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Show FEOU1LY -CI3 .WHITE W.N.U.TEATURES THE STORY THUS FAR: Lieut. Col. Frank Kurtz, pilot of the Flying Fortress, "The Swoose," tells of that fatal day when the Japs struck in the Philippines, kllllns eight of his men and demolishing demolish-ing Old 99, with many other Forts, before be-fore It could get off the ground. After escaping to Australia, what Is left of the 19th Bombardment Group flies to Java, where they help defend the Island until It falls. V. S. fliers evacuate to Australia Aus-tralia to carry on the war from there." The 19th Bombardment Group is back In business again, and Kurtz once more flies "The Swoose." Buzz Wagner, hero of the Philippines, who has a desk Job in Australia, steps into a P-39 and shows nls boys how to nip the Nips. CHAPTER XXII " "Because the real truth is,' he said, 'our present Army fighters don't climb fast enough, or high enough and they don't have the range. Every Jap knows this, if the people back home don'.t. Maybe it would hurt their morale to find it out, but I'm only thinking of the morale of my pilots.' That's why he wanted to come home. Poor guy." "Meanwhile Florida played on in the sunshine," said Margo, "and I was trying to write letters to some of the other girls we knew whose husbands would never come back. Some of the letters I wanted to write I couldn't. For a while I had been on exhibition because my husband was supposed to be dead in Java, and they'd look at me and groan with patriotic sympathy, and then get to work planning the next golf tournament. I'd look at those strong, healthy young golf professionals, pro-fessionals, coaching flabby men on the putting greens, and wonder why they weren't in uniform. Only that was the wrong attitude; they'd tell you we need recreation now, more than ever, to keep our morale up during the war. I suppose it was true, but I kept wishing the weary boys in uniform I knew could be getting mor,e of it, instead of these stagnant, contented men." "There were some more names to be added to that list of letters," said Frank, "But with us the feeling had changed. It was wonderful to be able at last to smash them back, as 'the fighters had done at Darwin. And from its base in North Australia, Austra-lia, the old 19th Bombardment Group which included the 7th now was flying out over New Guinea and New Britain islands, landing heavy punches on them at Lae and Sala-maua, Sala-maua, and at Rabaul. "Now the Jap lines of communication communica-tion were as far extended as ours ttad been; now we had something like the equipment they had put against us. We knew, of course, Ihey were busy digesting Java and the Philippines. But we felt now :hey could never knock us back on our heels again, because we were getting solidly dug in so we could soak up their punches and put out a i few of our own. It was a nice feel- Ijng. "Also the Japs were getting a healthy respect for the E-model Forts. "Not long after the Olympics, I heard Kobi Ishi had entered the Jap Air Force. After that I thought of them all as Kobi Ishi, a pretty good diver with some fair tricks and a toothy smile, but nothing you can't handle if you train for it. Maybe they're all fanatics, craving to die for the Emperor, but I remember a story the 19th told me in Australia. "Six of our Forts were coming in over Rabaul to give the Japs a pasting when one lone Zero showed Hp. The six Forts were all brand-new brand-new E models, and the Japs had learned about them. The Forts continued con-tinued in formation, but keeping their guns trained on the Zero. Now most fighter pilots, whether they're American, Jap, or German, are nervous and quick like fox terriers. There's no gap between thinking and acting, so you can almost watch a fighter plane and read its pilot's mind. That's how it was with this little Jap. He starts in, thinking here's a chance to pick off a Fort, and then suddenly he sees all those guns and thinks how sweet and cute his little almond-eyed geisha is back home, and how nice it would be to get back to her, so about half a mile away he pulls out in a turn, out of range, and continues parallel with the six Forts, thinking it over. Well, the little geisha finally wins out over the Emperor, because he doesn't go in, but he thumbs his nose at them in his way: flying alongside, with all of our gang watching, he starts doing Immelmann turns. It's a half-loop, which brings you out upside down only flying backward, quickly followed by a half-roll, which turns you right sidfc up again. And it's one of the hardest tricks in the iDOok if done properly beautiful flying, the boys said, and he kept doing it