Show ago lil M N 9 ME iu Y 77 WHITE TJ THE STORY THUS FAR aleut col frank kurtz pilot of a flying fortress tress tells of that fatal day when the japs struck in the philippines eight debt ol of his men were killed while fleeing tor for shelter and old 99 with many other forts was demolished on the ground after escaping to australia what JS Is left of the squadron flies to java where they go on 0 n many missions over the he philippines T the he japs learn the a and n d the java sea weakness of the E mod model el fortress but the boys stick a 50 caliber gun in the navigators compartment kurtz senses be Is being watched in java and one night wakens at the glare of a flashlight the hand that held it also held a dagger the would be assassin gets away CHAPTER we dreamed and prayed for this and as a matter of fact the navy did make an attempt an aircraft tender was loaded with P and started out from australia but what happened was just what was feared those P were in crates stacked high on her decks so she had to come clear in through skies the jap bombers ruled she went down with her entire crew and those crated P forty miles off the southwest coast of java but im sure the navy was doing the best it could for us us with what they had the next night a navy man who had just got in from our little fleet told me what had happened to the marblehead and the houston those two beautiful cruisers which had been the nucleus of our asiatic fleet helping the dutch and australians defend java with the rest of the fleet been out in the java sea when they sighted lighted a jap recco plane overhead about noon they knew they were in for trouble they had no carrier of course which could send a fighter up to shoot it down he said the jap bombers presently came over them from their bases in borneo and the celebes our bases they had captured in three waves spaced about half an hour apart by skillful maneuvering they dodged the bombs of the first two waves but the third which c crippled rip pled them caught them just at sundown and chewed their superstructures into steel spaghetti in the darkness they were able to crawl away out of range and the marblehead eventually got back to the states but troubles of our own were looming ahead the boys in navy patrol wing 10 came in with the report that their planes on reconnaissance had sighted a force of six jap transports and five warships headed toward bali strait which divides java from bali they they were after the den passar airdrome on bali our last steppingstone stepping stone having already occupied the airfield at timor this was as maybe you now begin to see a war of airdromes aird romes clark del monte kenyari Ken dari sama rinda kaupang au all of them lost pearls in the united nations defenses and now den passar next it could only be malang agno ro and maciun all we had left on the strand all I 1 can say is the dutch and americans were ready to defend bali with what we had our little surface navies moved in that night to clip them a glancing blow on the run as done at straight and our submarines did a grand job in the moonlight the colonel sent his fortresses out and down to to paste them from the air we left two transports burning in the moonlight and a crippled cruiser next morning it was up to the air force alone because the navy was too tiny to venture out by day the forts went over of course in fact everything we had to smash at those jap transports as they poured thirty thousand troops onto the beach at bali the P were led by bud sprague himself that morning he got his commission as a lieutenant colonel he paused just before the takeoff take off to scrawl his signature on his papers but he be take time to pretty himself up in his new silver leaves I 1 guess he was satisfied to die in his old gold needed was dive bombers and about all they had was P a fighter plane which was never built as a stable platform to launch an egg from but all right there the job was to do and so bud climbed into the cockpit 64 howmann How many passes at the target are we going to make someone asked depends on how many wild hairs im sprouting when we get over her says bud with a grin and they were off he led them cold pigeon into that jap barrage over the bali beach hell back here the people dont know that boy ever did a thing out there and the other boys saw hirn him go down in orf on his run and never come up again yet his boys what I 1 are left of them still like to hope maybe he succeeded in landing on that bali beach which looks so nice in the travel folders and will turn up grinning some day telling them what a social success he was with the natives but it was pitiful we lost almost all our dive bombers there and about half our P 40 fighters of course bud and his gang made the japs pay ten to one for taking that airfield but the japs had it to pay with the japs holding that bali field they could send bombers and fighters into every corner of java we knew it was almost over but anyway the forts could now bomb our own field the japs had taken from us very convenient because we knew exactly where everything was when I 1 got back late to the hotel there was that beautiful dutch girl the one with the black hair and the pale face which was so wistfully sad in repose on only ly there were no sudden little smiles lighting it up now she was at the table where she and john robertson bov 10 1 Is 1 ar caught them just at sundown and chewed their superstructures into steel spaghetti usually sat alone when she saw me she jumped up and came running across the room had I 1 seen john she wanted to know in her pretty broken english out in the lobby they had told me john was missing hed been out on reconnaissance patrol in that lumbering slow old navy flying boat and there had been two messages from him many zeros sighted and then about a minute later a final one zeros