N93-HM

MH93N

Harold McAuliff

In July of 1940, four of us were sworn in as Flying Cadets at March Field, California. Along with Art Hoffman, Bob Snyder and George Markovich, I was ordered to report to the Air Corps Navigation Training Detachment at the University of Miami in Florida. As Hoffman was the only guy with wheels, we used his car and shared expenses. The trip was hot (before the days of air-conditioning) and boring except for nearly running into a herd of cattle - on a black night, on a black asphalt road, with black cows -- in northern Florida.

The University was located outside of Miami in the suburb of Coral Gables which bore the moth-eaten earmarks of the depression years of the 1930's. Over the next several days, 46 cadets were assembled, issued uniforms, books-tons of them it seemed-and quartered in the San Sebastian Hotel on the University campus and thus became the Class of 40 A-Navigation, the first of its kind in the U.S. Army Air Corps.

Capt. Norris B. Harbold ran the Air Corps side of things and Charlie Lunn, Pan American's Chief Navigation Instructor, taught the class. Both were excellent choices. Harbold had been involved with Air Corps Navigation activities since the early '30's and Lunn was a past master of all phases of celestial navigation.

In a large classroom, each cadet was assigned a big drawing table - large enough to accommodate a chart of the North Atlantic. After several weeks of studies of the movements of the stars, planets, moon, etc., and the corrections that had to be applied to a magnetic compass heading for variation and deviation, we started on "dry runs."

The "dry runs" were actually duplications of navigational data taken from Pan Am's Flying Clipper trips from New York or Miami to Lisbon. We were given the time (GMT), date, altitude in degrees, minutes and seconds, and the altitude of the star observed (Regulus, Betelgeuse, Rigel, or whichever it was). With that information and with reference to the Air Almanac and tables published by the U.S. hydrographic office a line of position (LOP) could be drawn. You were somewhere on that line. When another LOP was obtained from the observation of a second star, your position was established by the intersection of the two lines. Sometimes you had to adjust course and ETA for wind changes. We also learned that readings from the airspeed indicator and altimeter had to be adjusted for temperature and barometric pressure.

At first, it seemed to take forever to get to Lisbon, but after a few weeks of practice, things speeded up. We were then introduced to the octant, which is similar to a sextant but uses an artificial horizon in the form of a bubble in the field of vision. The trick is to center the star you are observing in the center of the bubble.

Then there were star identification sessions from the roof of the San Sebastian. The constellations were identified and navigational stars within them memorized - there were some 52 of them and they became old friends. As it was explained, there's no time in the air to mess around with a star chart. You've got to know what you are looking at.

After more classroom work and practice with the octant, we took to the sky... Several of Pan Am's old Consolidated and Sikorsky twin engine flying boats had been converted into navigation trainers - ten individual navigation stations to each airplane, each with its own compass, air speed indicator, altimeter, etc., and one big open hatch in the roof of the airplane for celestial observations. It was necessary to strap yourself into a harness v4hile taking a shot to keep the airplane from falling out from under you. These old birds soared along at about 1 1 5 miles per hour and it was sometimes bumpy. The slow speed was about right for fledgling navigators, as we had to take ten shots on each star and average the time and altitude. We made dead reckoning daylight runs down the Florida Keys and night celestial flights, usually south, then east, toward Cuba and then back into Miami.

Markovich and I were room mates and many a night we were glued to our desks working out problems. It was hot and humid, and the paper you were working on would stick to your wrists and arms. There were no screens on the windows, and when a breeze came from the west it brought clouds of mosquitoes with it. The solution to this problem was an investment in a box of rum-soaked crooks - vile-smelling cigars -- that put up a pungent smoke that kept these pests away.

At last, after 12 intense weeks, we were finished. There was a graduation ceremony at the plush Biltmore Hotel and speeches by General Johnson, Dr. Ashe, President of the University, and senior Pan American officials. Then we were split up -some ordered to the 7th Group, some to the 19th, and some to become instructors.

In October, 1940, upon completing the Pan American navigation course, 16 of us were assigned to the 19th Bombardment Group at March Field, California, and I had my first look at a B-17. The big four-engine bomber was a giant step up from the old flying boats we had trained on in Miami. We were kept busy with long navigational flights, over land and sea, had some training as bombardiers, and qualified as aerial gunners.

Several interesting things happened while at March Field. On the take-off of, what was supposed to be a navigation flight with Lt. Ernie Ford, our Squadron Engineering Officer, I was sifting in the nose up in the bombardiers seat. As we rolled down the runway, the left outboard engine let out a roar and accelerated on its own. This drew us off the runway to the left, headed straight for a large group of tents that were the temporary quarters of some recently arrived recruits. We were almost at flying speed, but not quite, and there was no way to stop. I could visualize total destruction coming up in a matter of seconds.

Suddenly, Ernie yanked back on the stick and we rose a few feet in the air; then' he slammed it down again and we bounced over the tents. As we gained speed and are able to climb up and shut down the maverick engine, we were a good 45 degrees off the normal take-off pattern.

We flew around for a while until everyone's heart rate had returned to somewhere near normal and came back in and landed. What had happened was that the turbo supercharger, which works off the exhaust system, had taken off on its own and produced a valid acceleration on that engine.

The kicker to this tale is that some six years later, Marjorie's sister asked us to go with her to a cocktail party and reception for a Colonel Somebody or other. I never did get the name, but then I never was sure of what Barbara was talking about anyway, so we went. The hostess led me over to the guest of honor and said, "I'd like to introduce you to Col. Ford."

Ernie took one look and said, "Introduce? We nearly got killed together!" So, I found out that when the 19th had been split up at March Field, Ernie had wound up in Alaska, and, from his description of flying conditions in that part of the world, I'm glad I'd had no part in it.

Another incident was our experience v,/ith the news reel industry. The news reels shown in movie theaters before the main feature always had a shoo lead-in of a patriotic theme - battleships plowing through a rough sea, West Point cadets on parade, etc.

One time they wanted a shot of a flight of P-40's flying past snowcapped Mt. Whitney. So, at March Field we loaded the news man and his camera on a B-17 and situated him at the right waist gun position where he would have an unobstructed view, and took off for Mt. Whitney.

The fighters joined us there and made a practice run so the cameraman could get organized, and then the show was on. The air was rough that day and the fighters were trying to keep a tight stepped-up echelon formation but were having a problem with all the bouncing around.

One fighter over-rode the plane in front of him and chopped up his rudder and stabilizer. The pilot with the damaged tail bailed out, and the guy with the slightly damaged prop managed to get back to his base.

The instant this happened, the B-17 pilot flipped his right wing up, spoiling the cameraman's shot, thinking, I guess, that it was a poor advertisement for the U.S. Army Air Corps.

I visually followed the man in the 'chute down to spot where he had landed and we were able to radio Hamilton Field where he could be found. So, that concluded an interesting, if unsuccessful, day.

In January of 1941 we were scheduled to fly to Langley Field., Virginia, to combine forces with the 2nd Group to provide a show of air power as we flew over the nation's capitol at President Roosevelt's inauguration. I looked forward to this, thinking that two groups of B-17's in formation would be quite a sight - I don't think we’d ever had the entire 19th in the air at one time.

We got to Biggs Field in El Paso the first day and spent the night at the field in the Hotel De Gink, a barracks-like affair with cots. Every Air Corps field had one. Later on they upgraded these things - slightly - and called them V.O.Q.s - Visiting Officers’ Quarters.

On take-off the next morning, our pilot, who was not the world’s best rammed the throttles up to the stops and blew a cylinder head in one of the engines. So, me never got to Washington and had to hang around Biggs waiting for a replacement engine to be flown in.

