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Show .WHITE W.N.U.TEATUftEJ rest of the American fighter strength off the ground. While one of our flights chased oft the accompanying Zeros, the rest of the boys were picking off Jap bombers, which were sliding out of formation and going down trailing smoke. They all had to turn off before reaching the target, tar-get, dump their bombs in the sea, and head back for their base at Ku-pang Ku-pang on Timor Island one of the steppingstones to Java they'd 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 with-out a man wounded or a plane scratched. " 'You know,' said Squeeze, 'if we don't look out, we're going to make the air a safe place for Americans!' "And after all those months of defeat, we were almost afraid to believe it. But two days later the Japs came back from Kupang with a real 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 at-tacked 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 light-ly constructed, and can't soak up much punishment from our heavy .50-caliber guns can't take the pounding our Forts can. Meanwhile the second American flight was taking tak-ing care of the eleven escorting Zeros. The boys had paired eff THE STORY THUS FAR: Lieut. Col. Prank Kurtz, pilot of a Flying Fortress, tela of that fatal day when the Jam truck In the Philippines. Eight of nil men were killed while fleeing for inciter, inci-ter, and Old 99, with many other Fortj, wal demolished on the ground. After escaping to Australia, what li left of their tquadron fliei to Java, where they to on many missions over the Philippines, Philip-pines, and finally defend Java Itself. Java tails to the Japs and the V. 8. fliers evacuate to Australia o carry on the war from there. They land on Broome field, which Is wrecked by Japs shortly aiter, but escape to Melbourne. Kurtz becomes pilot of "The Swoose," the air force general's plane. ( CHAPTER XXI "In Australia, the Air Force had to build from the ground up. Before Be-fore General MacArthur arrived from the Philippines we had located and were building our advance and supply bases all over North Australia Austra-lia from Darwin to Townsville. American engineers were pouring In, and General Brett put them to work. We were also improving Moresby, our problem child, and the Air Force staff had laid down its strategical plan for clearing Australia's Austra-lia's northeast shoulder of the threat of Jap air power so that when we had the necessary men and equipment, equip-ment, we could head back into the Philippines. "The old 19th Bombardment Group was back in business now in North Australia, and beginning in April of that year we were pounding pound-ing the Jap base at Rabaul in New Britain several times a week. "Meanwhile the Philippines were tottering. Bataan had fallen; Cor-regidor Cor-regidor seemed about to go; and we were working feverishly to rescue desperately needed Air Force personnel per-sonnel from Del Monte Field on Mindanao. Min-danao. 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 sev- nteen - hundred - mile flight, and there was a chance that there might not be enough gas left at Del Monte to get him ack to Australia. But the pilots, navigators, and ground ; crews still on Mindanao were worth their weight in gold to us, so Al started start-ed out. "He got right over Del Monte Field. Things looked quiet on the ground, and he was circling, waiting wait-ing for the signal to come on in, which for some reason seemed delayed. de-layed. Circling, A couldn't understand under-stand this until from Australia, seventeen sev-enteen hundred miles away, crack- les a radio message telling him under un-der no circumstances to land. Cor-regidor Cor-regidor and Mindanao had surrendered surren-dered 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 he'd provided pro-vided against this before he left. He'd told the Navy that if the Philippines Philip-pines caved while he was in the air and he couldn't refuel at Mindanao, he'd beach his plane on a little jungle jun-gle island, and he showed it to them on the map, so they could pick him up if they could get through. 6 rV- "All through the Australian war our fighters must have knocked off hundreds of Zeros which we've never nev-er claimed. We fight them until their gas is almost gone, and when they finally break away and start for home, they slide quietly into the sea with dry tanks. "Those fighters at Darwin are a great gang of kids, and they've invented in-vented their own service uniform, which might not pass parade inspection inspec-tion back here. It consists , of a long duck-billed hunter's cap, usually usu-ally red, plus a pair of white cotton ' shorts and nothing much else. They j don't like clothes because of the fire hazard cloth soaks up spurting gasoline, which will drop off naked flesh. They won't wear ordinary shoes. This started when one of them had to bail out in the desert back of Darwin and when his chute cracked open, the jerk nipped his shoes off. He had to walk barefoot for days. over the Australian desert. Now they wear tennis shoes or cowboy cow-boy boots, which won't 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 won't rust They look more like pirates than pilots, and so did the ones at Moresby. Mores-by. "When General Brett put Buzz in charge of the Moresby-Townsville fighters, he didn't Issue an order for Buzz to stay on the ground at his desk In Pursuit Interceptor Command Com-mand Headquarters at Townsville, but in a nice way he unofficially requested re-quested it "But Buzz was itching at the paper pa-per work. He was a fighter, not a desk man. And at Moresby he had new youngsters just in from the States. Their ' morale was low. They'd been having an awful time with the weather, and also the Japs had been coming in and shooting up