked over my shoulder anJ the smoke from the thousands of gallons of gasoline was visible when I was sixty miles from Myitkyina. Myi-tkyina. Next day, Msj 9, .1 made four I raids into Burma. On the first of these I escorted two transports pilote 1 lv Hartz and Sexton to Pa-oshan, Pa-oshan, where they were going to land to pick up the baggage of the AVG, who were going on to Kunming. I waited for them to land ai.d take off again and then called goodby. They were going on East within the air controlled by the AVG, and I wanted to look for Japs to the South anyway. Two hurs later Paos-han was badly bad-ly bombed by the Japs; and so I missed a good party by not stay- j ing around. t (To Be Continued Next Week) CHAPTER X: Scott's group heavily overloading the planes. He carries refugees out of Burma, pays a visit to General Chennault and tells him he is a fighter pilot and not a ferry pilot and is promised prom-ised the next P-40 that arrives from Africa. CHAPTER XI I couldn't waste much time in practice, for after all Burma was just over the Naga Hills and the Japs were coming towards Myitkyina Myit-kyina from the south and up the Chindwin and the Irrawaddy. It was open season and I needed no hunting license. Now I definitely) knew that adventure was near. On that afternoon of April 30, 1942, with a full load of ammunition ammuni-tion and the shark-mouth seeming to drip saliva, it was so eager, I waited by my ship for an alert. Jap observation planes had been eomino- over at hie-h altitude verv Well, it was tragic, but I guess it was better than a bombing. And so my first mission ended. Came May Day, and I began the greatest month in my life. I flew every day in that long month, sometimes as many as four missions mis-sions a day. By putting in a total of 214 hours and 45 minutes, I averaged av-eraged over seven hours a day for the month. Most of this was in fighter ships my little old Kitty-hawk Kitty-hawk and I learned a lot, and we were very, very lucky. When I had come in from my first sortie, the day cnerations burned down, my pal Col. Gerry Mason kidded me a bit. Since the next day started a new month, I vowed then on the sacred relics of my great-grandmother that during those 31 days I would destroy a Japanese plane if I had to go all the way to Rangoon. Ran-goon. We got pretty confident, the transnort hovs and I. for I used to rush back towards me as my speed cat the distance between us. I held the six guns on while I went the length of the troop column and caught the trucks There were only six now, but I fired into all of them and two I saw burn immediately. im-mediately. On my second pass, as I "S'ed" across the road, I shot at each truck individually, then turned for the troops again. The road was so dusty that I could barely see the bodies of those I had hit on the first pass. I sup brush to the side. As I pulled ;e le others were hidden in the up, I could see the black plume of smoke to the South my first enemy ship was burning fiercely. I made as though to leave the area, then carne in again from the South on the troops after the dust had settled. Again I strafed them, but this time I saw that they were firing at me. The trucks regularly. If they came today I hoped to surprise them. At two o'clock the alert came, but it was not observation. Many unidentified aircraft were reported report-ed by a British radio somewhere over the Naga Hills. I didn't ask for more than that scanty information infor-mation I was in my fighter and climbing over the "tea ranches," as Colonel Haynes called them. High over the field at 22,000 feet, I cuddled my oxygen mack and circled, watching for enemy ships to the East, South, and the Southeast down in the direction of a courre to Mandalay. I kept searching until my eyes hurt, but I saw nothing. After about an hour, turning to a course that would take me in the direction from which an enemy had to come I flew off to intercept I now had barely two hours' fuel, and the farther away frcm my base I met them, the more successful my attack at-tack would be. Lord! the ego that I pos jessed! I honestly believed I thought I could shoot down any number of Japs with my single sin-gle fighter. Again I say, more of the valor of ignorance. After forty-five minutes I turned turn-ed for home and began to let down to 1,000. Thirty miles from the field I suddenly tensed to the alert. Off ahead of me was a dark column col-umn of smoke, rising high in the air right in the position an the world' ; surface that the home field shoulc be. My torti red mind flashed flash-ed back to other results of bombings bomb-ings that I had seen. "My God," I moaned, "while I have been away looking for the bastards, they've slipped in here and bombed hell out of the home base!" With tears in my eyes I nosed over and dove for the Zeros that shou'.l be itrafing the field. (Later I was to learn a lot about this method too ) The s noke was from the base all right, but I could see no enemy planes. The only thing in the sky was a single Douglas transport, making a normal landing land-ing on the runway "Calling