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Show .WHITE W.N.U.TEATURE5 I saw it seemed like a bad dream. "When we landed, all the crew assembled as-sembled for the critique, each member mem-ber dictating just what he had seen to the officer. That's when I 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. hap-pen. "They told us to go to the barracks bar-racks and get some rest. But an hour later I found that the whole crew had, one by one, drifted back out to the plane cleaning guns, improving im-proving gun positions, doing things we'd suggested back in the States but no one had ever got around to doing. Throwing away those small inadequate ammunition cans, and rigging the guns so you could set a whole box of ammunition in there, figuring ways of putting more guns in the nose .50-caliber ones that really pack a punch. And cussing hell out of the bottom turret. It has remote control you look through a mirror and everything is backwards, back-wards, and you have to know exactly exact-ly where the plane is going before you can line the sights. "We'd found out our machine-gun oil would freeze at high altitudes, and we were figuring how to clean and oil the guns so they would best was a liaison job, and since I'd have to deal with Navy men so heavy with rank and gold braid on their sleeves they looked like they'd had their arms up to the elbows in scrambled eggs, the Colonel gave me a set of captain's bars, so I could talk up to them Presently I was dealing with everyone the Dutch and the British, too. "The Dutch, for instance, were begging for help in Sumatra. It's that long island which parallels Malaya, Ma-laya, pointing down in the direction of Java. The Japs weren't in Singapore Singa-pore yet, but already they were swarming across the narrow seas from Malaya trying to grab the oil refineries at Palembang. So the Colonel sent the Forts." "We got to Palembang 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. pal-ace. 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. He'd married an American girl, so he spoke good English. We had on only greasy coveralls, but he took us right into his quarters all air-conditioned and mosquito-proofed. The native couple they had as cook and houseboy gave us the first home-cooked home-cooked meal we'd tasted since the war. "The Dutch officer was a fine-looking 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, be-hind, in command of native ground troops, to defend those refineries. He hadn't heard from his wife. You could see he was very much in love with her. Also that he didn't think much of the military setup they had in Sumatra, so he doubted doubt-ed that he would ever see her again. "He'd been back on a visit to Holland Hol-land just before the Germans came in. Since then he'd had only one letter from his mother smuggled out. She had had a couple of German Ger-man maids from over the border. They made good servants for the heavy work, but just before the surprise sur-prise invasion they'd been called back to Germany. It was the same, she said, all over Holland. So no wonder, he said, that Jhe Germans knew the name of every Dutch officer offi-cer 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 whv hi THE STORY THUS KAR: Lieut. Col. Frank Kurtz, pilot of a Flying Fortress, tells of that fatal day when the Japs struck in the Philippines. Eight of his men were killed fleeing for shelter and Old 99, with many other Fortresses, was demolished before It could get off the ground. After escaping to Australia, wnat is left of the squadron flies to Java where they go out on missions over the Philippines. The bombardier takes up 4 the story and tells of a flying trip to Brazil, Egypt, Iraq, India and Java. A battle In the clouds In whlcb swarms of Zeros attack an E model Fortress Is described, and In which the Zeros come out second best. Seven Zeros are hot down. CHAPTER XII "We've already lost altitude waiting wait-ing for the Major (we'd boxed him in so he could stay with us and the Zeros wouldn't tear him to pieces), and he seems to have developed engine en-gine trouble. We're down to 23,000 feet. And I'm the lead bombardier. "But now the whole plan is again altered: I get it over the command radio. We're to lay them in chains across this target. So I set up the bomb sight again, put the cross hairs on that cruiser. "It is a perfect run. I 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. "I get one because he miscues. "Then I jam my eye back onto that bomb sight. Everything is riding rid-ing pretty the cross hairs right where I want them, the bombs about ready to be released. "A second before the bombs leave my plane, I see that Jap cruiser starting to turn (he's figured our bomb-release line to the hair). He's turning toward us as I watch the bombs go down. By the time they' arrived, the cruiser is three-fourths through a turn of 180 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 direct hits. My left wing man's string is barely in front of the cruiser, my right wing man's string is barely behind it the damned thing seems enveloped in bombs churning the water, and debris de-bris 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 we're still losing altitude to