TE14P

This document was provided to the 19th BG association by William R. Eaton, Sqd 435, 19th BG, from his copy of newspaper installments of TURN OF THE TIDE by Major Edward C. Teats, as told to John M. McCullough, believed originally published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, in December 1942. DL 103094.

Installment I

Small Army Air Force near Manila Wiped Out by Jap’s first Attack

We knew damned well we didn't have much of a chance They called us a suicide group, but none of us considered it that. I don't know where the phrase originated; it was one of those flag-waving catch-lines that sound impressive -- from the outside looking in.

We didn't stop to think what was going to happen to us. We didn't know what the future had in-store. We didn't know whether we would get out of the Philippines; we didn’t know whether we would get out of Java. All we knew was that we were going to fly until we got orders to leave Java, or until we didn't have any planes left.

When the Japs hit Clark Field our main air base in the Philippines 60 miles north of Manila, at just about noon on Dec. 8, we knew that we were in for a party.

It was a delaying action. We never did have enough to stop them. We hurt them plenty, and we weren't whipped. Our job was to inflict just as much damage upon the Japs as we could-and hope that outside help would get in to turn the tide. We knew we couldn't do it alone.

* * *

Ten weary months passed before the tide was turned.

That period -- from Dec 8, 1941, until sometime in August or September, 1942 -- tells the story of the 19th Bombardment Group.

We left our men on Luzon. We left them on Mindanao. We left them on Java. Dead men, wounded men and prisoners of war. Some of them were in the thick of fighting on Bataan. Some of them manned the beach defenses on Mindanao.

That’s war. You can’t win a war without losses. You’ve got to match the enemy -- and then have some left over for the final wallop.

One of these days we’ll be moving back across those islands. I will take an oath that there’s not a man living of the old 19th who isn’t praying that we will live to be in that show. We have some unfinished business down that way.

I’m not sure it was entirely luck that half of the groups four squadrons -- B-17Ds and a few of the earlier B-17Cs, famous now the world over as Flying Fortresses -- were in Mindanao when the blow off came. Anyway it was fortunate.

About half our B-17s were either totally destroyed in the first attack on Clark Field or rendered permanently useless for combat missions. The remaining planes constituted the entire bombardment striking force of the United States Army Air Forces in the Far East.

It was about half past six in the morning. We had just finished breakfast and were strolling over to the operations tent, hands in pockets, when Major O'Donnell, the senior squadron commander, came out. He is a good-looking witty man, well liked by everyone but completely adored by his men. his friends call him "Rosie" He held a radiogram in his hand and not casually, but very quietly, he said: “Pearl Harbor has been attacked."

Everyone went poker faced. There wasn't any excitement. No one said a word. I churned around inside. I suppose the others did, but you can't tell what's going on inside a fellow at a time like that.

I think practically all of us were surprised. We weren't looking for the Japs to pull what they did. It was almost unbelievable. And yet we had been expecting something. For almost three months we had known that we were sitting on a powder keg, and that Hirohito's little men were playing around with the matches. All we could do was to try not to get blown off the seat.

There was not a man in the Philippines who didn't realize that if the Japs hit us, it wouldn't be with any transport and destroyer force. It would be with everything they had. We had complete faith in our military dispositions and were confident that, no matter what their force, they couldn't take the place over night; but we also realized that unless we got a hell of a lot of help from the outside, the going would be plenty tough. It was...

At the moment when Rosie made his announcement, we didn't all strike a pose and wonder what we thought about it. You didn't stop to consider the odds. You didn't have time to stand off and look at the situation and realize that we were up against the power of the Japanese air force.

Ten hours later, while I was flying combat patrol around the eastern half of Mindanao, my radio operator intercepted a message which said something about Clark Field being attacked.

The field was our base. All the rest of our planes were there. Our friends were there. Our gear was there. When we came in, after a completely uneventful but tense patrol, we learned the few details that were available.

"They bombed the hell out of it," O'Donnell said.

Some personnel had been killed. Damage to materiel and casualties were heavy. The Nips hit with every thing they had. Horizontal bombers came over first, dive bombers moved in behind them, and then the strafers came in low to clean up.

