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Show Fl THE BULLETIN. BINGHAM CANYON, UTAH 5 jtiJEEBTS BIEw rest of the American fighter strength off the ground. While one of our flights chased off the accompanying Zeros, the rest of the boys were picking off Jap bombers, which were sliding out of formation and going down trailing smoke. They all had to turn off before reaching the tar-ge- t, dump their bombs in the sea, and head back for their base at Ku-pan- g on Timor Island one of the steppingstones to Java they'd taken away from us. But Squeeze and his gang followed them out to sea, and shot down every one of the ten bombers. Our boys returned with-o- ut a man wounded or a plane scratched. " 'You know, said Squeeze, 'if we don't look out, we're going to make the air a safe place for Americans!' "And after all those months of defeat, we were almost afraid to believe it. But two days later the Japs came back from Kupang with a real force thirty-thre- e bombers protected by eleven fighters. Again we were ready. It was a beautiful day, the sky clear as a bell, and again Squeeze tore into the whole Jap V formation far at sea. He at-tacked In elements, and each time he hit, another Mitsubishi would go spinning down in smoke, or else would sag below the V with engine trouble, lagging so that the next American element could pick him off. We found Jap bombers are light-ly constructed, and can't soak up much punishment from our heavy guns can't take the pounding our Forts can. Meanwhile the second American flight was tak-ing care of the eleven escorting Zeros. The boys had paired off ! Uut. Col. 4 rlylnc Fortr.e,, K u "he" the At , fleeing lor shel- - 1? 2 ?ttet, , what is 1 J1 iutt' ,va. where they 1 tbt PhlllP-"- "' Avs Itself. Jv. f ' TMT Und on Brooms ?i Melbourne. Kurt, iwoess." th. air 5 Z-- : J ATTEBXXI ? !i, the Air Force had I the ground up. Be-- f MacArthur arrived l) we had located Zt our advance and ',n over North Austra- - larwin to Townsville. crineers were pouring eral Brett put them to fere also improving HI , problem child, and the 'aff had laid down its clearing Austra-- " i, an for st shoulder of the threat : ,0wer to that when we ; essary men and equip-- ( ,uld head back into the i i 19th Bombardment r. ack in business now In alia, and beginning in t . year we were pound-- e base at Rabaul in New al times a week. the Philippines were iataan had fallen; Cor-ce- d about to go; and we :j feverishly to rescue needed Air Force per-D- el Monte Field on Min-MueU-who was now port, told me of his last said the place looked so cas scared even to be way now. It was a sev-- 1 ;dred mile flight, and I chance that there might I jh gas left at Del Monte back to Australia. But I navigators, and ground a Mindanao were worth in gold to us, so Al start-rig- ht over Del Monte r.gs looked quiet on the ! he was circling, wait-sign- al to come on In, ;ome reason seemed de-:lin- g, Al couldn't under-ati- l from Australia, sev-ire- d miles away, crack-messag- e telling him to land. Cor-- '. Mindanao had surren--e Japanese while he had Ete. e was, eight hours from and with only a few left But luckily he'd pro-n- st this before he left. leNavy that if the Philip, i while he was in the air In't refuel at Mindanao, his plane on a little Jun-an- d he showed it to them i. k they could pick him iflild get throueh. All through the our Australian war fighters must have knocked off hundreds of Zeros which we've nev er claimed. We fight them until eir gas is almost gone, and when they finally break away and start lor home, they slide quietly into the lea with dry tanks. "Those fighters at Darwin are a great gang of kids, and they've in- - VMteud their own service uniform, which might not pass parade inspec- tion back here. It consists of a long duck-bille- d hunter's cap, usu-ally red. plus a pair of white cotton shorts and nothing much else. They don't like clothes because of the fire hazard cloth soaks up spurting gasoline, which will drop off naked flesh. They won't wear ordinary shoes. This started when one of them had to bail out in the desert back of Darwin and when his chute cracked open, the jerk flipped his shoes off. He had to walk barefoot for days over the Australian desert. Now they wear tennis shoes or cow-boy boots, which won't flip off. This costume includes a belt, to which is attached a jungle kit on one side and a .45 on the other. The .45 they keep covered with