OCR Text |
Show lSi to is MY Wj&, CQ-OTLOT Wf -3V2feafcCol. Robert- L.Scott wnu .release, iSL The story thus far: After fraduatins from Weil Point, Robert Scott wlni bit wlnn at KeHy Field and Ukei p combat flytuf. When the war breaki out be ti an Instructor and Is told be la too old lor combat Bylnf . He appeals to several Cenerali and Is Bnally given an opportunity oppor-tunity to et Into the fight. Be flits bomber Into India, where he It made a terry pilot, but this does not satisfy him. After visiting General Chennault he gets KIttyhawk, and soon becomes a "one man air force" ovrr Burma. Later be Is made commanding officer of the 23rd Fighter Group. Ma). Alison gets three bombers one day and lands In the river. Bis plane sinks, but the Chinese get It ut by a S.OOO-year-old method. CHAPTER XX When stranger things would happen, hap-pen, we talked about things of the sort which had once been told In story books. All of us agreed that when this war was over, there would be nothing that had ever happened In fiction that wouldn't have actually happened In this battle of the universe. uni-verse. For Instance: Likiang is a city in China far up on the big, northern loop of the Yangtse-Kiang. It Is China, yes, but that part of China is as wild as Tibet and Arabia. The people are called "Lolos," and they must be descendants descend-ants of Genghis Khan. I had flown over the place, for it was Just North of the ferry route from Assam to Kunming, and I had seen the flat clearing South of the village that could have been an emergency landing land-ing field. I noted that it was close to nine thousand feet above sea level, lev-el, and therefore not a field to use unless one had to. Capt Charlie Sawyer had crash-landed crash-landed Just South of there, closer to Talifu, and had been unable to identify iden-tify himself. While the wild-looking Lolo tribesmen were getting set to execute him with ancient-looking flint-lock muskets, Sawyer said the holes In the barrels looked twice as big as fifty-calibre bores. Just at the crucial moment, however, when bis fate looked darkest, some new arrival In the party saw the Identification Identi-fication card that Sawyer had been pointing to. It was inscribed in various vari-ous languages, and with pictures. The new arrival didn't recognize the Chinese flag, or any of the languages, lan-guages, or the Generalissimo's signature sig-nature "chop" but he saw a star. As It happened, it was the star of India over the Imprint in Hindustani. Then the tribesman pointed to the tame star on the wing of Sawyer's hip the insignia of the Army Air Force. Sawyer was saved, and later be was feasted on wild buffalo and rice wine. But why? Here In the wilds of the Lolo country, where very few ! white men had ever been, the tribes-I tribes-I men were more familiar with the j white star of the Air Force than with j any written language. We learned the principal reason later. A report bad come In to General Chennault't headquarters that a native na-tive village in the Lolo country, between be-tween Lake Tali and Likiang, was under siege by the Burmese northern north-ern tribesmen who had crossed the Salween, perhaps under the direction direc-tion of the Japanese. Two of us, Holloway and I, were sent to look i the place over in two P-40's. We were told by the General that we j could determine whether the town was under siege by noting whether or not the usual pedestrian traffic was passing in and out of the city gate. All the cities are walled, and are obviously very far from roads or from civilization. We made our observation and returned re-turned with the report The village was besieged, and we bad seen the horsemen encamped a half mile around the city wall. We loaded up and went back with six eighteen-kilogram eighteen-kilogram frags on the wing racks and plenty of fifty-calibre ammunition. ammuni-tion. I also carried a Very pistol and all colors of shells. As we circled the town, we could ee the villagers watching us; then we dove on the besiegers and bombed them from a thousand feet The lines of prehistoric cavalry broke and retreated towards the Salween Sal-ween and Burma. We machine-gunned machine-gunned them until they spread in panic. Then I used the Very pistol, hooting first green lights, then red. Holloway said It was the best display dis-play of fireworks he'd ever seen. We checked up for several days, but the raiders hadn't come back, and normal nor-mal pedestrian tramc was passing through the city wall. Holloway and I. with two of the General's P-40's, bad stopped a war. . The white star of the Air Force bad been seen by those villagers, and they had told the surrounding country that we were friends. Perhaps Per-haps the constant sight of transports from India to China and return had made the big white star a familiar symbol. At any rate, the Lolos who were about to execute Sawyer recognized rec-ognized It and to them it meant more than written languages and sealed orders. Such