| OCR Text |
Show :: est B IB MY h: l CPHL0T fff V2&aCol. Robert L.Scoff w.n,,dB,. 04. and going like a bat out of hell. Ajax stood by to take my position If worse things should develop and I should have to land. But the coolant light finally flickered flick-ered and went off, the engine cooled off when I got a Uttle of the boost off and stopped abusing it. And I breathed again, feeling that I'd been holding one breath for fifteen minutes. min-utes. All was clear behind me, and I gradually climbed to ten thousand and went back home to Hengyang. All the boys came out to see me. Of course Elias was missing and they'd been worried lest I was a goner too. There were cannon holes in my wings and tail; one had gone just across the back of the canopy. There were smaller holes In the fuselage from the cockpit back to the tail; there was oil from the spinner spin-ner of the prop to the tail. Oil from your own ship can hardly get on the very tip of the nose of your ship, and this was proof that It was Jap oil. As we looked the plane over, I got more and more settled down from mV narrow eSPnnP Rut then T real. was peppered with over two hundred hun-dred holes from the last five months of combat. But the old ship wasn't junked or salvaged, for we needed parts too badly In China. There were new planes on the way to us now in monthly Increments, but we could take this plane and put several back in commission. The scheme that we devised helped my morale greatly, for to have junked the old ship that had been my fighter for five months would have been like seeing the horse that you've ridden for twenty years cast aside and destroyed. I could remember too well that day when I ' landed at Hengyang and looked at the damage the ship had suffered. There had been a lump In my throat and I had felt as though my sword had been taken away. "Old Exterminator" had taken me nearly five hundred hours into combat com-bat against the enemy. That's over la hundred thousand miles and you ' just ask any pilot if that isn't a long way on trips where people shoot at you. We tnnlc this cruris nut ftf trip fihin r 'he slory thus far: After (sradunUni; UOSlSs m West rolnt, Itobcrt Scott wins hti lirs at Kelly Field and takes up combat 111 lug. He has been an Instructor for Utir years when the war breaks out, and ,1 . Is told that he Is now too old for ' mbat flying. He appeals to several h:i nerals and Is finally elven an opportu-'d opportu-'d t y to f et Into the flsnt. He Hies a (Is i mber to India, but on arrival Is made Loga" ferry pilot and this docs not suit him. '1 f iz ler visiting General Chennault he gets Klttyhawk and soon becomes a "one , 'an air force" In the skies over Burma. 'P' iter he Is made commanding officer of ,ce 1 e 23rd Fighter Group and still keeps nip locking down Jap planes. He tells the , ory ol Capt EUas. Gun , 1 ' j.J Cn.VPTER XXI -ond Idah When I finished the job and pulled ii anP again, I could barely see the 1 Iatkst of my flight several miles away. Hebe1 gradually climbed after them, for-i. for-i. dot to look around, and just sat -larkhere, "dumb and happy." Just sat Wtorhere too long over enemy terri-n. terri-n. Qor, without looking around every (econd. Without thinking about it, I lad become a straggler. In a high-powered engine, as soon is we go into combat we take miliary mili-ary power from the engine that is, we take as much boost as the en-cato en-cato Eme s'and without "detonat- Tjt tog," put the prop In low pitch, high a speed position. As you leave the ''P1 combat and the area, if you're not too excited the hand automati-ca automati-ca cally pulls the prop controls to max-Ituri max-Ituri lmum cruising position to save fuel stev and to keep the engine from running run-ning hot. I began subconsciously to ape do this. ass Just then, very dreamily, I heard hug pop-pop-pop-pop-pop. I raised my 3rof head slightly, to try to see my oth-qoii oth-qoii er fighters ahead, and pulled the ized that my ship, which I had now flown In combat from April until September 2nd, was badly damaged. "Old Exterminator" was shot to pieces. We had tea in the alert shack and sent the other mission out to dive-bomb dive-bomb Nanchang and strafe the trains from Kukiang to the North towards to-wards Hankow. Also we got the Chinese net looking for Elias, and reported that I had shot down one Zero near Kukiang. General Haynes led some missions on Canton, and after fair bombing results the fighters stayed behind and engaged the enemy Zeros. Lieut. Pat Daniels shot down his that General Chennault had given me in April and put them in my new P-40E. They were well broken in, and the Armament Officer, Captain Hoffman, who had been with the AVG and In my squadron In Panama Pana-ma seven years before, had worked them Into perfection. I had had no jams or stoppages In over a month. The landing-gear we put on another ship; the instruments were scattered scat-tered throughout the group; the armor ar-mor plate was taken out to make a hot-cake griddle for the mess. All parts of the fighter were cannibalized, cannibal-ized, and in a month were spread out over eighteen P-40's In the organization. or-ganization. I remember especially grey i '.'