Show G MY ANA AV fad r to I 1 L ali col robert L scott RELEASE the story thus far an alter after graduating from west point robert scott wins ilni his bis wings at kelly field and takes takei up op combat flying when the th war breaks break out ont he be li I 1 s an instructor and Is ii told he ha Is I 1 too old for or combat flying dying ile he appeals to several leveral generals Gene rala and li is finally given an aa opportunity to set get into the fight ile he stes a bomber into india where he be li Is made a ferry pilot but ahli does not satisfy him after visiting general chennault he 40 gets eel IL ft and soon becomes become a one man air force orce over durma burma later he be I 1 Is made commanding officer of the fighter group afa maj allson alison sets three bombers one day and lands la in the river till ills plane minks ank but the chinese let get it out oat by a year old method CHAPTER when stranger things would happen we talked about things of the sart ort which had wee once been told in story books AU all of us ua agreed that when this war ivas was over there would be nothing that had evet ever happened in fiction that have act actually happened inthis in this battle of the i universe for instance la is a city in china far up on the ahe big northern loop of the klong it Is china yes yea but that part martof of china is Js as wild as tibet ind and arabia the people are called lolos and they must be descendants ants of Geng genghis fils khan I 1 had flown over the place or it was just north ot of the tha ferry route from assam to Kun dunming ming and I 1 had seen the flat clea clearing south of the ilage that could have been an emergency landing field troed I 1 coed that it was close to nine thousand rid feet fe et above sea level and therefore not a field to use unless one had to capt charro sawyer had crash landed just south of there closer to and had bad been unable to identify tiby himself while the e wild looking lolo 1010 tribesmen were getting set et to execute him with ancient looking flintlock flint bint lock muskets sawyer said eald the holes in the barrels looked twice as ac big as fifty calibre bores just juit at tho the crucial moment however when his bis fate looked darkest some new arrival in the party saw the identification fi card that sawyer had bad been pointing to it was inscribed in various languages and with pictures the new alriq arrival recognize the chinese sag beg or any of the languages orthe or the signature il chop 1 ab abut 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 same ame star on the th ewing wing of sawyers hip the insignia of bf the army air force sawyer was wa slaved saved and later he be was feasted on wild mild buffalo and rice wine but why here in the wilds of the lolo lola country where very few white men had ever been the tribesmen were more familiar with the white star of theair force than with any written language we learned the principal prine apal reason later A report had come in to general aults headquarters that oat a native village in the lolo 1010 country coxin tty between lake tall tali and Li kiang was wad under siege by the burmese northern tribesmen who had crossed the Sal Bal perhaps under the direction of the japanese two of us holloway and 1 I were sent to look the place over in two P we were told to ld by bythe the general that we w e could determine whether the town was wa under sunder siege by noting whether or not the usual t pedestrian traffic c was fas passing pas in ahdout an and dout out of the city gate all AH the cities citie sare are walled and are obviously very far froni from roads or from civilization remade we made our observation and returned with the report rit the village was besieged and we had seen the horsemen encamped camped eq a half mile around the city wall we loaded up and a n d wont went back with six eighteen kilogram frogs brags on the wing racks and nd plenty of fifty calibre ammunition I 1 also carried a very pistol and all colors of shells arwe As we circled the town we could see the tha villagers watching batchin gus us then we dove on the besiegers and bombed thorn from wt a thousand housand feet the lines of prehistoric cavalry broke and retreated towards the sal and burma we machine gunned them until they th ey spread in panic theal then I 1 used med the very pistol shooting first green lights then red 11 holloway olloway said it was iohd best dis play of fireworks hed ever seen we checked decked tip for several days but the raiders haan hadn come back anador and dor normal pedestrian traffic was passing through the city wall holloway and 1 I with two of the generals Gene raPs P had bad stopped a war the tha white star of the air force had end been seen by b y those villagers and they hod had told the surrounding country that we were friends perhaps the constant sight of transports from rom india to china and return had mads mad tife the algi white star a familiar symbol cymbol at any rate the lolos loloa who were about to execute sawyer recognized 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 1010 country during the autumn