Our force in Mindanao had an abrupt christening in combat -- by proxy, you might say. First Lieutenant Earl Tash had taken off about the middle of that morning for Clark on a strictly routine flight for a needed overhaul of his plane.

He was making his approach to the field, with wheels and landing flaps down, completely at peace with the world, when the Nips jumped him. With enemy fighters blasting away at him with .30 and .60 caliber guns, he tore out of there, hedgehopped through ravines and passes with both aileron cables shot away and shook them off. His gunners accounted for at least one Jap, but one of the crew -- S/Sgt Mike Bibbin -- was wounded. Tash was running low on gas, and he had his fuel mixture “leaned out” to the point when he got back to Del Monte that he was practically running on air.

He wasn’t any happier to see us than we were to see him, but he couldn’t tell us much.

* * *

Our two squadrons left Clark during the night of Dec 4-5. It was a practice alert, a tactical dispersal of the islands bombardment striking force, and the force took with it enough supplies for three days. We expected to return on the morning of Dec 8, but even before word of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the force had received instructions to remain at Del Monte.

When the 19th Bombardment Group got into Luzon from Hawaii during Sept and Oct of 1941, Clark Field was the only airdrome in the Philippines big enough to accommodate Flying Fortresses. Other air fields were being built and work on Del Monte was begun almost immediately, establishing it as an alternate base.

In reality, it was just a big cow pasture, backed up against some mountains between two lines of hills inland and southeast of Cagayan on the north coast of Mindanao about 600 miles south of Clark. Field lights had been installed a week before, and there were some defensive ground troops, but there were no shops, no hangers, no adequate servicing facilities, and the upper end of the runway slanted downhill like a ski-run.

The men of the squadron took with them only what they needed -- tooth brush, razor, personal items of that sort, and three of four changes of uniform. I don’t think anyone had more than 25 pounds of luggage, and many had only cross-country bags. Very few of us were able to replenish either our wardrobe or our personal kit, for almost everything was destroyed in the initial attack on Clark Field.

* * *

Instructions were received from Clark for out squadrons to return immediately. Major Cecil Combs took his [93rd] squadron up that night, and about the middle of the following afternoon our [14th] squadron of eight took off, led by Major O’Donnell. We approached the field at sunset, contacting it by radio when some distance out. As we circled between the airfield and Mt. Arayat, a mountain jutting our of the flat valley a few miles east of Clark, a flight of six or eight pursuit planes came boring up from the dusk toward us.

They were climbing fast. Our gunners who had made the entire trip at gun positions, were cautioned to hold their fire until positive identification of the planes could be made. It was hard to identify them until they cleared the darker twilight around the clouds below. They could have been Japs, as easily as not.

As they closed in on our rear quarter, every gunner leading them through his sights, they signaled and peeled off. At the moment we identified them as P-40s, they had been able to identify our silhouettes against the western sky.

A few minutes later Clark instructed us to land at a new field which most of us had never seen before near the little town of San Marcelinas, just back of Subic Bay at the head of Bataan Peninsula and about 30 miles across the mountains from Clark.

In the dry season the field was a fairly smooth, sandy clearing near a dry river bed. In the rainy season it was a sizable river.

Little or no work had been done -- or, in fact, was required-to make the landing area useable. The usable part was about 300 yards wide and 1800 yards long, with trees and brush surrounding most of it. Hasty efforts within the preceding few days to make a cross-runway for fighters had produced a rectangular area cleared of trees, brush and stumps. A strip 200 feet wide and about 4000 feet long, at right angles to the main clearing, formed the runway. At least, it was called a runway, but it was useless. Even light vehicles cut ruts six inches deep in the dry, sandy soil loosened and leveled by the graders. Walking on it was like walking on so much talcum powder.

* * *

We landed as rapidly as we could for two excellent reasons. There were no lights of any kind on the field. The only illumination for a pilot coming in after dark was that of the plane preceding him. In the second place, the native Philippine soldiers, stationed at the field as a ground force, began to shoot at us.

They were jittery as hell. That was easy to understand. They had been handed uniforms about a week before, and Luzon was lousy with Jap Fifth Columnists. They were every where. Rumors were thick. Nobody knew what was going on. That was one of our worst troubles.