..msyroy.H sy; wjwu. $r that the automatic fuel-pump was put on a P-40B, which permitted the lighter ship to go higher than it had ever gone before, and on Its second flight with the booster pump, the pilot, Lieut. T. R. Smith, shot down a Japanese observation plane over Kunming. I never did go out and look at the old engine that had come out of my first fighter. After all, an engine Is exchangeable anyway, and we get used to different ones. The shot-up shell of the fuselage, and the wing that had held me up over a hundred thousand miles of enemy country, I didn't want to see again. I just thought of my six fifty-caliber guns flying with me in my new fighter as the real soul of "Old Exterminator." And I thought of the hundreds of parts from Air Corps number 41-1458 " that were helping to keep eighteen ships of our Group in the air. For the men of the Group, the cannibalized ship had been a help, but to me it had been a tradition :pei throttle back just a little more. ) V That popping sounded like engine lia detonation to me. Then I tensed, for . j, t had seen that my manifold pres-tlu; pres-tlu; sure was barely 35 Inches (on the )rg manometer gauge), and therefore I could not be detonating from too much boost. At the same instant I heard again the pop-pop-pop, and became all attention in a flash; my ' nose went down I had been climb-rc climb-rc lng my prop went back to low pitch M and my throttle really went forward ' enough to cause the engine to de-e de-e tonate. A cold shiver went down - my spine, there In that hot glass cage. I skidded the ship to the left and looked around as my speed built up fast. What I saw in the sun, ahead of me, chilled me more. I saw winking wink-ing lights and the blurred outline of an airplane and not so far away. Then I saw another, and I guess there were others. I could see the orange lights winking down at me even in the glare of the sun. They were Japs firing at me, and I had only slightly more than a thousand turkey and a straggler! While I fumbled with my mike button to my radio to call Holloway and Baumler for help, I realized the futility of it. I don't believe my dry throat would have made a sound anyway. I just acted and thank the Lord, my reflexes let me do something. I turned directly towards the ships with my nose down, and pulled up firing. I know now that if I had turned away from them they would have shot me down in their cross-fire. As it was, I surprised them and went underneath them very fast and into the sun. Thus, when they looked around, I had the sun in my favor, and from that time on I was using it. But as I pulled up firing, I held the trigger down and "froze." I heard the cannon of the Zero I felt the recoil of my six guns I felt things hit "Old Exterminator" Extermi-nator" and then I saw a cloud of black smoke in front of my nose. I shut my eyes involuntarily and dove again. Something hit my ship with the same sound you get when you suddenly sud-denly By into heavy rain. I opened my eyes and everything was dark. Fighter pilots ready to take to the air on a moment's notice. They had plenty of opportunity to fight all the time. They never had to sit on the defensive and worry. And, strangely strange-ly enough, they liked It. first Jap, and Charlie Sawyer got his third. In the next raid of the bombers General Haynes again led. Maj. Butch Morgan who the newspapers news-papers used to say was the only Yankee on General Chennaultfs staff . . . "Wonder how he got there?" was leaning over the lead bomb-sight bomb-sight and directing the bombing. This objective was to burn the docks of Haiphong on the coast of Indochina. Indo-china. The small bomber force of six B-25's went in with only three P-40's for escort. Maj. Ed Rector led the fighters, with Lieutenant Marks on one wing and Pat Daniels on the other. Just to make the bomb load against the Japs heavier, the fighters fight-ers carried a flve-hundred-pound bomb on each ship. With these they dive-bombed the docks after the bombers had blasted them and set them on fire. Here the attack was entirely successful; the fighter boys came back and said it was the best bombing that they had ever seen. The bomb train had covered the to keep. In my mind, no matter how long I myself might be fighting in China, "Old Exterminator" would be on all those flights some of it would be on every mission that we flew. And thus it would fly forever. On September 25, Maj. Ed Rector led the assault of a flight down to raid Hanoi in Indo-China. I led the support, and we kept a thousand feet above the first echelon. Our