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Show ffl (SdMD IS MY .0m W!. -CO-PHLOX frf JV2iEfc Co!. Robert L. Scoff w.n.u release Tbe ..thus lar: Robert Scott, a West I'T W'.iduate, begins pursuit train-lnj train-lnj at iV',iia after winning his wings at Kelly Held, Texas. When war breaks ont be Is instructor at a California airfield, air-field, but wanting to get lnU combat flying he writes General after General making the request. Finally the chance comes. He says goodby to bis wife and child and leaves for Florida, where be picks up his four-motor bomber and flies to India. Here for some time he is a ferry pilot, flying supplies into Burma. When Burma falls to tbe Japs be helps carry refugees to India. Soon he has an opportunity to visit General Chennault, and tells the General he wants t be I flgbter pilot. CHAPTER XI I couldn't waste much time in practice, for after all Burma was just over the Naga Hills and the Japs were coming towards Myitkyina Myit-kyina from the South and up the Chindwin and the Irrawaddy ..It was open season and I needed no hunting hunt-ing license. Now I definitely knew that adventure was near. On that afternoon of April 30, 1942, with a full load of ammunition and the shark-mouth seeming to drip saliva, it was so eager, I waited by my ship for an alert. Jap observation observa-tion planes had been coming over at high altitude very regularly. If they came today I hoped to surprise sur-prise them. At two o'clock the alert came, but it was not observation. Many unidentified un-identified aircraft were reported by a British radio somewhere over the Naga Hills. I didn't ask for more than that scanty information I was in my fighter and climbing over the "tea ranches," as Colonel Haynes called them. High over the field at 22,000 feet, I cuddled my oxygen mask and circled, watching for enemy ships to the East, South, and Southeast down in the direction of a course to Mandalay. I searched until my eyes hurt, but saw nothing. After about an hour, turning to a course that would take me in the direction from - which an enemy had to come, I Dew off to intercept I now had barely two hours' fuel, and the farther away from my base I met them, the more successful my attack would be. Lord! the ego that I possessed! I honestly believe I thought I could shoot down any number of Japs with my single fighter. Again I say, more of the valor of ignorance. After forty-five minutes I turned for home and began to let down to eighteen thousand. Thirty miles from the field I suddenly tensed to the alert. Off ahead of me was a dark column of smoke, rising high in the air right in the position on the world's surface that the home field should be. My tortured mind flashed back to other results of bombings that I had seen. "My God," I moaned, "while I've been away looking for the basta-Js, they've slipped in here and bombed hell out of the home base!" With tears in my eyes I nosed over and dove for the Zeros that should be strafing the field. (Later I was to learn a lot about this method meth-od too.) The smoke was from base all right, but I could see no enemy planes. The only thing in the sky was a single Douglas transport, making a normal landing on the runway. "Calling "NR-Zero NR-Zero." NR-Zero." I asked what the fire was. The reply was muddled, but everything every-thing seemed to be in order, for I noticed two other transports clearing clear-ing the field for China. I circled, then dove on the smoking ruins of the RAF operations "basha." That building had been the casualty, and it was a total loss. I could see the operations officer sitting out in the open, some hundred feet from the charred ruins, calmly carrying on his duties. When I'd gotten my fighter parked again I went over and heard the story. No Jap attack had come, and I felt relieved my single-ship war and I had not let the station down. But as I heard the embarrassed embar-rassed operations man tell his story I remember choking discreetly and leaving before I laughed myself to death. I When JJ. alert sounded, "Opps" the opt: at I ns officer had hurried to the winuow of the thatch and bamboo "basha" to see me take off in the "bloody kite that Kitty-hawk." Kitty-hawk." Seeing a transport from China about to land, and fearing that the Japs would bomb it on the field, he had then fired a Very pistol out of the operations window: the red Very light would be the signal for the transport not to land but to fly in the "stand-by" area. The Very tight had gone nonchalantly out of the operations window, into the wind, had curved gracefully back into another window, and had burned the bloody building in five minutes. Operations was being carried car-ried on as usual from operations desk, which was located in front of the site of the former office. Bloody lhame, wasn't it? Well, it was tragic, but I guess it was better than a bombing. And to my first mission