There were reports that enemy parachute troops had landed in the hills between San Marcelinas and Clark. Communications were so tied up there just weren't any. We had radio contact, but coding and decoding took so much time that very often it was almost useless. We needed time and time was only one thing, among many, that we didn't have.

No one was badly hit by the ground troops before they quieted down. One Pilot got a bullet through the wing. The plane piloted by Captain Elmer Parcell, who later was killed in India, took one through an oil line.

* * *

We circled the field once, then spaced out at intervals. It was so dark that at 1000 feet you could just make out the field. But by the time the fourth or fifth man was ready to land, all he could see was the dust the man landing was kicking up. His only method of orientation for landing was the beam of the landing lights of the planes ahead.

Right then, the safety margins of peace in heavy bomber operation disappeared. We found out a lot about those big fortresses that we hadn't known. We discovered that we could take off from any field we could land in. We took off and landed, no matter what the wind direction was. We operated at the maximum most of the time. We threw the book away, and went through the weather and anything else to get on the target, open or closed.

As soon as we landed, we taxied in between the ships already down and some brush, in order to clear the landing area. One officer and one enlisted man was detailed from each of the planes to go to town to rustle up some food, as there was nothing available at the field. We hadn’t had anything since breakfast, as we were running low on water. All we had was what remained in out canteens.

The navigator on my ship went in to the village on a truck, but the place was locked up tight. The natives had taken to the hills when we flew in at dusk, and there wasn't a soul around. Our fellows scoured the town, and finally found one little place that was open. They didn't break in; they walked in, picked up eight or nine loaves of bread, left some money on the counter and tore back to the field.

We divided up a loaf between the crew members of each plane, then rolled up in our blankets under the wings away from the dew drip. But not to sleep,.. There was a Filipino guard and the little men were very much on the alert.

Three or four times during the night, there was a challenging shot as a nervous sentry heard. a rustle in the brush.

The island was full of the damned Japs.

Installment II

First Four Days of War put all US Pursuit Planes out of Combat

The only communications we had at San Marcelinas was the radio of an old B-18, twin-engined bomber which was the immediate predecessor of the Fortress.

It was pulled into the brush and one man was detailed to sit on it’s radio tuned in to the frequency, of Clark Field.

Major O'Donnell, our squadron leader, took off for Clark before daylight On December 9. There were no obstruction markers on the field and no field lights. The runway was located in a valley about ten miles long and five miles wide, and it was a dangerous place to get into or out of after nightfall. At night, the mountains were invisible so that on the take-off, the minute you cleared the field, you went into a 45-degree turn and hoped you were skimming them. It wasn't too bad if there was starlight or moonlight, for then you could pick up the reflection on Subic Bay and see the dim silhouette of the mountains.

As soon as O'Donnell landed, he instructed us by radio to proceed to Clark.

* * *

We took off at dawn with six planes, through a tropical downpour, with a low overcast hugging the tips of the mountains, but when we got to the vicinity of the field, only three planes were told to land. Their pilots were Colin Kelly, George Schaetzel and Guilford Montgomery.

There was an alert, they were expecting an air-raid any minute, they had no dependable air raid warning system, and three, planes were the, maximum that could be serviced because of crippled facilities- We didn't get any clear view of the field. We could see the burned buildings, and planes were burned all over the field, but from what we learned within a few days, the Nips did a beautiful Job..

It looked as if every bomb had a string tied to it, pulling it down to its exact target. There were dummy planes dispersed about the field, but there probably were Japs among the workmen that constructed them, for the bombers calmly passed up the dummies, and scored bull's eyes on the real ones. The hangars were hit and most of the buildings in the camp area were badly chewed up.

There was plenty of gas. The main fuel dump was so well hidden In a banana grove a mile or so back of the field that even when you knew where if was, you could not detect it from the air. But the raid knocked out our servicing facilities, and that was what really hurt.

All of the telephone communications leading out of Clark Field were either tapped or cut. They found places where the wires obviously had been cut with pliers, and others where it was evident that the break had not been caused by bombs. They had line crews working on the lines practically all of the time.