A ferry command pilot lieutenant aronson ronson lost an engino which means that his bis engine failed on his tri trip from assam to Kun dunming ming ile he bare barely Voia sought made the big meadow that was south of the town of Ll klang is fri tha th a 1121 hairpin rp in loop of the tha yingtse Yang tse after several days day we went in there to loo look k the improvised landing field over in the tha hope that we could fly by mother another transport to him with a good X AS i BA 44 engine or carry in the mechanics and the tools with which to repair the th bad one in every organization there la Is al ways one person who holds up the mora morale e some one who makes the darker moments brighter and who can bring blittle a little sunshine into the tenso tense reality of war out in the china theatre and especially in the fighter group my most anfor character was henry ellas elias this ibis pilot was a southerner like mos of the others in the china sides when I 1 first reached heng yang he was acting as assistant operations erat ions officer to ajax daumler baumler xe he hid had a reply for every person and a comeback come back to every joke he was definitely a morale bul builder lder and you con can ask anyone if no not as valti valuable able at the front as ammunition 4 ellas elias had been on several raids and had shot down two japanese when aheard I 1 heard the first joke about him hed been on an attack to hanchang Nan chang and as the ships turned for home in the fading light of late lat afternoon some one in the rear of tho the formation observed something peculiar up ahead there were five rl ve win pr these pilots are tired out by almost const constant constatin atit alert without relief tor for 21 days daya P with their sleek silhouettes showing wheels up and everything in proper ord order er but kofl to the flank in almost the position of the number three man manin in a vee formation was one ship with its wheels extended tended ei some one called on the radio hey ell ellas as chos that flying in 11 formation with wit hyou you with their wheels down As the words sank into the consciousness ness of the flight fligh tand and of ellas elias especially their ominous significance became apparent ellas elias jerked his head around and looked at his wing man even io an inexperienced eye the silhouette wait waa unmistakable it was a jap model J 1 97 one of the tha old fixed landing jear ear types the entire formation tried at once boget to get it as they finally realized what it was but they had the laugh on ellas just as he recognized the jap we the enemy pilot evidently recognized the P in the twilight before darkness perhaps he saw the leering sharks shares mouths foras for as ellas 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 the joke elias EllA took the kidding in good part and always had a comeback A small two seater biplane a fleet cams came to hengkang Heng yang from one day with a chinese officer we looked tha little ship over as it if came into tho the field wide vide open at some dome seventy five miles ach an hour our we now have just the bait we ne need I 1 said lieutenant ellas elias I 1 want you to borrow that fleet from the chinese I 1 know a trick to make the japs lose lots of face and W airplanes ir 5 ellas elias had laid down ills his operations reports and was listening attentively tent ively this ought to got get you promoted I 1 went on now you get that plane and service it tonight then early in the morning you take off for bankow allson alison baumler and I 1 will be along later and will arrive overawe over the jap city before you do ellas elias was looking at me in wonder then when you get there fly by over the enemy airport at thirty five ave hundred feet keep you just above their small calibre fire and they cant shoot accurately that low with the big over the field you fly with one wing low kind of skidding cutting your switch on and off so the japs will think youre either wounded or over there with a bad engine eng itie ellas elias was waa trying to figure out whether I 1 was serious or not then I 1 added well be up there in the sun and ae fast as the zeros come coma up for you well wad knock them Ahern down after all ellas elias if they get you a fleet lanew worth orth much but by now lieutenant Lieuten int ellas elias was walkin walking out oa and calling over his shoulder ano no sir colonel I 1 just want to bo be a plain allot I 1 dont want to be no bell ball of fire well wo we saw aw the value of ellas elias when we lost him for in this second battle around hunan he tailed failed to return from i the ithe strafing raid of september 2 1942 we had taken six teen P 40 i back to hengkang Heng yang when we had gotten them in shape to tight fight and had landed there just about dark to surprise the japs the night the fleet landed and the night I 1 had been kidding henry ellas elias next morning we got into the air before daylight and went for or lake auyang hu near hanchang Nane Nan hang chang where the J japs a p a were moving the chinese rice out by junks junki and barges robbing the breadbasket of china in the