NR-Zero NR-Zero NR-Zero," I asked what the fire was. The reply was muddled, but everything seemed to be in order, for I noticed two other transports clearing the field for China. I circled, then dove on the smoking ruins of the RAF operations opera-tions "basha." That building had been the casualty, and it was a total loss. I could see the operations opera-tions officer sitting out in the open, op-en, some hundred feet from the charred ruins, calming carrying on his duties. When I'd gotten my fighter parked again I went over and heard the story. No Jap attack had come and I felt relieved my single ship war and I had not let the station down. But I heard the embarrassed operations man tell his r.tory and I remember choking chok-ing discreetly and leaving before I lavighed myself to death. When the alert sounded, "Opps" the operations officer had hurried hur-ried to the window of the thatch and bamboo "basha" to see me take off in the "bloody kite that Kittyhawk." Seeing a transport from China about to land, and fearing that the Japs would bomb it on the field, he had then fired a Very pistol out of the operations window: the red Very light would be the signal for the transport not to land but to fly in the "stand-by" area. The Very light had gone nonchalantly out of the operations window, into the wind, had curved gracefully back into another window, win-dow, and had burned the bloody building in five minutes. Operations Opera-tions was being carried on as usual us-ual from operations desk, which was located in front of the site of the former office. Bloody shame, wasn't it? to go with them across Burma and Joplin and some of the other daredevils would try to lure the Jap in to attack them. Jop would call over the radio in the clear: "NR-o from transport one three four I'm lost near Bhamo give me a bearing." Up there, some 3,000 feet above them, I'd be sitting with my fighter, fight-er, just praying that my "decoy" would work and some luckless Jap would come in for the kill. Then I'd imagine myself diving on his tail, my six guns blazing. But the ruse never worked. Sometimes I think the "Great Flying Boss in the Sky" was giving me a little more practice before he put me to the supreme test. May the fifth was one of the big days in my life. Waving goodbye good-bye to Gerry Mason as I taxied out, I saw him hold his thumb up to me to wish me good hunting. I waved back and was in the air on a sweep towards central Burma. Bur-ma. I went straight to Myitkyina; then, seeing nothing, I swung south along the Irrawaddy over Bhamo. Continuing South I went right down on the Burma Road, North of Lashio, and searched for enemy columns. North of the airport air-port at Lashio I saw two groups of troops in marching order. I would have strawed them immediately immedi-ately but I was afraid they might be Chinese; after all, there were two Chinese armies coming North somewhere in Burma. I made as though to ignore them and they partially scattered to the sides of the road. Twelve trucks in the column col-umn kept rolling to the North. Then I momentarily forgot about the troops for in the northwest-em northwest-em corner of the field at Lashio was a ship. From my altitude of 2500 feet I saw at once that it was a twin-engined enemy bomber, later lat-er identified as a Mitsubishi, Army 97. It was being serviced, for there were four gasoline drums in front of it and a truck that had evidently unloaded the fuel. My gun switches were already on, and had been since I had seen the troop column. Now I was diving for the grounded bomber and getting get-ting by "Christmas Tree" sight lighted properly. Hurriedly I began to shot. I saw men running from the truck and jumping into the bushes to the side. My first shots hit in front of the plane, probably striking the fuel drums, for heavy dust covered cov-ered the enemy ship. I released my trigger as I pulled out of my dive, just clearing the trees behind my target. As I looked back I saw the red circle on one wing but the other was covered by the body of a man who either had been shot or was trying to hide the identifying identi-fying insignia. Keeping the ship very low, I turned 10 degrees for the second attack. This time I did better. I saw my tracers go into the thin fuselage and then into the engines. At first I thought that what I was seeing was more dust; then I realized real-ized it was smoke pouring from under the ship. It was on fire. Foolishly, then, I pulled up to about 600 feet; if there had been anti-aircraft fire, I know now they would have shot me down. Again I turned and shot at the truck and the gasoline drums and once more I saw the tracers converge on the enemy ship. Smoke was floating high in the sky I could smell it over the odor of cordite that came from my own guns. Keeping very low again, I turned turn-ed East and found the Burma Road, turned up it and started looking for the columns which I now knew were Japanese. I ap-proa ap-proa ' -d them from the rear, fired from about a thousand yards and the -o id seemed to pulverize. The closely packed troops appeared |