The first warning of that first attack on Clark came when the bombs started to fall. Some of the fellows were in the house at the time, just finishing lunch, when the first ones landed. There were a lot of stories explaining why, but we never did catch up with the official report.

So there we were, almost exactly 24 hours later; circling the valley east of our main air base on Luzon because we didn’t dare take the chance that we might be caught on the ground by enemy bombers or strafers.

We hugged the overcast and maintained a sharp watch for Japs, but when we had only a half hour of fuel left, we had to return to San Marcelinas.

In the meantime, Major O’Donnell loaded up and took off north for Aparri, several hundred miles from Clark on the northern coast of the island, where the Japs were attempting to seize their first beach head. He reported and attacked a Jap carrier, which Schaetzel worked on that same afternoon.

* * *

When we got back to San Marcelinas, there was one job that had to be done, and done fast. Our ships were un-camouflaged. They were the peace-time silver, exactly the same color as our American commercial transports, and you could see those big silver birds -- according to operations -- for 25 miles. We put it at 75, and on one occasion, we actually did catch the glint of one of them 70 miles out- That was just as good as issuing an engraved invitation to the Nips, and it made effective concealment of the planes on the ground almost impossible.

Some of the planes of the 19th group had been camouflaged, and we had two or three of them, later, at Del Monte. There were no facilities at San Marcelinas, but when we got back to Mindanao we tried to spray paint them. We got some green paint and some other stuff and mixed them. It was a sorry camouflage job and to make it worse, the paint was glossy rather than dull so that the wings and fuselage still reflected the sun. After we were through with them, some were a splotchy green, some a dirty brown and some an indescribable color which could only be called dull.

At least, we killed some of the reflection and the splotchiness of the job helped to break the outline of the wings and fuselage when seen from the air. We had no hangars and, of course, no effective dispersal points, so we put the natives to work cutting banana stalks, palm fronds and slender saplings with which we camouflaged the planes during the day.

As soon as a plane landed the native boys got to work under our supervision, standing the saplings against the wings, placing the other brush so that the sharp lines of the ships blended more or less into the ground coverage.

The next day -- December 10 -- Schaetzel, Kelly and Montgomery took off from Clark on individual missions. All three went north to work on the Japs, who were trying to consolidate the beachhead at Aparri. At that time they had not gotten in to Vigan and Lingayen on the west coast.

Kelly hit the battleship and was pretty well back to Clark when the Jap fighters swarmed all over him and his plane was shot down in flames. Kelly's top gunner and aerial engineer, Sergeant Delehanty, was killed by the fire of the first attacking Nip fighter. With his plane in flames, Kelly ordered his crew to abandon ship.

We knew our loss in Kelly. Colin and I had been good friends, for he came to my squadron when he arrived in Hawaii. We not only worked and flew together, but spent a lot of our “off-duty" time together, too. We had lost a good friend, but there was no mourning. He "had the stuff" and had done a great job.

I often thought of Marian, his wife, and their little red-haired, feckle-faced son, and wondered how it would affect their lives. Funny, but we seldom thought much about the possibility that one of us might be the next to make his last flight.

* * *

Montgomery got over a transport and left it in flames. Schaetzel made one run on the Jap carrier and bombed it and started to make his second run, but by that time the Nips were all over him. We didn't run in to many Zeros the first few days, but there were a lot of ME-109s, either German-made or Jap copies, and Nakajirna and Mitsubishi 97s were very prominent.

Schaetzel took one quick look at the opposition and drove for the clouds at 7000 feet, a good many thousands of feet beneath him. "The last time I looked at the air speed indicator," he told us when he got in to San Marcelinas, "it read 350 and was still going up. I knew there were mountains at 6000 or 7000 feet, just under the overcast, but I didn't even think of that."

To make matters worse, just as he hit the clouds and pulled out; all guns exhausted ammunition. But he shook off the pursuits and got back. His plane had bullet holes all over it, and was streaming oil from a ruptured tank. One engine had been hit, the wings were shot up, there were holes in the tail from anti-aircraft bullets, and some explosive bullets had knocked all the paint of the armor plate behind the pilot. The ship was a mess.