ended. Came May Day, and 1 began the greatest month in my life. I flew every day in that long month, sometimes some-times as many as four missions a day. By putting in a total of 214 hours and 45 minutes, I averaged over seven hours a day for the month. Most of this was in fighter ships my little old Kittyhawk and I lean.ed a lot, and we were very, very lucky. When I had come in from my first sortie, the day operations oper-ations burned down, my pal Col. Gerry Mason kidded me a bit We got pretty confident, the transport trans-port boys and I, for I used to go with them across Burma, and Jop-lin Jop-lin and some of the other daredevils would try to lure the Jap in to attack at-tack them. Jop would call over the radio, in the clear: "NR-o from transport one three four I'm lost near Bhamo give me a bearing." Up there, some three thousand feet above them, I'd be sitting with my fighter, just praying that my "decoy" "de-coy" would work and some luckless Jap would come in for the kill. Then I'd imagine myself diving on his tail, my six guns blazing. But the ruse never worked. Sometimes I think the "Great Flying Boss in the Sky" was giving me a little more practice before he put me to the supreme test. May the fifth was one of the big days in my life. Waving good-bye to Gerry Mason as I taxied out, I saw him hold his thumb up to me to wish me good hunting. I waved back and was in the air on a sweep towards central Burma. I went straight to Myitkyina; then, seeing nothing, I swung South along the Irrawaddy over Bhamo. Continuing South I went right down on the Burma Bur-ma Road, North of Lashio, and searched for enemy columns. North of the airport at Lashio I saw two groups of troops in marching order. I would have strafed them immediately, imme-diately, but I was afraid they might be Chinese; after all,. there were two Chinese armies coming North somewhere some-where in Burma. I made as though to ignore them and they partially "W jpm-w, i .... i - - - , , i ? ' ft: LtTJt X- . " i iW . -.'2 z - " ' I f - - " 'V, I ' " ' I ' . . t ' " , i ' ,o , t - . i ( t tfhv-fc- ..1.1. -!&iwk.J!?aiL-il iiSK., i Chinese soldiers and coolies look over Jap plane shot down by Col. Scott. scattered to the sides of the road. Twelve trucks in the column kept rolling to the North. Then I momentarily forgot about the troops for in the northwestern corner of the field at Lashio was a ship. From my altitude of 2500 feet I saw at once that it was a twin-engined twin-engined enemy bomber, later identified iden-tified as a Mitsubishi, Army 97. It was being serviced, for there were four gasoline drums in front of it and a truck that had evidently unloaded un-loaded the fuel. My gun switches were already on, and had been since I had seen the troop column. Now I was diving for the grounded bomber bomb-er and getting my "Christmas Tree" sight lighted properly. Hurriedly I began to shoot. I saw men running from the truck and jumping into the bushes to the side. My first shots hit in front of the plane, probably striking the fuel drums, for heavy dust covered the enemy ship. I released my trigger as I pulled out of my dive, just clearing the trees behind my target. tar-get. As I looked back I saw the red circle on one wing, but the other was covered by the body of a man who either had been shot or was trying try-ing to hide the identifying insignia. Keeping the ship very low, I turned 180 degrees for the second attack. at-tack. This time I did better. I saw my tracers go into the thin fuselage and then into the engines. At first I thought that what I was seeing was more dust; then I realized it was smoke pouring from under the ship. It was on fire. Foolishly then, I pulled up to about six hundred feet; if there had been anti-aircraft fire, 1 know now they would have shot me down. Again I turned and shot at the truck and the gasoline drums, and once more I saw the tracers converge on the enemy ship. Smoke was floating high in the sky I could smell it over the odor of cor. dite that came from my own guns. Keeping very low again. I turned East and found the Burma Road, turned up it and started looking for the columns which I now knew were Japanese. I approached them from the rear, fired from about a thousand thou-sand yards, and the road seemed to pulverize. The closely packed troops appeared to rush back towards to-wards me as my speed cut the distance dis-tance between us. I held the six guns on while I went the length of the troop column and caught the trucks. There were only six now, but 1 fired into all of them and two I saw burn immediately. On my second pass, as I "S'ed" across the road, I shot at each truck individually, individu-ally, then turned for die troops ' again. The road was so oity that I could barely see the bodies of those I had hit on the first pass. I suppose the others were hidden in the brush to the side. As I pulled up, I could see the black