Show QUEENS PROUD THE rife STOUT STORY TITUS THUS FAR LICUL col frank kartt enot of day f a flying fortress fortran atal ly when the tell 1 of ah that japs jap eracli 1 la ch the lph paines eig ediht ht ol of bli big were killed while line fleeing for or ahel ur u tas end old W va with many other foru forts u demolished on 0 th the 11 ground ironed aner after escaping to australia what bat Is left or 0 1 atell I squadron ines bl to te java where they go on OB many any missions over the philip defend java itself itse if java pines alic and d aln finally uy till jans to the japs and the U S flier filers vI cuate to A australia ralia to carry on the irr r from there they land on broome field eld which li is wrecked hy by japs shortly tu nor but escape to melbourne kurtz be becomes colnes pilot or ol the gwoose the air force generals tener alt plane CHAPTER in U australia the air force had to build from the ground up before general macarthur arrived from the philippines we had located and were building our advance and supply bases all over north australia from darwin to tow townsville naville ns ville american engineers were pouring in and general brett put them to work we were also improving moresby our problem child and the air force staff had laid down its plan for clearing austra lias las northeast shoulder of the threat of jap air power so that when hen we had the necessary men and equipment we could head back into the philippines the old bombardment group was back in business now in north australia and beginning i g in in april of that year we were poun pounding d the jap base at in new britain several times a week meanwhile the philippines were tottering bataan had fallen corregidor seemed about to go an and d we were working feverishly to rescue desperately needed air force personnel from del monte field on mindanao al mueller who was now flying a transport told me of his last trip in he said the place looked so shaky he was scared even to be looking that way now it was a seventeen hundred mile flight and there was a chance that there might sot not be enough gas left at del monte to get him back to australia but the pilots navigators and ground crews still on mindanao were worth their weight in gold to us so al started out he got right over del monte field things looked quiet on the ground and he was circling waiting for the signal to come on in in which for some reason seemed delayed circling al un understand der this until from australia seventeen hundred miles away crackles a radio message telling him under no circumstances to land corregidor and mindanao had surrendered to the japanese while he had been en route there he was eight hours from home base and with only a few hours gas left but luckily hed provided against this before he left hed told the navy that if the philippines ibi caved while he was in the air and he be refuel at mindanao hed beach his plane on a little jungle island and he showed it to them on the map so they could pick him up if they could get through now he headed for this island looked its beach over and set her down in the surf the rocks in a lew few seconds made junk of his big four motored liberator then according to A al the days seemed me like years although only five eve ot of them passed before a submarine periscope popped up in the cove and carefully scanned the horizon for jap planes before the craft surfaced to take him and his crew aboard I 1 during march the hot spot was darwin which the aussien called the coventry of australia because the japanese had come over on february nineteenth nine benth and not only flattened its little town of four thousand but on an the airfield wiped out an american fighter group en route to the java war at that time it was only a little australian field with almost no antiaircraft the RAAF boys were good lads trying hard but getting nowhere lacking both training and equipment the american fighter group perched on that field which slugger pell was leading toward java had no warning until they heard the sound of the jap motors slugger wanted to save his planes if he could so instead of diving for the foxholes the japs were already strafing he tried desperately to get his boys off slugger was shot down at 50 feet while his landing gear ear was still retracting tr and before hed had time to drop his belly tank ile he tried to dail bail out but of course he was too low W A previous squadron had ac lually managed to get into the air but ut sluggers were au all either shot down own on the takeoff take off or killed in their cockpits tock pits before they cleared the runway kinle ly or else strafed and set af afire ire while they were taxiing into tion on it had been a field day for the zeros word now came through that ek a force ce of ten jap bombers and three fighters ahlers was on its way to darwin it was what squeeze had been wait tor for he hit them tar far out at wa sea squeeze has a clever tactical idea a which I 1 describe in detail but as the th japs approached tair wt marzet our patrols pulled the DIE L y rest of at the american fighter strength off the ground while one of our fl bights chased ed off the accompanying accompany zeros the rest of the boys w were picking 6 off jap a bombers bombe which were s sliding ng out ut 0 of formation a tion and going down trailing smoke they all had to turn off before reaching the target dump their bombs in the sea and head back for their base at kul KU pang on timor island one of the steppingstones stepping stones to java taken away from us but squeeze and his irgang gang followed them out to sea and shot down ever every Y one of 0 the ten bombers our boys returned without a man wounded or a plane scratched you know said squeeze if we dont don t look out were going to make the air air a safe place for americans and after all those months of defeat we were almost afraid to believe it but two days later the japs came back from kaupang with a real force thirty three bombers protected by eleven fighters again we were ready it was a beautiful day the sky clear as a bell and again squeeze tore into the whole jap V formation far at sea he attacked in elements and each time he hit another mitsubishi would go 90 sp spinning inning down in smoke or else would sag below the V with engine trouble lagging so that the next american element could pick him off we found jap bombers are lightly constructed and cant soak up much punishment from our heavy 50 caliber guns cant take the pounding our forts can meanwhile the second american flight was taking ing care of the eleven escorting zeros the boys had paired off r P r jf iua a r the sub surfaced to take him and his crew aboard and were whirling over and