During the attack the bombardier in the nose leaned over to pick up something -- probably an ammunition box -- when a bullet just missed the back of his neck. If he had been sitting upright he would have been a dead pigeon. The navigator was sitting at his desk, looking out the window-(there wasn't anything else for him to do) and a stream of bullets whisked a book off the desk, practically out of his hands.

We didn't have any prime mover at San Marcelinas, and the field was deep in dust. Lacking any "cat" (caterpillar tractor), the ground crewmen tied a little bomb hoist truck to a 2000-gallon tank trailer and pulled and horsed it around the field, servicing the ships.

I was on a bomb-loading truck coming from the other side of the field where Godman's plane was camouflaged. It was out of commission, due to trouble in the oil system, and was half hidden among some trees at the side of the field.

As we came across I saw a "joker" (enlisted man) ploughing through the dust about 300 yards away. He had a carton of cigarettes in each pocket. One of them dropped and he turned back to pick it up. Then he started to run, kicking up a trail of powder fine dust behind him. Another carton dropped and broke open, spilling packs of cigarettes. He stopped, looked over his shoulder and then really sprinted for the opposite side of the field.

* * *

When anyone in the Army drops a carton of cigarettes and doesn’t have time to go back for them, he’s in a hurry. We pulled down the field to a slit trench and found this man with some other enlisted men and two or three Filipinos. As soon as the engine quieted down we heard the planes. Then we saw them. Through the thin, tuffy scud clouds I saw one formation of nine go by, at 14,000 to 18,000 feet.

There were three planes on the field loaded with bombs, and bombs were laying all around. The planes had a few palm fonds over them, camouflaged as best we could under the circumstance, but if the Nips spotted the field ... We dove into the slit trench, too.

The first formation was of nine planes. Three or four minutes behind them there was a second formation of 27. They were heading east for Clark Field. I couldn’t help admiring their formation. The Japs fly the finest formation I have ever seen. This business about them being a funny-looking, squit-eyed bunch of little men who have to wear glasses and can’t fly is hooey.

We were hoping they hadn't spotted our ships and they didn't. There was a fairly low over cast and the whole valley around Clark Field was hidden. We heard them circling around up there, but apparently they-couldn't locate the field, for they headed on south. The wind was in the south, and we could hear the growl of their planes as they flew in the direction of Manila, about 50 miles to the southeast of us. A few minutes later, we heard their bombs hit. At that distance, the detonations sounded like very distant thunder, but there was no mistaking the sound. None of us said anything. There wasn't any point in wasting breath on the obvious.

* * *

Three or four minutes after one of the Nip formations repassed on its way north. we heard a lone P-40 climbing wide open. We guessed he had taken off from one of the fields around Manila. The snarl of his motor was unmistakable.

He was climbing like hell and he wasn't saving his engine... one lone P-40 steaming full throttle after a formation of 27 Jap bombers. He didn't catch them, but that wasn't his fault. He was trying.

After the first three or four days, we didn't have any pursuits to send out for combat. We lost a lot of those we had the first day, and a number were shot down in combat. Those that were left were used primarily for reconnaissance. They were sent out in pairs under strict orders to avoid combat because we couldn't afford to lose them.

Of course, they tucked bombs under their wings and went in for a little strafing. A pilot couldn't do much about it if he was flying reconnaissance, minding his own business, and ran head on into a mess of Japs, like "Buzz" Wagner at Aparri. Buzz, who was reported missing only a few weeks ago on a routine flight out of Florida, shot down two Jap fighters and then strafed the field at Aparri, where he destroyed a dozen or so enemy planes among those lined up on the field.

That afternoon, when we passed down near Corregidor on our way to Del Monte, we could see two huge columns or smoke rising a couple of thousand feet into the sky, forming a big, black umbrella right over Cavite. We knew then what the bombers had hit. I think that was the day they knocked out the naval base.

Installment III

Route of Historic Army Flight to the Philippines -- Ref Fig 1 at end

When we flew out to the Philippines from Hickam Field, we knew that relations between the United States and Japan were a little strained, but we never considered that war was imminent.

That flight itself was the strongest kind of indication to us that things were really getting hot, and that we could expect some kind of a break in the situation almost any time.