At long last, we ceased being flying cadets, and in April, 1941, we were commissioned 2nd lieutenants. Then, in May, the group was split up, some going to Albuquerque, N.M., some to New Orleans, and some to Tucson, where I wound up.

Then, in September of 1941, the 19th was reassembled at Albuquerque and I learned we were going to fly to the Philippines. After completing some shakedown cruises in a new airplane, we left for Hamilton Field, near San Francisco. There was one short stop on the way at the Sacramento Air Depot for an equipment check- I don’t recall just what was checked, but one thing that shouldn't have been was the life raft which is contained in a small compartment in the right wing root. When it is released, it blows out the fairing between the wing root and the fuselage and the raft spews out over the wing inflated. This is fine if you are forced to land on the water, in which case the airplane's flying days are over anyway. Nobody knew how long it would take to put all of this back together, so we had to transfer all our gear to a spare B-17D and we left for Hamilton Field.

Here there was a very short briefing - there wasn't much to say. I already had the course plotted and knew it was some 2,200 miles over open water. With Sam Maddux as pilot, Ivan Renka as co-pilot, Gene Greeson as Bombardier, and Sol Shellito, crew chief, and four other enlisted men, we left Hamitton Field and flew out over the Golden Gate Bridge in the late evening. It was a nice clear night and soon the stars were out – millions of them – a celestial navigators dream, and I was able to get good three-star fixes at frequent intervals. A group of airplanes left Hamilton that night about ten minutes apart so we never saw one another during the flight As dawn came and the light increased, the sight of the Pacific Ocean was awesome – nothing but water and distant horizons at all points of the compass. As we continued westward a low cloudbank appeared and presently I could make out an island beneath it – Oahu. We were dead on course and a few minutes later were tuned in to the peaceful of Hawaiian music from the radio station in Honolulu.

Hickam Field was right next to the entrance to Pearl Harbor, and as we entered the landing pattern we had a good look at the Pacific Fleet -- Battleship Row stood out in all its might and splendor. It was exactly 13 hours and 10 minutes since we took off from San Francisco - it had been a VERY long day!

A day later, we left for Midway Island. It was a daylight dead-reckoning flight of some 1,100 miles. It was uneventful except for the sight of a cluster of rocks jutting up about 40 feet above the surface of the water in an otherwise empty sea. We stayed overnight at Midway and left the next morning for Wake - another daylight dead reckoning flight of about 1,400 miles. I was relieved to see the little atoll that was Wake show up on my ETA.

When we reached Wake Island we were held up for nearly a week, waiting for the weather to clear on our route to New Guinea. This gave us time to relax and explore the island, which was really not much more than a coral atoll. A large civilian construction crew had built the runway out of crushed pink-colored coral which extended a ways into the water. They had also built barracks and a mess hall which we used. The Marine Corps had anti-aircraft and machine gun emplacements as well as infantry and a few obsolete Brewster fighters. They were all great guys and very cordial to us Air Corps types. (Later, when the war started, they gave a good account of themselves .before being completely overrun by superior forces).

At any rate, during the few remaining months of peace, I had a chance to explore the lagoon and was fascinated by the different shapes and colors of the coral formations. The water was clear with a sandy bottom and only about five or six feet deep, so you could stroll along and look at the different kinds of fish, a great variety of shapes and colors. I also got acquainted with saltwater soap. There was a shortage of fresh water, so all showers were salt water, and, for some reason, ordinary soap did not respond to it.

An odd little thing happened during our brief stay on Wake. Back in Tucson, Arizona, when I was in the 48th Squadron, Marjorie, my wife, had loaned a book to Lt. Jim Travis, who had loaned it to Lt. Schmidt who had loaned it to Lt. Sam Maddux. The title was Inside Europe and gave a pretty convincing picture of what Hitler had done and was probably going to do in the future. So, Sam stretched out on a cot next to mine, reading, and said, "You really ought to read this thing, Mac." I told him I already had and we looked on the flyleaf and there was Marjorie's name. Small world department.

A few days later, our Air Corps weather experts told us that the weather was such that we could continue the flight to New Guinea. What we would run into, so they said, was a static equatorial front about 600 miles south. If the weather became too rough, we were to climb 1,000 feet and deviate our course by five degrees to the right, and to continue doing this until we hit smoother air. We took off at night – it was a long leg and I'd need star fixes. As we continued on, I got two good star fixes and was satisfied that we were in great shape. Then we hit that so-called front.

It got rough, we began to bounce around pretty good. So Sam, the pilot, did as he'd been told to do. We climbed and turned and continued with this formula and things continued to get worse. It got so bad I couldn't read the compass and the flight instruments were giving wild and erratic readings. There was rain, lightning, and St. Elmo's fire on the leading edge of the wings and around the props. I looked out along the wing and could see it undulating like a palm frond.

At this point, Sam called me and said that we'd used so much fuel climbing around that he doubted that we could make our original destination of Port Moresby in New Guinea. So, we turned around and I gave him my best guess for the course back to Wake until I had something more substantial to go on. I didn't like this at all, but we were between a rock and a hard place. It is enough of a chore to find a small atoll in the middle of the Pacific under ideal conditions. But this time, having turned off course, climbed way above our original altitude, and been bounced all over the sky for an hour, it was anyone's guess as to where we were.

It seemed to take forever to pull clear of this storm, but eventually we did and were able to descend to a more comfortable altitude and found ourselves in sort of a valley in the clouds that rose up on either side to what must have been at least 50,000 feet. Here, I could see stars directly above. With a narrow field of vision I couldn't identify them with any particular constellation, but eventually I identified one and was able to take a fix. This confirmed that our course was O.K.

Later on I took another sight on a different star and this confirmed the first. The trouble here was that due to the angle, I could only get a line of position for a course line and nothing to cross it with for a speed line and so I couldn't be sure of our ground speed.

As dawn approached, the clouds thinned out and at long last I was able to see Polaris. This not only gave me a ground speed check, but also established our latitude. We were on course and only 100 miles south of Wake. For the first time in hours, I was able to relax a little.

We had dropped down to about 1,000 feet. There was a light fog or sea mist close to the surface of the water allowing an occasional glimpse of the sea. At one of these clear spots we flew directly over a big Japanese cargo ship. He made a violent turn, as though he expected to be bombed. In light of later events, I often wondered if that Japanese Captain knew something that we didn't.

The day wouldn't be complete without one final bit of confusion. Sam announced that he had picked up Wake on the radio compass and the island was dead ahead. A short Mile later, he said that the needle had reversed and we must have passed over the island and he was turning around - and he did. As we continued on the reverse course, I kept my eye on Polaris. At the last possible moment, before it faded away in the daylight, I took one last shot. This showed us south of the previous one. With this evidence, I took the chart up to the cockpit and convinced Sam we were going the wrong way. So, we turned again and dropped down to about 500 feet, and presently, there it was – we were even lined up with the runway.

When we pulled off the runway and stopped, Col. Eubank came into the airplane and wanted to see my log. I told him I hadn't kept one since being bounced around in the storm and showed him the chart. It was a little messy, but the whole story was there and he finally seemed satisfied that I knew what I was doing.

When things settled down, we went over to the Pan American weather station on the other side of the island. They had plotted two small typhoons side by side directly on our course. By monkeying around turning right, we'd run right smack into them. As there were other B-17s due into Wake that day, and space was limited, we took off for New Guinea the next morning.

It's impossible to leave the subject of Wake Island without special mention of the Gooney birds. The Gooney bird is an albatross in formal language, but once you see one try to land or take off from land it's evident why the name "Gooney" is appropriate. They run awkwardly through the sand eventually tumbling in a heap of wings, feet and feathers, only to get up again and repeat the process, sometimes repeating this performance two or three times before getting airborne. They don't seem embarrassed about it - as though it's par for the course.

