Show p GOD I 1 IS MY 1 1 14 1 1 PILOT 1 4 col robert W release the story lory thus far an robert scott a west point graduate wilno hll his wings wing at kelly field T from mitchel field t N ti be li s lent e n to panama his fell real pursuit training ruining li Is begun in a P ile iia begins to train other pilots but as a the war edges closer he wants wan ti to got get into combat service he 0 writer write many any letters to generals general pleading for or a chance to fight and atlant it comes in the form of a phone call all from rom washington asking if he c cm an it fly a tour four engine lomber bomber lie says y he be can a w white b lie lie he when he be leaves leave bi als wife if and child lie he realizes that they meant america for him bim he picks up op bis fort Is in florida asks one of his former students h how to fly it and they are off tor for brazil CHAPTER VII maybe the meal was really good ive ve forgotten but later we were to have some meals which were definitely knitel y on the rugged side ilde some time just try a breakfast at three a m composed of warmed over im bouldy mouldy 0 uld y theare warmed toast with slightly sour canned tomatoes after this year and more I 1 can close rny my eyes and see col C V haynes sitting there looking at that dell delicacy cacy thinking no doubt about C carolina country ham with brown gravy making a little puddle in the grits well fed but on the tired side we e left the base at 1335 for our next destination farther down the coast boast for more than two hundred miles we were over friendly territory as we hugged the beaches but later along the ivory coast we had to fly out to sea to avoid the prying eyes that were vichy french I 1 must have sworn deeply that afternoon tor for in my diary I 1 note now that I 1 wrote this thia line damn we tave bave to dodge those b all the time ll 11 we passed a fighter base at 1700 GMT and one one hour later we landed at another west coast base the sun was setting back to the west in the Atlantic Atlant lc towards home easter sunday was last fast coming to a close I 1 remembered then from hearsay evidence that I 1 had been born bom exactly acely thirty four years before from personal experience I 1 would be able to recall this easter as a memorable I 1 one Next day while the crew worked on the tired airplane some of us drove into the bush country with a guide we made about a ten hour trip into the interior to To goland entering a typical dirty village we heard jazz music and picked our way towards the source I 1 imagine all tf of us were expecting to find a radio or a instead we found that we were really an in the land that had birthed jazz grouped about an earthen crock of palm wine was the population of the village and the more they dipped the tee gourd cups into the stagnant rime ing liquor the hotter the music mccame and the more the sweating black bodies swayed to the beat of the drums their bare feet were moving to the rhythm in the dust and their naturally musical voices added to the syncopated rumble that came from black hands thumping many kinds of drums made U us s wonder whether some orchestra like cab galloways Gallo Callo ways come to attica africa with us on a USO project on april 7 we left the gold coast tor for kano in nigeria off at 08 00 GMT we flew a course of 0 90 degrees to miss more of vichy france Over Lagos in the clammy heat of the equatorial jungle we turned into the continent to a course degrees and continued over very thick country until we crossed the niger from there on east the land that was africa seemed to dry up and my boyhood conception of how bow the dark continent should look faded away instead of constant jungle we now saw dry desert ake the lower hump of 0 t brazil near natal or places in our own west we landed at the old walled city of kano that afternoon our next takeoff take off for khartoum would best be made at nightfall in order that we might land in the sudan early in the morning before the dust storms had impaired the visibility to waste time w we walked into town to see eee the ancient city of biblical days soon we found ourselves dodging camels lepers eipers and all ali baba with his more than forty thieves general aults was composed af three squadrons functioning under the supreme com command mand of chinas cainas generalissimo chiang kal kai shek about seventy pilots pilot sand end three hundred ground crew personnel made up this organization which for nearly tour four months had been in combat against the japanese air force from rangoon up to cashio burma these american boys had come from the air services of the american army navy and marine corps the general was an old pilot and through many years of single tester flying in the noise of open cockpits hod hed become mode moderately a tely deaf a circumstance that had bed helped to bring about his retirement knowing that war with japan was more than probable after Us his re brement he had gone to china end and thre there he had not only pers persuaded u a ded ith the to build the air warning net within china but had worked to train chinas cainas air force as well growing out of this when the tee brave chinese air force forc was virtually destroyed by the overwhelming wh elming odds of the japanese jug gembut cna aut chennault ault hadlond had long cher shed a volunteer force of american airmen flying american equipment in china against the jap the purpose was fourfold to test american equipment to train a nucleus of american pilots in actual combat to furnish air support for the chinese land laid fortes forces and to fight a delaying action against the japanese until the chinese armies could be equipped with modern modem sinews ot of war tor for offensive action against the stranglehold strangle hold of japan finally to in the late summer of 1941 the army navy and marine corps permitted a few reserve officer pilots to resign their commissions and accept jobs as instructors with central aircraft manufacturing company or cameo as it was called these seventy odd pilots and some three hundred ground crew men proceeded in small numbers on ships shies of various nations dutch british indian american and some unregistered west from san francisco to java then singapore and thence to rangoon burma these instructors for cameo were carried on the passenger lists as acrobats doctors lawyers and probably even indian chiefs I 1 imagine that after they made their gre great k t record with never more than ftfe fifty y d 4 general aults was composed of three squadrons fune fane honing under the supreme command of ef Chin cainas chinas generalissimo 0 cheang chinall alb cabout kal kai shek shown own above about seventy en ty pilots and abd three hundred ground crew personnel made up this organization which tor for nearly four our months had been in combat against the japanese air force from ran ban goon gon up to cashio burma five airplanes they shot down two hundred and eighty six japanese planes losing only ionly eight in combat the complaining japanese would have been disposed to add the remainder ima bainder inder of the nursery rhyme rich man poor man beg beggar g arman ar man thief many times t i had heard beard radio tokyo complain of the cruelty of these american