Show SA MY 2 pa 41 a 0 ira L 0 A 1 col robert L scoff alscott anu RELEASE the story thus tar far after graduating from west vest point as a a second lieutenant robe stobert I 1 scott wins win his wings at kelly field bield and takes tabes up pursuit flying when the war breaks out he Is an dinst instructor tor in california an and told he 1 Is too 0 old for or combat comb a t flying lie appeals to several generals I 1 for 0 r a chance to ay a combat plane and finally cnally the opportunity cornel comes iiii he says a ys goo godby d by to his bis wife and child and a bomber to india where he becomes co es a ferr terry y P pilot flo which does doe not appeal pea I 1 to him ille ile visits general chen and Is prom promised sed a Kitty hawk and soon he Is fi dying y ling the skies over 13 burma urnia ile he gets his first Jap bomber burns up ap enemy trucks and cuts a jap battalion to bits CHAPTER XIII 1 word had come now that the with general chennault as commander was to be inducted into the army air corps chennault then a general in the chinese army but a retired captain in the U S army was to be given the rank of brigadier general to head the china air task force but from what I 1 had gathered from the few newspapers we had received and from rumors that filtered through I 1 knew that not noi many of the were going to accept induction there were officious men around the india theater who thought the were unruly and undisciplined to these statements I 1 always remarked remark bd that I 1 wished we had ten such undisciplined groups tor for they would have destroyed some three to four thousand enemy airplanes and that would certainly have hindered the japanese there were others who claimed that the fighters of the fought for high salaries and the extra bonus of five hundred dollars for each enemy plane they shot down that made me laugh tor for I 1 had seen the fight and later on I 1 was to fly with them against the enemy I 1 knew those great pilots I 1 knew that they were great american adventurers who would have fought just as hard tor for peanuts or confederate money as long as they were fighting for general Cher chennault mault and were flying those beloved As it stood now after long hours of combat the men were tired they had been out of the united states under the most trying conditions for nearly a year they were all showing combat fatigue and needed a rest some of them were combat weary and ought never to be risked in combat again furthermore the induction of the had hit a snag from poor judgment on the part of one marf man it seems that someone had lined the boys up tor for a fight talk on the glamour of induction into the army and had used very little tact he recited newspaper stories intimating that the fought for or the high pay of cameo between to a month depending on whetted or not the pilot was a wing man or a squadron leader this salesman went on to state that he sincerely hoped the would accept induction because if they and when their contract with cameo expired they would probably find their draft boards waiting for them when they ey stepped off the boat that carried them back to the united states in id that ease case they would of course be Induct edas privates rather than commissioned as officers A large percentage of the i are reported to have got up and walked out on the speech after all they we were re high strung fighter pilots who had fought fough tofie one of the irea greatest test battles against superior odds that has ever been reported in iii this case they were being threatened without complete knowledge of all the facts involved I 1 know that from that day on they taught the chinese coolie boy on the relue refueling ling truck jokes about that reverse sales spee speech cli one involved an expression tha that of course was never permitted to reach its destination the boy was trained b by some of the who were leaving china to run up to every transport that landed and ns as the passengers got out to repeat for their benefit an unprintable american expression aimed at the speechmaker speech maker the gas truck coolie would religiously meet every caa C 47 and with bland countenance would repeat the sentence most of the used 0 o make surer cure that he e devir reach edthe transport unloading the right man but several times time it took the best of american flying tackles tackles to stop him in time handled in another way I 1 believe that every one of the who was physically able stayed As it was only five pilots remained and some thirty ground crew men we had wanted to divide them into two groups those who from a physical standpoint badly needed rest in the united states and those who could stay out oui in china tor for six months longer without impairing their health we were to permit the first group to go home on july fol fourth irth the day their contracts with cameo terminated