Show W I 1 taa 10 fe QUEEN idt S DIE proudly 48 air wo e fo TITE STORY THUS FAR dieul col frank kortz kartz flying fortress pilot tells 1 of I that fatal day when the zaps japs struck to ig the tie philippines the no ground Is cov COT ored the skeletons of V U S planes q wo longer lent life to aa la barracks because japs are photographing clark field cots are moved into a cornfield which ll 11 later bombed by japs they elFA CUlts to the island of Atin mindanao danao liar har rr schreiber the navigator now takes ap p the tory story how two fortresses out got on a mission in assion to ret get a row raw of jap transports are attacked by a swarm of zeros they trash crash land in a rice paddy on B mascato island land buy an outrigger ca see oc san sail to fie of panay and later get tt U australia CHAPTER VII well it was nice for a few days to 0 o be out of danger to start getting our dozen planes overhauled As quick as we could we began flying missions each fortress had brought out about fifteen men from del monte and they got to work putting the planes back into shape but the missions were terribly long it was seventeen hundred miles from darwin back to del monte almost as far as from new york to denver wed leave darwin in the morning fly by all day land at del monte after dark to be safe from the japs service the plane eat catch a little nap and then gas up in time to be off for an early morning bombing of the jap invasion fleet off luzon then back to del monte it was daylight now and risky as hell bell so get in quick gas ftp up load bombs and get the hell out fast and away to an afternoon target coming back toward del monte in the darkness thank god when no jap pursuits are hanging around arriving about midnight Inid night a cat nap again gas up and youre off for australia think of the pilots and crews going through that grind day after day you might fly eighteen hours straight and be out of the cockpit for only one of them and yet the thing we dreaded most was christmas it was right ahead of us now christmas in defeat and on this barren hot dusty desert field with no word or mail from home and no way to get word back to them wed send cables we knew would never be answered because we could give no address ill put my christmas up against the one you had said frank going on with his story we were all feeling low we knew there would be no letters or packages or even cables 7 for us so it was natural tural that on en this hot dry dusty sun scorched christmas day some of us should wander over to the australians radio shack just to see what little word from home we could pick up on the air 1 I should say that part of us were gone on a mission into the philippines two forts including george and they now should be on that dreary nine hour drag back to batchelor field we hoped none of them would be shot down on christmas day the australians were damned nice to us they let us watch them open their packages and handed us their christmas cards to read and then say what part of the states are you from yank so we could tell them about our own families and wives or best girls if we wanted to and most of us did but we kept wondering about that mission although we talk about it and of course we know they had run into serious trouble hit by zeros at high altitude and that plane during this christmas day fight had been given A burst of machine gun fire right through his radio compartment sergeant killian his radio operator was shot through the top of the head as he be was helping the gunners reload picking up new ammunition cans full of 50 caliber belts and handing them up and taking back the he empty cans while the gunners pounded away at the zeros two others had been badly wounded by the same burst and since face this was at high altitude it was vas very serious because maybe the e boy topples over so that his i dygert agen mask faus falls off there I 1 much you can do for a wounded man an during combat at high altitude when oen you have wounded men aboard you try to get down to at least east feet as soon as you so they wont be under the A strain taw ol of breathing through oxygen masks but there were zeros still bew 1097 them one of the forts prime defense weapons is altitude and george orge knew if h he e broke away from fornia fornication tion and di dived ved down alone he blood a very good chance of being picked off so he did id the right thing stayed or LV with the formation only it was a M 4 bell beof 01 a hard decision to make on W 1 christmas mas day y with those poor r wounded men 1 I 1 to n back fighting for j breath eata in the h high i gh air or i we anew ew nothing of this yet but 0 and we were feeling e pretty pa low the australian radio operator 40 4 to us a 33 twiddling his dials trying to get d or a program from the states so 00 ay ile be homesick we hoped wed d get just a homely de eption of what kind of a christ mas day 0 it was as ln in a typical ameri ct ind nite town how that at ani might be any of ours the snow enow under crunched 14 feet ot i the people walking up on porches to deliver christmas packages and maybe hear the real american voices of some real american ican girls in a christmas choir singing holy night or 0 little town ot of bethlehem or some of the other old time songs what we got instead was a lot of politicians doing their stuff on war aims they were from all over the world sounding off all over the dial and we argued with those australian kids as to which ones were the corniest theirs or ours they insisted theirs were but we agree because ours were all stuffed full of roast goose optimism plum pudding hard sauce and production figures but something was coming in over the CW radio continuous wave or dot dash and the australian with the earphones an after writing it down instead of sending it in to his commanding officer gave me a queer embarrassed look and handed it to me and my heart thumped because I 1 thought it just might possibly be from margo although I 1 see how it could be it was from hed wa waited cited until he lew flew out of the danger zone before breaking radio silence 11 rice ile he said hed be in after dark with one body aboard and to have the ambulance on the standby stand by at the field that meant there were more wounded it finished C christmas for us we say much s and my heart thumped because I 1 thought possibly it might be from margo and neither did the australians but pretty soon one by one we got up and wandered out of the hut when got in his plane was so badly shot up that we decided to call it a wreck it was a tossup toss up between his plane and