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Show . . lWr anese. They are as dangerous as mad dogs. They think they will win and they can if we continue to underestimate them. Strange things happen in the air, strange as the fiction of the ages. Six of us shot into a ship that detached itself from one of the circling Japanese "circuses" we encountered one day east of Hengyang. When you meet the Jap in his larger-numbered formation, forma-tion, he at once goes into the circling cir-cling technique that Baron von Richthofen made famous in the last war. This "circus" gradually moves in on or away from their objective as a defensive maneou-ver maneou-ver for in it the ship behind protects pro-tects the tail of the one in front. from experience that we've tried it many times and we need to be very sure that we are at 18,000 to clear the mountains from the Ir-rawaddy Ir-rawaddy to Tali Lake. Below us are the villages of the Miaows. We climb to 25,000 feet to test the "suped-up" ships, and a smile comes to our faces under the oxygen masks for this is going go-ing to surprise the Jap. We're going go-ing over the Mekong now, and from the time that has elapsed we've certainly picked up a tail wind must be going over 300. The gorge of the Mekong runs like a gash in the sinister country of Burma to the south, and we know it goes on and on towards Saigon and the sea. GdDID m MY CPSIL0)T ' Col. Robert L. Scoff vmu. 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. It's barely twenty miles to the Salween, and we make it so quickly quick-ly that we begin to doubt that th other river had been the Mekong. Me-kong. Our ground speed is well over 300 as We see Lake Tali and start the down-hill run to Kunming. Kun-ming. Now we catch the first glimpse of the Burma Road, north of Yunnanyi, and soon we see the small lake that is near our field SYNOPSIS CHAPTER XXVI: The squadron bombs shipping in the East river at Canton and at Whangpoo docks and sinks two freighters loaded with Zeros. Twenty-nine Zeros out of 45 coming up over Canton are shot down. CHAPTER XXVH Another theory was that the realization that you had strafed enemy ground troops, shot down Japanese pilots, strafed troops getting out of an enemy transport, or even killed Jap satellites, would come back to you at night, and you'd wake up in horror at having hav-ing "blood on your hands." To that I say "Nuts." I never knew a pilot who thought about it. All the pilots I ever saw were so happy hap-py over even their first enemy kill that I began right off to know that we were not the soft race we had been charged with being early ear-ly in the war. Personally, every time I cut Japanese columns to pieces in Burma, strafed Japs swimming from boats we were sinking, or blew a Jap pilot to officers or of your soldiers splashed splash-ed in your face by an enemy bomb. Then you know for- it's seared on your soul that we have the best country in the Universe, whether it's run by the Democrats or the Republicans or the new party par-ty that springs up tomorrow. You know that you have everything every-thing to live for, and that the Jap has everything to die for. That's his only hope of reaching the heaven hea-ven that we always have. Yes, they're suicide pilots; at times they will try to ram your plane, or will dive their ships into in-to our carriers. I've seen a Japanese Japa-nese dive low over Hengyang and circle while they shot at him with everything on the field and we shot at him with every ship above the field. But he flew his ship in a slow circle, as if he were blinded and couldn't see, or were only partly conscious. Then, with a half roll at barely 300 feet, he dove his plane into the only building build-ing on the field our thatched-roof thatched-roof alert shack, which then burned with the Jap in his ship. When the wreckage had cooled enough we finally pulled his charred char-red body out and by his side was his Samurai sword, and through his ' body the doctor found one lone bullet hole, severing his spinal spin-al cord near the small of the back. He had been able to move his hands but not his feet. But with his last consciousness he had picked out one more object on our field to destroy for the gods of the Shinto Shrine. But they have fear too. Don't think they're supermen, for I assure as-sure you they're not. They're little, lit-tle, warped-brain savage animals hell out of the sky, I just laughed in my heart and knew that I had stepped on another black-widow spider or scorpion. Later, when the newness of combat had worn off, I used to watch a Japanese pilot come towards tow-ards me on a head-on run, picking pick-ing me out, I guess, because I was leading the Group. I'd get my sights on him and yell, perhaps a bit hysterically: "You poor sucker suck-er with my six Fifties that outrange out-range your short-range little cannons can-nons that jam lots of times, I'm going to blow you apart before you get close enough to hit me!" Over-confident, perhaps, for I didn't get every one who came at me, and I took lots of hits in my own ship even had to dive away sometimes when two came on me at once. But I'm still here, and from thirteen to twenty-two Japs who fought against me are dead. That's the "chip" of invincibility invincibil-ity that I carried on my shoulder into combat. That's the combat spirit