Show c ava PROUD alts g STOUT T 0 R Y THUS FAR lleon col IS ot of a abing fortress a of ci that tatai fatal day y when the lle japs ja ack mck in the t philippines light ol of his tor for shelter and nd were ere lined fleeing a we beb n 0 did 99 with th many any oah other er fortresses was nii thed before it could take off after escaping to what Is left ol of the squadron flies dies to JAVA lv where thy they to go out nt missions over the philippines many c a pao fighter planes arrive arri ve irom from australia a few w days before tt torl A sat jap bombis reported report td over java three e er r for orce cof and 11 zeros get ites 0 japs come com over milor cl squadron sou adron commander tie the forts pot a lap jap carrier in the java sea and send it away limping then more forts fortl arrive CHAPTER XIV the japs by now were stirred up they came over obviously off a carrier hidden somewhere near and str itra alfed fed hell bell out of timor airdrome luckily there was nothing on the field feld just then now we began to see that it would be only a matter of time until the japs took that steppingstone field feld at timor which connected us to australia and it would all be over for no more fighters could get through to us under their own power jap bombers had already hit cabaya gui abaya if we got no more fighters how long before they smashed our forts at malang the skies bere darkening fast but about this time we did a curious job for the dutch I 1 was in n their navy headquarters on business when commander Kom mander van der came running up you got to help me he said our bravest sub is in trouble she cant dive then he explained that she was more than three hundred miles out in the java sea moving slowly toward home base but that zeros were circling overhead and had probably summoned jap bombers to polish her off two dutch had been guarding her but those big flying boats are clumsy as ducks and the zeros had already shot one down what they had to have van der explained was fighters to cover the submarine but the little dutch curtiss fighters have the range to get out and back 1 I got bud sprague on the phone told him I 1 was coming out urgent then I 1 wrote down on a piece of paper what van der told me of their submarines course speed peed and hourly position bud laid it out on a chart and figured fast it was a long distance even with belly tanks his fighters could barely get out there and spend pend fifteen minutes patrolling the submarine when have to start back but he figured he had enough planes to keep two of them over her all the time in fifteen minute relays until escorted her back to a point where the little dutch curtiss fighters would have the range to take over bud led the first pair out himself hes no swivel chair officer and the dutch in addition to being tearfully grateful woke up to the fact act that maybe liaison was a good idea van der noticed id had trouble getting a car getting out cut to the field id been spending my salary on taxis getting business done and the next morning a dutch staff car with a sergeant ergeant at the wheel reported to the door of the hotel they assigned it to me for the duration of the war but bilt at this point another submarine showed up with a hardluck hard luck story she was one of ours which tad bad sneaked through the jap blockade from corregidor with a load tit of fourteen passengers most of them pilots I 1 knew who had lost their planes and been left when we had to pull out of the philippines they came roaring into the hotel late they were sick of fiddling around on bataan with rifles and tow now were itching to get into the air bain again in addition to which been ten cooped up for days under water in that stinking little tin cigar box c you can imagine how a pilot would rould take that here they were at last tree free in a big luxurious hotel with lights and girls they nearly pulled it to pieces and danced with all the girls in the place pho ho would take a chance with them oil a the floor but in between they had bad plenty of news 1 I told them they had me in giai sorl n work just now and they said lle bell if I 1 had talents like that the place for far me was on corregidor the army had the navy stuffed into one end of a tunnel mule licile they were stuffed into the other and relations relation s were vere so strained that t the staffs would only communicate by courier arid and now how about out a shot of this daiquiri Dai quiri rum they eyd d heard so much talk about I 1 finally got them quieted down and on the bus for malang they e crazy to get back up in the uz after all those weeks and then just as I 1 was about to 10 E to bed a cau call from margo came through tough some friends wanted to to me go Ilor florida lda with them said margo th e girls husband had a war job there e I 1 decide but frank slid ald it looked as though he sh going t get any y vacation so I 1 should both W like a good long one to do for b L e 1 of U Us I 1 must go and it would our vacation I 1 could tell he bras as very I 1 tired ired and that worried un bertone glad cw wa W s in his is voice ce I 1 had been al when he told me he would J L W probably be on the ground for a while so I 1 understand it nobody in the states doubted yet that java would hold I 1 told him id call him as soon as I 1 reached florida and then he said a curious thing darling he said id better warn you that these calls may not last much longer 1 I ask why because I 1 knew it must be something the censor would not let him tell me so because the time was up I 1 just said good night without ever talking it over wed always made it our rule never to say goodby that was too frightening always it was good night 1 I was worried margo said frank because id just got word from our navys on patrol that a new jap invasion fleet was coming down strait apparently parent ly headed for Balik papan on borneo it has a fair har harbor bor and is the last base they would need before they took over java tand and I 1 see how we were going to stop them but next day colonel eubank gathered his forts together and they took off at in the morning so that they would be out over strait in time to make their bomb run just at dawn they had to come down below the overcast to see the target which was two converging lines of jap ships heavily escorted one coming in am from the northeast and one from i lop 9 at I 1 was working the top turret gun and could see what was happening on th the e third fort TaT akan well we hit it and of course we do some damage but its a big force the navy dare go in we have only a handful of forts so the japs keep coming but were desperate and so are the dutch their entire bomber