There had been another reason for wanting to make this flight to New Guinea at night, beside taking advantage of the stars to navigate by; and that was Truk Island. Truk was a Japanese stronghold and they didn't want anyone getting a close look at it, so we gave it a wide berth in daylight.

This was a long dead-reckoning haul. I was able to establish wind direction by reading the wave tops through the drift-meter and made the necessary course corrections, aided by a couple of shots at the sun. Things seemed to be going smoothly until we discovered that we had an oil leak in the number three engine. Oil was running down the top of the wing. This wasn't too bad at first, but after about an hour, it got worse and Sam shut the engine down. After a conference, we decided to land at Rabaul in New Britain. Rabaul has a large harbor and the town is sprawled along beside it. There is a semi-active volcano a ways inland that spews out smoke and ash every so often and so the whole town has a gray drab look. The emergency field was a ways inland on a sort of cleared jungle area and was maintained by the Australian Army.

We landed on the strip, but in taxiing to a parking place, we got stuck in the mud. It took several trucks in tandem tied to the landing gear and all four engines at full throttle to get the airplane back on hard ground. While the oil line was being replaced, a couple of the Australian officers gave us a brief tour of the country. We arrived at a hilltop overlooking a large valley. "This is as far as we go," one of them explained. “What you're looking at is headhunting country and largely unexplored. We've secured what you've already seen, but we don't go beyond this point."

When we returned to the airstrip, the oil line had been replaced, and after thanking our hosts for their help, we took off for Port Moresby, New Guinea.

The airfield at Moresby was controlled by the RAAF. We were directed off the runway onto a taxi strip which was sort of a lane through the tall grass. Through an occasional gap, you'd see a native, black and bushy-haired, in a loincloth and carrying a spear - pretty rough-looking characters, but friendly enough. Their mouths and teeth were blood red from chewing betel nut, and it all added up to a pretty ferocious appearance.

The RAAF were good hosts and showed us around the native compound - a group of huts and one large meeting building, used by the men for tribal rituals. Near the waters edge of the bay there was a large group of sampans. The people living on them seemed a little different, but we were not there long enough to find out why some lived on land and some on the water. We took off the next morning for Australia.

The flight from Port Moresby was not a long one -- over the Gulf of Carpenteria and skirting the north coast of Australia. The RAAF field was at the northwest tip of Australia near the town of Darwin and this is where we landed. This was a permanent station and they had a pretty fancy Officers' Mess. I remember a long row of silver mugs on a shelf - each having an officers name and squadron insignia on it. These guys were very hospitable and high spirited and, I think, slightly loony and lonesome from being out in the boondocks for months on end. They were flying patrols endlessly to the North and East and that can get pretty monotonous.

We left the next day for Clark Field in the Philippines. Our course was slightly west of north and no navigational problem. Borneo and Celebes were easy to recognize. Celebes had a very distinctive shape -- it looked like a beached octopus -- and there were islands scattered along as we approached the Philippine group -- so the whole thing was like reading a road map. As we approached Luzon, I could see the island fortress, Corregidor, in the middle of Manila Bay, and, as we flew along the shoreline, I could see rusted hulks on the rocks or run ashore in the shallows. I wondered what that was all about until I realized I was looking at the remains of the Spanish fleet defeated in the Spanish-American War.

Clark Field was about 60 miles north of Manila, and I was looking for asphalt or concrete runways and taxi strips, etc., and realized that the large dirt open area between jungle and cane fields was it! As we landed I could see some hangars and tents and a few B-17s scattered around with some in revetments and some other airplanes of an earlier vintage. There was an old Air Corps bromide that when things become obsolescent in the States, they were sent to Hawaii, and then on becoming totally obsolete, sent to the Philippines. I recognized a B-10 and what I think was a P-12 from a by-gone age.

Fort Stotsenberg was at one side of the field and this was our new home - at least temporarily. These were old permanent quarters designed years ago for the tropics with wide screened verandahs. There were four of us sharing these old family quarters -- complete with houseboy and laundress, which was living high on the hog for a bunch of 2nd Lieutenants. It was the custom, or rather an order, which had been in effect during many years, that all officers must be in dress white outside of quarters after six in the evening. So we ordered whites from the Chinese tailors at Stotsenberg. We never wore them, as a few weeks later we were put on alert which only meant the usual regulation suntans with the addition of a World War I type tin hat and a gas mask - and later a side arm -- .45 and web belt, etc.

In the few weeks prior to this alert business, George Markovich and I took the train from Ft. Stotsenberg into Manila. It was quite a trip -- the cars filled with Filipinos, with their chickens, pigs, vegetables, etc., and stopping at every hamlet enroute. As we neared Manila, the route became squalor personified. We ran along side of the Passig River and it looked like an open sewer.

Manila itself wasn't too bad. Transportation consisted of a motorcycle-powered cart affair, and a few horse-drawn rigs of the same ilk. We took one of these contraptions for a ride down Dewey Blvd. which was a broad palm-lined street skirting the bay with nice looking apartments. This was the plush side of Manila. The Army Navy Club was also located there and we stopped in to have a look -- a very fancy affair and eventually wound up back in town for a tour of the walled city. This had apparently started out in life as a Spanish fortress and garrison but was now mostly shops and a few offices built on the inside of the walls. I bought some fancy Filipino skirts and jackets for Marjorie and mailed them on what must have been one of the last flights of the Pan Am Flying Clippers out of Manila. We took the train back to Stotsenberg and called it a day.

Back in the old quarters some weird things happened. I had given the so-called houseboy a light-weight tropical suit to be cleaned. When it finally came back, if had obviously been washed in the river and was ruined. This crew would say, "yes, yes" to anything you asked them to do, as though they understood English-but I guess they only got about half of it right, so stuff like this continued to happen. Another oddity about this place was that on the back porch was a table about five feet long with the sides built up about six inches. It was lined with metal and had four or five inches of sand on top of that. This was used for charcoal cooking. Another thing I found was an old flatiron with a compartment for live coals.

A week or so later we moved into new quarters down on the field. These were newly constructed and called sawallis -- built on a platform about four feet high with sides and roof made of a combination of bamboo and what looked like thatch. They were cool enough and George Markovich and I became room mates again, sharing a living room and bedroom.

Clark Field was not large enough for the number of airplanes we had there so the 93rd Squadron and part of the 28th were flown 500 miles south to Mindanao. This was a large island with a big grass field that could accommodate B-17s, and the personnel set up housekeeping in tents. The Del Monte Packing Company had a large pineapple plantation there and a large club for their management people which became the temporary Operations Center.

Back in our sawalli quarters, one of the officers had a good radio which he tuned in to the morning news broadcast from Manila each morning. At 7 a.m. on the morning of December 8 (we were beyond the International Date Line) they announced that Pearl Harbor had been attacked and that damage was extensive. We all congregated at the Officers' Mess down on the field and were ordered to get the airplanes off the field. So, everyone took off and we flew around aimlessly over Luzon as far as the north coast and round and round. We could see smoke rising from the vicinity of Manila and knew that something had been hit.

About noon, we received radio instructions from our control tower to come in and land - that naval installations at Subic Bay had been hit but we had been by-passed. So we landed and again trudged up to the mess for lunch. I was just seated when a messenger came in saying that the pilot and navigator of our crew were wanted at group HQ at once. That was Ray Schwanbeck and me. At Group Operations we learned that we were to fly to Formosa to photograph Japanese airfields. The only hitch here was that we didn't have the right sort of camera at Clark and that one was being flown up from Nichols Field in Manila. Another snafu developed when we discovered there were no maps of Formosa. Ed Whitcomb, the navigator of HQ squadron, finally came up with what looked like a page from a Rand-McNally Atlas and we made tracings of it and started to run that off on an ancient mimeograph machine - and it didn't look like it was going to be too useful.

