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Show g GOD IS MY bco-piLot cj The .lor, thu. f.r: Aft...... . "V1T W-NU RELEASE VkW ine story u,u. f.,: After lraduaU from We,t Point. Robert Scott Ma, hl, ftylnf. He ha. been an In.tructor lor uIm "h ?e" the brcak' 2 L I nW t0 old ,or C(nbat anil I ' . ""'" "Veri1 G" and I, B,uy offerea- oppot ;f. ?T-rtt He mtt a bomb" India, but I. made a ferry pilot and this doe. not .alt him. He vl.lt. Gen. Chen-nault, Chen-nault, eu a Klttyhawk, and ioon flying the .kle. over Burma, known a. the "one man air force." Later he I. made CO. of the 23rd Fighter Group, but be .till keep, on knocking down Jap planes. He goes out on hi. greatest ml.. .Ion, over Hongkong. CHAPTER XXV Pilots waiting for the order t go Into the air. Sitting at the crude table, waiting for the chow wagon or for an alert. Listening with keen ears for the jingle of the telephone Playing gin rummy or poker, but hearing everything that was going on. A player would be dealing the deck, and in the middle of the routine rou-tine of dropping a card here, and one there, the phone would ring. The card would stop in the air, poised over the table while we all heard the Chinese interpreters pick up the rnonnntn J ... . JlX uthey V' even me some Site, Ver there ta . ES a"d have sent some new Mo. h r?' and we're 8oin to get the best in tne world, planes L?flf .w llmb 4'500 feet minute Mty thousand feet. But there's your crew-chief now, waving you in "d h?'s l00kl"g M the patches you ve shot from the blast tubes of Tour guns and knows you've fired at the enemy. Or maybe your "vie-wry "vie-wry roll 1 warned him anyway . . . Who knows? Day after day, through the early Part of November, we actuaUy Prayed that the weather East would clear so that we could stop our small, piddling attacks on Burma and go back to Hongkong. I knew that General Chennault and Colonel Cooper were planning a big one for the next time, for now we had the largest force of fighters we had ever seen in China. New P-40's had been arriving in small numbers, but steadily. The Group was actually being built up to strength at last. With the first breaks in the heavy winter clouds, Bert Carleton was sent with his transport and our ground personnel to Kweilin. Avia- tinn fiuil -...j i . seventy to fifty and finally to notn-ing, notn-ing, I sweated out my return to Kweilin and just made it by mentally men-tally lifting the ship onto the strip between the jagged stalagmites that seemed to guard our field. That afternoon I led sixteen fighters fight-ers to escort our twelve bombers to Canton. Capt. Brick Holstrom, who had participated in the raid on Tokyo the preceding April, led the bombers. As the fighters kept the new tactical "squirrel cage" about his formation he deliberately circled cir-cled to the South of Tien Ho airdrome air-drome and covered the target area perfectly with his long string of bofflbt. The anti-aircraft was heavy tad increased as we went on North over White Cloud field. I looked back at the results at Tien Ho and felt a surge of pride at that perfect per-fect bombing from fourteen thousand thou-sand feet. This was teamwork. I knew now, with bombers and fighters fight-ers properly proportioned. All of us were mad because the Japs wouldn't come up. The bomber crews had reported them taking off from both fields and keeping low, but heading in all directions. The accurate bombing must have destroyed de-stroyed many of them on the ground, tion fuel and bombs were placed ready for Instant use, and I could feel the tension in the air again. From the daily reports on the air-warning air-warning net it could be seen that the Japanese had maintained a constant con-stant aerial patrol over Hongkong and vicinity since our last attack. With the first break in the clouds we sent observation planes over with magneto pnone and utter the famil-lar famil-lar "Wey wey," as they say "hello." "hel-lo." The card would remain there over the table, undealt throughout the telephone conversation until the player realized what he was doling. do-ling. Then he'd go hesitatingly on. Perhaps the call was one of the hundreds that meant nothing; only the Chinese really knew, and we could only wait and find out. Then .gain, the receiver of the telephone might drop back into place and the Interpreter would say something to another Chinese. This second one would go to the plotting-board, look at the marked co-ordinates, and quietly qui-etly put a little red flag down over . certain city towards Japanese territory. ter-ritory. Even then, with one warning warn-ing only, the game could go on for long time in confidence. Perhaps the Squadron commander command-er or the officer who was on the alert that day would move out of the game and start looking the map and the flags over, sizing up the situation. As the picture formed and it became apparent that this waa a real attack