My squadron did all of the survey work on the Tran-Pacific route from Oahu to the Philippines, by way of Midway, Wake, Port Moresby, Darwin and Manila.

We had an advance agent who went to New Guinea and Australia, checking on the availability of high-octane gas, servicing facilities, usability of fields, all that sort of thing -- all in preparation for the flight.

An inkling of what was up came when they told us that we were to go as a [14th] squadron. At that time there was no heavy bombardment force in the Philippines, and, from the speed with which plans for our flight were completed and the equipment assembled, it was evident that they wanted such a force in a hurry. One boy who went by boat with the ground echelon was given four hours notice to get aboard.

We left in early September, with Major O'Donnell as the squadron leader, and flew by flights in easy stages along, the stepping stones that, within three months, were to became historic islets in American history -- Midway and Wake.

It was a new route from Wake to Moresby and in normal times it undoubtedly could have attracted much attention.

The times were not normal. Our course was so mapped as to detour Ponape -- one of the main Jap bases in the eastern Carolines -- at night and at high altitude. We made hourly position reports except on the third leg of the flight, that from Wake to Port Moresby. On it, we observed radio silence until we were well clear of the island. We knew that there was "something going on" in the Jap mandated islands, in spite of the fact that under the terms of the mandate they were pledged not to develop the Islands as fortified strong points.

It was not yet dawn when my flight passed near Ponape. There was just the faintest suspicion of grayness in the east, and we could see the dim outline of the island and somewhere far below us, a flashing light, probably a navigation beacon. Later, we saw flashing lights in the Philippines that were also navigation beacons, and Jap-operated, too, but more on that later.

There were two incidents of the flight which I will always remember vividly. The first was considerably more amusing than the second.

Bill Fisher, leader of the second element of the squadron, broke an oil line shortly after he took off from Wake, and had to turn back. As a consequence, he was two hours behind us. About one hour after sunrise, when the flight normally would have been clear of Ponape by a hundred miles, Major O'Donnell broke radio silence and called for reports from the other planes. Each reported except the number one plane of the second flight. Finally, O'Donnell asked Fisher, "What's your position?"

Bill promptly came back with: "I'd hate to tell you!"

Every plane in the flight must have echoed to sub-stratospheric chuckles. We knew instantly that Bill was sitting right on top of Ponape at high altitude that very minute in broad daylight!

There are a number of Fortress pilots who would like to be in the same position over Ponape now -- with bomb-bay doors open.

It was a 2100 mile flight from Wake to Moresby, all but a mere fraction of it over the Pacific, and naturally it required careful planning.

About two hours out of Wake (and this is the second and most amusing of the incidents) part of the electrical equipment on our plane went bad. and then failed altogether. From then on the only instruments our plane had were the navigation instruments, flight instruments and cylinder head temperature gauge. For 11 of the 13 hours required to make the flight, that’s the way we flew. We had been told that, if necessary, we could land at Rabaul on New Britain Island, which was directly on our course, but not to do so unless absolutely necessary, due to wet conditions of the field.

* * *

No one on our ship had the remotest suspicion as we steamed over the island that only eight months later, Rabaul, Salamaua, Lae and the Owen Stanley Mountains formed the back bone of Papua would be our targets. We looked over the field at Rabaul and then climbed to clear the mountain ranges of New Britain on direct course to Moresby, hedge-hopped the mountains at the gap and practically coasted down the other side into Moresby. We arrived with between 2 and 2 1/2 hours of fuel remaining.

I would like to put in a plug for the navigators on that trip. Every one kept an accurate log and when we compared them, they were almost identical examples of the, finest kind of work.

Three days before we left Hickam, word came through that the flight out to Clark Field would be a permanent change of station. Prior to that, most of us had supposed that it was just .a ferry trip, and that we would "dead-head" back by Clipper.

My tour of foreign duty began in May 1939, and I imagined that I would be transferred back to the States in May, 1942, at the end of a three-year stretch, one year of which was an extension of foreign duty by request. Naturally, when I said good-bye to my wife in Honolulu, I supposed that I would see her in the spring.

* * *

We went to Manila from Australia on the butt end of a typhoon. We knew that a typhoon had passed in the vicinity of Guam, but had no radio contact with Manila and the weather for the preceding few days had been wonderful.

