Show is X col robert escoff W RELEASE RU SASH the story thus lar far mier after graduating from w west est Po point Intas ai a second lieutenant robert ober I 1 scott wins his wings at keuy field alaid and nd takes up pursuit flying when the war breaks out he is I 1 an inspru instructor la in california calif 0 enla and told he ls Is too old for or combat flying g lie ile appeals to several leveral generals general for a chance to fly a combat plans plane and finally the opportunity comei ife he filesa aclei a bomber to india where he becomes a terry ferry pilot but this does not appeal to him ile he visits visit general chen nanct an and to tg promised a and when rhen he be feti els it hi he becomes it a one man air aft f force ace over burma doing much tamage damace to the japs on many a lone mission one lay day he gets eti orders to report to t gen chennault in Kun dunming ming CHAPTER XV these were led by five ot of the best men of the and there was one rest reat ace ln i the nt hole heh that only the general and the could have arranged two squadrons of 0 these flying tigers had agreed to stay behind tor for a two weeks period to help the newly formed d fighter group I 1 think this gesture by those men such as bob neal charley bond george T burgard frank lawlor john E jim how md ird and others who were suffering from rom combat fatigue and ill health was one of the bravest and most selesa self sacrificing incidents ot of this war in the two weeks that they remained two of them gave their lives ind and their sacrifice was beyond the call of mere duty these men with those five who stayed with us to lead our squadrons hill rector bright and sawyer and the radio engineering armament and ground personnel were our backbone and our inspiration we of the fighter group salute you that fourth ot of july as the overconfident enemy ships came in over they brought a new twin engine fighter that was supposed to murder us they came in doing arrogant acrobatics expecting to strafe the chinese civil civilians lans to in the city without opposition general chennault watched them with field eld glasses classes from outside the cave and called directions to bob neal ed rector and tex hill who were sitting with their ships in the sun high overhead at twenty one thousand at Us his radio order of take em the newly formed with the attached dropped down and massacred the japs there were soon thirteen wrecked zeros and new twin I around the field lor the chinese to celebrate over thus was the fighter grou group P organized and activated in combat when I 1 took over things thing at dunming there were three fighter squadrons and one headquarters headquarter squadron major tex hill had on one squadron at hengkang Heng yang china and with him were such deputy leaders as maj gil bright maj johnny auson alison and capt ajax baumler maj ed rector had another squadron at kjellin with capt charlie sawyer tor for his assistant to in leadership these outlying stations are about five hundred miles in the direction of japan from our headquarters on the plateau of cunnan at dunming Kun ming the third unit was the squadron under maj frank who was very busy training the most junior members of this new fighter group in the way of fighter aviation I 1 got the group headquarters to running and stood by for or orders to begin leading the fighter forces in action to the east on july 10 tex HUI hill led a small flight including baumler auson alison lee minor and ellas elias up on the yingtse Yang tse their prime job was to escort a few B 25 medium bombers against the docks of bankow this objective of mission with our china force was never all we considered to be the duty tors of our fighters fili for if any other target preen presented t ed itself after the bombers bombera were on the way home wed have some fun tex hill led his flight along with the bombers who were led by col C V haynes after the bombs had been released and the B were heading back for base with their bomb bay doors closed tex called for an attack by the fighters on the enemy shipping in the river one of the bomber pilots said that I 1 tex rolled his ship over from sixteen thousand feet and streaked down for the jap gunboats gun boats below the little gunboats gun boats were shooting everything they had at the american fighters but that ive learned since was what hill liked tex bius guns were firing even ss as he be pulled out right on the water and they hey swept the decks of the enemy gunboats gun gurn boats the bomber pilot said that as the fighter ships would turn low to the water and come in each concentrating on one ot of the little jap warships he could see the six lines of fifty calibre tracers cutting across the water at long range ranga they seemed to meet out to in front of the fighter and then fan out and cover the derk deck of the target birget then as the speed of the fighter narrowed the range the point where the fire I 1 crossed cross edthe the zero or convergence point of the guns was right at the waterline of the jap boat and it must have knocked to in a hole that trip crippled pled the boat right away on the second attack one of these gun coats boats was sinking and on fire hills four fighters sank all tour four of the little litile metal gunboats gun boats next day on another flight such As ahli brie one hill led eight fighters four our with wing bombs for dive bombing hanchang Nan chang while these foai our went down with their bombs hill was to stay aloft with the other four our to act as top cover just in case 18 some ome zeros tried to surprise the dive bombers ajax baumler said that he saw the whole thing johnny dove for or his t target a aget one of the gunboats gun boats on the lake but as his bomb hit the boat the P 40 was seen to explode evidently hit by ground fire ajax followed the burning ship almost to the ground and saw it strike in a rice paddy near a buddhist temple so one ot of the who had stayed for the extra two weeks was W as killed in action its peculiar how a man could fight all through those last nine months and then go down from a lucky antiaircraft anti aircraft shot john had remained for or the purpose of training the new pilots and his job was that of airdrome defense he was killed on this offensive mission it was one that he could have refused with honor instead he had volunteered tor for this dive bombing flight and had been killed in carrying it out it was the most inspiring thing he cou could id have done I 1 kept sweating out the organization of the group and finally on july 17 1 I received orders from the general to proceed to kjellin area and take charge of fighter operations I 1 know my heart nearly beat my ribs to pieces tor for I 1 was at last being ordered to go out and lead the fighting just as I 1 landed on this airdrome in the Kwan sl province a I 1 saw the remainder of the get e q major ed rector ace and squadron commanding of officer fleer who took heavy toll of the japs into a transport to begin their long trip home to the U S A they imey called to me as they got aboard and I 1 saw bob neal their greatest ace wave wava from the door as he stepped in we were on our own now except for the five veterans who had accepted induction induction in china and the thirty odd ground men As the transport got