and to remain there on leave tor for no less than a month after which they were to come back to china it Is my opinion that at least ninety per pent of the would live accepted this offer but as it was waa five of the greatest t pilots in the world stayed with the group when their contracts contract it expired and those five were enough 1 I went wee da an cf continued 0 my single ship raids on the japs after my flights with the the burning ot of the train in indochina and the news of 0 my one man war in burma the story got to the war correspondents I 1 began to hear from home in the states that I 1 had been written up as the one man air force from an egotistical standpoint I 1 felt the thrill that a normal person would but bathis time I was beginning to realize that one nian man and one ship in this type of warfare meant very little in the days that followed I 1 sank barges filled with enemy soldiers bombed enemy columns and strafed enemy soldiers swimming in the water from the barges I 1 had sunk but when I 1 went back next day there were rn more 0 re and more japs surging northward into upper burma towards india no the title was an empty one for even I 1 with my egotism of success in combat knew by now that one man could make no real mark on this enemy that we were fighting I 1 had the satisfaction however of knowing that I 1 was learning things I 1 had the experience of ten years of military flying and I 1 knew I 1 was a good pilot the day was going to come when that knowledge of mine learned the hard way would help train the new units that would come from home there is no substitute for combat youve got to shoot at people while youre being shot at yourself for the time being though there was just the one ship and I 1 nursed it like a baby flying it constantly I 1 had begun to feel a part of it sometimes at night id think of my wife and little girl but never in combat sometimes coming home after striking the enemy id think of them and they seemed tar far tar far away towards the last of may after id flown just about two hundred hours 1 I a a X 11 A W 4 0 4 T R I 1 g m 4 VR X Y A jap bomber Is shot down to ile col scotts first aerial combat in combat and had gathered about a hundred holes in my ship I 1 think I 1 must have wondered if 11 id ever see them again I 1 carried a tommy gun with me in the cockpit of the ship for at ai strafing altitude there would probably be no time to ball bail out with the chute anyway and I 1 knew that prisoners taken by the japs receive very harsh treatment especially those who have been strafing the capturing troops when shot down PAY greatest bombing day came late in the month of may when I 1 dropped tour four pound bombs at Hom homalie Ho malin alln down on the Chin dwin where the japs seemed to be concentrating cent rating early in the morning I 1 headed south with the heavy yellow bomb slowly climbing over the naga hills and through the overcast topping out at feet As I 1 continued south on the course to where the uyu met the Chin dwin river the clouds lowered but the overcast remained solid in crie one hour computing that I 1 had made the miles to homalie Ho malin I 1 iet let down through the overcast hoping that the mountains were behind me luck was with me as it usually was in my single ship war and I 1 found the overcast barely a hundred feet thick I 1 see homalie and my target area but I 1 kept right up against the cloud ceiling and circled warily I 1 knew that I 1 was in luck I 1 could drop the bomb and then climb right back into the overcast no matter how many jap fighters came to intercept soon I 1 saw my target ind and sure enough there were loaded goaded barjes barges coming out of the broad Chin dwin and heading tor for the docks of 0 homa liri I 1 continued circling against the clouds af at teet feet for I 1 had a plan olve dive bombing from a P 40 is not the most accurate in the world you cant dive very steeply or the bomb might hit the gro propeller peller and also in too steep a dive iti its hard bard to recover in the high speeds that are built up it seemed to me that the type of bombing one had todo to do in order to keep the speed under control arid and to miss the prop was more in the nature of of glide bombing most beginners however are always short with their bombs that Is cosay to ay the projectile strikes before it gets to the tar get on the line of approach rather than over it it from my practice bombings s on the I 1 had developed a rule of thumb I 1 would dive at some forty A five e degrees then as the target tn in my gun sight passed under tinder the nose oi of my ship I 1 would begin to pull out slowly and count one count for very livery thousand feet of my elevation above the target then as the ship come came al rost level it if I 1 was at two thousand feet when I 1 reached the co count of two I 1 id d drop the bomb I 1 let the four barg