over and over, just out of range, as much as to say, 'Boys, I'm not coming in, but don't think I can't fly.' Kept it up for fifteen minutes in his latest-model supercharged super-charged Zero, and just as he flipped off into a cloud, our gang waved their applause for the flying circus, and he gave them the high sign back. To me he was Kobi Ishi. I'd like to meet him after the war. "In early April Port Moresby' on New Guinea was our problem child. Our air base there was a single jun-glc-hewn landing strip with no ade-rmte ade-rmte Antiaircraft guns. We were I building dispersal fields, but they weren't done yet, so that the aircraft had to be lined up along the side of that gravel runway and of course were slow in getting off, which made it a setup for the Japs. Also, our equipment was flown by green youngsters from the States. The big problem was supply. Moresby is as far from Melbourne as Los Angeles Ange-les is from Pittsburgh. Then at every ev-ery state line the Australian railroad changes gauges, so a1 the freight cars had to be unloaded. We had about a dozen B-24's to bring supplies sup-plies in over the water from the end of the railroad at Townsville, but only about four of these were operational; the rest were under repair. "And the Japs were still a nuisance nui-sance at Moresby dropping down from the overcast to strafe our field at 40 feet altitude. We spent a lot of our time there, and had some close calls getting out to save the Swoose." "I'll never forget our closest one," said Master Sergeant 'Red' Varner, WW i The cannibal head hunters who lived in the jungle used to stalk the tame village natives. the Swoose's crew chief. "We got just a minute and a half's notice that the Japs were coming. Now the General could have stepped down into a foxhole and been perfectly per-fectly safe there, watching the Japs pound the field. But not our General Gen-eral he wanted to save that plane, and we had to run like hell to jump in, the General leading everybody, slam the doors, and lam out of there. We had to take off down wind, which was bad, missing a little hill by a lot less than 100 feet. We wouldn't have missed it if it hadn't been for those smart trees they have on New Guinea growing on top of that hill the most intelligent ones I've ever seen. Because they saw us coming and ducked. I happened to be looking out and saw them. Then I looked back, and bombs were already breaking on the field right in the dust of our take-oft. "The Colonel here, who of course was doing the piloting, pulled a smart one. The Japs were right on top of us, so he hugged the ground figuring then the Zeros couldn't dive on us without mashing mash-ing their own propellers into the bush. We went hell for breakfast, wiggling in and out of gullies hardly 40 feet off the ground, and then out over the sea, where we could see a cloud cover to hide in. We had all kinds of rank aboard that day Australian Air Force generals ' and other visiting firemen and some of them weren't used to scuttling through gullies in a four-motor plane, and by the time we got into that cloud they were sprouting some gray hairs." "By May, though," said Frank, "we began to get the situation in hand at Moresby. We got some dispersal dis-persal fields back in the hills for our planes and an operational alarm net so now we can intercept, and also the Zeros run into an intense cross-fire from the ground which sends them trailing off across the jungle on fire. So presently strafing straf-ing is out, and we have only regular raids by high-altitude Jap bombers pounding the field. Our fighters are getting better every day, and pretty soon they're chasing them out over the coast, jettisoning their bombs, which whistle down harmlessly to tear up empty jungles. "For a while we had a labor problem. prob-lem. The tame village natives we'd hired to work on the field didn't like the bombs, and when the alarm sounded, instead of jumping into the ! foxholes they'd beat it into the jungle, jun-gle, and maybe not come back for a couple of days. However, this soon stopped, because the cannibal head-hunters who lived in the jungle jun-gle used to stalk them and chase them back, and as between the bomb and the head-hunters, the na- I tives, chose the bombs, so we got plenty of work done. "By now we weren't worried about Port Moresby. We had that in fair shape, and our bombers were going over almost every day to pound the Japs. - But we were uneasy un-easy about the other shore of New Guinea. The Japs had already dug in at Lae and Salamaua suppose they came on down the line and put in an airfield at Buna, right opposite Moresby? They could cause us plenty plen-ty