As this was taking place, it sounded like a high wind was blowing through the trees - there was the squeal of automobile brakes outside and someone yelling "Here they come!" and then all hell broke loose. I dove under a large table as the ground heaved and the old building shook. Dust rose in clouds and the noise deafened us. When this was over we made a dash for the rear of the building where there was a large trench. We made this just in time as the bombardment was followed up by a strafing attack.

When it seemed clear, we went out on the field to see what had happened there. It was a mess. Dense smoke rose from the hangar line, bomb craters were everywhere. Some B-17's were shot full of holes and others reduced to pools of melted aluminum and burned out engines. There were killed and wounded on the hangar line and on the field, and the Officers' Mess had taken a direct hit, with some dead and wounded there.

During the next few days there were other strafing attacks, and a few of the fighters carried bombs. There would be a lull for a day or two, then another attack. During one of these, I was caught on the field and dove into a bomb crater. I landed in a heap and felt a sharp pain in my back. It eased up a bit and after a while I was able to get around pretty well. I didn't realize it then, but it was the start of some back trouble that was to bother me for years to come.

During another lull between attacks, I was down by the hangar line and ran into Sam Maddux. There was an old B-18 sitting in front of the hangar and Sam suggested that we take this up on a recon flight to see what was going on. Rumors were flying thick and fast - everything from Japanese landing parties to paratroopers. So, we got in the B-18 -- just the two of us, me as co-pilot - and started the engines. At that point, who comes roaring out of the hangar but Col. Eubank, the Group Commander. "Shut down and get out of there; you don't have a snowball's chance in hell in that thing." So we did, and later events proved that he knew what he was talking about. He very likely saved our lives.

The Japs continued to harass Clark, strafing officers' and enlisted quarters which burned to the

ground. Some strange and tragic casualties occurred.. A P-40 fighter pilot attempted to take off to attack the Zeros. They got him before he left the ground and he burned in a clump of trees at the far end of the field. On another day, I heard gunfire in the overcast above the field, and a cluster of parachutes drifted down from the overcast, followed a few moments later by an explosion that lit up the cloudbank. This was Capt. Colin P. Kelley's crew - Kelly himself didn't make it. The story got out of hand, and news stories had it that they had sunk a battleship. Well, it wasn't a battleship, but a large transport. Even so, it was more than anyone else had achieved at that point. Japanese troops were landing on the west coast of Luzon, and P-40's based at lba were strafing and bombing them, which probably bought us some time. A Filipino pilot, flying an ancient P-12, was said to have shot down a Zero.

Major Don Gibbs, 30th Squadron C.O., got his people together and encamped in a cane field away from possible targets. It wasn't much of a camp – we slept on the ground with a large tarp and blanket. B-17's from Del Monte came into Clark once in a while. One night, I heard one land and the next thing I knew as I lay on the tarp, was a jab in the ribs and a voice saying, "Come on, Mac, you're getting out of here".

It was George Markovich, and so I followed him in the gloom and we got into the airplane and took off a few minutes later. I was up in the navigators compartment with George, so I don't know who else was on board.

We reached Del Monte at dawn and it was a beautiful sight. The field was on a large grass plateau that rose about 500 feet above the shore. The 93rd squadron was still running bombing missions from here - hitting some shipping and airfields the Japs had taken. At one point, we had lost radio contact with the outside world. Major O’Donnell solved this by rigging up 55-gallon drums of gasoline in a B-18 (which didn’t have sufficient range on it’s own), and connecting them together in a plumber’s nightmare so that they could be pumped into the wing tanks. He flew this B-18 down to Australia, re-establishing contact and obtained the correct radio frequencies to be used. The 93rd had moved to Australia and then to Java as the field at Del Monte was coming within range of Japanese aircraft.

Eventually, there were about 20 or so of the "homeless" who had come out of Clark the same way I had [flew down]. We had cots that we set up in a gully, and could get some rest at night. During the day we hung around a sandbagged tent – the operations office – to see if we could find out what was going on.

There was a National Guard Anti-Aircraft outfit camped somewhere near with no guns. How they got stranded here nobody knew. There was a tractor on the field and also a rusty old iron water-tank. With these ingredients these guys decided to make a tank and thus be protected when working around the field. So they cut one side of the water-tank down and fastened it over the tractor. It was a big job and when completed, they decided to test it. The testing was by firing an old Springfield rifle at it from about 50 ft. That .30 caliber bullet went in one side and out the other, and that was the end of the great tank project.

Living in the gully was pretty much of a mess. Nobody had much more than the clothes on their back and we got to be a pretty gamy lot. Somebody had discovered a fast-moving stream in the hills. The water was clear and fresh and it was located in a pretty little valley. We rigged up a low slung trailer used to haul bombs to the airplanes with two long bench seats and took the whole mob there for "laundry day."

Things were well under way with everyone stripped naked washing themselves and their clothing when a Zero swooped down from upstream and opened fire. What a mess! The bottom of the stream was covered with smooth rocks and we were slippery with soap – all trying to scramble for cover behind some of the large boulders in the stream. It was a miracle that no one was hit, but there were bruises and scrapes aplenty and the air was blue with the standard curses and some colorful descriptions of the Jap pilots ancestry. Eventually, we got sorted out and returned to base (the gully).

I got sick of gully style so several of us moved into an abandoned field workers shack at the edge of the Del Monte pineapple plantation. It wasn't much and smelled of dried fish, but at least it had a roof and a floor. We weren't here long, as they finally completed a barracks type building that we moved into.

One day several of us made the trip down to Cagayan, which was the port for the Del Monte Co. There was a field hospital there and we visited some of our sick and wounded. A small inter-island steamer had made its way from Luzon with some of these hospital cases as well as the able-bodied. The ship had been bombed as it entered the harbor. It was not hit, but there were several near misses. One guy had jumped overboard just in time to feel the effect of a bomb exploding in the water. The compression squeezed him up pretty badly and he was in rough shape.

While at Cagayan we witnessed a wild fracas between a P-40 and a Zero – all around the sky with the Zero on the P-40's tail. Finally, the P-40 pilot put it down in the shallow water near the shore and was able to wade ashore unharmed.

A lot of the 30th Squadron ground crews, including the mess sergeant and a field kitchen, were on that little steamer and they set up camp on a bluff overlooking the bay. I really don't remember what we'd been getting for meals up to this point, but the mess sergeant's [Robinett] chow was a vast improvement. While all of this was good news, there was a dark side also.

Major Gibbs was shot down flying a B-18 from Clark to Del Monte. He was a fine officer and an outstanding Squadron Commander and was sorely missed.

Back at Del Monte a few days later, I was detailed to clear an emergency landing strip for P-40's. There were still a few of these flying around, but mostly as couriers. There were about 20 men armed with picks and shovels and we climbed into a truck and headed out several miles to what had once been a cane field. We were fairly well under way when a jeep drove up and the sergeant driving it said, "Lieutenant, you're wanted back at the field." So, I left the senior noncom in charge and left. There was a B-17 on the field and I was told, "Get your gear and get aboard, you're going out." There were others on board and I somehow wound up standing in the cockpit behind the pilot and co-pilot.