away and the dust settled down I 1 climbed out of my fighter and looked around at the country I 1 could but marvel at the geographical situation colonel cooper and I 1 cooper had been in the movie production business used to discuss the peculiar beauty of the place and held hed say that it would make the greatest location in the world for a moving picture it was a flat tableland country and over the ages it must have been under water from the level plain rose vertical rocky hills like stalagmites mites these were honeycombed with eaves caves where water when they were submerged must have dissolved the limestone that had been in the pockets eviden evidently aly the glacier period had planed th the a valley flat fiat as the glacier moved south but the jagged rocks had withstood the pressure then as the glacier melted the caves had formed under water now the gray pinnacles of lava like rock pointed straight towards the heavens these one thousand to two thousand toot foot sentinels gave the valley an aery appearance pe arance that always subdued my general feeling of cheerfulness As long as I 1 went to kjellin Kw ellin I 1 dreaded the extra nervous tension that I 1 knew it would produce add to this a summer temperature of over degrees a humidity of almost per cent and a fine powdery dust that gagged you and you can realize that kieft was not a summer resort there w was as just the single r runway way tor for the planes cut there ther between a een those silent needles of sto stone a we had fiad operations office in one ne of the natural caves and the radio set et in another As I 1 climbed out of my I 1 could see neither here in kjellin I 1 first had explained to me the air raid warning system on which we depended it was of course a working dream that general chennault had bad developed many times it has saved our fighter force in china and without it our chances there against the japanese would have been hopeless it seems that the general had always known that japan was our natural enemy when he was retired from rom the air corps instead of staying on his farm in waterproof louisiana tor for the rest of his life and living an easy life shooting ducks and fishing he had gone to china here la in a rugged exist ence he had told his story to the generalissimo with the approval of high chinese officials he had built this air warning net had caused to be constructed many strategic air bromes in china and had preached the doctrine doc trina of pursuit aviation the warning net Is of 0 course se secret and cannot be discussed in detail but it if you imagine two concentric circles one with a radius of 0 one hundred kilometers and the other of two hundred kilometers around each of most ot of the fields and large cities in free china you have a general pic picture tuie in these circles are thousands ot of reporting stations some within the enemy lines some right on the enemy fields them selves there may be a coolie sitting on a city wall watching for or airplanes or listening for or engine noise and reporting it with a visual signal there may be a mandarin ln in a watch tower a soldier in a field with a walkie talkie radio all reports finally get in to the outer circle where some of 0 thi the information Is and finally it goes to the plot ting board in our cave or operations shack there chinese interpreters get the reports and move little pin flags along the map ot of china and we know where every enemy ship is in our territory and can see where ours are the net works so efficiently in certain areas that we dont take off until the japs are within the one hundred kilometer circle this gives us more fuel with which to fight when the japs come we know at what hat altitude they are approaching and from exactly what direction we know their speed and their numbers its kind of a joke too that in several places we know when the japanese roll their ships from their hangars or revetments when they start their engines and when they take off 03 also it not only works tor for the obvious purpose ot of defense but has permitted us in many cases t to 0 locate lost pilots tor for the navigation n facilities in china are not the worlds best of course the loc locating ting of lost friendly ships took another element besides the warning net it required the existence of intelligent radio operators who knew the country and had common sense these men like richardson miller and sasser with others stayed out there with us and if you count the aces as the first factor that permitted us to carry on in a manner that discredit the flying tigers then these men who helped us by radio were the close second factor suppose that one of our pilots returning from a flight loses his po position si on his bis map because of a cross wind because of unfamiliarity with the country because of his own s stupidity fill which we call a short c circuit ir between the headphones head phones or just because the maps of china are very inaccurate in many such instances we would have lost an airplane worth virtually millions in our combat zone and perhaps the pilot too the pilot who Is lost calls the radio station that he thinks is closest to him and in code tells the trouble the radioman rad loman tells him to circle the next town he be passes tor for a few minutes down in that town marked on his bis map with an unknown chinese character some member of this warning net sees him and reports one P 40 circling in a few minutes the radio operator gets the report and tells the pilot youre reported over yufeng fly fifty eight degrees at two hundred miles an ho hour and well have supper ready weve got grits tonight yeah one amusing but near tragic instance of this orientation by means ot of the air warning net happened a bout about the time the induction board came to china another fighter group commander had waited tor for several days over in india to come into china with a large flight of P ill he finally came over on a transport and eventually got tired of waiting lor for the fighters he know that the weather was very bad in burma and that the monsoon on winds from the south could SO take ake them so tar far off course in a few minutes that the entire flight might easily get lost after a long wait he came back to assam in the transport and led his pilots towards dunming Kun ming first of all he be corrected too much tor for the southerly wind and in a very short time he be was fifty miles south of his course and near two japanese fields his deputy uy I 1 leaders ea d herded him to the north and then the monsoon wind from out the indian ocean began to work on hi his na navigation v and in another hour he b was lost far to the north of the course night was falling failing and the hills of north china were rising threateningly then the net it it justified its existence long before would have begun to pay for itself the leader called Kun dunming ming and the operator there a tough old former navy man heard him and gave the instructions circle the first town you see the group commander began to argue at once said he be have enough gas to waste circling but the radioman radio man talked him into doing it then the net reported e d and dunming operator said youre over yangpil fly degrees for or twenty minutes and ymer you see the lake dunming Is on TO ITO |