Show ElE lITS B WHITE 4 I 1 V I 1 up ahm 5 THE STORY THUS FAR col frank kurtz pilot of 0 the flying fortress known as the gwoose which escaped from dark clark field tells of 0 fatal day when the japs struck la in the philippines old 99 another fortress is s truck struck down before it can get off the g ground aund the ground Is uttered littered with the skeletons of V u S planes no longer sate safe to sleep in the barracks because japs are photographing dark clark field cots were moved into the middle of 0 a cornfield later they evacuate to mindanao and as they arrive japs are already putting troops ashore on the island squadron commander major gibbs goes out on a secret mission and falls alls to return harry schreiber the navigator takes up the story CHAPTER VI about an hour out of del monte shorty wheless drops out of formation we guess its engine trouble and he cant keep up this rate of climb and half an hour later pease As we come to the rend rendezvous elvous point where were due to make our turn and go straight in on our target only thirty five miles away lee coats drops out his motors we can see are weak he cant make the altitude that leaves just my pilot jack adams and to go on in alone when we thought there would be six planes we had planned to divide into two flights of three planes each the nights flights were to come in on the target at three minute intervals and at different angles there are just two planes now so jack decides hell pretend he is one flight and will play like he was the other the two of us against this big gang of jap ships we are closing in on so as agreed on we come in first flying north to south but the overcast is so thick we have to get down to about before we can see the target and there it is were glimpsing it and then losing it and glimpsing it again through breaks in the clouds a row of transports and naval craft escorting them I 1 when we come in on the target im down there in the lower jaw but now my job as navigator is temporarily over so I 1 can leave it and go back to the bomb bay where the bombs are hanging in racks on either side of a little aisle now the bomb bay doors are opened and light comes up around the bombs and now the bombs are away I 1 lean over to look down through the open bomb bay doors reeling a little woozy because my oxygen mask is back by my seat in the navigators compartment and just before jack adams adami from his pilots seat slammed those bomb bay doors closed looking down below the belly of the ship I 1 think I 1 see something but then the doors slam shut and there is only blackness so I 1 run back to the navigators compartment and boy there they are a whole gang of zeros coming up after us there were five of them after us climbing up and in on our tail our bottom gunner shot down the nearest one but the other four kept coming in a tight formation jack adams began wish washing our tail tail up and down to give our top gunners a chance at them no reason why the bottom gunner should have all the fun and sure enough the top gunner picked one out of that formation that left three so then jack pulled a cute one he throttled throttle ed back suddenly and one zero overshot us to the left which made him a clay pigeon for our side gunner who picked him off wed dribbled on down through the bottom of that cloud and jack was looking for a nice beach to set her down on but there any beach only jagged rocks with white surf wrapped around them and we kept losing altitude the hell with those so jack nosed her in toward land still losing altitude fast and then r right i ahead of us we spotted a big clump of trees about sixty feet high well there time for anything but a prayer and not any long rambling one either but jack handled the situation beautifully he pulled her nose up as high as he dared and just cleared those trees tree s and then cutting the remaining two motors so we have to climb out of her in flames he made as nice a belly landing in a rice patch as you could hope tor for within three minutes 0 of the time we crash landed in the rice paddy behind those tall trees we were surrounded by a gang of filipinos all al waving the longest sharpest knives you d want to see but pretty soon we convinced them we japanese so they all got helpful and told us we were on island because these natives wanted to honor the american off officers acers who w were ere f fighting tor for their country they brought me a donkey to ride of course to have refused would insult them and yet I 1 dream the kind of a deal I 1 was getting into the first half mile so bad and I 1 even thought I 1 was lucky I 1 walking and getting sore feet like you do in the infantry but pretty soon I 1 began to realize first just a little bit and then more and more that there are worse things than having sore feet we crashed on the fourteenth of december and on the twentieth we bought an outrigger canoe for fifty pesos apesos and hired natives to sail and paddle us to the island of panay with me get getting ting a chance to brush up on my navigating when we were about forty miles from land I 1 noticed the skipper of this craft of ours had crawled up into its nose and was peering down into the water why well he explained there were supposed to be a lot of floating japanese mines here and he thought it would be all right it if we bump any of them the next day we landed on panay and were told the american forces were all ganged banged up down at its southern end and when we got to them we reported to general chynoweth then we really were in for it because it seemed the old bombardment group had left eft mindanao for australia so they 1 0 I 1 N 4 ii 4 4 1 because these natives wanted to honor me they brought me a donkey to ride gra grabbed abbed us and attached us to a filipino field artillery regiment giving jack adams bill Ha illing and myself a battalion to command which we thought was going