closing in that left only three of the ones I 1 knew in gallant patrol wing 10 commander peterson bill hardy and duke campbell none of them had been able to tell her and when I 1 looked at her face I 1 found I 1 either because it was the face of someone frozen with fear in a nightmare so frozen you knew she barent move to accept the truth if you told her so I 1 too was afraid in au all the evenings that were left there were not to be many I 1 avoided that lobby because it was haunted by a ghost a pretty pale fear frozen face that came running up to you and asked with hope forced into a frightened smile if you had seen john to me the most frighten ing ghost of all the ghost of a dead love which will not die but theres something else that thai should be told only I 1 must go bad back m the me a had sent a high ground officer to sura baya on a special mission of great importance and with about a million dollars deposited to his credit in the Ja bank with this he was to buy and equip with supplies three blockade runners which would carry to corregidor ammunition medical supplies and food for or those poor devils on bataan who were still fighting on two of the ships had already left A third was almost ready to go this officer left java the tw twenty enty sixth of february the d day a y af after t er he left his assistant a young youn 9 second lieutenant called me u up p in in considerable sid erable anxiety his chi chief e f he explained pla ined had paid him the compliment of leaving him in Su in entire charge of completing the arrangements range ments nothing remained to be done except the most important thing of all the officer before leaving had been unable to find a radio operator for this last ship without one they could not start because unless the they y gave a prearranged radio signal when they approached corregidor the rocks guns would blow them to pieces could the air force possibly let them have a radio operator since the mission was a dangerous one the assistant said he would pay a man who volunteered a bonus out of the money his chief had left in the bank now asking our colonel for a radio operator was like asking him for his right arm but java was caving in the situation was tense our colonel hesitated and then said that while he order anyone on so dangerous a mission he thought even after we explained clearly what it was we could get a volunteer and we did we told the men the mission was most dangerous but of the greatest possible service to our country and out of the line stepped a clean cut alert looking kid called sergeant only after this did I 1 tell him of the five thousand dollar bonus we let ren feltz go down and look over the ship loaded with surgical equipment food drugs and three hundred thousand rounds of 30 caliber ammunition so that she was practically a floating bomb he talked to the captain a swede and looked over the negro and chinese crew there were two one for topside dressed like javanese natives so the japs might mistake her for a fishing trawler then came to me with written orders from the bomber command and I 1 told him the ports of call they were to slip out at night down the north coast of java through lombok bombok strait then along the netherlands east indies then cut up east of the celebes running the jap blockade into the philippines till they came to manila bay entrance where they would be challenged by the rock and he was to answer on the radio with the proper signal he i knew what he was getting into wed been flying over those waters for months he knew just how thick the jap surface ships were and also that they had hardly a fifty per cent chance of escaping being blown up by a jap mine just outside the breakwater why did he do it to help those poor devils in the infantry dying on bataan hed seen the cargo and then the money he told me exactly what to do with that and the message I 1 must send but well come to it later of course it was all pretty irregular paying a man for heroism maybe when peace comes somebody in a swivel chagrin cha irin washington will start writing us letters asking us why we did it and I 1 dont know what well say and then it all ended happily for us because the money was sup posed to receive for trying to do what he did was never paid but that comes later meanwhile we had other things to worry about the japs had put a little landing force ashore on a tiny island sixty miles north of Su and taken over its radio station they told us yet said the bombardier but we smelled it rumors were running all over the place that we might evacuate any time now maciun where I 1 was based was being bombed every day now wed go out on a mission and always come back to find craters in our runways when wed land immediately be another alarm and wed have to hop off the field without servicing the planes or loading more bombs also instead of going out to targets in formations we now were going singly As soon as wed get one ship on the ground long enough to get it gassed and bombed up wed take off by our little lonesome dodging zeros to pick just any target from the countless councle ss transports that were swarming off java in the last week I 1 got a light cruiser cru iser and an d a transport blew the end off the transi transport 0 rt nothing was sure except the fact that all those jap ships moving toward java pleasure yachts and that we have any reception committee to meet them on what turned out to be my last day I 1 got my plane loaded with bombs and took off headed for a huge convoy wed heard was coming down toward us from borneo we met it halfway the plane ahead of us was already pasting it when we arrived we came in at watching this first ship plunking direct hits on two parallel strings ot of transports seventeen in each string thirty four in all with fifteen or twenty naval craft circling them TO BE CONTINUED |