OCR Text |
Show with an altitude of about 9,500 feet. But about eight o'clock we hit a tropical front which was a nightmarefog night-marefog so dense you could hardly see to light the tip of your cigarette. "When we saw it coming ahead, each V spread out a little, so we wouldn't collide. Only we didn't dream how dense and how long it was going to be. "It was like trying to fly irside a giant bale of cotton so dense that when you looked out at the side you could barely see your own wing tips. And looking straight ahead, that bale of cotton seemed tightly packed against your windshield, only it was a dull flat gray-white, like the cotton I imagine they'd spin winding sheets out of. And you'd stare Into the windshield, trying to see how close you were to your wing man, but there would only be that flat white, squeezed tight against your windshield, muffling everything. every-thing. Then all of a sudden, the wing of the plane ahead would come surging into view out of that winding wind-ing sheet, so terribly big and close that you would frantically jerk back all four throttles to cut your power, and begin fishtailing your rudder to slow the big brute down a little, praying that by this you'd miss crashing into the plane ahead at least by a few yards. "We'd been fighting through it on instruments, because inside that cot- continuing the long slow circle Inside In-side the csnyon in the hope we'll pick up some of the others, and won't have to go in en the target alone. Meanwhile the radio operators of the two planes have started talking to each other by winking their Aldis lamps back and forth. We're so near the target I don't want to use the radio any more than necessary. And just then I spot a third plane about 500 feet below us and far-ther far-ther west down the canyon. Just as I'm wondering which one it is. my j radio operator reports that the plane j we're circling on isn't Jim at all, it's j Bill Bohnaker. So we drop on down the canyon and sure enough, that third plane turns out to be old Jim. I can read his number plain j now on his tail. Now there are three I of us in the circle, wondering what in hell has become of the other six. We haven't got the gas to stay In this golden dream castle much longer. long-er. But just then my radio operator comes in with a message from Combs, the leader. God knows where he is, but he's telling us, 'Continuing to target.' and he's sending it out by key, where he can use code, because be-cause he daren't use voice so close to the target as he must by now be, because most of these damn Zero pilots seemed to have graduated gradu-ated from Los Angeles High School and understand English as well as you do. "All right, continue it Is, so now we plunged back into that damned front the opposite canyon wall and the gray mist packed down around my windshield again. We continued to climb in that deathly whiteness-first whiteness-first one wing and then the other surging into my view. I flew it for forty-five minutes and decided it was just too much to risk crashing into each other when we were so close to the target. So without any message to Jim or Bill I decided I'd spread out. I flew 45 degrees for thirty seconds, then back thirty more seconds, and then continued on the old course flying on instruments, of course. But now that we were staggered both in altitude and in interval, it wasn't so bad. "Finally we broke out into the clear at 27,000 feet at a quarter after ten and discovered we had lost interval in-terval only by a very little. But I was groggy we'd been on oxygen for four and a half hours already. "But the weather was still playing tricks. Now the mist was coming in great tufts, thicker than cotton wadding, while below us was a thin layer of overcast. "We were getting close to the target tar-get now. Should we climb higher? There wasn't much point, because If we did, that overcast layer might thicken so that we couldn't see the target, and we'd have to come down below it to unload. "But where's Bill Bohnaker? I look back and see that he's very slowly peeling off. I wonder why. Probably supercharger trouble. Then I think to myself, 'There he goes, and I'd hoped maybe at least three of us could go in together.' Because in my mind is that rain-check idea the score isn't settled yet, and if that target Is open at all, I've made up my mind I'm going in. And I think to myself, 'Here we go again, Jim, just you and me.' "About this time I hear a gunner on Combs' ship they've broken radio ra-dio silence, which means they're on the target saying, "Lots of enemy fiehters sighted!' ! ') 1 I ... far L'ut- Co1- I st this rr teIU 6'enrS. P. ucU in demolished :.f .re f round. They I" ' L ipenO Christina day r-ener.H Brereton Z bomber, to Java. ' urt on fliSht for Davao, iCX. peard JTS make the bomb 'Lrdler shout, "bombs CHAPTER IX ,d on evTry ounce of power dwas about to turn for :T when I saw, just in Xj Jim, who had dropped s' before I did. had al-:dhis al-:dhis turn to get off the w seconds before me. ,t thing I d'd t0 caU .bombardier and the nav-me nav-me on up and tell me done to the Japs, aid it had been a sight to lew of the Jap cruisers ,-eri had managed to get r' and their wakes laced i- great spirals and sworls "ed to dodge the bombs, a these few, they said, t the Japs absolutely flat-there flat-there had been enough could have blown a chunk :r fleet they would never vexed from, as, they had watched four on i Jap battleship, seen debris flying in every di- i imoke starting to bil-In bil-In iddition to this, our had Junk three smaller cruisers and a transport, lid our bomb pattern had :e whole area white with loam, and what few ships power up were running e crazy. They said thou-killed thou-killed personnel had been drowned, and also that :ra hell out of the dock i docks at Davao Harbor, don't have time to gloat something approaching us i catches my