cellophane candy-ba- r wrappers so it won't rust They look more like pirates than pilots, and so did the ones at Mores-by. "When General Brett put Buzz in charge of the Moresby-Townsvill- e fighters, he didn't issue an order for Buzz to stay on the ground at his desk in Pursuit Interceptor Com-mand Headquarters at Townsville, but in a nice way he unofficially re-quested it. "But Buzz was itching at the pa-per work. He was a fighter, not a desk man. And at Moresby he had new youngsters just in from the States. Their morale was low. They'd been having an awful time with the weather, and also the Japs had been coming in and shooting up the place, catching these kids in the air and picking off too many. They needed someone to show them how to handle a P-3- 9 Airacobra against the Zero both planes have their points. "So one day when he's up 'inspect-ing' Moresby he spent most of his time there without any formality Buzz steps into a P-3- 2 and leads them. They were all agog. They've heard of the Great Wagner, but they aren't sure the stories of what he'd done in the Philippines mightn't be a myth. "He led twelve of them out above New Guinea, over the Owen Stanley range, on a mission in the direction of the big Jap base at Lae, from which they were returning over the ocean when they ran into a Japa-nese trap. "The Japs had a flight of Zeros circling a spot which our boys must pass on their homeward leg. Buzz ' said it was partly his fault for not having told his gang of twelve to refrain from combat on this home-ward leg, because they needed all their gas to get back, while the Japs were freshly fueled from a near-b- y base. "But when the two end men on the flight saw the Japs, they peeled off, and Buzz saw he'd have trouble headed for this island, beach over, and set her ieiurf. The rocks in a s made junk of his big Ed Liberator. wording to Al, the days e years, although only 'fl passed before a sub-r:sc-popped up in the srefully scanned the hori-- ? planes before the craft ' take him and his crew March the hot spot was the Aussies called 7 of Australia because lad come over on Feb-:een- th and not only flat-"- e town of four thousand airfield wiped out an --ghter group en route to far. time it was only a little W with almost no F boys were good hard but getting no--- " both training and awiean fighter group "W field, which 'Slug-li- s leading toward Java, until they heard the P motors. Slugger Mve his planes if he ftoa of diving for the m Japs were already ; med desperately to get ' Wa shot down at 50 feet i gCar W3S Sti11 re" Jff0re he'd hal tank. He tried to 1 0f cou"e he was too squadron had ac-- W to get into the air. Z ere aU either shot o' killed in their they cleared the run-- s itrafed and set afire taxiin8 Int day for the J came through that a P bombers and three D s way to Darwin. 3e had been wait-the- m far out at 1 1 .i" cleyer tactical SUldn't describe in JaP approached 1X11 Patrols pulled the holding the rest, so he gave the signal over the phones to go on in. Buzz said it was a lovely battle the whole argument rolled thirty miles up the beach and then thirty miles back again, like a big tumble-wee-d on the prairie. Buzz shot down three Japs himself, and his wing men two a total of five Japs for the day. We gave three planes to get them (one was forced down gasless), but we didn't lose a pilot on that flight. "That did the business for those green, scared kids. When they saw Buzz's gunsights trained on a Zero, watched his chewing it up right in front of them, they real-ized it could be done, and, more im-portant, they saw they had a leader which was all they needed to put them back in business. "That night, sitting with me under the mosquito-nettin- g canopy we'd thrown over the wing of the Swoose, was the first time I saw Buzz really worried. Because when General Brett found out about this, what would he say? Buzz was worried that the General would not only re-quest him to stay on the ground, he'd make it an order in writing, and then the fun would be over. "Buzz was twenty-si- x years old, and he hadn't gone up just to hang three more on his record, but be-cause he really loved it. But he said in the future he thought rather than risk an order grounding him, he'd stay out of combat with Zeros and confine his activities to develop-ing mast - high bombing attacks against transports. He thought his kids should all be trained to do it, and he'd done a