lee coats which was also full of bullet holes but looking them both over we decided was somewhat the worse we just had to have a wreck on the field to serve as a spare parts reservoir to keep the other planes in the air the old gwoose here and he jerked his thumb backward still has those tall tail surfaces we took off that plane we needed everything but most of all we needed bomb bay gas tanks of course we were in terrible shape the old bombardment group had lost two thirds of its original strength in three weeks and we were now reduced to about a dozen planes about enough for a decent squadron but there was one hopeful fact of the two dozen odd we had lost only two colins and jack adams had been shot down in combat by the japanese the rest had been blown up on the ground or like wheless plane had been wrecked on the beach to save the crew when it have the range to get home and just about the time we were adding up this score and wondering what would happen to us next we found out tor for without warning general brereton landed on the field and we were immediately summoned to a meeting in operations hes heps a tough quick cocky fighting little air force officer who li like ke to sit down when hes laying out plans or giving orders and standing there before us his shoulders reared back he lined us out he told us the united states army air force of the far east of which he was commander was moving all its bombers to java and at once its main base would be on a field near the city of malang from there we would operate out of advanced bases already prepared by the dutch on the outlying islands of borneo and the celebes from these our first missions would au all be concentrated on breaking up an immense concentration of jap transports which was gathering at dabao bay on the southern tip of the philippines ip but as he talked we got curious just how big was this american air force of the far east which the general commanded and whose task it was to smash the japanese in the philippine islands so they reach out to the dutch east indies the had started out as a group commanded by a colonel its strength was now practically one squadron an adequate command tor for a major in peacetime just how many groups would this two star general have at his command for this fourstar four star task ahead but there was big news for me ever since the loss of old 99 1 I had been a placeless pla neless pilot a kind of ghost walking with the living a head without a body but now lee coats was to go with the general to brisbane as engineering gi officer and I 1 was to take over his plane and crew for the java war now at last was my I 1 chance to settle the score for old 99 from australia to java is a full days work even for a fortress frank went on but the weather was fine and all of us were feeling great the ocean was a deep blue and we were constantly passing over islands green with jun jungle gle growth which are practically steppingstones stepping stones connecting asia with australia the last one of all was maybe the most beautiful the famous island of bali just before you get to java and as I 1 saw it coming ahead over the horizon I 1 help thinking about those pictures of it you used to see on the round the world cruise folders always on the cover was a color photograph of a beautiful golden brown sixteen year old girl with a wicker basket on her head and a printed cotton sarong gathered low around her hips and nothing much in between except a completely unselfconscious conscious smile 1 I was feeling pretty good and I 1 guess the crew was too you see wed been on the alert for six weeks and not so much as an hours leave for them to go into any town for even a glass of beer java in the lat late afternoon was as beautiful as anyone had ever promised it would be rich green velvet except where the sloping i ng sun gleamed on the rice paddles paddies or burned the standing water gold against the soot black mud we flew over the big city of Su and straight on toward the smaller city of malang sixty six miles away which was tobe our base to get there you have to climb a little and then enter through a narrow mountain pass which usually is filled with clouds in the afternoon like a thick cotton stopper in a bottle at least later it served to keep the zeros out told me the field was well camouflaged but because laid it out for me carefully on the map I 1 had no trouble in finding it it was a better job of camouflaging than anything wed ever dreamed of inthe in the philippines looking down on it from altitude you took it to be just an ordinary tilled field there was what looked like a cornfield almost across the runway and in addition a fake railway line crossing it I 1 even had difficulty in picking out the hangar roofs so carefully were they painted into the tropical vegetation we crossed it turned cir circled clea and landed the dutch even using their radio to bring us in for fear of giving away the location of that beautifully hidden field they brought us in with a flash gun and luckily I 1 could show my new crew the precision type landing required on that grass field which was later to prove tough as hell we came in in the usual soft javanese afternoon rainstorm and of course I 1 dare apply brakes as you would on macadam I 1 was to find it was a tricky job getting off and on that slippery turf with a full load of bombs the boys were of course in lather to get into town but first there had to be the usual pilots meeting and its always the same I 1 dont car care e who the officer is captain major or lieutenant colonel hes got to st stand and up there and dish out the old college pep talk about how were here to do this and that while the boys are snorting to get into town only this one so bad because at last we were going to do what we had for years been trained to do with our fortresses when those reinforcements came streaming in g in we could go out in big formations and drop a p pattern attern that meant something later they were to find that dutch dating as simple as it looked because the first three or four times you had to take mama and papa along at the end of dinner before they left wed all stood up and drunk just one new years toast to the memory of au all those guys wed known so wen back in the islands who be with us now and a 0 score the air force had to settle in their behalf J java ava seemed fat and lush and peaceful but I 1 knew 5 ahead of us was terribly hard work long missions hitting again and again it if we were to hold the japs back until those thousand Arne american rican planes a arrived TO BE CONTINUED |