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Show C (GdDB ES MY m Wr CdD-FHLdDT .?Col. Robert L.Scott W-N.U. RELEASE. WrJ. They think they will win and they can it we continue to underestimate them. Strange things happen in the air, strange as the fiction of the ages. Six of us shot into a ship that detached de-tached itself from one of the circling cir-cling Japanese "circuses" we encountered en-countered one day East of Heng-yang. Heng-yang. When you meet the Jap in his larger-numbered formation, he at once goes into the circling technique that Baron von Richthofen made famous in the last war. This "circus" "cir-cus" gradually moves in on or away from their objective as a defensive maneuver, for in it the ship behind protects the tail of the one in front. Our tactics were to dive through the "squirrel cage" and get snap shots at as many ships as we could, but keep our speed to prevent their getting on our tails. It was in one of these attacks that this lone' Jap Zero left the protection pro-tection of his other ships and began to do aerobatics sloppy loops wing-overs, wing-overs, stalls, and then another loop. Thinking it was a trick, we were wary; but after two of our pilots had made passes on it, two more of us went down towards it. As I kept getting closer and closer to the enemy ene-my plane I could see that the pilot was evidently hurt, but when I Another friendly coolie who gave aid to Col. Scott. The siory thus far: After craduaUng from -at. Point, Robert Scott wins his wings at Kelly Field, Texas, and takes up combat flying. He has been an Instructor lor four years when the war breaks out and Is told be Is now too old for combat flying. After appealing to several Generals, Gen-erals, Scott Is finally offered an opportunity oppor-tunity to get Into the fight. Be flies a bomber to India, but on arrival Is made a ferry pilot, but this does not suit him. He visits Gen. Chennanlt, gets a Klttyhawk and soon Is flying the skies over Burma, where he becomes known as the "one man air force." Later, he is made CO. of the 23rd Fighter Group, but he still keeps on knocking down Jap planes. CHAPTER XXVn Another theory was that the realization reali-zation that you had strafed enemy ground troops, shot down Japanese pilots, strafed troops getting out of an enemy transport, or even killed Japanese satellites, would come back to you at night, and you'd wake up in horror at having "blood on your hands." To that I say "Nuts." Later, when the newness of combat com-bat had worn off, I used to watch a Japanese pilot come towards me on a head-on run, picking me out, I guess, because I was leading the Group. I'd get my sights on him and yell, perhaps a bit hysterically: "You poor sucker, with my six Fifties Fif-ties that out-range your short-range little cannons that jam lots of times, I'm going to blow you apart before you get close enough to .hit mel" Overconfidence, perhaps, for I didn't get every one who came at me, and I took lots of hits In my own ship even had to dive away sometimes when two came on me at once. But I'm still here, and from thirteen to twenty-two Jap pilots who fought against me are dead. You know that you have everything every-thing to live for, and that the Jap has everything to die for. That's his only hope of reaching the heaven that we already have. Yes, they are suicide pilots; at times they will try to ram your plane, or will dive their ships into our carriers. I've seen a Japanese dive low over Hengyang and circle while they shot at him with everything every-thing on the field and we shot at him with every ship above the field. But he Mew his ship in a slow circle, cir-cle, as if be were blinded and couldn't see, or were only partly conscious. Then, with a half roll at barely three hundred feet, he dove bis plane into the only building on the field our thatched-roof alert Ehack, which burned with the Jap In his ship. When the wreckage had cooled enough we finally pulled his charred body outand by his side was his Samurai sword, and through his body the doctor found one lone bullet-hole, severing his spinai cord near the small of the back. He had been able to move his hands but not his feet But with his last consciousness conscious-ness he had picked out one more object on our field to destroy for the gods of the Shinto Shrine. But they have fear too. Don't think they're supermen, for I assure you they're not. They're little, warped - brain savage animals with the complex of suppression but they have fear, like any one else. Their fear is worse, for there's that phobia of having nothing to live for the inferiority-complex they try to overcome. I once saw that fear on the face of a Japanese pilot when he knew he was going to die. and it did me lots of good. I told of it many limes to youngsters in my Group and It always made them feel better to know that the Japs were afraid when they met them probably more afraid than we were. Oh, the Jap is a wonderful pilot when he meets no or little opposition. They come in over undefended Chinese cities and loop and roll and zoom, shooting at the helpless pedestrians while arrogantly flying inverted on then- backs. But when they meet good American fighters, with pilots w'.io know how to fight them, they are the most anxious people I've ever Jiet to leave our territory and go ' h" for leather" towards Japan. 