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Show 5D)ID) IS MY CdD-FEILOT Col. Robert L. Scoff wnu 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. ma Road for months after it' should have fallen. Against odds of more than twenty to one, they had saved face for America and the white race, in this battle against a much-belittled enemy. When one considers that the AVG fought in what the British called obsolete tactical combat aircraft the P-40B's and P-40C's, their deeds and scores become truly tru-ly legendary. Throughout China today, General Chennault's AVG are regarded as "Saviors of Free China Skies." The Chinese sentry on the gate to the Fijichan or airfield, air-field, may shake his head when you show him your pass, but when you smile and call, "A-V-G," his face lights up in turn and he calls, "Ding-hao your are number one." He holds up his thumb in the old familiar signal, and you enter. Then, to show his high regard re-gard for Americans and his vivid memory of General Chennault's Flying Tigers, he calls after you, "A-V-G mean American Very Good ding-hao, ding-hao." We caught up with three more of our thirteen bombers at Kano, and all our crew had begun to feel confident that we could not be called back from the mission against Tokyo. To, insure this to a greater degree, we were trying hard, without appearing to be too anxious, to be the first to reach our initial point Karachi, India. So long as we were the first of the B-17's, we could claim a moral mor-al victory. For after all, Colonel Haynes was boss, and in a ship with longer range than the Fortress For-tress and we wanted him ahead. With full service aboard, and the temperature hot and stifling, even after nightfall, we threaded our way through the dust for the J take-off. I remember that the heavy ship used the entire runway and some of the sagebrush prairie land too, for there seemed to be no lift whatever to the hot, dead air. Finally reaching a comfortable comforta-ble cruising altitude at 12,000, Doug and I breathed the old familiar fam-iliar sigh of relief at having once again gotten a loaded bomber in the air, and the sigh echoed around the ship. Down in the dust haze not a light showed as we crossed equatorial equa-torial Africa where Sergeant Aal-tonen Aal-tonen and Cob wanted so much to land for a look at the big-lipped Ubangi women. Then Lake Chad and Fort Lamy went by. Just before be-fore dawn we crossed North of the mountain of El-Fasher. At six o'clock the White Nile appeared we had crossed the western part of the Sudan. Our landing was made at Khartoum, where the Blue Nile and the White Nile meet. On April 8, we left Khartoum for an easy run to Aden, on a course which was almost due East over the mountains of Eritrea. We went on over Gura and Massaua to the Red Sea. On our left we could see Yemen, and farther South and to our right, Somali-land. Somali-land. Reaching the South end of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, the well-known landmarks, the Rocks of Aden appeared about noon. Next day we'd make the run on to India. The British garrison commander command-er took care of us that night. But around the dinner table there suddenly sud-denly dropped a blanket of despair. de-spair. The London radio announced announc-ed that Bataan had fallen. After (Continued on Page Seven SYNOPSIS CHAPTER VI: Scott solos a Flying Fortress for the first time and makes twenty practice land- 1 lngs. He leaves for India from a Florida point. CHAPTER Vn Maybe the meal was really good I've forgotten. But later we were to have some meals which were definitely on the rugged side. Some time just try a breakfast at three a. m. composed of warmed-over, mouldy, then re-warmed toast, with slightly sour canned tomatoes. After this year and more, I can close my eyes and see Col. C. V. Haynes sitting there looking at that delicacy thinking, no doubt, about Carolina country ham, with brown gravy making a little puddle in the grits. Well fed but on the tired side, we left the base at 13:35, for our next destination farther down the coast. For more than 200 miles we were over friendly territory as we hugged the beaches, but later, along the Ivory Coast, we had to fly out to sea to avoid the prying eyes that were Vichy French. I must have sworn deeply that afternoon, for in my diary I wrote this line: "Damn, we have to dodge those b all the time." We passed a fighter base at 17:00 G.M.T., and one hour later we landed at another West Coast base. The sun was setting back to the West in the Atlantic towards tow-ards home. Easter Sunday was fast coming, to a close. I remembered remem-bered then, from "hearsay evidence," evi-dence," that I had been born exactly ex-actly thirty-fours years before. From personal experience I would be able to recall this Easter as a memorable one. Back through a great part of my hectic life, I had been the "time-hog" when it came to chiseling chisel-ing airplanes from every station in the U.S.A. I had