plume, of smoke to the South my first enemy ship was burning fiercely. I made as though to leave the area, then came in again from the South on the troops after the dust had settled. They had reformed but were not as closely packed as before. be-fore. Again I strafed them, but this time I saw that they were firing at me. The trucks couldn't get off the road, and I exhausted my ammunition am-munition on them in two more passes. One truck that I caught dead center with a full two-second burst seemed to blow up. When I left, I knew that four of the trucks were burning, and farther to the South I could still see the smoke of my first Jap plane rising high above the trees of Burma. Straight back to base I went, feeling feel-ing very intoxicated with success. At last I'd been able to see Japs and draw blood. In this case they had been treated just as they had been treating Allied ground troops, and I was happy. That afternoon I went back on the second mission. I found the wrecks of four trucks and baggage, and objects that could have been men, scattered all over the road. The place where I had caught the troop column showed about forty dead men. The grounded plane had burned, and with it had burned about ten acres of the jungle. I fired a long burst into the truck and into the four fuel drums in front of the debris of the enemy bomber, but they didn't burn; I guess the morning morn-ing fire had finished them. I searched the country to the North for more troops, but didn't intercept any. I went back home highly elated I had drawn my first blood. I felt that the world was good again. With pride I radioed General Chennault that his "shark" had been in use. that I had caught lots of rats walking walk-ing along the Burma Road, and that one Army 97 bomber would fly no more for the Japs. When Myitkyina fell, I went over there every day to burn the gasoline that had been stored in tins in the woods to the Northeast of the end of the runway. I had found out its location from British Intelligence, Intelli-gence, but the RAF Group Captain had exacted from me a promise that I would not fire into it until he gave me the word. It seems that he was afraid that the firing and the burning of the fuel would excite the native Burmese who were in the village. I couldn't see what difference that would make, for after all the Japs would capture the thousands of gallons of aviation gasoline, and the natives were more than likely helping them anyway. Though I held off, every time I saw the shiny four-gallon cans in the trees my finger itched to burn the cache before the enemy could use it. I passed the three days of waiting in burning three barges on the Irrawaddy, South of Bhamo, and in setting a fuel barge on fire down on the Chindwin. In this last raid my ship picked up a few small holes; evidently some Jap sympathizers got my range. Later in the week, the RAF Group Captain told me that his Commandos Comman-dos in Myitkyina were going to knock holes in all the fuel tins with picks before they left the field to the Japs. Nevertheless I kept watching the gasoline stores while the Japs moved to the North. On May 8, when I got in my ship and started the Allison, my friend the Group Captain ran across the field to tell me that the Japs could not get the gasoline it had been destroyed without with-out fire, and thus the villagers would not be panicked. Over the roar of the engine I yelled that in that case it would not bum when I fired into it. For I had waited long enough; the Japs were in Myitkyina and I wasn't taking any chances on their acquiring over 100,000 gallons of aviation avi-ation fuel less than two hundred miles from our base. When I came over the field at Myitkyina, the enemy fired at me while I was yet ten miles away; I could see the black bursts of the 37 mm AA in front and below me. I started "jinking" and moved to the Northeast, so that I could come from out of the sun and be as far as I could get from the field. With my first burst the whole woods seemed to blow up I have never seen such a flash as that which came when that veritable powder-train of high octane fuel caught fire from the tracers. trac-ers. I also fired at two of the gun installations on the field. But the bursts from the Jap guns were so close to me that I decided to let well enough alone, and turned for home in Assam. Next day. May 9. I made four raids into Burma. On the first of these I escorted two transports piloted pi-loted by Sartz and Sexton to Pao-shan, Pao-shan, where they were going to land to pickup the baggage of the AVG, who were going on to Kunming. I waited for them to land and take off again, and then called goodby. They were going on East within the air controlled by the AVG. and I wanted to look for Japs to the South anyway. any-way. Two hours later Paorhan was badly bombed by the Japs; and so I missed a good party by not staying around. (TO BE CONTINUED) |