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Show .WHITE W.N.U.TEATUREJ It was darker than the inside of a black cow, but every now and then the lightning would rip everything wide open the whole cloud around us would flame up, and you could see to read fine print in the cabin. We were like a bug in a neon tube. Then blackness would close in, and it would be a long time before your eyes could make out the little blue-pink blue-pink exhaust flame of the plane next to you. "After about an hour we had plowed through the storm, and were flying above scattered moon-flecked overcast down below us at about 4,000. "At 10:30 we were over the target, and we glided down to 3,000 feet to see what was going on. Through the hunks of clouds we could see the gun flashes of Jap warships lobbing lob-bing shells Into that poor old town. Then we would see the flash when the shells exploded. They had fires already going in several places, and of course the town had absolutely nothing to hit back with. "But clouds protected the Jap fleet, so we couldn't malte a run on just where we guessed those gun flashes were the thickest. Bombs were scarce. Orders had been if we didn't find a good target, to bring them home, so we did. We had no flares aboard to light up that harbor, har-bor, or any installation for dropping them. The old Forts were never cut out for nightwork, but of course in a -war you sometimes get into screw to lighten it and then, turning turn-ing the motors on full blast, had made a Jump take-off from that little lit-tle strip. He grabbed a sandwich and went on in to Malang. "The air-raid alarm in Surabaya was now going off regularly, sometimes some-times three times a day, because the Java Sea was stiffer than an old sock with Jap carriers. Colonel Eubank Eu-bank was now faced with a real problem. The three main bases for our Forts were at Malang, Madiun and another town which was spelled Jokyakarta, but the American boys couldn't chew this one, so they all gave it up and everybody just called it Jockstrap. "The Dutch had no system to detect de-tect planes coming in from over the sea. Their only warning system was a tiny island about seventy-five miles out It had a radio, so Surabaya Sura-baya got fifteen minutes' notice and Malang about thirty. "So what was the Colonel to do? Our P-40's were badly overworked, so when the alarm sounded, If the Forts took to the air the Zeros might shoot them down, while if they stayed on the ground, the Jap bombers bomb-ers might blow them up. Never were we able to keep more than twelve planes in the air, even including reinforcements, re-inforcements, for we were losing them about as fast as they were coming in, and a number were always al-ways under repair and therefore un-flyable. un-flyable. "Also we had some bad breaks in luck. One afternoon Lieutenant Ray Cox had his plane up on a high-alti- THE STORY THUS FAR: Lieut. Col. Frank Kurtz, pilot of a Flying Fortress, tells of that fatal day nhen the Japs struck in the Philippines. Eight of his men were killed fleeing for shelter, and Old 99, with many other Fortresses, was demolished on the ground. After escaping escap-ing to Australia, what is left of the squadron flies to Java, where they go on many missions over the Philippines and Macassar Strait. Sergt. Boone, gunner, tells how Queens die. Nine Forts are out looking for Jap carriers when they meet a flight of "P-40's" who fly with them. Too late they discover the forged stars. The "P-40's" Jap plaues -open up at close range on the Forts and three Queens go down In flames. CHAPTER XV "When that chute cracked open, the jerk pitched him out of the harness har-ness head-first, and as the chute billowed bil-lowed loosely back of the plane's tail, we saw him dropping down with his clothes smoking, getting littler and littler. Oh, Heaven! I couldn't look any more. "The plane was settling faster, In that steepening curve now, because be-cause it was all over. So we who have seen a Fortress die in battle can tell you how they do it They die like the men who fly them and fight in them would want them to die! They die like the great Sky Queens they are. And Queens die proudly. "Just then I heard our pilot Captain Cap-tain Strother over the Interphones,, telling Jim Worley, our bombardier, that he'd opened the bomb-bay doors, and for the bombardier to go back and salvo all the bombs and the gas tanks carried there. "Well, Jim Worley is about to obey, but just then he sees a Zero coming right in on us, head-on and his gun there in the nose is the only one who can handle this attack, so he's got to stay on it. "He gives her one burst and then starts to salvo his bombs and gas tanks, but