'ay I flew up very close to a lonefy pilot during a fight near Kweilin. I placed my sights right where his wing Joined the fuselage of the 1-97-2 and steadily squeezed a burst from two hundred yards, holding the trigger down while I moved into closer range. Then I swerved out from behind the enemy ship, expecting it to stream fire and perhaps explode. I had seen pieces come otf. and I had seen the canopy glass turn to a fine, shining powder that sparkled in the slipstream slip-stream as the ship nosed almost straight up. But when It didn't burn, I skidded back across its tail, first with a look to my rear quarter. I saw into the cockpit. The canopy can-opy had been shot away and I could see the Jap's face and on it was a look of terror such as I had never seen before. The realization went through me with such force that as I nosed down to fire again I nearly cut the tail from the Jap fighter with my prop. Then I savagely held a long burst from less than fifty yards while I shot the ship to pieces. Even after the enemy plane had fallen and I had flown through the debris, I found that I was continuing con-tinuing to fire at the empty heavens, for I had learned to hate also. No, the Jap is far from a superman. super-man. But we must never again belittle be-little the fanaticism of the Japanese. They are as dangerous as mad dogs. earlier months, been compelled to fly alone. The shark-mouths bad not yet been painted on, but the silhouettes sil-houettes of the new fighters looked friendly nevertheless. A fast trip over the five hundred miles from Assam is like this: We're off from our base and heading head-ing 118 degrees across the twelve-thousand-foot Naga Hills to the first check-point, where the upper fork of the Ctiindwin forms the likeness of a shamrock. Up to our left now, from the altitude of eighteen thousand thou-sand that we've attained so effortlessly effort-lessly with the new ships, can be seen the higher snow-capped peaks of Tibet and Chinese Turkestan. Down below us the valley of the Irrawaddy is low and green, bul forbidding nonetheless. Ahead, as we cross the "Y" in the little knowr "triangle of the Irrawaddy," we see the real hills of the "hump" begir to rise. Snow-capped peaks everywhere. every-where. Our map reads that oui highest peak is going to be 15.80C feet; yet we well know from experience ex-perience that we've tried it man times and we need to be very sure that we are at 18,000 to clear the mountains from the Irrawaddy tc Tali Lake. Below us are the villages of the Miaows. We climb to 25,000 feet tc test the "suped-up" ships, and a smile comes to our faces under the oxygen masks for this is going tc surprise the Jap. We're going ovei the Mekong now, and from the time that has elapsed we've certainlj picked up a tail wind must be mak ing over three hundred. The gorge of the Mekong runs like a gash ir the sinister country of Burma to the South, and we know it goes on anc on towards Saigon and the sea. It's barely twenty miles to the Salween, and we make it so quicklj that we begin to doubt that the oth er river had been the Mekong. Out ground speed is well over three nun dred as we see Lake Tali and star the down-hili. run to Kunming. Nov we catch the first glimpse of th Burma Road, North of Yunnanyi and soon we see the small lake tha Is near our field at that town. Thi mountains to the North are veri high, and we know they get highe: and higher and stretch almost with out break to the East and the Pa cific. We see the hairpin turns o the Burma Road near Tsuyung, am know that we're nearly home fron the Taj Mahal and India. We dive over the field of our head quarters just one hour and twenty five minutes from the time we tool off from Assam, five hundred mile away. I can tell by the smiles oi the faces of the other men in thi Sight that we're all thinking thi same thing: We have bad medicini for the Jap packed into the in creased horsepower of these nev "Kays" our Warhawks. They an the latest of the P-40 series, am coming to us this time of year wi look upon them as Christmas pres ents from the States. The P-40 was in production whei the war began. Then the deck were definitely stacked against us and everything was in favor of tb enemy. During the past year of ou war these ships produced as no oth er fighter plane did, for they wer serving on every front. Any pilo who actually fought the