yearly rope rape of the rice hau took eight of the P and I 1 took the other eight ellas elias was on tex hills wing we split at hanchang Nane Nan hang chang and my eight went to the south to catch some gunboats gun boats that had been reported in the fintze hukow strait near kui gukl ang coming from the yingtse to the lake I 1 heard hill call 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 tor for shore where the hungry chinese coolies would salvage the rice through the four passes at the japs ellas elias was right on wing but on the fourth pullout he dropped behind the formation perhaps to shoot at something hill seen maybe hed seen a jap fighter an and had gone tor for it we knew there were eight zeros supposed to be bd 0 ver over nan chang bhang ellas elias return with the flight andhor and for two days we carried himas him as missing then the chinese net reported that a group of chinese soldiers hid had seen a lone american P 40 engaged by tour four japanese zeros the american had fought them but his ship had been shot down the american had jumped out in his bis parachute and tour four japanese had strafed him on the way down 1 the body had be been V found with the identification flag number listed the pilots name nama was lieutenant ellas elias all of us watched for japs balling bailing out so that we could shoot one or two down fo for rEllia ellas but we get the chance we sent captain Captai rf wang down to man klan to get elgass body wang had to travel a hundred and sixty miles by buffalo cirt cart by alcohol bus bu alls and on f toot oct but he finally got there the tha trip took him twenty days when the body of our lost pilot finally arrived at the field from which he had last taken off it was in a chinese conto that wang had gotten at klan kian we el placed the flag over the grim gilm reminder of war and sent it by transport I 1 to dunming Kun ming to lie beside chis his other brother pilots in that buddhist graveyard in cunnan andio and so it went tragedy humor tragedy ifor on the same raid irald I 1 had led the other eight ships with elements led by holloway Howay Ho and oconnell andrad and had caught the JW jap gunboats gun boats ten of them at fintze Hul hukow cow strait they were bhore more than likely comi coming tig to auyang hu to colv convoy oy those rice barges but we were going to interfere with their thel r rendezvous even as we circled them from six teen thousand deett teet I 1 think they knew they were going to have lots of trouble they had to stay almost in line nose to stern lor for they were going through the narrows narrow strait we circled warily fora minute looking the sky over for enemy fighters then spir spiralled spiral ailed led down As soon as w we e got close enough to the jap ships to see distinctly we noticed thattie that the seamen were lumping over the side into the water only afew a few seemed to ha have erema remained ened to fire are the antiaircraft guns gung and and holloway silenced most of those with their initial pass I 1 think most of the ammunition had been fired at us while we circled it at sixteen thousand i feet for we were the whole show now wed rake the steel decks from stem iter nto to stern and then swing out low to the water comeback and come back with quartering shots from the beam we were so low that we were actually sh shooting up at the decks cf thi the boats boat I 1 saw many human huma nhe heads ads above the water waier as the ahe japs trl I 1 to swim from the bo boats at sand and I 1 fired at them those bullets ricocheted from the water in into the steel side of the gunboat and went on through As my range would reach the sweet spot of some yards where the six unas of tracers and armor p i piercing hercing fifties convey converged ged it would appear as though fian an oringe orange colored hole the tha size of a flour barrel was being burned burne dinto into the tha sidi side of the jap vessel at the waterline water line we sed S ed along the ten ship una and shot at them all 4 from both sides on the second pass two of the vessels were listing and others were smoking on the fourth attack seven out of the ten were smoking and burning and some of these were on the bottom with their masts barely out of water photographs tak hakea en later ister from an observation plane showed that seven had bad sunk immediately inthe in the strait and that theoph the other three hid had sunk within a thousand yards of the battle area I 1 was so happy S so i 0 excited and eager tint that I 1 tried to be glamorous oui that morning after the tha fourth attack I 1 had called to reform re form and head for the rendezvous point to the southwest but as s the ships left the target I 1 saw pom something ething I 1 had to go back tor for it was a japanese flag waving defiantly from the mast of one of the sunken gun gunboats boats forgetting caution and with the other seven planes speeding away to the tha rendezvous point I 1 dove to strafe trat the sag ilag in ina a gesture of hate haie tto TO BE CONTINUED 4 U aji painful pleasure marriage ge has many many pains but celibacy has no pleasures samuel johnson |