often stated4 that I never had, and never would have, enough flying time. Right now, the way my head and eyes ached and the way my body fairly yearned for a place to stretch out I almost resolved to -eat those statements of the past. For during dur-ing the last 28 hours we had been in the air, for 25 of them were under terrific tension. In that one day we had not only been lost in the South Atlantic, but we had covered nearly 4,000 miles, from Belem to Natal to our stop near Fisher's Lake, and on to destination. destina-tion. I remember looking over at Doug and saying rather sadly that for once in my life I had had enough flying for one day. As we rode out to our billets in a British lorry ' with a barefoot bush-boy chauffeur, I contemplated contemplat-ed the completed trip. I firmly believe be-lieve that had I been a confirmed ground soldier, wholly .unconverted .unconvert-ed to air power, I would have realized rea-lized that the airplane had grown up and was definitely here to stay. Next day, while the crew worked work-ed on the tired airplane, some of us drove into the bush country. With a' guide we made about a ten-hour trip into the interior, to Togoland. Entering a typical dirty dir-ty village we heard jazz music and picked our way toward the source. I imagine all of us were expecting to find a radio or vic-trola; vic-trola; instead we found that wo were really in the land that had "birthed" jazz. Grouped about an earthen crock of plain wine was the population of the village, and the more they dipped the gourd cups into the stagnant-looking liquor, li-quor, the hotter the music became and the more the sweating black bodies swayed to the beat of the drums. Their bare feet were moving mov-ing to the rhythm in the 'dust and their naturally musical voices, added to the syncopated rumble that came from the black hands thumping many kinds of drums, made us wonder whether some orchestra like Cab Calloway's had not come to Africa with us on a USO project. On April 7 we left the Gold Coast for Kano, in Nigeria. Off at 08.00 G.M.T., we flew a course of 90 degrees to miss more of Vichy France. Over Lagos, in the clammy clam-my heat of the equatorial jungle, we turned into the continent to a course of 58 degrees and continued contin-ued over very thick country until we crossed the Niger. From there on East, the land that was Africa seemed to dry up and my boyhood conception of how the Dark Continent Con-tinent should look faded away. Instead of constant jungle we now saw dry desert, like the lower hump of Brazil near Natal, or places in our own West. We landed at the old walled city of Kano that afternoon. Our next take-off for Khartoum, would best be made at nightfall, in order or-der that we might land in the Sudan Su-dan early in the morning before the dust storms had impaired the visibility. To waste time we walked walk-ed into town to see the ancient city of Biblical days. Soon we found ourselves dodging camels, lepers, and Ali Baba with his more than forty thieves. None of us ever determined whether or not this Ali Baba was a descendant of the Arabian Nights original. But we did learn of a great decision that he had lost in a financial battle with some ferry pilots from the AVG. These men were members of the famous First American Volunteer Group under General Chennault, who were fighting the Japs in Burma. General Chennault's AVG was composed of three squadrons, functioning under the supreme command of China's Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. About seventy pilots and 300 ground crew personnel person-nel made up this organization which for nearly four months had been in combat against the Japanese Japa-nese Air Force from Rangoon up to Lashio, Burma. These American boys had come from the air services ser-vices of the American Army, the Navy, and Marine Corps. The General was an old pilot and through many years of single-seater flying in the noise of open cockpits, had become moderately mod-erately deaf, a circumstance that had helped to bring about his retirement, re-tirement, snowing that war with Japan was more than probable, he had not only persuaded the Generalissimo Gen-eralissimo to build the air-warning net within China, but had worked to train China's Air Force as well. Growing out of this, when the brave Chinese Air Force was virtually destroyed by. the overwhelming odds of the Japanese Japa-nese juggernaut, Chennault had long cherished a volunteer force of American airmen, flying American Amer-ican equipment in China against the Jap. The purpose was fourfold: to test American equipment to train a nucleus of American pilots in actual combat, to furnish air support sup-port for the Chinese land forces, and to fight a delaying action against the Japanese until the Chinese armies could be equipped with modern sinews of war for offensive of-fensive action against the stranglehold stran-glehold of Japan. Finally, in the late summer of 1941, the Army, Navy, and Marine Mar-ine Corps