Axis ene mies in the P-40 Tomahawks, Kitty hawks, or Warhawks will tell yo' they are tough and dependable. The; will dive with the best of projectile including a bomb. All of us hop that the best fighter plane has no been produced, but we- know tha America will develop it. In the meantime, through thos lean months when America had t fight on many fronts with so little the glorious P-40 series paid off whe the chips were down in a ratio c betweerl twelve and fifteen to one-twelve one-twelve to fifteen enemy ships fo every one of ours lost. Some day, when the war is ove and our sturdy American engine driving great American ships hav won victory with air power, I hop and pray with all fighter pilots wh have faced our enemies in aeris combat, from the hot sands of Liby to the cold tundra of the Aleutiani from the jungle heat of Guadalcans to those torrential rains of the Buj mese Monsoons that some undei standing group of citizens will go t Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. There beside the statue that commemc rates the first flight of the Wrigl Brothers, I hope that they will buil a monument to the Curtiss P-40 wit its Allison Engine. And now, with a few minor battle in the air, we saw Christmas in Ch na draw near, and I couldn't hel wishing for fast action somewhere After all, there's only one place person wants to be at Christma time, and that place for all of u was far away. I took off from Kunming one da Just before Christmas to inspect th warning net in western Yunnan. 1 didn't take long to find out that was very inefficient near the Bui ma border, where a steady influx c fifth-columnists and Japanese mor ey was filtering across the Salweer Even then I knew that instead c getting Uie Chinese officers who wer in charge of the net to investigate it would be much better to have few engagements with the Jap ove the failing net-area. There was n tonic like burning Jap planes ove the country to improve the function Ing of the air-raid warning net (TO BE CONTINUE I crossed the top of the strange-acting plane I saw that he was leaning forward over the stick control, obviously ob-viously dead. As the speed of the dive would build up pressures on the tail surfaces, sur-faces, the nose would rise, for a Jap ship is rigged that way. As the ship climbed more steeply, the pilot's upper body swung to the back of the seat in the normal position and the plane made a sloppy loop. For several minutes we watched the pilotless Zero in fascination. From 16,000 feet a ship that is shot down can dive into the ground in a few seconds it can even spin, in from an explosion in a little longer than that; but we watched this plane for twice the time that it would normally nor-mally have taken. It worked closer and closer to the ground over the same area, as it lost altitude gradually gradu-ally in the maneuvers. Then, after the longest wait that I can remember remem-ber having gone through in the air, in one of its dives from a loop it struck the hills below and burned. We could have burned it with a long burst many times during the minutes min-utes of our watching, but I imagine we were all spellbound at ,the spectacle. spec-tacle. No one spoke for several minutes as we turned back to Hengyang. Then some call over the radio broke the spell, and we just marked the Jap off as another confirmed Zero another "good" Jap. Over in Yunnan we fought the Japs a few times in Burma and had the sadness of another military funeral fu-neral Those moments in the Buddhist Bud-dhist burial grounds were the hardest hard-est In China. As the Chaplain read the prayer and the Bag-draped casket cas-ket was lowered into the red earth of Yunnan, a small formation, with 6low-turning engines that gave forth a muffled sound, would fly over the grave. There would be one vacant niche in the evenly spaced fighters, in honor of the brother airman who would fly no more. After eight months in combat I was sent with five other pilots to ferry fer-ry six new P-40K's over from the air base at Karachi. During our wait for the planes to be ready for combat, we were permitted to go to Bombay for the detached service. There, in this splendor of the Hotel Taj Mahal, we had a glorious time. In fact, it became very hard to realize real-ize that a war was going on over in Burma and China, as we looked at the night clubs from Malabar Hill and from inside them too, at the horse-races for the Aga Khan's Purse and at all the things that we had forgotten to remember. The return across India was a happy one. for we were ferrying new and hlgher-powei ed ships back to the war. and all of us were eager to try them out in combat From Assam we took the old familiar trail that I used to fly with the transports, trans-ports, and it felt especially good to look around and see those friendly looking P-40's along with me over the Burma Road where I had, in |