lot himself. You come in low and horizontal in a pur-suit, and just before you're on her little wing bomb you release your so that it slaps right against the transport's side at the water line. Then quick you pull up out of the antiaircraft fire. We talked a lot that night. He had a fast mind, and was doing a thinking both on tactics lot of ound fighters. He said in and about our way he wanted to get back home " wWle. I'd turned down a Ski home once, and ne'd fcrned but now he had . it down twice, reason for returning. (TO BE CONTINUED) The snb surfaced to take him and his crew aboard. and were whirling over and over in their squirrel cages, a Jap and an American to each cage, while the first flight kept up the heavy cleaver work chopping into that bomber V from behind, or some-times going out ahead of it to turn and come in for a bust on its nose. They were forcing it lower when they'd peel off and come in for a pass, it was fun watching both mo-tors light up. "A good many Jap bombers got over the target, but you couldn't call it a bomb run. Most of their bombs went wild, as always hap-pens in a disrupted attack, and many others salvoed their bombs in the desert so they could run away. But those which did get over Dar-win ran into Bofors ack-ac- k fire. The battery was operated by an old Crete gang of Aussies the tough-est hombres in the business-a- nd the American 's had pushed the Jap bombers so low that the ack-ac- k could really rip into them. They were between that cleaver in the air and a buzz saw on the ground. Two or three Jap bombers dribbled right down onto the field, whole wings shot off or else blown into con-fetti The Japs tried to use their chutes from the burning bombers-wh- ich should explode the fairy tale that Japs are too fanatical to use chutes-- yet even they caught fire. "Most of the' first Jap bomber Darwin, but only part J Csecond. while the third Jetti-soned its bombs and ran like hell for Kupang. estimated range of You see the using belly tanks is about Twelve hundred miles. It's five ten miles from Kupang to Sarwin. and to go and return is a thousand and twenty miles That safety margin that is leaves a tiny more than used up if the Zero has to fighting en route. do any first hitting the Japs far out "Also ai sea'. Squeeze forced , to can t their belly tanks-th- ey figh? while carrying them-a- nd be-gf- n using their precious wing-tan- k las long before they got to the tar get SATURDAY, Sunday and night already taken cart of the 1944 season and these factors will continue to operate until autumn leaves begin turning red and gold. Weekday afternoon attendances Jump from 1,200 and 1,500 per game to anything from 20,000 to 50.000 un-der the conditions named above. This is largely due to war work but it may also become a fixture after the war is over. There is still a fourth factor that has been a big help. This is the close-- nf tistflt GrantlandRlce ne" ras' especially the American league, where there is no outstanding team. From the 16 teams in both leagues only the Cardinals have any decided advantage and if they happen to lose a few men to the draft, the scramble will then be complete. The one big weakness In major league baseball has been the fact that in the last few years, two or three teams have dominated the two races, leaving the other 13 or 14 outfits struggling to see the lead-er's vanishing dust. Year after year, we've seen the Yankees so far in front by July that you could turn your attention to something else. In the last few years the Cardinals and Dodgers have been the only teams that counted in the National. A few years back the Tigers, In-dians and Reds broke up this com-bination for a short spell, only to subside later on. But it's all different now. The greatness that was the Yankees be-lon-to "the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome." Week after week eight American league clubs have been running along only a few games apart, from top to bottom. Six of the eight clubs have been traveling 'in a com-pact bunch and there isn't a man-age- r in the league who can pick you a favorite with assurance. The Yankees can win it, or they can finish fourth. This applies to the Senators, Browns, Tigers and others. More Interesting Races There have been only a few seasons in some 40 years where baseball had two or three teams in both leagues still in the race after August. The greatest single season was 1908 when