| Show QUEENS M a EE JU ME E U EM W wa X CO WN WHITE IT E irl c e tad e THE STORY THUS FAR col frank kurtz pilot of a flying fortress tells of that thai fatal day when the japs eight of his truck struck in the philippines men were killed while fleeing tor for shelter and old 99 with many other ports forts the ground alter after was demolished on Is left of escaping to australia what their squadron flies ales to java where they over tile the philippines missions to on many and finally defend java itself java and the U S filers tails falls to the japs evacuate evac aate to australia to carry on the war tram from there they land on broome field which Is wrecked by ja japs 5 shortly after but escape to melbourne kurtz becomes pilot of the gwoose the air force tenc rals plane CHAPTER the old bombardment group was back in business now in m north australia and beginning in april of that year we were pounding the jap base at in new britain several times a week meanwhile the philippines were tottering bataan had fallen corregidor seemed about to go and ye we were working feverishly to rescue desperately needed air force personnel from del monte field on mindanao al mueller who was now flying a transport told me of his last trip in he said the place looked so shaky he was scared even to be looking that way now it was a seventeen hundred mile flight and there was a chance that there might not be enough gas left at del monte to get him back to australia he got ri right ht over del monte field things looked quiet on the ground and he was circling wa waiting ite for the signal to come com on in in which for some reason seemed delayed circling al understand this until from australia seventeen hundred miles away crackles a radio message telling him under no circumstances to land corregidor and mindanao had surrendered to the japanese while he had been en route there he was eight hours from home base and with only a few hours gas left but luckily hed provided against this before he left hed told the navy that if the philippines caved while he was in the air and he refuel at mindanao hed beach his plane on a little jungle island and he showed it to them on the map so they could pick him up if they could get through now he headed for this island looked its beach over and set her down in the surf the rocks in a few seconds made junk of his big four motored liberator f then abc acc according to A al the days seemed like years although only five of them passed before a submarine periscope popped up in the cove and carefully scanned the horizon for jap planes before the craft surfaced to take him and his crew aboard during march the hot spot was darwin which the aussien called the coventry of australia because the japanese had come over on february nineteenth and not only flattened its little town of four thousand but on the airfield wiped out an american fighter group en route to the java war the american fighter group perched on that field which slugger pell was leading toward java had no warning until they heard the sound of the jap motors slugger wanted to save his planes if he could so instead of diving for the foxholes the japs were already strafing he tried desperately to get his boys off slugger was shot down at 50 feet while his landing gear was still retracting tr and before hed had time to drop his belly tank he tried to bail out but of course he was too low word now came through that a force of ten jap bombers and three fighters was on its way to darwin it was what squeeze had been waiting for he hit them far out at sea squeeze has a clever tactical idea which I 1 describe in detail but as the japs approached their target our patrols pulled the rest of the american fighter strength off the ground while one of our nights flights chased off the accompanying zeros the rest of the boys b were picking off jap bombers which w aich were sliding out of formation and going down trailing smoke they all had to turn off before reaching the target dump their bombs in the sea and head back for their base at ku pang on timor island one of the steppingstones stepping stones to java taken away from us but squeeze and his gang followed them out to sea and shot down every one of the ten bombers our boys returned without a man wounded or a plane scratched you know said squeeze if we dont look out were going to make the air a safe place for americans American sl and after all those months of defeat we were almost afraid to believe it but two days later the japs ap s came back from kaupang with a re real al force thirty three bombers protected by eleven fighters again we were ready it was a beautiful day the sky clear as a bell and again squeeze tore into the whole jap V formation far at sea he attacked in elements and each time he hit another mitsubishi would go spinning down in smoke or else would sag below the V with engine trouble lagging so that the next american element could pick him off we found jap bombers are lightly constructed and cant soak up much punishment from our heavy 50 caliber guns cant take the pounding our forts can meanwhile the second american flight was taking care of the eleven escorting zeros the boys had paired off I 1 mr M r f got 1 SV OF the sub surfaced to take him and his crew aboard and were whirling over and over in their squirrel cages a jap and an american to each cage while the first flight kept up the heavy cleaver work chopping into that bomber V from behind or sometimes going out ahead of it to turn and come in for a bust on its nose they were forcing it lower when peel off and come in for a pass it was fun watching both motors light up A good many jap bombers got over the target but you call it a bomb run most of their bombs