Show QUEENS DIMIE y 3 r w wn t WHITE aj W THE STORY THUS FAR col frank kurtz pilot ol of a flying fortress tells of that fatal ar ds when the japs struck in the philippines eight of 0 his men were killed fleeing tor for shelter and ol 01 old 99 with many other fortresses was demolished before it could get olt off the ground after escaping to australia what Is left of the squadron flies files to java where they go out on missions over the philippines the bombardier takes up the story and tells of a flying trip to brazil egypt iraq india and java A battle in the clouds in which swarms of 0 zeros attack an E model fortress Is described and in which the zeros come out second best seven zeros are shot down CHAPTER XH weve already lost altitude waiting for the major wed boxed him in so he could stay with us and the zeros tear him to pieces and he seems to have developed engine trouble were down to feet and im the lead bombardier but now the whole plan is again altered I 1 get it over the command radio were to lay them in chains across this target so I 1 set up the bomb sight again put the cross hairs on that cruiser it is a perfect run I 1 even have time to take my eye off the sight and fire bursts at two more zeros as they attack from the front they start way out ahead to the left and a little below us now coming on in at me they cross over and up toward the center of my fuselage their guns pounding and then slip on back and dive straight down and away 1 I get one because he miscues then I 1 jam my eye back onto that bomb sight everything is riding pretty the cross hairs right where I 1 want them the bombs about ready to be released A second before the bombs leave my plane I 1 see that jap cruiser starting to turn hes figured our bomb release line to the hair hes turning toward us as I 1 watch the bombs go down by the time they arrived the cruiser is three fourths through a turn of degrees the first bombs are falling short three of them now mine come two direct hits on the cruiser the other two going over the plane back of me gets some soma direct hits my left lef wing twing mans string is barely in front of the cruiser my right wing mans string is barely behind it the damned thing seems enveloped in bombs churning the water and debris flying above the foam boy that japanese captain just turned the wrong way but now our formation swings and heads for home zeros still swarming around us and were still to protect the major who seems able to use barely enough throttle to keep her in the air after forty minutes the last zero drops away short of gas and barent chase us any further presently over the command radio robinson to skiles go ahead skiles answering radio the base at malang to have an ambulance ready we have two badly wounded men aboard we wonder who they are one is probably the tail gunner since we saw robinsons plane taking so many tracers there the other must be their radio operator or else they could have sent their own dot dash message back to base meantime our radio operator is telling malang to have the ambulance out our plane is now leading the formation major robinsons just behind us weve drifted slowly down to feet altitude protecting robinson then all of a sudden robinsons plane swoops down beneath us about 1000 feet and the incline sends it scooting on out in front of us heading a little toward the coast of borneo Is robinson going to beach her and now over the command radio skiles to robinson Is there anything wrong our pilot asks but there is no answer we watch now major robinson is making a gradual turn as though to rejoin the formation but halfway in the turn his plane starts nosing over goes into a dive goes faster straight down at the sea we watch holding our breath just before he goes in his tail elevator blows off the poor guy must have had the stick clutched back into his stomach trying to pull out of that dive and the terrible air pressure on those elevators ripped them off theres a huge splash flame a spiral of black smoke and a widening circle of yellows reds and black which is burning gas and oil on that topaz green water the second after it hits I 1 call lieutenant on the interphone my god duke I 1 said did you see thata that yes he said and then in a minute lie fie said thank god those japs see it the formation circles above the dead queen we circle until the fire dies away peering down at the widening disk of oil but there is no sign of anything else on the surface until then it seemed like nbattle a battle just a game but now I 1 feel like someone had kicked me in the guts there were guys on there id drunk with wed sat around and lied to each other id seen it happen but I 1 believe what I 1 saw it seemed like a bad dream when we landed all the crew assembled for the critique each mem ber dictating just what he had seen to the officer when I 1 was credited with three of the eight zeros we knocked down after the critique no one had much to say we were all thinking about what we saw happen wed found out our machine gun oil would freeze at high altitudes and we were figuring how bow to clean and oil the guns so they would best 0 boy that japanese captain just turned the wrong way operate up there you tell the officers from the men remember we had no maintenance crews in java we did all the work ourselves and my pilot had his coveralls on installing an extra ox oxygen agen outlet in the tail after seeing what had happened to robinsons tail gunner he figured if his tail gunner got wounded another man in the crew could go back there and they would both stay on oxygen the E of course was a big advance over the D but any