he'd just go over and tell the card-game about it. Or maybe two or three men would begin be-gin to get helmets out The game would silently break up, with cards and CN left where they were. Helmets Hel-mets and gloves would be put on. Men who were pretending to be sleeping in the bags on the floor would be awakened. And the tension droppeu off like a cloak. It wasn't the actual combat these fighter pilots feared, for we all wanted combat more than anything else; it was the damnable uncertaintythe uncer-taintythe ringing of a telephone, an ominous sound that most of the time meant nothing. When men went out of the door to for we had made a feint of continuing continu-ing on South to Hongkong. I sent one ship home with each bomber. The rest of us hung back and tried to tempt the enemy Zeros to come up; but they had evidently received their orders. Next morning Lieut. Pat Daniels got up begging the General to let him lead a dive-bombing attack on an aircraft assembly plant in Canton. Can-ton. His plan was good, and the mission was made ready. All of us went down to the alert shack and watched the ground crew loading load-ing the little yellow fragmentation bombs under the wings of six P-40E's. A short time later they were off, with Daniels waiting to blow up the factory, and all set with his movie camera to take pictures automatically as he dove the bombs into the target. Three hours later only five of the six returned. Pat Daniels was missing in action. His wing man had seen his leader lose part of his wing in an explosion on the way in with the bombs. Anti-aircraft could have done it, but most of us agreed from the description that Daniels' bombs might have hit his own pro- j peller. At the tremendous speed that a fast fighter-ship builds up in a long and nearly vertical dive, pressures pres-sures are also built up from the increased in-creased speed. This torque necessitates ne-cessitates so much compensating pressure on the rudder that one must actually stand on the rudder control. While doing this, Pat might j have relaxed pressure just as he ' reached down to pull the bomb re- i lease; this would have allowed tha speeding plane to "yaw" or skid, and the bombs could have struck the arc of the prop. The only note of encouragement waa that a chute had been seen A group of fighter pilots on the alert at Kunming. a top-cover of several fighters, but the Jap would not come up to fight the shark-mouthed planes. His instructions in-structions appear to have been: Wait for the American bombers. On November 21, the ground crews got to Kweilin. Instead of keeping them in the hostel that first night to insure that information get into their ships and take off there was no handing to friends on the ground of last letters to take care of, no entrusting of rings and watches to room-mates. For fighter pilots don't think of not coming back. They are invincible, or think they are, and they have to be that way. Down in our hearts we may figure that some accident will get us some day, when we are old and gray, when our beards get in the way of the controls, or we get to where we don't see well or react fast but we would not leak out to the enemy, we sent them to town, first casually remarking that we were here now for the second attack on Hongkong. Early next morning our twelve bombers slipped into Kweilin, with Colonel (promoted since the last attack) at-tack) Butch Morgan in the lead ship. The strengthened fighter force of between thirty and forty planes infiltrated for reservice some went to Kweilin, others scattered to the surrounding emergency fields for better protection of the bombers. As when the fighters left the target. Lieut Patrick Daniels was one of our best and most aggressive pilots, and we missed him immediately and hoped for the best. That same night, Johnny Alison led eight ships in a fighter sweep and dive-bombing attack on the docks at Hankow, over four hundred miles to the North. In the river harbor, with the sky criss-crossed by tracers from the ground, Johnny dropped his bombs on the hangars and on a large freighter. Then for ten minutes he strafed the enemy vessel and badly disabled it Captain Cap-tain Hampshire dove and shot the searchlights out until he was out of ammunition. The night attack so deep into enemy territory was a daring one and did much to confuse the Japs further. Johnny's ships were rather badly shot up from the ground-fire, and he was lucky to get them all back to base safely. But it was such missions as these which built up the circumstances that would assure the success of the big attack the General was planning. plan-ning. Next day, with eighteen fighters, we escorted the bombers to raid Sienning, an occupied town near Hankow. We kept the circling movement move-ment all around our B-25's and tried to give them an added feeling of security by our presence. Through heavy anti-aircraft