Cubs, Giants and Pirates were deadlocked through September in the National league and where the Tigers, White Sox and Indians were, well bunched in the American. But In later years the Yankees began wrecking their league, where you knew by July Fourth there was ionly one club left In the race. In the meanwhile Cardinals, Rods and Dodgers at least gave the National league a few continued thrills. Everyone knows today the caliber of war baseball has fallen off badly. No game can lose such men as iDiMaggio, Feller, Dickey, Ted Wi-lliams, Joe Gordon, Herman, Red Ruffing, Keller, Slaughter, Terry ' Moore and a hundred others with-out showing the deficit. But the quality of the two pennant races has more than made up for the absence of so many shining headlights. After all there is no big kick in watching the home club struggling along from 12 to 30 games in the rut. The wonder is that baseball has done as well with so many lop-sided races, wUh certain teams los-ing from 90 to a 100 games each season as others won from 90 to a 100. Baseball has needed a better dis-tribution of playing talent, but I still wouldn't know how to bring that about with larger cities and wealthier owners having all the best of it. The war has taken charge of this weakness. Among the 16 major league clubs it has left only the Car-dinals with any decided playing ad-vantage so far. The Cardinals will still have to lose more than one or two of their best men to fall back with the pack, and make it a real two league scramble. Just how many more will be taken into war service is still anybody's guess. After all, what the public wants is a contest not a runaway or a walkover. Those who have lived in second division cities, watching their ball clubs try to finish sixth or seventh, can understand this much better than those pulling for pennant-winnin- g teams, high up ii the race. Home-Ru- n Timing When it comes to the matter of home-ru- n timing, pound for pound, weight for age, displacement and power, Mel O'.t fci 1 Giants comes close to leaftaig the etAiits n. It must be remembered that Ott, the lone entry from the National league, had to battle against such American league mam-moths as Babe Ruth, Jimmy Foxx, Lou Gehrig and Hank Greenberg, who outclassed Mel in every physi-cal way, all over 200 pounds, all six footers, with Greenberg at 6 feet 4. Released by Wtttcrn Newipaper Union. RED Rolfe, former Yankee third and now coach at Yale, has domt a bit of postwar planning which should appeal to ev-ery person Interested in baseball. Rolfe suggests that colleges start planning for a national baseball championship after the war a col-legiate "World Series." He ad-mits there Is nothing new In the Idea, but at least It comes at an. opportune time. Most college lead-- , era both academio and athletic; are envisioning enlarged athletic programs following the war. And baseball is the most natural game of all to a majority of the nation's youngsters. It is natural that high schools should take a keen interest in the sport. Schools in the smaller towns i ; . n, i h Ll Li ... . J i J ROBERT "RED" ROLFE usually have a good supply of talent for this type of competition. The cost is not prohibitive, and the sup-port given many small town high school teams verges on the phe-nomenal. Legion Program The American Legion, despite wartime restrictions and difficul-ties, is continuing Its junior base-ball program one of the finest sports undertakings In history. Most state high school championships are being hold as usual. There is one obvious reason why little attention is paid to college baseball in most instances. The reason is financial. Seldom can it support itself, much less show a profit. The Big Ten has kept the game fairly healthy, but has done little to make it a real drawing card. Baseball is looked upon as a minor sport in the college world. But it isn't natural that so popular a game should be so neglected. With so many people interested in the game, why relegate it to the same position occupied by swimming, fencing, etc. Not that there is any-thing the matter with those sports, but they never have captured the public imagination. Baseball has. Rolfe suggests a sectional elimina-tion series with the Pacific coast champions playing the Big Six or Missouri valley winners; the South-west against the Southeast and the Midwest against the East. "The play-off- s and championship aeries could be completed within ten