over in their squirrel cages a jap and an american to each cage while the first flight kept up the heavy cleaver work chopping into that bomber V from behind or sometimes going out ahead of it to turn and come in for a bust on its nose they were forcing it lower when peel off and come in for a pass it was fun watching both motors light up 4 A good many jap bombers got over the target but you cau call it a bomb run most of their bombs went wild as always happens in a disrupted attack and many others their bombs in the desert so they could run away but those which did get over darwin ran into bofors boford ack ack fire the battery was operated by an old crete gang of aussien the toughest hombres combres in the business and the american P had pushed the jap bombers so low that the ack ack could really rip into them they were between that cleaver in the air an and d a buzz saw on the ground two or three jap b bombers dribbled right down onto the field whole wings wing s shot hot off or else blown into confetti the japs tried to use their chutes from the burning bombers which should explode the fairy tale that japs are too fanatical to use chutes yet even they caught fire most of the first jap bomber flight got over darwin but only part of the second s while the third jetti its bombs and ran like hell for kaupang you see the estimated range of aze a zero ro using bell belly y tanks is about twelve hundred miles mile S its five hundred and ten miles mile S from kaupang to darwin anc and I 1 to go and return is a thousand and t twenty ity miles that leaves a tiny safety margin that is more than used up if the zero has to do any fighting en route also by first hitting the japs J aps tar far forced them to out at sea k t squeeze drop their belly ta tanks aks they cant fight while carrying I 1 them and begin using their precious wing tank gas long before they got to the tar izet all through the australian war our fighters must have knocked off hundreds of zeros which weve nev er claimed we fight them until their gas is almost gone and when they finally break away and seart start tor for home they slide quietly into the sea with dry tanks those fighters at darwin are a great gang of kids and invented their own service uniform which might not pass parade inspection C back here it consists of a long duckbilled duck billed hunters cap usually red plus a pai pair r of white cotton shorts and nothing much else they dont like clothes because of the fire hazard cloth soaks up spurting gasoline which will drop off naked flesh they wont wear ordinary shoes this started when one of them had to bail out in the desert back of darwin and when his chute cracked open the jerk flipped his shoes off he had to walk barefoot for days over the australian desert now they wear tennis shoes or cowboy boots which wont flip off this costume includes a belt to which is attached a jungle kit on one side and a 45 on the other the 45 they keep covered with cellophane candy bar wrappers so it wont rust they look more like pirates than pilots and so did the ones at moresby when general brett put buzz in charge of the moresby townsville fighters he issue an order for buzz to stay on the ground at his desk in pursuit interceptor command headquarters at townsville but in a nice way he unofficially requested it but buzz was itching at the paper work he was a fighter not a desk man and at moresby he had new youngsters just in from the states their morale was low been having an awful time with the weather and also the japs had been coming in and shooting up the place catching these kids in the air and picking off too many T they e needed someone to show them h how to handle a P 39 Aira cobra agai against st the zero both planes have their points so one day when hes up inspecting moresby he spent most of his time there without any formality buzz steps into a P 39 and leads them they were all agog heard of the great wagner but they arent sure the stories of what hed done in the philippines be a myth he led twelve of them out above new guinea aver the owen stanley range on a mission in the direction of the big jap base at lae from which the they were returning over the ocean when they ran into a japanese trap the japs had a flight of zeros circling a spot which our boys must pass on their homeward leg buzz said it was partly his fault for not having told his gang of twelve to refrain from combat on this homeward leg because they needed all their gas to get back while the japs were freshly fueled from a nearby near by base but when the two end men on the flight saw the japs they peeled off and buzz saw hed have trouble holding the rest so he gave the signal over the phones to go on in buzz said it was a lovely battle the whole argument rolled thirty miles up the beach and then thirty miles back again like a big tumbleweed on the prairie buzz shot down three japs himself and his wing men two a total of five japs for the day we gave three planes to get them one was forced down ga but we lose a pilot on that flight that did the business for those green scared kids when they saw buzas gunfights gun sights trained on a zero watched his 50 caliber chewing it up right in front of them they realized it could be done and more important por tant they saw they had 2 a leader which was allther all they needed to put them back in business that night sitting with me under the mosquito netting canopy wed thrown over the wing of the gwoose was the first time I 1 saw buzz buz z really worried because when general brett found out about this what would he say buzz was worried that the general would not only request him to stay on the ground hed make it an order in writing and then the fun would be over buzz was twenty six years old and he gone up just to hang three more on his record but because he really loved it but he said in the future he thought rather than risk an order grounding him hed stay out of combat with zeros and confine his activities to developing most mast high bombing attacks against transports ile he thought his kids should all be trained to do it and hed done a lot himself you come in low and horizontal in a pursuit and just before youre on her you release your little wing bomb so that it slaps right against the transports side at the wat water er line then quick you pull up out of the antiaircraft fire awe we talk talked ed a lot that ni night ight he had a fast mind and was doing a lot of sound thinking both on tactics and about our f fighters Ight ers he said in a wa way y he wanted to get back home tor for a while id turned down a ticket home once and hed turn turned ed a it down twice but now he had bad a reason for returning TO BE CONTINUED |