barges esget get almost to the tha makeshift wharf then I 1 dove from my cloud cover As I 1 got it the h e middle two barges on my gun sight I 1 made a mental resolution not to be short for even if I 1 went over id hit the japs in the town As I 1 passed three thousand feet the nearest barge went under me and I 1 began to pull out and count one two three pull putting in the extra count to insure me against being short I 1 felt the bomb let go as I 1 jerked the belly tank release and I 1 turned to get the wing out of the way so that I 1 could see the bomb hit the five hundred pounds of TNT exploded either right beside the leading barge or between the barge closest to shore and the docks As the black smoke cleared I 1 saw pieces of the barge splashing into the river a hundred yards from the explosion I 1 went down and strafed stra fed but the black smoke was so thick thic it that I 1 could see very little to concentrate cen on so I 1 climbed to three thousand feet and waited tor for the smoke ke to clear then I 1 dove for th the e two bargas barass that were drifting down the river I 1 must have put two hundred rounds into each of them I 1 got one to burning and from the black smoke it must have been loaded with gasoline on my second raid I 1 dropped a five hundred pound bomb on the largest building in homalon Hom alln which the british intelligence reported the next day had been the police station they said that two hundred japanese were killed in that bombing and that between six hundred and a thousand were killed in the series ot of bombings many bodies were picked up about thirty miles down the Chin dwin at tamu and sit tiang all ali four of my bombs had done some damage and I 1 was quite satisfied in british intelligence reports 1 I read that radio tokyo had me mentioned n homalon Hom Hor alln nalin one bombing had taken place it seems with very slight damage and that tha tonly only to the innocent burmese villagers b but ut t the he imperial japanese army had evac bated Horn homalon alln because of the serious malaria that was prevalent there anyway I 1 always like to think that my tour four trips tripe to Hor homagin nalin with four pound packages of good old american Pica tinny TNT had something to do with the monkey mens deciding that the malaria malar Is was too bad along the Chin dwin my raids with old exterminator torl continued through may and into june some days id climb out of 0 india through the rain clouds of the monsoon and fly on into burma the trip back would then be one to wor ry me tor for I 1 never knew exactly when to let down almost every day however if I 1 worked my take of off time properly pio perly id get back from the mission as the storm clouds were breaking and id have a nice welcome hole to dive through on other days when I 1 so lucky id just have to roll over and dive for the valley of the and where I 1 always came out or I 1 be here to tell about it some of the flights into burma were just a waste of gasoline I 1 would see nothing it follows that I 1 have written of the more exciting ones theres nothing so monotonous as to fly for four hundred miles with plenty of ammunition or sometimes for two hundred to three thre hundred miles with a heavy bomb attached and find no place to drop it id have to come back then and gingerly letting down through the dark monsoon clouds land the pounds ol of TNT as if I 1 had a crate of eggs aboard after all we have bombs to waste early in junei june I 1 did have one exciting trip from reports of the ferry pilots I 1 heard that the japs were building a bridge over the river Num some forty miles north of the very afternoon the report reached me I 1 went over and strafed the engineers at work on the bridge and I 1 nearly got shot down awn for the efficient japanese had moved in their antiaircraft anti aircraft with the bridge crew when I 1 landed at the base I 1 helped the ground crew count the th 11 thirty small calibre holes in my ship my cap had one hole in it though luckily it had not been on my head but back in the small baggage compartment of the Kitty hawk that was pretty bad though for for it was the only cap I 1 had and tor for months I 1 had to wear it with all the felt torn from the crown by the jap ground fire I 1 remember that later one of the young bomber crew men asked maj butch morgan it was when we stepped from our ships after bombing hongtong Hong kong whether or not id had bad that cap on when the bullet went through I 1 cussed cassea about the cap and loaded the ship for or another run on the bridge at As I 1 came in from another direction this time and very low I 1 saw bodies of the enemy from my first strafing but the japs were still working on the bridge I 1 strafed the boiking party in two passes from different directions so go low that the anti antiaircraft aircraft shoot at m me e effectively 70 HE BE CONTINUED |