the place, catching these kids in the air and picking off too many. They needed someone to show them how to handle a P-3S Airacobra against the Zero both planes have their points. "So one day when he's up 'inspecting' 'inspect-ing' Moresby he spent most of his time there without any formality Buzz steps into a P-39 and leads them. They were all agog. They've heard of the Great Wagner, but they aren't sure the stories of what he'd done in the Philippines mightn't 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 Japa-nese 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 home-ward leg, because they needed al their gas to get back, while the Japs were freshly fueled from a near-by base. "But when the two end men on the flight saw the Japs, they peeled off, and Buzz saw he'd have trouble holding the rest, se he gave the signal over the phones to go on in. Buzz said it was a lovely battle the whole argument rolled thirty miles up the beach and then thirty miles back again, like a big tumble-weed tumble-weed 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 te get them (one was forced down gasless), but we didn't lose a pilot on that flight "That did the business for those green, scared kids. When they saw Buzz'g gunsights trained on a Zero, watched his .50-caliber chewing It up right In front of them, they realized real-ized it could be done, and, more Important, Im-portant, 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 we'd thrown over the wing of the Swoose, was the first time I 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 re-quest him to stay on the ground, he'd make it an order In writing, and then the fun would be over. "Buzz was twenty-six years old, and he hadn't gone up just to hang three more on his record, but because be-cause he really loved it. But he said in the future he thought rather than risk an order grounding him, he'd stay out of combat with Zeros and confine his activities to developing develop-ing mast - high bombing attacks against transports. He thought his kids should all be trained to do it and he'd done a lot himself. You come in low and horizontal in a pursuit pur-suit and just before you're on her you release your little wing bomb so that it slaps right against the transport's 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 doing a lot of sound thinking both on tactics and about our fighters. He said in a way he wanted to get back home for a while. I'd turned down a ticket home once, and he'd turned it down twice, but now he had a reason for returning. (TO BE CONTINUED) 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, er sometimes some-times going out ahead ef it U turn and come in for a bust on its nose. They were forcing it lower when they'd peel off and come in for a pass, it was fun watching both motors mo-tors light up. "A good many Jap bombers got over the target but you couldn't call it a bomb run. Most f their bombs went wild, as always happens hap-pens in a disrupted attack, and many others salvoed their bombs in the desert so they could run away. But those which did get over Darwin Dar-win ran into Bofors ack-ack fire. The battery was operated by an old Crete gang of Aussies the toughest tough-est hombres in the business and the American P-40's had pushed the Jap bombers so low that the ack-ack could really rip into them. They were between that cleaver in the air and a buzz saw on the ground. Two or three Jap bombers dribbled right down onto the field, whole wings shot off or else blown into confetti. con-fetti. The Japs tried to use their chutes from the burning bombers which should explode the fairy tale that Japs are too fanatical to use chutes yet even they caught fire. "Most of the first Jap bomber flight got over Darwin, but only part of the second, while the third jettisoned jetti-soned its bombs and ran like hell for Kupang. "You see the estimated range of a Zero using belly tanks is about twelve hundred miles. It's five hundred hun-dred and ten miles from Kupang 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 can't fight while carrying them and begin be-gin using their precious wing-tank gas long before they got to the tar- get "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. "Then, according to Al, the days seemed like years, although only five of them passed before a submarine sub-marine periscope popped up in the cove and carefully scanned the horizon hori-zon for Jap planes before the craft surfaced to take him and his crew aboard. "During March the hot spot was Darwin, which the Aussies called the Coventry of Australia because the Japanese had come over on February Feb-ruary nineteenth and not only flattened flat-tened its little town of four thousand but on the airfield wiped out an American fighter group en route to the Java war. "At that time it was only a little Australian field with almost no antiaircraft anti-aircraft The RAAF boys were good lads, trying hard but getting nowhere, no-where, lacking both training and equipment "The American fighter group perched on that field, which 'Slugger' 'Slug-ger' 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, re-tracting, and before he'd had time to drop his belly tank. He tried to bail out, but of course he was too low. A previous squadron had actually ac-tually managed to get into the air, but Slugger's were all either shot down on the take-oft or killed in their cockpits before they cleared the runway, run-way, or else strafed and set afire while they were taxiing into position. posi-tion. It had been a field day for the Zeros. "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 wait-ing for. He hit them far out at sea. Squeeze has a clever tactical idea which I shouldn't describe in detail. But as the Japs approached their targeV our patrols pulled the |