Is the strangeness of this global war. More true fiction came out of the Lolo country during the autumn. A Ferry Command pilot Lieutenant I Aronson, 'lost an engine" which means that his engine failed on his trip from Assam to Kunming. He barely made the big meadow that was South of the town of Likiang, m the hairpin loop of the Yangtse. After several days we went in there to look the improvised landing-field ever, in the hope that we could Or (another transport to him with a good t engine, or carry in the mechanics and the tools with which to repair the bad one. In every organization there is always al-ways one person who holds up the morale, some one who makes the darker moments brighter and who can bring a little sunshine into the tense reality of war. Out In the China theatre, and especially in the 23rd Fighter Group, my most unfor-gctable unfor-gctable character was Lieut. Henry Elias. This pilot was a Southerner, like most of the others in the China skies. When I first reached Heng-yang Heng-yang he was acting as assistant operations op-erations officer to Ajax Baumler. He had a reply for every person, and a come-back to every Joke. He was definitely a morale builder, and you can ask anyone if they're not as valuable at the front as ammunl-tion. ammunl-tion. Elias had been on several raids and had shot down two Japanese when I heard the first Joke about him. He'd been on an attack to Nanchang, and as the ships turned for home In the fading light of late afternoon, some one In the rear of the formation observed something peculiar. Up ahead there were five U .v j These pilots are tired out by almost al-most constant alert without relief for 21 days. P-40's with their sleek silhouettes showing wheels up and everything In proper order. But off to the flank, In almost the position of the number-three number-three man in a Vee formation, was one ship with its wheels extended. Some one called on the radio, "Hey, Elins, who's that flying in formation with you, with their wheels downf" As the words sank into the consciousness con-sciousness of the flight, and of Elias especially, their ominous significance signif-icance became apparent. Elias Jerked his head around and looked at his wing man. Even to an inexperienced in-experienced eye, the silhouette was unmistakable. It was a Jap Model 1-97, one of the old fixed landing-gear landing-gear types. The entire formation tried at once to get It as they finally realized what it was. But they had the laugh on Elias. Just as he recognized rec-ognized the Jap, the enemy pilot evidently evi-dently recognized the P-40' in the twilight before darkness perhaps he saw the leering sharks' mouths. For as Elias shoved the nose of his ship straight down and dove for him, the Jap pulled his ship straight up and climbed for the sky. Later, when our Imaginations began to embroider em-broider the Joke, Elias took the kidding kid-ding in good part and always had a comeback. A small two-seater biplane, a Fleet came to Hengyang from Kweilin one day with a Chinese officer. of-ficer. We looked the little ship over as it came Into the field wide open at some seventy-five miles an hour. "We now have Just the bait we need," I said. "Lieutenant Elias, I want you to borrow that Fleet from the Chinese. I know a trick to mr.ke the Japs lose lots of 'face' and airplanes." air-planes." Elias had laid down his Operations Opera-tions reports and was listening attentively. at-tentively. "This ought to get you promoted," I went on. "Now you get that plane and service it tonight, then early in the morning you take off for Hankow. Alison, Baumler, and I will be along later and will arrive over the Jap city before you do." Elias was looking at me in wonder. "Then, when you get there, fly over the enemy airport at thirty-five thirty-five hundred feet that'll keep you Just above their small-calibre fire and they can't shoot accurately that low with the big stufT. Over the field you fly with one wing low, kind of skidding, cutting your switch on and off so the Japs will think you're either wounded or over there with a bad engine." Elias was trying to figure out whether I was serious or not. Then I added: "We'll be up there In the sun, and as fast as the Zeros come up for you, we'll knock them down. After all. Ellas, if they get you. Fleet isn't worth much." But by now Lieutenant Ellas was walking out and calling over bis shoulder: "No sir, Colonel, I Just want to be a plain pilot I don't want to be no ball of fire." Well, we saw the value of Ellas when we lost him, for in this second battle around Hunan he failed to return re-turn from the strafing raid of September Sep-tember t 1642. We had taken sixteen six-teen P-40's back to Hengyang when we had gotten them in shape to fight and bad landed there Just about dark to surprise the Jsps. That's the night the Fleet landed and the night I had been kidding Henry Elias. Next morning we got into the air before daylight and went for Lake Puyang