The reason for this flight, aside from picking up strays and taking them to Java, was to bomb Japanese ships reported to be concentrated south of Zamboanga on the extreme southwest corner of Mindanao. We made the bomb run at 20,000 feet I couldn't see the results from where I was standing, but the problem was that the bomb bay doors wouldn't close. This slows down the airspeed which is very bad news if there are fighters around. Since I had no particular duties and was closest to the bay, I was given the task of cranking the doors closed by hand.

This is a bear of an operation, as you have to straddle the catwalk and reach far down to the right to operate the crank. The mechanism seemed stiff and was hard to turn. The big problem was the lack of oxygen. The hose from the flight deck was too short for me to be able to use it while cranking, and after four or five turns I had to sit upright and lean forward to get a few gulps and then resume cranking again. The prospect of getting dizzy and failing through 20,000 ft. into the Sulu Sea was not an inviting one. Finally the job was done and we were clear of the target area, so we started a descent to a more comfortable altitude.

Jan 19; Back at Del Monte a few days later, I was detailed to clear an emergency landing strip for P-40's. There were still a few of these flying around, but mostly as couriers. There were about 20 men armed with picks and shovels and we climbed into a truck and headed out several miles to what had once been a cane field. We were fairly well under way when a jeep drove up and the sergeant driving it said, "Lieutenant, you're wanted back at the field." So, I left the senior noncom in charge and left. There was a B-17 on the field and I was told, "Get your gear and get aboard, you're going out." There were others on board and I somehow wound up standing in the cockpit behind the pilot and co-pilot.

My first impression of Java was that it was beautiful. We came in over Surabaya a Dutch port and naval base, with the town spread out behind it. Everything looked neat and clean, a refreshing sight after the Philippines. We flew inland a few miles to a Dutch Air Force base outside the town of Malang. We were assigned to the Dutch Officers! Quarters - a long step up the civilization ladder from what we'd been used to. There weren't many Dutch flying officers around anymore. The ancient B-10’s and their crews had been used up. They were a gutsy bunch and had made low-level attacks on the Japanese fleet as long as they lasted.

Jan 22; A day or two after landing in Java, I flew my first combat mission. I looked forward to it, as I was sick and tired of taking this punishment on the ground. I wanted revenge. It didn't exactly turn out this way. This mission was to bomb the Japanese fleet which was strung out between Borneo and Celebes and its size was impressive -- there were battleships, carriers, cruisers, cargo ships, destroyers -- the whole works. As we reached the bomb release line, all hell broke loose. The anti-aircraft was intense and swarms of fighters attacked. The bombs were dropped, but I had no idea where they went -- I was completely dazed and terrified by the ferocity of the attack. The Zeros were coming in from astern and as one completed his pass, he was just off our right wing when he exploded in a million pieces. I guess our side gunner got him. It's weird, but my impression at the time was that of a turkey exploding in mid-air in a cloud of feathers and the bombardier sifting scrunched down in his armor-backed seat with only the top of his WW I tin hat showing. We pulled clear of this with some bullet holes in the airplane but no casualties and landed back at Malang.

At the time, it seemed impossible that anyone could get used to this terrifying kind of uproar, but in time I did and even became slightly blase about it - I think we all did. The moments of terror were still there, but it seemed like we weren't going to get out of this mess anyway, so why sweat it? The phrase, "What the hell, you want to live forever?," became a popular one.

The next two or three missions I flew were about like the first, since they were against the Japanese fleet which was in about the same place. From 25,000 feet we could see the ships turn as the bombs left the bomb bay and the best that I ever saw were some near misses and a hit on the stem of one ship. The ack-ack was intense and the Zeros aggressive.

Feb On one occasion when were in an old D model without tail gun or turrets, we had a Zero on our tail. So the pilot (Swanbeck) went up and over a B-17E off our right and down under it -- whatever it took to keep the E's tail gun between us and the Zero. As time went on, it was obvious that we weren't doing much damage to moving ships, but we were thinning out the ranks of the Zeros considerably.

As the lead navigator of a formation of six B-17 E aircraft, I had set the course from the Dutch airfield at Malang eastward along the south coast of Java toward the Straits of Bali. It was February 17, 1942, and we were after a Japanese carrier reported to be close inshore to the island of Bali.

On turning north up the strait, we had to drop down to 12,000 feet to get under a heavy overcast. Within minutes we sighted the carrier. We were dead on target and it looked like a perfect run for the bombardier. As he got the bombsight lined up, I watched the carrier and could see fighters leaving the deck.

In a matter of minutes, six Zero fighters were at our altitude and coming straight for us in a head-on attack. I could see the leader open fire, but there seemed to be no return fire from our formation. There was a .30 caliber machine-gun in the compartment and I grabbed it and thrust it through the metal gunport in the Plexiglas nose. I knew that it was no match for the 20 millimeter cannon of the fighters and not nearly the range. But the rate of closure must have been close to 500 mph, so I did the only thing I could, filling the space through which the Zero had to fly with all the fire I could. I thought I must have hit some part of him, as he quit firing and went into a shallow dive along with his entire flight beneath our formation. I could hear our rear guns firing while we headed for cloud cover.

I learned later that the twin .50 caliber turret guns had malfunctioned, as was the case with three other airplanes in our formation, so the little .30 caliber gun I was firing played a more important part in the battle than I'd expected. When I got off the gun, I saw that the bombardier had removed the bombsight from its mount and realized that the bombs had not released and that we were heading for cloud cover lugging several tons of dead weight. Why this happened, I don't know - possibly the gun firing directly over his head and hot empty shell casings flying around might have distracted him.

Far more important than this was why the turrets had malfunctioned. These new E type B-17s had been flown hurriedly over the Atlantic, across Africa and India. to give us some replacements in Java. The crews probably had not had time to become thoroughly checked out on them -- and we had had little or none. These guns were a fairly sophisticated piece of equipment with electric optical sights, so the maintenance had to be done carefully. The upshot of all this was that a factory representative was flown out to give our people the necessary instruction and training.

Months after this fiasco was over and done with, I learned that I had been awarded the Silver Star for gallantry in action and being instrumental in breaking up the enemy attack. The citation went on to say, "One Zero was shot down."

There was one night mission that was kind of a hair-raiser. It wasn’t danger from the enemy this time, but from the weather. It was as black as I'd ever seen it and we were following the airplane in front of us. All you could see was the dim red light on his tail and we were trying not to lose him or overrun him all the way up to Macasar. The Dutch wanted us to bomb their oil fields there so that the Japanese couldn’t use them. There were fires in one area which the first of our flight had started, so we unloaded in the same place. Down below, there were flashes of what looked like sheet lightning but may have been naval gunfire.

We finally got out of there without colliding with another airplane and got into calmer weather and landed back in Malang.

The dining arrangements at Malang were unique to say the least. Each evening we boarded a bus at the airfield and went into town. It was a paved road weaving its way through trees and past scenic terraced rice paddies. The bus would stop every so often to let a large group of monkeys cross the road. I noticed a huge black python entwined in the lower branches on one of the trees - waiting, no doubt, to drop down on some unwary monkey.

The bus took us to the Palace Hotel, a very plush affair in the middle of beautiful, well-kept grounds. Once inside, we trooped into the dining room, which was really a large banquet hall with two long tables running down the length of the room from either end of the head table. Col. Eubank, the Group C.O., sat at the head table with some of his staff and some high-ranking Dutch officers. The tables had large bowls piled high with exotic looking fruit of all shapes and colors. Behind the diners, waiters stood in turbans and bright costumes ready to serve the next course. It was a far cry from life in the "gully" at Del Monte. The routine here was that a sheet of paper from the head table was passed down the line from hand to hand containing only a list of names. If your name was on it, you flew the next morning and boarded the bus back to the field after dinner. If you were not on the list, you had the evening off.