that a fighter pilot must have who fights alone in a little ship where he's the loneliest person per-son in the world sometimes. But do you know what makes the pilot pil-ot understand that he's got to be better than the Japanese, makes him know what we are fighting for, gives him faith that in the end, when we're all properly trained train-ed and equipped, we'll be the best Air Force in all the world? It's the understanding that comes when you've seen the rest of the world, when jyou've glimpsed the filth and corruption of all the hell holes that Americans are fighting in today, when you've had the blood and brains of your brother Our tactics were to dive through the "squirrel cage" and get snap shots at as many ships as we could, but keep our speed to prevent pre-vent their getting on our tails. It was in one of these attacks that this lone Jap Zero left the protection of his other ships and began to do acrobatics sloppy loops, wingovers, stalls, and then another loop. Thinking it was a trick, we were wary; but after two of our pilots had made passes pass-es on it, two more of us went down towards it. As I kept getting closer and closer to the enemy plane I could ' see that the pilot was evidently ; hurt, but when I crossed the top of the strange-acting strange-acting plane I saw that he was leaning forward over the stick control, obviously dead. As the Speed of the dive would build up pressures on the tail surfaces, sur-faces, the nose would rise, for a Jap ship is rigged that way. As the ship climbed more steeply, the pilot's upper body swung to the back of the seat in the normal position and the plane made a sloppy loop. For several minutes we watched the pilotless Zero in fascination. From 16,000 feet a ship that is shot down can dive into the ground in a few seconds it can even spin in from an explosion in a little longer than that; but we watched this plane for twice the time that it would normally have taken. It worked closer and closer clos-er to the' ground over the same area, as it lost altitude gradually in the maneuvers. Then, after the longest wait that I can remember having gone through in the air, in one of its dives from a loop it struck the hills below and then burned. We could have burned it at that town. The mountains to the north are very high, and we know they get higher and higher high-er and stretch almost without a break to the East and the Pacific. We see the hairpin turns of the Burma Road near Thuying, and know that we're nearly home from the Taj Mahal and India. We dive over the field of our headquarters just one hour and twenty-five minutes from the time we take off from Assam, 500 miles away. I can tell by the smiles on the faces of the other men in the flight that we're all thinking the same thing: We have bad medicine medi-cine for the Jap packed into the increased horsepower of these new "Kays" our Warhawks, and they are the latest of the P-40 series, coming to us this time of year we look upon them as Christmas Christ-mas presents from the States. : The P-40 was in production when the war began. Then the decks were definitely stacked against us, and everything was in favor of the enemy. During the past year of our war these ships produced as no other fighter plane did for they were serving on every front. Any pilot who actually fought the Axis enemies in the P-40 Tomahawks, Kittyhawks, or Warhawks will tell you they are tough and dependable. They will dive with the best of projectiles with the complex of suppression but they have fear, like any one else. Thir fear is worse, for there is that phobia of having nothing to live for the inferiority-complex they try to overcome. I once saw that fear on the face of a Jap pilot when he knew he was going to die, and it did me lots of good. I told of it many times to youngsters in my Group and it always made them feel better bet-ter to know that the Japs were afraid when they met them probably prob-ably more afraid than we were. Oh, the Jap is a wonderful pilot when he meets no or little opposition. opposi-tion. They come in over undefended unde-fended Chinese cities and loop and roll and zoom, shooting at the helpless pedestrians while arrogantly arro-gantly flying inverted on their backs. But when they meet good American fighters, with pilots who know how to fight them, they are the most anxious people I've ever met to leave our territory terri-tory and go "hell for leather" towards tow-ards Japan. One day I flew up very close to a lone Jap pilot during a fight near Kweilin. I placed my sights right where his wing joined the fuselage of the 1-97-2 and steadily squeezed a burst from 200 yards, holding the trigger down while I moved into closer range. Then I swerved out from behind the enemy ene-my ship, expecting it to stream wun a xong ourst many times during the minutes of our watching, watch-ing, but I, imagine we were all spellbound at the spectacle. No one spoke for several minutes min-utes as we turned back to Hengyang. Heng-yang. Then some call over the radio broke the spell and we just marked the Jap off as another confirmed Zero another "good" Jap. Over in Yunnan we fought the Japs a few times in Burma and had the sadness of another military mili-tary funeral. Those moments in the Buddhist burial grounds were the hardest in China. As the chaplain chap-lain