guerrilla pilots under general chennault aults a clever leadership and tactical genius they had bad virtually driven the imperial japanese air force from the skies of burma and held the burma road for months after it should have fallen against odds ids ot of more than twenty to one they had saved face for america and the white race in this battle against a much belittled enemy when one considers that the fought in what the british called obsolete tactical combat aircraft the P and P their deeds and scores become truly legendary throughout china today general aults are regarded as saviors of free china skies the chinese sentry on the gate to the 1171 JIchan or airfield may shake his head when you show him your pass he may not understand your hard bard won chinese chine se but bat when you smile and call A his face lights up in turn end and he be calls ding hao you are number 0 one ne 1 he holds his thumb up in the old familiar signal and you enter then to show his high regard for americans and his hii vivid memory of general Cher aults maults flying tigers he be calls atter after you A V G mean american very good ding hao ding hao bao we caught up with three more ot of our thirteen bombers at kano and all our crew had begun to feel confident that we could not be called back from the mission against tokyo to insure this to a greater degree we were trying hard without appearing to be too anxious andio us to be the first to reach our initial point karachi india so long as we weri were the first of the B we could claim a moral victory for after all colonel haynes was boss and in a ship with longer range than the fortress and we wanted him ahead with full service aboard and the temperature hot and nd stifling even after nightfall we threaded our way through the dust for the takeoff take off I 1 remember that the heavy ship used the entire runway and some of the sagebrush prairie land too for there seemed to be no lift whatever c r to the hot dead air finally reaching a comfortable cruising altitude at twelve thousand doug and I 1 breathed the old familiar sigh of relief at having once again gotten a loaded bomber to in the air and the sigh slab echoed around the ship down in the dust haze not a light showed as we crossed equatorial africa where sergeant ergeant Aaltonen and cobb wanted lo 10 so much to land for a look at the alg lapped gubangi worn en then lake chad and fort lamy went by just before dawn we crossed north of the mountain of el fasher at six the white nile appeared we had crossed the western part of the sudan our landing was made at khartoum where tho blue nile and the white nile meet on april 8 we left khartoum for an easy run to aden on a course which was almost due east over the mountains of eritrea Erl trea we went on over gura and massaua to the red sea on our left we could see yemen and farther south and to our or right Somal Soma lland liland reaching the south end of 0 the red sea and the gulf of aden the well known landmarks the rocks of aden appeared about noon next day wed makee make the run on to india the british garrison commander took care of us that night but around the dinner table there suddenly dropped a blanket of despair the london radio announced that bataan had fallen after the first comment we settled down to worry part of our mission was to bomb jap concentrations around bataan and corregidor would this development cause that part of the attack to be called off again the fear of being frustrated in oar our effort lo fo take the offensive clutched my heart it seemed that orice once again help had been started too late we had bad caught the last of th the e B at aden and next morning mornin g we got up an extra hour early fo tor r the takeoff take off our fortress was straining to get to the initial point just behind the B 24 success was in sight at we were climbing over the beach of southern arabia and is as the light improved we all agreed that arabia was a rugged looking land after the terrible stories about the mutilation of forced down flyers at the hands of the tribesmen we all were glad that we had the little cards written in arabic promising high payment to the arabs if we were delivered unharmed to the nearest british outpost we followed the arabian coast over the blue waters of the arabian sea to the gulf of oman and then crossed to karachi colonel haynes with the B 24 had gone to delhi our orders were to wait at karachi and now for two weeks we anxiously waited while the rumors flew I 1 think 1 I shall always associate india with my first impression on getting out of my ship no one seemed to know anything behind us lay twelve thousand miles which we had made in eight days for what no ane one stood there with orders to expedite our departure instead s they appeared to think we had ferried this ship for them to use in training training mind you here halfway round the world and in a country that faced attack any moment when we explained as muc much h as we could about our secret orders smiles came to the officers faces bets were laid that we would never leave karachi with those ships but we were volunteers and our combat spirit was still there I 1 r remember member e that all my crew took the bets as fast as they werl offered but we lost once again we had been frustrated in our effort to go to war on the offensive now four months after pearl harbor the stencilled stencil led word on a B 17 in our flight SNAFU meaning I 1 g roughly in air corps slang sn a aled up seemed to fit the situation we learned the worst when haynes came back from delhi with a face a yard long sadly he told us the truth due to the fall fail of bataan and the loss of other fields in eastern china our secret bases baags coupled with other factors beyond his bis control our dream mission had bad come to the end of the line during the fourteen days in karachi when we had been waiting for colons colonel haynes it had been a difficult job of finesse to hang on to the ships all ali twelve of the B 17 were med lined up to be turned over to base units on the field but the personnel responsible for the conflicting orders had reckoned without the extreme loyalty of the volunteer crewmen to the flight commander and the pilot of each ship the men stood guard twenty four hours a day in and around the bombers this was logical too because each ship contained not only the secret bombsight bomb sight but full complements of loaded fatty calibre guns as well as the personal effects of the bomber crews crew at first the crews appeared bewildered but then their attitude seemed to imply stubbornly that they had been ordered to attack japanese territory and no matter if bataan arz all of eastern china tell fell what they were going to do one day the general in charge ot of the air base sent a crew down to my ship with orders for them to take over and search out a japanese task force far out in the arabian sea they were met with the ready tommy guris guns of my men and roughly told that no DO one except members of the crew could get aboard A major in the new crew showed his bis orders my crew chief replied im sorry sirl buti have mine too we are on our way to bomb an enemy objective no one gets aboard this ship except the regular crew TO 10 BE CONTINUED |