there's a crashing sound, and the controls don't work. He doesn't realize a bullet has wrecked his controls doesn't know what has happened. "Then all of a sudden-! Bang! . there's a hell of an explosion inside 'our plane, and dust, and the stink of gasoline. After seeing what had just happened to the other two planes, we thought it could mean only one thing. We must be on fire! And later on, ask me about that railroad spike. "But somehow there were no flames, so we kept on pounding away at the Zeros swarming around us it was the only thing to do. What had happened was that a bullet had smashed into our compressed-oxygen tank, and also cut a gasoline feed line, so that gas was spurting , all over the cabin, but we didn't know it then. Finally the tail gunner, gun-ner, seeing gas streaming along the plane's belly past him to trickle off the tip of the tail, guessed what 'had happened, and called out to the rest of us over the interphones for God's sake not to smoke. With that cabin filled with pure oxygen and rtfrnrf cracks where you use whatever you've got to do what must be done. "We hated it, leaving that poor old town burning while the Japs sat out there and tossed shells into her, without giving it even a little help but it had to be. "On our return we found that storm had moved on down Java and was squatting right on Malang Field. The turf was soaked into apple ap-ple jelly, and our pilot did a wonderful wonder-ful job on the landing. We were worried, because we knew that a single pound weight on the brakes would start our twenty-five tons sliding slid-ing over that slippery field like it was the frozen surface of a pond. So to keep from piling up in a crash at the end of the runway (remember, (remem-ber, we had all our bombs aboard and couldn't dump them because they were precious), our pilot ground-looped her, so she would start sliding sideways in that muck. Skidding along, he waited until she had revolved in a 180-degree turn and was sliding backward. Of course she would then have crashed tail-first tail-first into the end of the field and blown up all of us, but he was able to stop her by gunning the motors. Even if the wheels couldn't bite into that slippery ground, the propellers could bite the air. It was neat. "Another gripe we had on Malang Field wa the food. The mess was in charge of the Dutch. They served only one hot meal a day, and this was always at noon usually hot soup with boiled beef and potatoes. But I only got to eat this hot noon meal three times I was always out on missions, which should give some idea how busy we were. "They had baskets of food for ui to take up in the plane pineapples, tropical fruit, and then sandwiches which were either a slab of cheese, or else raw bacon, in between two thick hunks of bread. We found this heavy stuff made gas In your intestines intes-tines and just as you got to high altitude al-titude going over the target this gas swelled up, giving you the gripes. So we'd eat the fruit and throw the sandwiches away. "Also Malay cooks don't know hot food the breakfast soft-boiled eggs were always hard, and they'd bring out a No. 10 can of jam for a hundred hun-dred and fifty men. What with getting get-ting two or three hours' sleep a night, we all lost weight two of ui lost nineteen pounds and Charlie lost twenty-three, and it wasn't scared off us, either. "We all felt that with a decent meal we could do a lot more. So as much as we needed sleep, at eight or nine o'clock at night we'd take the. Dutch bus into town to a restaurant owned by a Javanese, which had a Dutch waitress who spoke English, just to buy us a thick, rare steak. Americans have got to have red meat to fight on. Give them that and they'll manage to sleep when they can. "We finally took over the mess, but that didn't help much, because by then the field was being bombed regularly. The mess sergeant had his kitchen blown up three times in a single day, and this didn't improve the flavor of things. But the worst thing was, he'd got hold of three truckloads of Reigel pale beer, and had the cases neatly stacked when a Jap bomb scored a direct hit, leaving leav-ing not more than three dozen bottles. bot-tles. I never saw men any madder than we were when we came out of our foxholes and word went around they had blown up our beer." "They'd moved us over to Madiun Madi-un Field," said the Bombardier, "and we had your troubles and some more besides. When we first arrived ar-rived there were no P-40's or antiaircraft anti-aircraft guns for miles to keep the Zeros up. But we did have three D-model Fortresses out of commission commis-sion we were using for spare parts. So Lieutenant McGee dismounted their guns, and Master Sergeant Sil-va Sil-va and I decided to mount them in holes around the airfield. At least these would keep off strafers. I (TO EE CONTINUED) gasoline fumes, it would have Deen a bad idea. Don't forget to ask me about that railroad spike. "When we got back to our field and were telling about it, someone asked our tail gunner if he wasn't scared when, right after watching those other two go down in flames, that bullet burst our oxygen system with a big bang. 