of trouble, intercepting our bombers bomb-ers on the way out and back. "General Brett was particularly anxious, and wanted to move in and take Buna in May. There was nothing noth-ing there then but a native village and an old Catholic mission. But Melbourne said no, because it would mean landing troops to defend our airdrome there. "But the Air Force knew if the Japs ever got Buna it would take a . first-class expedition to get them out. Finally General Ralph Royce, who was General Brett's operations chief, flew out over northern New Guinea on a personal inspection of the whole coast, and sent to Melbourne Mel-bourne a detailed report, endorsing a field at Buna as vital to our future fu-ture air operations. "Presently his reply came. In reference ref-erence to his report on the establishment estab-lishment of a landing field at Buna, Melbourne headquarters commended commend-ed him for his initiative in making the reconnaissance, but found that owing to lack of facilities, it wasn't possible at this time. "But this friendly little ground-air argument over Buna was soon settled. set-tled. The third week in July our reconnaissance spotted a Jap Naval task force moving toward the north coast of New Guinea, and now just off Rabaul. We weren't sure where they were headed maybe around the island, to capture Moresby itself. "We were taking no chances, so on July 24 General Brett hit them with everything he had, little as it was medium and light bombardment. bombard-ment. Forts and obsolescent dive bombers. "But for twenty-four hours the fog closed in, hiding them. When it lifted they were sixty miles off Buna. Now we knew the Jap High Command was thinking in the same strategical terms as we were in the Air Force. "Even though the weather gave us this very short time to pound them, we made them pay for their Buna landing. But still they could sneak a transport through during the night to put troops ashore. Had we had only a little infantry and artillery at Buna, they could have held them off, giving the Air Force a chance to pound their landing barges at dawn. But we didn't have, and when morning came their transport was steaming- away empty. "In only two days the enterprising enterpris-ing little devils had chopped a landing land-ing strip out of the jungle. A few days later their fighters were rising off it to attack our bombers as they took off or returned to Moresby after aft-er pounding the Jap base at Rabaul. "It took almost six months of hard fighting by both Australian and American infantry, down over the Owen Stanley range finally led by General MacArthur himself to clear the Japanese out. What we have now is real co-operation. The ground forces know the vital importance impor-tance of airfields, and I hope we in the Air Force have come to appreciate appre-ciate the tremendous importance of the unity of air, land, and sea." "A man doesn't know what distance dis-tance means until he flies that end of the world," said Red, the crew chief. "Remember the time we had to make a forced landing right in the middle of the place?" "I'll never forget," said Charlie, the bombardier. "It was about the time of that Buna business." "We had left Darwin," said Red, "and were flying across the Australian Austra-lian desert headed for Cloncurry. We had umpty-ump rank aboard, about sixteen in all General Royce, General Perrin, General Marquat, and some Australians Air Marshals they probably were and also Lyndon Lyn-don Johnson, a big lanky guy from Texas, a real Congressman, only now he was out inspecting this area as a Navy Lieutenant Commander. "Well, we're flying along over this wilderness which looks like the rumpled rum-pled parts of New Mexico or Arizona, Arizo-na, heading, we think, for this Cloncurry, Clon-curry, only our arrival time goes by, and no Cloncurry. "Harry, the navigator, begins to check things, and discovers that his octant has gone out on him it's like a sextant on a ship, only you use an air bubble instead of the horizon. It wasn't Harry's fault the prism was turning all right, but now he could see the recorder wasn't He came up out of the navigator's compartment com-partment into the cockpit shaking his head, and told Frank here what had happened that he had no idea where the Swoose was. 'You can have her now. Major,' he says. 'She's all yours!' "Well, first the Major got our radioman ra-dioman to working, trying to wake up some Australian station which ; would give us a bearing. But I ! guess they were all asleep. Our ' gas was getting lower and lower. And the sun was sinking, too. And that country below us was all rum- pled up like someone had slept in it. i (TO BE CONTINUED) |