force now consisted of eight old B a 1934 model martin twin engine bomber which were based at Balik papan these boys knew if the japs were everto evento be stopped it had to be now to give our reinforcements time to get in if we were going to get any so that afternoon they made their last desperate stab damaging that jap fleet of course but not stopping it and just as these dutch bombers were coming in to land on Balik papan field they were hit by carrier carrier based zeros zero and every plane destroyed st now the dutch had noth ing and everything depended on our forts so the next day they put out from malang to strike ke at the japs in and if possible sink a carrier but what happened on that mission should not be my story for I 1 there two of our sky queens died that day in battle and I 1 see it it happen often I 1 plenty of them had come home crippled others were beached like shorty wheless plane many others have cracked up when fog phrot shrouded aided the field but wed lost only five by enemy a action and rarely have the japs seen one fall colm colin crashed through the overcast near clark fie field ld so they see him they saw A dams adams but not major robinson seldom do our own boys ever see the old que queens ens go down in battle I 1 so you tell it said frank and h here ere he looked at sergeant boone the gunner si s 1 I saw it said the gunner if and how they die I 1 carl can ten tell you it began like this nine of us had taken off from malang to strait t to 0 look for carriers we lad had only started we were about sixty miles niile S off the coast slowly climbing had reached feet when we noticed some fighters in a tight formation we assumed that they were pao P s but we taking any chances because there seemed to be quite a gang of them reinforcements had at ar maybe some rived which we heard of so we watched as they came closer only when we saw the white points of our army air force star with the red disk in the middle were we relieved it occurred to us that you can take t ak e the red sun of japan and with h few strokes of a paintbrush make five white star points around it shortly after this incident the arm army y a air ir force emblem mas changed and the red central disk removed we dream of this but still we watched what we were so sura were P they were flying along with us about three thousand yards away apparently paying no attend tion we suspect they were japs mapping out their attack there was nothing about this maneuver which surprised us for the japs so far had always attacked us from the rear then they wheeled in for their nose on attack and too late we saw thos eArmy air force stars on their fuselages had been crudely forged they concentrated on our first three planes and remember no now w that this first attack which caught caugh t us completely off guard and far below our regular altitude happened in only a few seconds one fortress they hit only in the motor the next fortress they put an incendiary through the bomb bay gas tank they must have known through subversive activities in java that we have ones yet in that model this set off the oxygen system and the whole fortress flared in front of our eyes in a puff of flame and smoke out of this we could see two or three parachutes floating down maybe the men dangling from them were alive more probably they had never pulled the rip cords themselves but the explosion opened the chutes 1 I was working the top tur turret ret gun an and d from here I 1 could see exactly exactly what was happening on the third fortress captain duke ship which was just on our left and very close I 1 saw it and so did sergeant jim worley the bombardier who was working the little 30 caliber nose gun and had brought down three zeros we all saw some of it but worley and I 1 saw most first we saw plane shudder as the jap tracers crashed into its cockpit and into its bomb bay but she go down yet for a while she continued on with her chin up like those pictures you see of marie antoinette or mary queen of scots walking proudly toward the scaffold and she waver or flinch even when we could see that dull red flames from the gasoline tanks of that bomb bay were sprouting out of her from the cockpit clear back to the tail we surged just a little ahead of her nose and from here we could see duke and his copilot co pilot both slumped over dead their heads leaning against the shattered pane of the cockpit window so it any man who was keeping her chin up it was the old queen herself who wanted to die this way we dropped back and came in a little closer you had an awful feeling you wanted to help and you and we saw sergeant Keight keightley liy her radioman and right waist gunner climb through his escape hatch and bail out and his chute open and then her left waist gunner doing the same on the other side we saw her tail gunner bail out and his chute open they found him four or five days later on an island she was enveloped in red flames now from nose to tail and through her windows we could see flames shimmer inside her cabin and as her plates melted she began to sink I 1 in a curve and along the wake of that curve we were to count seven parachutes like seven swirling dandelion seeds but as yet she gone down much and our own pilot captain strother a brave skillful pilot who was presently to die and every man of his crew feels he gave his life to to save ours was keeping abreast of her so that with our guns we could keep the japs away in her last moments and give her men men a chanco chance to jump the last to leave her was sergeant leonard coleman her turret gunner we could see him working his but now he left his turret we saw him go by the side window and he was struggling to put on his parachute which he worn in that cramped top turret for it would have interfered with his sighting and shooting struggling to get his arms through it like a jacket among those licking flames we saw him go back to the rear escape hatch saw him drop through it with his clothes afire saw him jerk the cord he must have done it immediately because by the time he had cle cleared ai red the flaming tail by twenty feet we saw his chute crack tight open but then almost instantly we saw that parachute nara chute begin to billow loosely like a silk scarf in the wind because oh god we saw something pise else we saw the poor guy had had to jump mp without having time to buckle the belt strap of his parachute the price he paid for stay ing ng in his turret for a few last shots at zeros protecting the others while they jumped maybe he figured he could hold the ends of the belt together with his hands maybe his hands were so burned he be work w the clasp TO OTC fir BK CONTI |