eye through :;eld. It's practically fly-urse fly-urse and our altitude, ex-: ex-: j oil to the left. But am ghost? It can't be what I i Messerschmitt 110, the Ernst Udet told me all erlin when I visited there rhere can't be a Messer-10 Messer-10 in this hemisphere, else could it be with that a't alter his course and ;er mine; and after he's 1 point where I could set iion course with him, I ffle to my senses, to real-Ji real-Ji the pilot of a Flying d my job is to get home a these boys and this ch was never designed to dogfights with Messer- ; back to Malang feeling H with ourselves," said ad I personally felt I S headway settling my old J icore. But in Java we . x were troubles ahead, i ast of these was that our ' accusing us of bombing j; didn't say any of a n hit, just that they'd Jt off an attack, and it o me that this might ex-'-se fireworks which came ;punder our chins through : st that night over the i EJ' But we were never ' SJi. Then why don't you -r Jour ships are going , it seemed that had never -a ruling from the Navy ' Washington. I guess 1 ust take some kind of I .51 -oath never to tell any- Jl -rtody who doesn't wear more was going on. ;., 60 that our smash at the , 111 Davao had been al- f essful. Because Davao safe base for them, : apparently boosted up 'f two or three The gallant Dutch are burning up their Borneo oil fields. ti bale you couldn't see stars or ocean, and it took so much hard flying fly-ing that I was having my co-pilot handle the power for me. If I thought I was dropping behind the rest, maybe I would get lost and have to go over the target alone, which by now we knew was a dangerous dan-gerous business, I'd say to him, 'All right, give me a little more mercury now about four inches.' Then when I'd catch a glimpse of the plane ahead I'd say: 'Okay, now you can bring it back to thirty inches. We're sitting okay I can see him fine.' And I could for a minute or so. "Without warning I break into the clear. I haven't climbed over that cloud, but instead have flown out of one of the walls of an enormous cloud canyon and am now flying around in the clear air between the precipices. "Ahead of me looms the other canyon can-yon wall. Maybe it's thirty miles away, maybe fifty-you can't ever judge the distance of a cloud, because be-cause they don't come in standard sizes. But cloud canyons like this one are one magnificent sight that you never see any place except in the high skies. "Because, you see, the morning sun was slanting down from behind me. over the top of the canyon wall -j ...v,:v, T had Inst come, to "But they're still far ahead, out of sight. Here we are again, in a staggered attack the stragglers to bear the brunt of what the first flights stir up. We ought to know better, but still I'm going on in. "The weather gets crazier and crazierthese enormous tufts not stratified at all, but floating around at almost any altitude. And my copilot co-pilot seems to be fascinated by a big black one that isn't shaped quite like a thunderhead. It might be one of those Dakota tornado funnels, only it doesn't revolve. "Then suddenly he says, staring at if 'Hell, Frank, that isn't a cloud at all-look!' I follow his finger, and down at the base of that cloud, on the ground, is a crackling, flaming oil field! The gallant Dutch are scorching the earth for fair-burn-ine ud their Borneo oil fields right " .naissance went r i?3Vao area and revere; re-vere; then we found ;Jls 'lug had moved out down into Macas-, Macas-, " fj was ear they J rtean out Borneo-not J) our "dvance bases 1 U,ie "ey wanted the f frakan and Baiak- 1 0 ! ern coast of Bor" rUisso rich they say s'" r'!t into the bunk- 2,C0UrEe thd built ft efore Pearl Har- i 01 weir own. , 'f'ng to stop them? t n y' be"use we . the only forCe the J a?efre wn-" wn-" MjL wa known ' g3ng 01 sm'Ps off and at 6:30 in ! Fieid ",S t0ok oft trom I Jv, ' planned to I WSea and then in-' in-' caTying to start OUI. Ui win-" hit the top half of the cloud-canyon wall ahead. That top half might have been built out of burnished silver feather beds piled one on top the other, and yet you looked again and it seemed to be so firm it could be carved of glistening ice or marble. mar-ble. "I am wondering if old Jim is also looking at all this when sud-denly sud-denly his voice comes out of nowhere no-where into my earphones. " -Connally to Kurtz,' he is call- " 'Kurtz answering Connally,' I Sa" 'Have you broken into the clear yet?' he asks. 'Into the clear. Jim, at 14.500. Now I'm turning onto 270 degrees. That means I'm turning west to fly down that canyon to see U can't catch sight of Jim, whose voa e is so loud in my ears. Suddenly I see a single Fortress ahea ttere in the canyon. I pick h" "P the reflecting sun hits his uptilted wing. He is circling. 'I think I see you, Jim, I cau. Conunt to circle.' I head toward the plane and fall in on its wmg, In the face of the advancing Japs, millions of dollars' worth of it. Imagine Imag-ine all of East Texas crackling and pouring black smoke into the sky. We can't stop to watch a billion bil-lion dollars go up in black smoke The Dutch are doing their job and we have ours, which just now is scanning for fighters. I realize that in this weather and so close to the target they might be anywhere, only Jor some reason I never think of them when my No. 1 starboard en-eine en-eine starts jumping around in its mount, raiding the whole plane. "I only curse my luck and ask, 'If we were going to have engine trouble trou-ble why in hell couldn't it have been on the way home instead of noW when we're about to begin our run over the target?' r watch the oil pressure drop sickeningly, and still it doesn't dawn me what hit that motor Im just sore at it for letting me down. S also, what will I do nurse it bv feathering it, or see if I aSf ve it maybe 1,000 RPM's the other three up to 2,600? (TO BE CONTINUED) |