Hu, near Nanchang, where the Japs were moving the Chinese rice out by Junks and barges robbing rob-bing the breadbasket of China In the yearly rape of the rice. Hill took eight of the P-40's and I took the other eight Elias was on Tex Hill's wing. We split at Nanchang and my eight went to the South to catch some gunboats that had been reported in the Sintze-Hukow Strait, near Kuki-ang, Kuki-ang, coming from the Yangtse to the Lake. I heard HiU caU that he had caught the rice ships and was burning them. Later he told me that he found twenty-six of them, Junks and steel barges; he sank some and saw others with their sails on fire, floating for shore where the hungry Chinese coolies would salvage sal-vage the rice. Through the four passes at the Japs Elias was right on Tex's wing, but on the fourth pullout he dropped behind the formation, perhaps to shoot at something Hill hadn't seen. Maybe he'd seen a Jap lighter and had gone for it; we knew there were eight Zeros supposed to be over Nanchang. Nan-chang. Elias didn't return with the flight and for two days we carried him as "missing." Then the Chinese net reported that a group of Chinese soldiers had seel a lone American P-40 engaged by four Japanese Zeros. The American Ameri-can had fought them but his ship bad been shot down. The American had Jumped out In his parachute and four Japanese had strafed him on the way down. The body had been found, with the identification flag number listed. The pilot's name was Lieutenant Elias. All of us watched for Japs balling out, so that we could shoot one or two down for Ellas, but we didn't get the chance. We sent Captain Wang down to Kian to get Elias's body. Wang had to travel a hundred and sixty miles by buffalo cart, by alcohol bus, and on foot, but he finally got there. The trip took him twenty days. When the body of our lost pilot finally arrived ar-rived at the field from which he had last taken off, It was in a Chinese coffin that Wang had gotten at Kian. We placed the flag over the grim reminder of war and sent it by transport to Kunming, to He beside his other brother pilots in that Buddhist Bud-dhist graveyard in Yunnan. And so it went: tragedy humor tragedy. For on the same raid I had led the other eight ships, with elements led by Holloway, Schiel, and O'Connell, and had caught the Jap gunboats, ten of them, at Sintze-Hukow Sintze-Hukow Strait They were more than likely coming to Puyang Hu to convoy those rice barges but we were going to interfere with their rendezvous. Even as we circled them from sixteen six-teen thousand feet, I think they knew they were going to have lots of trouble. trou-ble. They had to stay almost in line, nose-to-stern, for they were going go-ing through the narrow strait We circled warily for a minute, looking the sky over for enemy fighters, then spiralled down. A soon as we got close enough to the Jap ships to see distinctly, we noticed that the seamen sea-men were Jumping over the side Into the water. Only a few seemed to have remained to fire the antiaircraft anti-aircraft guns, and Schiel and Holloway Hollo-way silenced most of those with their Initial pass. I think most of the ammunition had been fired at us while we circled cir-cled at sixteen thousand feet for we were the whole show now. We'd rake the steel decks from stem to stern and then swing out low to the water and come back with quarter-' ing shots from the beam. We were so low that we were actually shooting shoot-ing up at the decks of the boats. I saw many human heads above the 1 water as the Japs tried to swim from the boats, and I fired at them. Those bullets ricocheted from the water into the steel side of the gunboat gun-boat and went on through. As my range would reach the "sweet spot" of some 287 yards, where the six lines of tracers and armor-piercing Fifties converged, it would appear as though an orange-colored hole the size of a flour barrel was being j burned Into the side of the Jap vessel ves-sel at the water-line. We S-ed along the ten-ship lint and shot at them all from both sides. On the second pass, two of the ves-! scls were listing, and others were smoking. On the fourth attack, sev- j en out of the ten were smoking and burning and some of these were on the bottom with their masts barely out of water. Photographs taken later from an observation plane ; showed that seven had sunk immedl-' attly in the strait and that the other oth-er three had sunk within thousand yards of the battle area. I was so happy, ao excited and eager, that I tried to bo glamorous that morning. After the fourth at tack I bad called to re-form and bead for the rendezvous point to the Southwest But ai the ships left the target I taw something I bad to go back for. It was Japanese flag, waving defiantly from the mast of one of the sunken gunboats. Forgetting For-getting caution, and with the other even planes speeding away to th rendezvous point, I dove to strafi the flag In gesture of bat. (TO Bt CONTINUED) |