to be a considerable honor since we were ulli only ly lieutenants then we looked them over they were all about high school age half of them speak english and the job was to get them to understand you of course they know what to do with a rifle but this matter because we had only fifteen rounds of ammunition per man not enough for an hours target practice the field artillery part of it all consisted of the name plus six sights for old world war french 75 millimeter field guns the guns themselves had been sunk on a supply ship in manila bay the S sights had been shined up and were in prime condition we encourage V these hese kids to keep their rifles loaded being afraid that if one of the guns we went nt off in the dark they would start star t banging away and shoot each other and maybe us so we gave the them bayonet practice instead early in january they moved us over to gaygay en on mindanao island we heard all the troops from all the islands were to make a stand there but no japs they gave us a section of the beach a mile and a half long to defend if they came right behind our lines there was a small jap colony we knew they were there of course wed gone through their houses looking for radio equipment anything they might use to send information to the dabao japs and we posted a small guard around therm them but slip 0 out ut and go on down to dabao to jo join in the dabao japs and there much we could do to stop it we were e only a handful ourselves so I 1 was tickled to death when word came to go back to old del monte field where the plane placeless pla neless aviators were being assembled evacuation to australia where we would get safely back into the air again 1 I got to del monte on march thirteenth and we were all ganged banged up on the field where we were expecting B to carry officers and men to australia at 9 p m we heard the motors of a plane and turned on out our landing lights but it see them and kept on going we know it then but we have al priority for those planes that night were intended to take out general genera macarthur and his party and their baggage and records only the general yet arrived but we supposed the planes were for us about 11 p m we heard another plane and snapped the landing lights on and this time it saw them and landed out of the fortress st stepped lieutenant pease of our own bombardment group he tol told d us the other plane we had heard was goldmans God mans it had got mixed up and bumped into the sea but pease was immediately called over by general sharp who told pease that general mac macarthur AX thur had been delayed and that the plane should wait over a few days until he came now pease want to wait over for a single hour of daylight on del monte field for by that time the jap planes were swarming over the place pease knew the air force was trying desperately to hang onto what few forts they had left and he realized that if he stayed over the next the would make him quite comfortable in a foxhole at the edge of the field where he could watch his plane become the prize for a japanese turkey shoot for del monte by this time was as unsafe as dark clark had been a fact the infantry seem mohave quite grasped 41 so pease explained to sharp it would be all right with him provided general macarthur understood what he was getting into that he had a fine plane here except that it had just come from the java war and was slightly out of repair it was too bad for instance that the supercharger super chargers sr r were out but he hoped hed be able to clear the runway on the takeoff take off and not slip off into a cartwheel at the end of it spilling the generals party and all that baggage all over central mindanao and then if he did take off there was the little matter of his hydraulic system which had gone bad on him so when he came to land the brakes work and he might not be able to stop when he came to the end of the runway well general sharp decided that it certainly suitable and told pease hed better get started back to australia before dawn pease I 1 said im goin with you you dont know it but you got a new navigator for this trip because im not goin to stay in this damn place no more well pease agreed to let me work out my passage that way and also said he could take off fifteen other placeless pla neless aviators if they mind the risk now take a look at us in australia exactly forty eight hours after we arrived the australians told us radio tokyo had broadcast it is now understood the american flying fortresses are operating from batchelor field near darwin how they knew it we never learned for sure probably from jap pearl fishermen who had been thinly scattered along this australian coast and who when war broke out went back and hid in the bush the RAAF royal australian air force boys would spot their camp fires at night and try to track them down without much luck probably they had radio radi 0 senders and even a layman could count our four engines a and nd recognize us as flying fortresses the country itself is as desolate and sparsely populated as the worst parts of west texas and new mexico and the most important town for a thousand or so miles is little port darwin with seven or eight thousand people sitting there on the rim of nothing at all it has wide streets like one of those midwestern towns built in the boom of the eighties a good hotel which is sub subsidized by the qantas dantas airways and reminds you of the one on wake island a band which plays in a bandstand in the park and a zoo with a few emus kangaroos and koala bears no fresh vegetables everything imported in cans there you have darwin batchelor field was about forty miles back in the brush a and nd it consisted of a couple of runways runway hacked out of the mesquite i it t wass was hard to get tools for grading or dynamite for stumps and a hangar run by bv the RAAF la 10 BE CONTI CONTINUED NUEn |