On one such free evening, I ran into some American submarine officers. They had heard that it was possible to get a phone call through from the Malang telephone office to the United States, so I went with them. I don't know how the Navy always seemed to get the word about this sort of thing and we didn't. It proved to be surprisingly easy. I gave the girl at the desk the number, city, and who I wished to speak to and was directed to one of the several phone booths in the office. I'd expected some kind of restriction or censorship, but there was none of that, and presently I heard Marjorie answer the phone. She gave a yelp when she recognized my voice and I was able to tell her I was in Java and still all in one piece. She hadn't heard anything since the war started and didn't know if I was dead or alive. It was a thrill to hear her voice and it boosted her morale. This was a tough time for the wives and families of Army personnel in the Philippines, as there was no means of communicating.

Things kept grinding away in Java. I was flying about every other day. The 7^th Group were equipped withB-17-Es and had flown them to Java over the Atlantic-Africa-India route and we inherited some of them, to replace our worn down D models. The airfield at Malang was attacked and strafed several times. On one such raid a B-17 near the hangar was set afire and exploded. Pieces of it flew in all directions. The force of the explosion was so great that one inch steel armor plate sailed over the hangar roof, crumpled like a piece of tinfoil.

We continued to pound away at the Japanese fleet with the usual results - more Zeros shot down than ships damaged. On one really bad day, the Jap fighters were waiting for us just as we cleared the coast of Java with full bomb loads at about 8,000 feet, climbing slowly to our bombing altitude. The plane next to ours in the formation was hit and caught fire. It continued to burn and crashed into the sea.

Sometimes a mission starts out wrong and stays that way from beginning to end. We had a newly arrived Major from the 7th Group leading this one. He had instructed all planes to check in with him on the radio prior to take-off. Someone failed to do so and the Major got out of the lead ship, strode out where he could be seen by all and stood, arms akimbo, glaring at the offending party. They finally got the word and he went back to his airplane. Those of us who had been through strafing raids are sweating heavily while this went on. Eight airplanes, engines idling, with full bomb loads, fuel, and crews, would have been a prize target for a lone Zero patrolling the early morning sky, and he could have wiped us out with one pass.

The final faux pas took place as we sighted the Japanese fleet from 25,000 ft. Our leader ordered the formation broken up -- each airplane to select a ship for an individual attack. This is asking for it when fighters are around -- and they were -- as you lose the protection of concentrated fire that a formation can unleash. There was ack-ack and we took a hit on the right wing. As we withdrew, we saw the leaders plane go into a shallow dive which became steeper and kept on going until it splashed into the sea. There was no radio message, just silence, so we never did know what happened.

This was tragic, as he was well liked and respected by those who knew him in the 7th Group. The 19th had learned something about combat flying the hard way too, and it was a costly business. Our own troubles were just starting. The hole in our wing was not large, but the ack-ack had blown out the tire on the right landing gear and I wondered how Schwanbeck was going to handle this one. He did a pretty slick job of keeping the left wheel on the ground with the flat tire on the right just skimming the grass, and then ground looping it when we'd lost enough speed -- with no damage to the airplane.

The over-all command structure at this stage of the war was sort of a nightmare made up of British, Australian, Dutch and American troops, all under the command of a Dutch Admiral who couldn't speak English. This meant that a bilingual officer had to be on the bridge of the non-Dutch ships to explain the Admiral's orders, which probably explained why some of the naval action got screwed up. This was the same body, I think, that selected our targets. If so, the British must have prevailed at the last session, as our next mission was to Singapore.

We never got there. Shortly after leaving the western end of Java we ran into some weather which grew steadily worse as we continued on, and finally got so violent that we had to turn back. Over Java once more, we received Malang's radio message that the field was under attack and to stay away until the "all clear” was given. So, round and round we flew over the west end of Java with the ceiling getting lower all the while and winding up at about 1,000 feet to stay under it before we were able to head for home.

The operation in Java was winding down faster than I knew. On one of the “free" evenings. I was sifting around a plush planters club with some fellow officers and some Dutch civilians including some "white" Russians who had escaped the revolution of 1918 and the conflicts and wars that followed between the Whites and the Reds. The Dutch had allowed them to settle in Java but they were technically stateless persons and none of them, Dutch or Russian, were under any illusions as to the treatment they'd get at the hands of the Japanese when they occupied the country.

Presently, a bus arrived -- much earlier than usual - and a lot of the group left. A few minutes later, I realized that they ALL had left. I still thought there would be another bus - there usually was. Instead, about 15 minutes later a blonde young woman in a Dutch Army uniform came sailing into the room and said, "if you are Lt. McAuliff, come with me -- and hurry!".

Outside was a motorcycle with a side car which I piled into and she took off like a scared rabbit. We sailed down the road - she sure could drive that thing - and out on to the field to a B-17 with all four props turning. The door opened and several pairs of hands yanked me inside and the airplane started its take-off roll. Inside, sifting on the floor, were all the guys who had left on the bus - a glum-looking lot. I think we all felt really bad at having to leave the Dutch to go it alone, but there was little more that we could do except get our airplanes blown up on the field. There had been enough of that at Clark. Many times since, I've wondered what happened to that Dutch girl, hoping that somehow she made it out of there. I didn't even have a chance to thank her. I didn't even have a chance to thank her.

We landed at Broome on the west coast of Australia in the morning.

We landed at Broome on the west coast of Australia in the morning. The Japanese had worked the place over, causing a lot of damage. A row of PBYs anchored near the shore had been strafed and sunk, the hangar had been hit, and there was debris scattered about the field. There was also a large mob of people milling around trying to get sorted out under confusing and conflicting directions.

H McAuliff, cropped from 1942 photo taken in Australia

A B-24 taxied in from the runway and we went over to see what that was all about. It turned out to be Ben Funk whom I had known at March Field, who was the pilot. He loaded as many as he could on the airplane - including a very pregnant Dutch woman - and we headed for Perth, 1000 miles to the south. I never dreamed that a B-24 could be so crammed full of people, and, to a man, we were all praying that the Dutch woman could hold out until we reached Perth.

This was the end of our air travel (the Dutch lady made it, thank God), and we were put on a troop train headed east across the Great Australian Desert for Melbourne. The Australian troops seemed young and noisy, very friendly, and curious about us. The cars were old wooden antiques from a by-gone age and as it was extremely hot, all the windows were open and flies, dust, and smoke from the steam locomotive came inside.

The trip took four days and we slept sitting up -- when we could. I don't recall eating anything other than sandwiches provided by some volunteer ladies when the train stopped briefly at small little settlements along the way. Doug Keller and I had invested in a couple bottles of Scotch before leaving Perth and we kept a poker game going to ward off the boredom of the trip.

As we passed through Western Australia and reached the border of South Australia, we had to get off the train and board another, as the rail gauges were of a different size. This happened each time we passed from one territory into another. We eventually reached Melbourne, a large modem city that was cold and gloomy at that time of year (late fall in Australia). The first order of the day was to find a hotel room and get into a shower. We located a supply outfit of sorts and were able to get some badly needed fresh clothing.

There was a lot of the old "hurry up and wait" routine while people were rounded up and sorted out, and the 19th was once again formed into squadrons and I wound up in the 30th again. While this was going one, some replacement fighter pilots had to be flown up to Townsville, 1,000 miles to the north. I started feeling sick on the way up, and by the time we returned, I was a mess – chills, fever, and assorted aches and pains. Fortunately, I ran into our flight surgeon in the hotel lobby. He took one look and said, "Dengue fever, you're going to the hospital." He gave me a slip of paper, shoved me into a staff car and told the driver to take me to Heidelberg Military Hospital. I thought this sounded a little strange, but it turned out to be a large Australian Army hospital. The routine here was the usual hospital Staff, with one added feature. Each morning at dawn I was prodded awake and swabbed down with cold water, leaving me to curse silently for the next two hours until breakfast was served.