'No,' he said, 'there wasn't time to be scared. But if someone had pushed a railroad rail-road spike into my mouth, I would have bit the head of it off, clean and sharp.' "The Flying Fortress was designed de-signed for the high skies, and if you keep her in her groove, for her crew she's the safest plane in the air and for her enemies the most deadly. We found this out not from any book, but we learned it that day in combat, which is learning it the hard way. And we hoped it wouldn't take too long for this lesson les-son to percolate upstairs." 1 "On the way home," said Frank Kurtz, "three of the remaining Forts hit a heavy afternoon rainstorm. Visibility and ceiling were zero, and for hours they flew around the island is-land of Madura, off the coast of Java, looking for a place to land. When gas was almost gone they decided de-cided to beach them. Luckily no one was killed, but two of the three were completely washed out on the seashore rocks they set fire to the wreckage so the Japs couldn't find out anything about the planes. But Lieutenant Fred Crimmons did a magnificent job of setting his plane down on the beach in the rain. He made two passes, looking at his gas in between, then squared away and brought her in she held firm, sinking only a little. I had the harbormaster's har-bormaster's wrecking barge, with tools and Dutch engineers, on its way before daybreak. They were having a little trouble with the natives na-tives there they were warned against Jap parachutists, and our boys had to yell at them a password the Dutch had taught them to use if we were shot down: 'Kancha Kom-pance!" Kom-pance!" It means 'Our Army,' they explained to us. "They worked a full day shoring up the plane, building a base of logs and sand under it, clearing a runway strip. And then, in Java's regular afternoon rainstorm, in came old Freddy onto Surabaya Field. He explained he'd stripped the plane of everything he could un- We saw him dropping down with his clothes smoking, getting littler and littler. tude test giving the superchargers a workover. With him in the cockpit cock-pit was Johnny Hughes, who had been checked off as a first pilot just after we arrived in Java. They finished the test and at two o'clock were spiraling down when Zeros came over to strafe the field below. These strafing Zeros also had a top cover of Zeros hanging up at 18,000 feet, in case our P-40's might come in to break up their ground party. "Well, when the strafing began, our boys in the control tower remembered re-membered that Ray was up, and they tried to tell him by radio to fly south oyer the sea for an hour, until the Zeros were gone that was our usual procedure. "But Ray and Johnny, alone in this plane, probably intent on their test must have had their headphones off. Anyway they couldn't be reached, although the boys on the ground tried frantically to let them know what they were coming down into. Finally they saw three Zeros hit them at 15,000 feet. Ray immediately imme-diately turned out to sea, while Johnny John-ny probably did what he could on the guns. But one gunner can't cover every side at once, and they didn't stand a chance against three Zeros. Next day the plane was found shot down and burned about twenty miles from Malang Field." "Shortly after that," said Boone, the gunner, "we had a tough little mission a night flight to bomb a Jap task force which was attacking one of the islands down toward Australia. Aus-tralia. I forget which one it was if I ever knew that was the navigator's naviga-tor's business. Six of us took off from Malang, but before we started for the target we had to fly over to Jockstrap and load up with Dutch bombs they were running low at Malang, and the Dutch at Jockstrap had plenty. Then we took off at eight o'clock at night in some of the dirtiest weather I ever hope to fly. In that country a storm at night is so black it's like going into the closet under the stairs where all the old overshoes are, and pulling pull-ing the door shut For our rendezvous rendez-vous we turned on the wing lights. But even with them it took us forty-five forty-five minutes to assemble. Then we went up to 18.000 trying to climb cit but we were still in that storm. |