fire, Morgan led the attack in and didn't waste a bomb. We left the warehouses In flames, and there was much less ack-ack coming up towards us than when we first approached, i Arriving back at our advanced base, we refueled and bombed up again. Then we made the second raid of the day towards Hankow, over the town of Yoyang. Once again Morgan blasted the target with black bursts of anti-aircraft fire bouncing around the formation. But there was no interception, and now we were feeling blue. Wt couldn't destroy the Jap Air Force if they were going to try to save their airplanes. We spent the next day. Thanksgiving, Thanks-giving, working on the airplanes and resting We had flown seven missions in four days, and both men and machines ma-chines were tired and in need of repair. re-pair. We had a special dinner that night, but remained extra vigilant against a surprise by the Jap. On that Thanksgiving evening, as we were grouped around the General, Gen-eral, he brought out a bottle of Scotch some one had given him, (TO BE CONTINUED) know that no enemy fighter is good enough to shoot us down. If that happens it's just an accident. These thoughts are the "chips" that we carry on our shoulders, and they have to be there arrogant, egotistical ego-tistical chips mellowed by flying technique and experience and fortified forti-fied by the motto. "Attack!" Never be on the defensive. Shoot the enemy ene-my down before he can shoot you down. You are better than he is, but don't give him a chance. He may get in a lucky shot but you're invincible. Move towards any dot in the sky that remotely resembles an airplane. Move to attack, with switches on and the sight ready. If It's not a ship or if it's a friendly one you'll be ready anyway, and your arrogant luck will last a lot longer. The worry comes before you get to take off for combat wondering whether or not you'll do the right thing out of habit. After you're in the air it's all the fun of flying and doing the greatest Job in the world. You are up there, pitying all earth-bound earth-bound creatures who are not privileged privi-leged to breathe this purer air on high. Your training makes you do the combat work that Is ahead without with-out thinking about the movements. Months and years of training hours of waiting on the ground high-powered engines pulling you up and up to the attack and then m a few fleeting seconds the combat Is over, your ship is all that's in the sky. and you're on the way home again to base, whistling and thinking think-ing how easy it was and what a great and glorious life It really Is. You're wondering if you can pick those cards up and finish the game and take your CN back from AJax or Johnny or Mack. You might be thinking how good that sleeping bag Is going to feel, or wondering whether wheth-er the transports that can land on the field, now that the air raid alert is over, have brought you any mail . . . "Dog-gone, wonder if hat sroman Is vriting me?" soon as I landed I ran up to the cave and the General took me in and showed me the plotting-board. The little red flags indicated increased vigilance at Hongkong. Then I got my orders: "Strike Hongay." In an hour the bombers were off to bomb the coal mines and docks of that Indo-Chlnse port North of Haiphong. Morgan sank a 12,000-ton ship that was reported to have been an aircraft air-craft carrier. The fighter escort strafed ferry boats, small surface craft, and looked for Jap fighters trying to intercept. But none came. That night the enemy sent up a flight of three bombers to each of our fields, looking for our forces. But we were so scattered that their luck was bad. Night fighters from all stations took off, but those under Maj. Harry Pike at Kweilin made perfect contact. The entire Japanese Japa-nese formation of three bombers was shot down over the field. Pike, Lombard, Lom-bard, and Griffin each added an enemy en-emy ship to their scores, but Lombard Lom-bard was shot down in flames when the Jap gunners blew up his belly tank. Lombard had made the tactical tac-tical error of pulling up over the bombers after delivering fire that shot one down. We had given him up for lost when he walked in carrying car-rying his chute and begging for another an-other ship. At dawn 'he next day. November 23 I led the group to escort Morgan Mor-gan to Sanchau Island with twelve bombers. We had noted that the Japs were strengthening the air patrol over Hongkong even more. The Genera) had smiled and said. "We're making them waste a terrible ter-rible amount of gasoline." We saw Morgan's bombs ake out two of the three hangars on the Island Is-land field, and we went down to strafe and watch for interceptors taking off. Some of the flight got three but my plane was hit by the ack.a'ck. and when the oil pressure began immediately to fail. I started for the mainland and home. With the oil pressure slowly going from |