new model will have little things wrong that you never find out until you take one up and fight it anyway said frank kurtz we had stopped the japanese there in strait for a while the little dutch navy helped but mostly it was american air power wed sunk quite a gang of them so the rest had to go home and lick their wounds realizing they move in on java until they had air control this meant they would have to clean us out of our advance fields in borneo and the celebes but meantime colonel eubank had ad hauled me down to the ground for a while to do a different job too many wars were going on the japanese were running a pretty good one but against them were the american air force the royal dutch air force the american dutch and australian navies all of us running wars of our own finally it was agreed that every night deliver to me in sura baya a safe hand message giving the position of every american ship in in those waters wed swap information about operations so everyone would be pulling together it was a liaison job and since id have to deal with navy men so heavy with rank and gold braid on their sleeves they looked like had their arms up to the elbows in scrambled eggs the colonel gave me a set of captains bars so I 1 could talk up to them presently I 1 was dealing with everyone the dutch and the british too d the dutch for instance were begging for help in sumatra its that long island which parallels ma laya lay a pointing down in the direction of java the japs in singapore yet but already they were we re swarming across the narrow seas from malaya trying to grab the oil refineries at Pa lembang so the colonel sent the forts we got to Pa lembang the last week in january said sergeant boone the gunner the dutch there were certainly swell to us there is a huge refinery in the town and they took us to a club sponsored by standard oil company a palace all the club members would drop around to be sure the air corps had a place for the night A dutch officer took the rear gunner and myself to his quarters hed married an american girl so he spoke good english we had on only greasy coveralls but he be took us right into his quarters all air con and mosquito proofed the native couple they had as cook and houseboy gave us the first home cooked meal wed tasted since the war the dutch officer was a fine looking big blond guy he brought out clean pajamas for us and some of his uniforms we could wear for dinner he was depressed early in january he had evacuated his wife and child to java for safety although that seems queer to say now he himself was staying behind in command of native ground troops to defend those refineries he heard from his wife you could see he was very much in love with her also that he think much of the military setup they had in sumatra so he doubted that he would ever see her again hed been back on a visit to holland just before the germans came in since then hed had only one letter from his mother smuggled out she had had a couple of german maids from over the border they made good servants for the heavy work but just before the surprise invasion been called back to germany it was the same she said all over holland so no wonder he said that the germans knew the name of every dutch officer fer in holland the morning of the invasion the gestapo would knock at the door and when the officer opened it would shoot him down in cold blood this was why he explained the dutch navy was so incapacitated for officers he was very bitter he was in wonderful physical condition been leading native troops through the jungles said his wife was high up in the java mountains and hoped she was safe 11 we came up a little later said the bombardier and by the time we got there the japs were moving into the rivers mouth just below Pa lembang the weather veather was overcast a ceiling of 2000 so we had to work down below that none of us liked it because a fort is a hell of a big easy target so close to the ground never built for that As we came in so close to the ground our radio operator called skiles on the interphone captain he said oxygen agree with me but im willing to begin chewing it any time now and I 1 broke in you can say that again captain northcott was leading the mission six planes we were and when we sighted the target he called over the command radio assigning our flight to a transport on the left it was a monster a huge maru liner which ive seen as a luxury cruise boat tied up to the san francisco docks suddenly she cut loose a hell of an antiaircraft barrage at us all coming from this one transport a regular fourth of july at three in the afternoon it was like looking down into a cone of fire with this transport at the tip and smoking red hot rivets they seemed like whizzing up at us they were rocking us around when suddenly we shuddered violently and almost went over on our back an ack ack shell had burst under one wing near the fuselage big pieces of it tore a huge hole just where the wing joins the fuselage and one embedded itself just a few inches from captain skiles we were already on our run almost at the release line and the jar had thrown out the bomb sight it was completely inoperative but id done some practice low altitude bombing at duroc back in the th states so I 1 said the hell with a bomb sight id guess at it I 1 was good and mad at the shaking ur wed got all right you 4 here they cornel comell I 1 hollered and dropped four in rapid succession they landed in a cluster about twenty five feet from the th transport the other four I 1 released relea sec more slowly wed come down te t 1000 feet now and low TO BE CONTINUED |