permitted a few reserve officer pilots to resign their commissions com-missions and accept jobs as instructors in-structors with Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company or Cameo, Cam-eo, as it was called. These seventy-odd seventy-odd pilots and some 300 ground-crew ground-crew men proceeded in small numbers num-bers on ships of various nations Dutch, British, Indian, American, and some unregistered West from San Francisco to Java, then Singapore, Sing-apore, and thence to Rangoon, Burma. These "instructors" for Cameo were carried on the passenger lists as acrobats, doctors, lawyers, and probably even Indian chiefs. I imagined that after they made their great record with never more than fifty-five airplanes they shot down 286 Japanese planes, losing only eight in combat com-bat the complaining Japanese would have been disposed to add the remainder of the nursery rhyme, "Rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief." Many times I had heard Radio Tokyo complain of the cruelty of these American guerilla pilots. Under General Chennault's clever leadership and tactical genius they had virtually driven the Imperial Japanese Air Force from the skies of Burma, and held the Bur- 24 hours a day in and around the bombers. This was logical, too, because each ship contained not only the secret bombsight but full complements of loaded 50-calibre fruns as well as the personal effects ef-fects of the bomber crews. At first the crews appeared bewildered, but then their attitutde seemed to imply stubbornly that they had ' been ordered to attack Japanese territory, and no matter if Ba- j taan and all of eastern China fell, ! that's what they were going to j do. ' One day the General in charge of the Air Base sent a crew down to my ship with orders for them to take over and search out a Japanese Jap-anese Task Force far out in the Arabian Sea. They were met with the ready Tommy guns of my men and roughly told that no one except ex-cept members of the crew could get aboard. A Major in the new crew showed his orders. My crew chief replied: "I'm sorry, Sir, but I have mine, too; we are on our way to bomb an enemy objective. No one gets aboard this ship except ex-cept the regular crew." (To Be Continued Next Week) liritl.-iH outpoHt. Wo follows! tlio Arul.lim const ov.-r tho tihio wiitors of tho Arabian Arab-ian to tho C,u( of Onuin, thou oiossod to to Kunn'hl. Colonel Hnynos, with the 15-21 hml kouo to nolhi. our orders wore to wait it Kunicht. And now for two weeks wo anxiously waited, wait-ed, whtlo tho rumors flow. I think I shall always assoolate India with- my first impression on KottinR- out of my ship. No one seemed to Know anything, liohind us lay 12,000 miles, whtoh we had made In eight daysfor what? No one stood there with orders to expedite our departure. Instead they appeared to think wo had ferried this ship for them to use In training. Training, mind you hero, halfway round the world and in a country that faced attack any moment! When we explained as much as we could about our secret se-cret orders, smiles eamet o the officers' of-ficers' faces. Bets were laid that we would never leave Karachi with those ships. But we were volunteers, and our combat spirit was still there. I remember that all my crew took the bets, as fast they were offered. Jut Wo lost Onco again we had been frus- . t o orr , Pffrt t0 S t0 war ? r( "-Now, four months word on 1 'b'T; the Stnciled Co, ng "snarled-up"secmed wori f, tUa"n- We rned the from n n? H,lyneS Ca "'m Pl'lhi with face a yard -JR. Sadly he-told us the Juth Urn nf n f Bataan and the loss of other fields in eastern Chi- " i U'' Secret bases-coupled with other factors beyond his control, con-trol, our "dream mission" had come to the end of the line. During the fourteen clays in Karachi, when we had been waiting wait-ing for Colonel Haynes it h, d been a difficult job of finesse to hang on to the ships. All twelve of the B-17's were lined up to be turned over to Base Units on the field. But the 'personnel responsible for the conflicting orders had reckoned reck-oned without the extreme loyalty of the volunteer crewmen to the flight commander and the pilot of each ship. The men stood on guard ton is, MY CO-PILOT JfvCOL. I i:ir,lUl0l!,1,T"ve1 settled down U'ffr mission was i " concentrations awuiu I ", corretfdor. Would f went cause that part to t Mllod ott ? 'rofbealnR frustrat-M51' frustrat-M51' rffort to take the otten- ' again help had been "cSt the last of the JVand the next morn- r ; ' rfup an tra hour early ;; e-k Our Portress was 't0M to the initial point KndtheB-24. Success was ;;;v;0 w were climbing over l-rti of southern Arabia and light improved we all tnt Arabia was a rugged-S rugged-S land. After the terrible about the mutilation of flyers at the hands L tribesmen, we all were glad '.'t"we bad the little cards writ-.inirabic. writ-.inirabic. promising high pay-1 pay-1 to the Arabs if we were de-:;rSl de-:;rSl unharmed to the nearest |