mission was to escort ten bombers for the bombardment of Gia Lam airdrome. We went South and "topped-off" our gas load at a secret base, then routed our flight to the West of Laokay to keep from alerting alert-ing the Jap warning net. Until we were close to Hanoi, we kept well West of the railroad that led to our objective. Even with these precautions to keep from alerting the enemy, we found the Japanese I-45's In the air and over the field as we came In from the West. The twin-engine fighters absolutely ignored our fighters fight-ers and made runs on the bombers, but they didn't get very far with their orders. Rector took the first four P-40's in on the leading Japs and hit them five hundred yards behind our bombers, who were already al-ready dropping their eggs. I saw I smelled the smoke and cordite and gasoline and thought I was on fire. Just then I realized I was still firing. I reached up, grabbed the handle, rolled the canopy open and saw light I rolled it shut again and realized that the blackness black-ness had been caused mostly by oil on my windshield. The speed of my dive had blown most of that off now, and though I couldn't see very well, I could make out the horizon. With a long sigh of relief I leveled lev-eled the speeding ship over the rice paddies, and as they say in the slang of fighter stations, "I took off Uke a scalded dog." I S-ed and skidded but tried not to lose speed. Looking back, I saw the smoke and oil that I had gone through, and down under un-der the place where I had been I saw fire and a plume of smoke one Jap that wouldn't fly again. I think I was halfway home before I fully realized that I had shot it down and hadn't run into it. For twenty miles I skimmed over the paddies, "jinking" to fool the enemy en-emy who might be pursuing, skidding skid-ding to make him miss, and watching watch-ing my boost read seventy inches of mercury. The engine heated up and the coolant light came on to warn me, before I eased the throttle back 1 little. I called Ajax Baumler on the radio and told him I was hit-had hit-had been intercepted, my engine was heating up and I didn't know what all was the matter with the hip, but I was on course for home Haiphong wharves from one end to the other, and when the ships went back to their forward field to refuel and return to base, the smoke was covering the town. Rector led his three fighters down in a strafing attack at-tack over the wharf fires and kept the fire-fighters from working. We were brought back now from the Kweilin-Hengyang front to watch the situation in Burma and to harass the Jap to the South in Indo-China. Our situation was peculiar in China we were just about surrounded by the Japanese on all sides except to the North, toward Russia, and that was so far and over such mountains moun-tains that it seemed not to matter. To our backs was Burma, filled with Japs To the South was Indo-China and Thailand, and out to the front and Northeast were Japanese. Where in hell could you find a worse situation? But we got to fight all the time, we never had to sit on the defensive de-fensive and worry. We Uked it and there was never a word of complaint I had to wait at Hengyang a day longer than the others, for my ship was being repaired enough for me to fly it to the repair depot at Kunming. At Kunming the .blow fell- the engine of "Old Exterminator" Extermina-tor" was bad and there were no more new or serviceable engines. ?he cannon from the Zero had dam-aged dam-aged the wing so badly that pullouts wodd be dangerous. The fuselage two of Ed's flight gang-up on the first steeply climbing 1-45, but before be-fore they could shoot it down Daniels Dan-iels went In fast to within a few yards of the Jap and shot him down in flames. As the ship -exploded I thought Pat Daniels' plane was on fire too, they were so close. We all confirmed the first ship for th eager Daniels, who was from Van Nuys, California. The bombers were on the way home now, and we sighed with relief re-lief and tried to catch the Japs. Ed Rector took the next ship he got bis sights on and blew it apart. Then he fought all the way to the ground with two others. Marks shot down one, and the others were about equally divided. I caught a flight of three I-45's going go-ing hell-bent for the bombers from below and to the rear, and shot the last one in the formation down with a short burst It was point-blank range and occurred very fast I first saw a thin trail of gray smoke that looked Uke the usual condensation cloud that forms behind the wings of fighter ships doing maneuvers at high altitude, when the atmospherio conditions are just right. And thee flame poured from the right engine It spread up over the cockpit and stretched thirty feet back in the slipstream. slip-stream. I moved up towards the second enemy fighter and didn't see the flamer go down. (TO BE CONTINUED) |