Dengue fever is a lot like malaria, with the same symptoms and caused by a mosquito bite. I seemed to respond to whatever they were giving me and soon felt well enough to leave. The only hitch here was that the doctor had not signed a formal discharge and there was no telling when he'd get around to it. I'd seen where they'd put my uniform, so I got dressed and called a cab amid a storm of protests and got the hell out of there.

It’s a good thing that I did, as the 30th squadron moved out the next day. We flew north to the small town of Cloncurry in Queensland and set up camp nearby. The town itself looked like something from a Western movie set where a couple of cowhands would stage a gunfight in the middle of the dirt street. Several of us moved into the only local hotel and had our meals there.

Then we met Mr. Mellefont, the manager of the local branch of the Bank of Queensland. He’d sent his family south, away from any possible combat zone, and lived alone in this big house which he offered to share with us. Ray Schwanbeck had been bumped up to the rank of Major and was the Squadron C.O. So he, the operations officer, Adjutant, Engineering Officer, and I all moved into Mellefonts house.

During the day we were out at the field attending to our various chores. I was designated Class A Finance Officer and given the miserable task of straightening out the enlisted payroll, and this was one grand mess. A lot of service records had been destroyed, lost, or left behind in the Philippines. Some men had been promoted on verbal orders of which there were no record, and nearly all of them had received partial payments to keep them going.

These payments had been in Philippine pesos, Dutch guilders, and Australian pounds, shilling, and pence, which was the most awkward of all to handle. Mr. Mellefont was most helpful in establishing the rates of exchange but how to verify rank and pay grade was the problem.

We finally came up with an affidavit signed and sworn to by each man and witnessed by the Adjutant. There must have been about 50 of these things. The payroll had to be figured in U.S. dollars to get to the bottom line, and then reconverted to Australian money since that's what I'd been paying off with. All of this took several weeks to track down each individual and get his story and then complete all the paperwork.

At last everything was done and I took off for Townsville, some 600 miles away. When we landed, I headed for the base finance office and ran into a brick wall in the form of a nit-picking Captain of the Finance Department who decided that he couldn't accept the affidavits and a written explanation of why they were necessary. The argument grew louder and more heated until a voice I recognized came from the rear of the room saying, "Captain, give that officer anything he wants." It was Col. Eubank, now the head of a new structure called Bomber Command. At long last, I flew back to Cloncurry with a very large check. I'd already alerted Mellefont how to break it down so we could pay off the troops. So, we finally had a payday and got everyone up to date.

There were some nervous moments, as regulations required that anyone not showing up for pay call had to be red-lined and his pay held over until the next month. We had crews out on a mission, and I didn't want to red-line these guys, so I took a chance and didn't. Fortunately, they all made it back and I could breathe easy again the whole thing wrapped up.

I was kept off combat missions while in Cloncurry. I think it was because the flight surgeon was not convinced that I'd fully recovered from Dengue fever, due to my unorthodox style of departure from the hospital in Melbourne – with no formal discharge.

There was an interesting collection of livestock here. There were large groves of eucalyptus trees on either side of the runway where a large group of kangaroos dwelled. Every so often they'd get the urge to visit the grove on the other side and would take their time about it, frequently stopping to play around (horse around?) in the middle of the runway. If an airplane was about to take off during this performance, it was necessary to send out a truck filled with people shooting .45's in the air to shoo them back into the woods. Sometimes they didn't shoo worth a damn, so here was a truck full of G.I.s careening around, uncooperative kangaroos, and a pilot sifting at the end of the runway with his engines heating up and cursing anything and everything that had to do with Australia.

Then there were the dogs. Soldiers seem to attract dogs, and throughout the encampment there were dozens of them – all sizes, shapes and colors. Finally, there was a goat who lived at the hotel. There was a large yard in the rear of the hotel and this was his domain. There was also a door at the rear of the bar through which the goat would amble when the mood struck him to lap up beer from a pan set beneath the beer tap to catch the overflow from the glasses as they were filled. Cloncurry was a very casual "outback” community.

Mess Tent at Mareeba, Harold McAuliff, left Norvelle, John Carpenter & _____________

We left Cloncurry in August and moved to Mareeba, nearer to the coast, where the 19th was once more assembled as an almost complete unit with Group HQ and three squadrons: the 30^th ; 93^rd ; and the 28^th all encamped in the same area; 435^th was still at Townsville. I was promoted to 1st Lieutenant and Ray Schwanbeck gave me his silver bars that he'd worn for a good many years. Ray was moved upward to Group Operations and we had a new Squadron C.O., Major Pinky Hovet. Unfortunately, he was killed a short time later in an accident involving an experiment with some magnesium flares. One of them ignited, hung up in the chute it was supposed to drop through, and caught the airplane afire. By the time they set it down on the water, it was too late, and no one got out alive.

A number of silly things happened at Mareeba. The ground crews and other non-flying personnel made the trip from Cloncurry by train-a long and round-about trip. The squadron safe was missing and, naturally, no one knew anything about it. A lot of the dogs that had frisked around with the soldiers at the camp at Cloncurry showed up – including Mike, a big black hound who was the boss of the lot. Some wise guy had tied an evil looking lizard to the door of the officers mess. It was about two feet long and nobody wanted to mess with it without knowing what it was. The dogs kept their distance woofing and growling at it, when suddenly out of the pack a little three-legged dog raced in, grabbed it around the neck and tossed it into the air and then stalked off with his nose in the air. The dog audience was stunned – especially Mike. He had lost face.

A flying squirrel was electrocuted on an exposed overhead wire and hung there for days. The mess sergeant and cooks managed to burn their tent down. We had another fire in the dry grass in the tent area and it took all hands to get it out. Once, I came back from a night mission dead tired only to find Mike stretched out on my bunk sound asleep. Attempts to move him failed and he got downright grumpy and mean. He had enough teeth to equip a crocodile, so I didn't want to mess with him and wound up tilting the cot and rolling him out of the open side of the tent. There was a lot of muttering and dog cussing, but Mike finally ambled off to find another tent to invade.

I was fed up with administrative duties and asked Capt. Carpenter, our operations officer, to put me back on the combat crew list which he did, and the next thing I knew, I was scheduled to fly with the Group C.O., Col. Carmichael.

Our first destination was Horn Island, off the north coast of Australia. We were flying over a solid overcast and when an ETA was coming up in ten minutes, I told Carmichael and we dropped down through the overcast with Horn Island dead ahead. He had a U.S.N. Captain in the co-pilot's seat – don't ask me why – but I hoped that he was impressed by this performance.

When we got on the ground, the Colonel slipped me a fast one. He wanted to hit Buna and Lae at local twilight, and you need an Almanac to figure for this – which I didn't have. So, I set out for the RAAF operations office to see what I could find when I was hailed by a RAAF officer in an old style tin hat who turned out to be Barry Moody, a guy I'd met in Melbourne. We'd given him a ride to Canberra on our way up to Townsville delivering the replacement fighter pilots. He was still the same breezy character, and he helped me root around the operations shack until we found a British Air Almanac which had the information I needed. Moody had been a flight instructor and had to take a reduction in rank to get into a P-40 fighter outfit, but he was happy as a clam at high tide.