days after the college terms end In June," Rolfe says. That would necessitate some schools keeping their players on deck for a week or two, but precedent wouldn't be broken. The N. C. A. A. track and field championships do the same thing. Possible Aid It is also Roue's suggestion that the major leagues would help con-duct the tournament. It Is only natural they would have an inter-est In the meet, since they are al-ways Interested in looking over the good college players. However, it Is unlikely that the schools con-cerned would accept any outside help. But it is more than possible to secure an agreement under which the major leagues or the minors-wo- uld not deal with a student until his class has graduated. For more than 20 years the National Football league has done this. Every once in a while a slight irritation is caused when a player quits school to join the ranks, but those instances are few enough so that they shouldn't be allowed to throttle any workable plan. Most baseball coaches affiliated with colleges will approve of Rolfe's plan. At least it is something con-crete. It could bring college base-ball back to its former glory. SPORTS SHORTS C The St. Louis Browns of the old Union association, opened the 1884 season with 20 straight wins. C. United States ski troops use ply-wood skis. C, Lou Gehrig never received more than one-ha- lf as much as Babe Ruth's salary of $80,000. C. Nylon fishing lines are part of the emergency fishing kits used by the United States armed forces. C Waite Hoyt, former Yank pitcher, again is doing radio broadcast in Cincinnati. f&TTERN'S . " "T'l r""" ' Ios Popular! TwS in popularity these day 1 is the delightfully wearabU and comfortable sun-bac- k jumper dress with wonderfully molded waist and hip lines. To make as neat a suit as you've ever seen, just add the jacket 1 Barbara Bell Patfern No. 1079 ta de-signed lur sizes 12, 14. 16. 18. 30; 40 and 42. Size 14 requires 4',i yards of material. Due to an unuiually large demand and current war conditions, sllshtly more time Is required In filling orders ior a lew of the most popular pattern numbers. Send your order to: 1974 Pretty Work Frock pOR being pretty while you work and completely comfortable try this buttoned-down-the-fro- nt dress rith attractive yoke collar and bright bias-bindin- g trim. Barbara Bell Pattern No. 1074 Is de-signed (or sizes 14. 10. 18. 20; 40, 42, 44 nd 46. Size 16 requires 3Vt yardi of 33 or material. SEWING CIRCLE PATTERN DEPT. 149 New Montgomery Street San Francisco Calif. Enclose 20 cents In coins for each pattern desired. Pattern No Size Name , Address Cre So Crisp -- Th. drains are Crest FhSs"-jfeSj- ifl, K Kellogg's Rice Krispies equal the i whole ripe grain in nearly all the fj ffl& protective food elements declared f Ifm fa Ma essential to human nutrition, wbi .W M ktffl Buy War Bonds and War Savings Stamps fllS lUR'Tim BAKING WSSSggff MUST BE GOOD JSi veToil our d3 t ingredients is now doubly im vj!r Prtan Choose the best . .. Then, guard V bjA against waste and be sure of results with ofV?Tl Clabber Girl Baking Powder AiJrAlofnar, , Sfc. Kaow$: It's economical, too, this y&JfSlSi baking powder that has been a favorite in f cuiuauLi '7mjSy millions of homes for years and yean. Fish Barometer A certain central European fish is known by the name of Thunder fish from the fact that by its ac-tions it prophesies the approach of storms. The Thunder fish lives in muddy brooks and lakes, where it usually buries itself in the mud. Some 24 hours before a storm the fish comes to the surface, mov-ing about in an unusually ener-getic manner, and this habit Has led to its being confined in glass globes as a barometer. Keep the bag emptied and you will get better service from your cleaner. Clothes that are not clean in 15 minutes are in ned of another washing in clean water. Sprinkle graham cracker, vanil-la wafer, or ginger snap crumbs on top of puddings before cooling to prevent a tough skin from form-ing. Try cutting down and making smaller the embroidered end of a worn-o- ut pillow case to fit baby's carriage or crib pillow. This saves a lot of needlework and fabric be-sides. Paste a narrow strip of old vel-vet under each rocker of the rock-ing chair to keep it from slipping while rocking. It pays to buy two pairs of stockings of the same color at the same time. Be sure to ask for your proper length, depending upon the length of your leg and your girdle. |