read the prayer and the flag-draped flag-draped casket was lowered into the read earth of Yunnan, a small formation, with slow-turning engines en-gines that gave forth a muffled sound, would fly over the grave. There would be one vacant niche in the evenly spaced fighters, in honor of the brother airman who would fly no more. After eight months in combat I was sent with five other pilots to ferry six new P-40K's over from the air base at Karachi. During our wait for the planes to be ready for combat, we were permitted per-mitted to go to Bombay for the detached service, There, in this splendor of the Hotel Taj Mahal, we had a glorious time. In fact, it became very hard to realize that a war was going on over' in including a bomb. All of us hope that the best fighter plane has not been produced, but we know that America will produce it. In the meantime, through those lean months when America had to fight on many fronts with so little, lit-tle, the glorious P-40 series paid off when the chips were down with a ratio of between twelve and fifteen fif-teen to one twelve to fifteen enemy ene-my ships for every one of ours lost. Some day, when the war is over and our sturdy American engines driving great American ships have won victory with air power, I hope and pray with all fighter pilots who have faced our enemies in aerial combat, from the hot sands of Libya to the cold tundra of the Aleutians, from the jungle heat of Guadalcanal to those torrential tor-rential rains of the Burmese Mon-coons Mon-coons that some understanding group of citizens will go to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. There, besides the statue .that commemorates commemo-rates the first flight of the Wright Brothers, I hope that they will build a monument to the Curtiss P-40 with its Allison engine. And now, with a few minor battles bat-tles in the air, we saw Christmas in China draw near, and I could not help wishing for fast action somewhere. After all, there's only one place a person wants to be at Christmas time, and that place for all of us was far away. I took off from Kunming one day just before Christmas to inspect in-spect the warning net in western Yunnan. It didn't take long to find out that it was very inefficient ineffi-cient near the Burma border, where a steady influx of fifth-columnists fifth-columnists and Japanese money was filtering across the Salween. Even then I knew that instead of getting the Chinese officers who were in charge of the net to investigate, inves-tigate, it would be much better to have a few engagements with the Jap over the failing net-area. There was no tonic like burning Jap planes over the country to improve the functioning of the air-raid warning net. (Continued Next Week) ' - II I A fire and perhaps explode. I had seen pieces come off, and I had seen the canopy glass turn to a fine, shining powder that sparkled spark-led in the slip stream as the ship nosed almost straight up. But when it didn't burn I skidded back across its tail, first with a look to my rear quarter lest I be surprised. sur-prised. I saw into the cockpit. The canopy can-opy had been shot away and I could see the Jap's face and on it was a look of terror such as I had never seen bfore. The realization reali-zation went through me with such force that as I nosed down to fire again I nearly cut the tail from the Jap fighter with my prop. Then I savagely held a long burst from less than fifty yards while I shot the ship to pieces. Even after af-ter the enemy plane had fallen and I had flown through the debris, de-bris, I found that I was continuing continu-ing to fire at the empty heavens, for I had learned to hate also. No, the Jap is far from a superman. sup-erman. But we must never again belittle the fanaticism of the Jap- Burma and China, as we looked at the night clubs from Malabar Hill and from inside them too, at the horse-races for the Aga Khan's Purse and at all the things that we had forgotten to remember. The return across India was a happy one, for we were ferrying new and higher-powered ships back to the war, and all of us were eager to try them out in combat. com-bat. From Assam we took the old familiar trail that I used to fly with the transports and it felt especially es-pecially good to look around and see those friendly looking P-40's along with me over the Burma Road where I had, in earlier months, been compelled to fly alone. The shark-mouths had not yet been painted on, but the silhouettes sil-houettes of the new fighters looked look-ed friendly nevertheless. A fast trip over the 500 miles from Assam is like this: . We're off from our base and headed 118 degrees across the 12,000-foot Naga hills to the first check-point, where the upper fork of the Chindwin forms the likeness like-ness of a shamrock. Up to our left now, from the altitude of 18,-000 18,-000 that we've attained so effortlessly effort-lessly with the new ships, can be seen the higher snow-capped peaks of Tibet and Chinese Turkestan. Down below us the' valley of the Irrawaddy is low and green, but forbidding nonetheless. Ahead, as we cross the "Y", in the little known "triangle of the Irrawaddy" Irrawad-dy" we see the real hills of the "hump" begin to rise. Snow-capped peaks everywhere. Our map reads that our highest peak is going go-ing to be 15,800 feet, yet we know |