stay back to protect pro-tect the Major, who seems able to use barely enough throttle to keep her in the air. After forty minutes Boy, that Japanese captain just turned the wrong way. operate up there. You couldn't tell the officers from the men (remember, (remem-ber, we had no maintenance crews in Java; we did all the work ourselves) our-selves) and my pilot had his coveralls cover-alls on, mstalling an extra oxygen outlet In the tail. After seeing what had happened to Robinson's tail gunner, gun-ner, 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 ad-vance 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. "All through Java we did it all ourselves the officers right along with us, helping load bombs and checking valves. We flew in weather weath-er out there you wouldn't drive out to the airport in back here. But the Japs were flying it too; they'd come in strafing and we'd have to jerk our old mutts off the ground quick." "Anyway," said Frank Kurtz, "we had stopped the Japanese there in Macassar Strait for a while. The little Dutch Navy helped, but mostly it was American air power. We'd sunk quite a gang of them, so the rest had to go home and lick their wounds, realizing they couldn't 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. It wouldn't be hard, for the Dutch had no troops to speak of on these islands. is-lands. Everything had had to be withdrawn to hold Java. But it took time for the Japs to take over our little advance bases at Samarin-da Samarin-da and Kendari, and being new to war, we foolishly thought Time was on our side. We were thinking of those thousand planes. We hadn't learned that Time in war is a treacherous ally who fa'ors anyone who will use him. "But meantime Colonel Eubank had 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 they'd deliver to me In Surabaya Sura-baya a siife-hand message, giving the position of every American ship in those waters. We'd swap information infor-mation about operat:ons. so everyone every-one would he pulling together. It j explained, the Dutch Navy was so incapacitated for officers. He was very bitter. He was in wonderful physical condition been leading native na-tive troops through the jungles. Said his wife was high up in the Java mountains and hoped she was safe. Next morning we left on a mission and never saw him again.", "We came up a little later," said the Bombardier, "and by the time we got there, the Japs were moving into the river's mouth, just below Palembang. The weather was over-east over-east a ceiling of 2,000, 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 doesn't agree with me, but I'm willing will-ing to begin chewing it any time now,' and I 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 as-signing our flight to a transport on the left. "It was a monster, a huge Maru liner which I've seen as a luxury cruise boat tied up to the San Francisco Fran-cisco docks. Suddenly she cut loose a hell of an antiaircraft barrage at us, all coming from this one transport trans-port a regular Fourth of July at three o'clock 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 em-bedded itself just a few inches from Captain Skiles. "We were already on our run, almost al-most at the release line, and the jar had thrown out the bomb sight it was completely inoperative. But I'd done some practice low-altitude bombing at Muroc back in the States, so I said the hell with a bomb sight I'd 'guess at it. I was good and mad at the shaking-up we'd got. -AU right, you xxx xxx xxx, here they come!' I ' hollered, and dropped four in rapid succession. They landed in a cius- 1 ter about twenty-five feet from the I transport. The other four I released J more slowly. We'd come down to ; 1,000 feet now. and that's low. (TO BE CON'TI.NL'ED) I the last Zero drops away; they're hart of gas and daren't chase us any further. "Presently, over the command radio: ra-dio: " '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 Robinson's 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 ambu-lance out. Our plane is now leading the formation. Major Robinson's just behind us. We've drifted slowly down to 4,000 feet altitude, protecting protect-ing Robinson. Then, all of a sudden, sud-den, Robinson's plane swoops down beneath us about 1,000 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 mak-ing mak-ing 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 be-fore he goes In, his tail elevator blows oft. 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. There's a huge splash flame a spiral spi-ral 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 call Lieutenant Duphrane on the interphone. inter-phone. " 'My God, Duke,' I said, 'did you see that?' " 'Yes,' he said. And then in a minute he said, "Thank God those Japs didn't see it.' "The formation circles above the dead Queen. We circle until the fire dies away, peering down at the widening wid-ening disk of oil. But there is no sign of anything else on the surface. "Until then it hadn't seemed like a battle just a game. But now I feel like someone had kicked me in the guts. There were guys on there I'd drunk with. We'd sat around and lied to each other. I'd seen it happen but I couldn't believe what |