went wild as always happens in a disrupted attack and many others their bombs in the desert so they could run away but those which did get over darwin ran into bofors boford ack ack fire the battery was operated by an old crete gang of aussien the toughest hombres combres in the business and the american P had pushed the jap bombers so low that the ack ack could really rip into them most of the first jap bomber flight got over darwin but only part of the second while the third jetti its bombs and ran like hell for foi you see the estimated range of a zero using belly tanks is about twelve hundred miles its five hundred and ten miles from kaupang to darwin and to go and return is a thousand and twenty miles that leaves a tiny safety margin that is more than used up if the zero has to do any fighting en route also by first hitting the japs far out at sea squeeze forced them to drop their belly tanks they cant fight while carrying them and begin using their precious wing tank gas long before they got to the target all through the australian war our fighters must have knocked off hundreds of zeros which weve never claimed we fight them until their gas is almost gone and when they finally break away and st start a rt for home they slide quietly into the sea with dry tanks those fighters at darwin are a great gang of kids and invented their own service uniform which might not pass parade inspection back here it consists ot of a long duckbilled duck billed hunters cap ally red plus a pair of white cotton shorts and nothing much else they dont like clothes because of the fire hazard cloth soaks up spurting gasoline which will drop off naked flesh they wont wear ordinary shoes this started when one 01 ol them had to bail out in the desert back of darwin and when his chute cracked open the jerk flipped his shoes off he had to walk barefoot for days over the australian desert now they wear tennis shoes or cowboy boots which wont flip off this costume includes a belt to which is attached a jungle kit on one side and a 45 on the other the 45 they keep covered with cellophane candy bar wrappers so it wont rust when general brett put buzz in charge of the moresby townsville fighters he be issue an order for buzz to stay on the ground at his desk in pursuit interceptor command headquarters at townsville but in a nice way he unofficially requested it but buzz was itching at the paper work he was a fighter not a desk man and at moresby he had new youngsters just jn in from the states their morale morald was low been having an awful time with the weather and also the japs had been coming in and shooting up the te place catching these kids in the air air and picking off too many they needed someone to show them how to handle a P 39 Aira Alra cobra against the zero both planes have their points so one day when hes up inspecting moresby he spent most of his time there without any formality buzz steps into a P 39 and leads i the them m they were all agog heard of the great wagner but they arent sure the stories of what hed done in the philippines be a myth he led twelve of them out above new guinea over the owen stanley range on a mission in the direction of the big jap base at lae from which they were returning over the ocean when they ran into a japanese trap the japs had a flight of zeros circling a spot which our boys must pass on their homeward leg buzz said it was partly his fault for not having told his gang of twelve to refrain from combat on this homeward leg because they needed all their gas to get back while the japs were freshly fueled from a nearby near by base but when the two end men on the flight saw the japs they peeled off and buzz saw hed have trouble holding the rest so he gave the signal over the phones to go on in buzz said it was a lovely battle the whole argument rolled thirty thir ty miles up the beach and then thirty miles back again like a big tumbleweed on the prairie buzz shot down three japs himself and his wing men two a total of five japs for the day we gave three planes to get them one was forced down but we lose a pilot on that flight that did the business for those green scared kids when they saw buzas gunfights gun sights trained on a zero watched his 50 caliber chewing it up right in front of them they realized it could be done and more important por tant they saw they had a leader which was all they needed to put them back in business that night sitting with me under the mosquito netting canopy wed thrown over the wing of the gwoose was the first time I 1 saw buzz really worried because when general brett found out about this what would he say buzz was worried that the general would not only request him to stay on the ground hed make it an order in writing and then the fun would be over buzz was twenty six years old and he gone up just to hang three more on his record but because he really loved it but he said in the future he thought rather than risk an order grounding him hed stay out of combat with zeros and confine his activities to developing mast high bombing attacks against transi transports orts he thought his kids should all be trained to do it and hed done a lot himself you come in low and horizontal in a pursuit and just before youre on her you release your little wing bomb so that it slaps right against the transports side at the water line then quick you pull up out of the antiaircraft fire we talked a lot that night he had a fast mind and was wa s doing a lot of sound thinking both 0 on n tactics and about our fighters he said in a way he wanted to get back home for a while id turned down dow n a ticket home ho me once and hed turned it down twice but now he had a reason for returning ta TO BE CONTINUED |