Time was running out, so I rounded up the C.O. and told him we'd have to take off in ten minutes in order to get to the target on time. Buna and Lae were small landing strips that were quite close together, and twilight would be at the same time at both of them. The reason for all this, I assumed, was that the Japs didn't seem to fly at night, for whatever reason. Visibility on the ground at twilight is poor, and if you did take off, you'd have to land in the dark. However, from the air you can see the ground quite well. Anyway, we unloaded the bombs, tearing up the runways, some buildings and parked airplanes, and headed home. Scudding down the Australian coast, it was dark and overcast. As I looked toward shore, I could see a light flashing – a lighthouse! I'd thought all of these had been closed down during wartime, but this one was flashing its coded signal – long white, short green – and could be identified as the Cooktown light. This gave me a good ground-speed check and I was able to set an accurate course into Mareeba.

Rabaul had been taken by the Japanese and had become a major staging and supply harbor for their operations in the Solomon Islands and the Bismark Sea. They had also taken over the airstrip where we had landed less than a year before on the flight from Wake Island, so it seemed strange to be bombing it now.

I made a number of missions. There was fighter opposition, but on the flights I made it didn't seem to be as aggressive as what we'd encountered in Java. The harbor, however, was a different story, and the anti-aircraft fire was heavy. I was lucky enough to come out of several of these missions unscathed but others were not. We lost several airplanes and some good friends over Rabaul.

Then there were a number of night missions to small islands east of New Guinea where the Japs would have a cruiser or a small carrier near the shore. These were hard to locate at night. On one mission, when we were flying the flare ship, I was sure I'd found the right place, but could see nothing until I noticed a dull red glow and realized that it was from a ship's funnel that must have been hooded, as it was pretty faint. We cut loose with the flares and as they lighted up the area I knew I was right because all hell broke loose – searchlights, ack-ack and machine-gun fire. We were first over the target and had to hang around tossing out flares as our other planes came in and bombed by their light. They came in individually at staggered altitudes several minutes apart. Getting caught in a searchlight is blinding, and in twisting and turning to get out of the light and ground fire I'm sure we gained or lost altitude. All we needed was a midair collision with one of our own airplanes. Fortunately this didn't happen.

I made a couple of flights on the flare ship and some more on the bombing runs. I remember one mission where we carried a 2,000 pound bomb, and when we released it the airplane shot up in the air 10 or 15 feet like an express elevator.

We would hit these targets at around midnight and return to Moresby at dawn. Often the field was socked in by heavy cloud cover, so I'd direct the flight off shore, and when I was sure we were over water direct the pilot to let down. We could go in at 500 to 1,000 feet under the clouds and see the field.

Once, when we approached Moresby on top of the clouds, the radio operator called the pilot on the intercom and I heard him tell the pilot that he had a radio compass bearing 90 degrees to the right of our course-which would have taken us smack into a mountain range. The pilot told him, "Thanks, but I'll stick to my navigators course.”

I don't know what the hell ails radio operators – maybe they get so bored maintaining radio silence they feel that they have to do something to earn their pay. The same thing happened as we were beating our way back to Wake Island after pulling free from a violent storm. I didn't know, but the radio operator had been requesting bearings from San Francisco and Hawaii which would not have been any good from that distance anyway and only got the people on Wake stirred up.

The field at Port Moresby was, in the early stages, a pretty primitive encampment. After staying there several days while running missions to the target area around New Britain, the heat, sweat, and dust had us smelling like a herd of goats. One day when the bombardier and I felt especially ripe we dug up a bar of soap, borrowed a rifle, and headed for a nearby river. You were not supposed to go into the river because of possible pollution and the fact that there were crocodiles in it. Anyway, we took turns stripping down and washing while the other guy stood "crocodile guard" with the rifle. We never saw any crocodiles.

As the months dragged on, Moresby improved a lot, and we had some medium bombers and P-38s working out of there as well as our B-17s. Upon landing, we'd be directed along a road just wide enough to clear the wing tips to a parking area in a grove of trees. Later, when it was time to take off, Capt. Kelsey, the pilot, swung the airplane around to get back on the roadway and the tail smacked into a tree trunk. We got out to look over the damage which only amounted to a dent in the horizontal stabilizer and didn't affect any of the control surfaces, so we took off. I'm glad we did because there was a prime target that day – a bunch of ships gathered in a small bay. We had a formation of nine and we clobbered them from 12,000 feet and got several direct hits and left one sinking.

Another time, in the same parking area where we'd hit the tree, a far more serious situation developed. As we were leaving the airplane to seek the shade of the trees, I walked through the bomb bay and noticed that the arming wire had worked loose from the nose of the last bomb in the rack. When a bomb is loaded in the bomb – bay, a small plug is screwed into the nose of the bomb and an arming wire is threaded through all of the plugs to keep them in place There is a small propeller at the tip of the plug., When the bomb is released it falls free of the arming wire, the propeller starts turning the threads of the plug which falls free, and the bomb is then armed and ready to explode on impact. The bombardier wanted nothing to do with it, and I didn't blame him, so we put in a call for the ordnance unit and two guys in a jeep showed up. One went inside the airplane and was out again in five minutes with the thing fixed. All of which confirmed our theory about bombs – let an expert do it!

We completed our bombing mission, returned to Moresby to refuel, and took off for Mareeba. It was a nice clear day and we were out of the combat zone, so Capt. Kelsey invited me to sit in the co-pilot's seat and fly the airplane for a while. The B-17 handled beautifully. Kelsey was a good pilot and a nice guy. After a while I decided to try out the tail gunner’s position. Here you have a wonderful view, but it seems a bit lonely and kind of remote from the rest of the airplane, and the swaying motion of the aircraft seems more noticeable.

The other co-pilot experience that I had in a B-17 was when we had a hurry – up call to fly a general from Mareeba to Moresby. With John Carpenter as pilot, the general in the co-pilot's seat, me as navigator, and a crew chief; that was our crew. After the general was delivered, there was no co-pilot, so I was it. There really wasn't much to do except to help keep an eye on the engine instruments and lower the flaps and call out the airspeed on landing.

As time dragged on into November, 1942, rumors started flying around that the 19th was to be relieved and was going home. This was taken with several grains of salt, for an army thrives on rumors. But, surprise of surprises, some airplanes started leaving. They were the ones in the best shape and capable of making it to Hawaii. The rest were too war weary to be trusted.

Carpenter, Norvell (the Jeep) and I had flown together and shared quarters for the best part of a year, so with some others we flew a tired B-17 into Brisbane and left it there for a complete overhaul. We then boarded a B-25 that had been converted into a passenger plane and flown by one of the airlines under contract to the Army. This was pretty plush compared to what we were used to, and it was with a feeling of real luxury to stretch out and snooze as we flew toward the Fiji Islands. We landed at an RAF station at Suva where there were good accommodations and a first-class Officers' Club. Refreshed, me left the next morning for Christmas Island, a small, sandy island south of Hawaii. Here we refueled and continued on to Hawaii.

As we landed at Hickam Field it was an emotional moment to once again see the Stars and Stripes flying from the flag staff. What was not so great was the damage we'd seen from the air. The once proud Battleship Row was now a string of battered, sunken, capsized hulls-a terrible and sickening sight. Hickam Field was pretty well cleaned up, with wrecked and burned out aircraft and other debris removed, although there was still evidence of damage along the hangar, line. Things were different. A year ago, the relaxed spirit of the famed Hawaiian hospitality had prevailed. The atmosphere now was dull and somber with blackouts and barbed were strung along the beautiful beaches.

A day later we left for San Francisco, sleeping most of the way stretched out in the comfortable airline-type seats – the only way to fly! As we passed over the Golden Gate Bridge, we realized that we were home at last and finally touched down at Hamilton Field where we had left outward-bound 14 months before.

Navigator Harold McAuliff sighting the sun