The squadron passed over Zamboanga on the southwestern tip of Mindanao and crossed Negros. As we approached Mindoro, the island directly south of Luzon, we saw clouds over to the east. It is a peculiar formation. There is a distinct black line in the sky between the clouds above and the rain beneath. We let down to within 100 feet of the water and bored right through, with rain drops as big as goose eggs slamming the windows. Finally, we picked up the shore line, established contact with Manila and headed straight across the bay. We weren't supposed to pass close by Corregidor (it was a restricted area), but we headed right in between the Rock and Caballo Island. We were so low we could look up to the barracks on Corregidor.

From Manila to Clark Field, we flew individually at tree-top level, right from sea-level to the field elevation.

The visibility was so low that as I came in to Clark, the control tower and the hanger line suddenly leaped from the fog and rain directly in front of me. I had to pull up sharply be clear them.

We had flown nine planes a total of approximately 7000 nautical miles -- 8050 -- statute miles and we didn't lose one, but one was disabled in the last few minutes. The rain was hammering Clark so heavily that operations had been completely suspended for three days. They hadn't even done any work on the field. One old plane was standing out there, but the visibility was so low that it could not be seen from the control tower. One of our ships hooked it taxiing after landing and ripped up it’s tail section. That was the only accident to mar the entire mass flight.

The 19th group came in with 27 planes over the same route in October, completing the group formation of four squadrons. [28th, 14th, 30th & 93rd]

Looking back on it, it isn't easy to explain just how we felt as we saw the clouds gathering in the Far East. Everything we did was building steadily and realistically toward the possibility of war. That was our job -- so much a part of it that I suppose we were less aware of it than an out-sider.

* * *

I think that it is pretty generally realized now that the United States was caught with it’s pants down out there in the Philippines. We wanted more stuff. To us , it was the familiar story of too little and too late. But our government was playing the game the gentlemanly sporting way. Of coarse we recognized the fact that the Japs were sly and foxy, that they always hit first and talked afterwards, but we gave them the benefit of the doubt -- and the first punch.

We weren’t trusting Nomura and when Kurusu arrived in Washington in the middle of November, we smelled a rat. From our point of view, we just couldn’t sit by and pin our faith on continuing peace in the Pacific on that pair.

We weren’t looking for the Japs to pull what they did. That is, we didn’t think the first blow would be struck at Pearl Harbor, but we were on the alert. From the day Kurusu arrived, we were on the alert in the military sense. We flew inner and outer patrols with the Navy from the Indo-China coast around the north toward the northeast.

We weren’t looking for trouble, though the planes were armed. They were not an offensive missions. We were prepared for trouble if it came.

All of this is a digression from the story of our combat operations in the first few days after December 8, but I think it fills in the background of where we came from and why, and something of how we felt.

Two days after the attack, we were squatting on an uncompleted airdrome in the mountains near San Marcelinas without instructions as to what we were to do. 0ur planes were gassed and armed. In the early afternoon, George Schaetzel got back to the field, his plane full of holes, to report the carrier That carrier, floating around crippled somewhere off Aparri, looked like duck soup for us and three of us -- Parcell, Captain (Inter Colonel) Donald Keiser, who died only a week ago in Egypt and I decided to try out a plan for a dispersed attack approach which we had worked out.

About the only thing I remember clearly of the surrounding circumstances is that I was hungry. I had had one-ninth of a loaf of bead since breakfast two days before, and some boiled water. We were dirty and tired and irritable, and bombing a Japanese. aircraft carrier seemed like an excellent way to give vent to our feelings.

We had loaded our maxim of bombs, and I was-ready to take off at the end of the runway, with Keiser waiting behind me and Parcell warming up, when Henry Godman came running out of the bushes from the radio plane with an order for us to return immediately to Del Monte. We wished fervently that the orders had not arrived until after we got into the air -- that Jap carrier sort of beckoned -- but orders were orders. Without waiting for Parcell, we took off.

* * *

On the way south, just off the island of Mender, We spotted something in a little cove and dropped down to have a look. As we dropped down and circled, we recognized it as a submarine. How it ever got in there, I don't know. Later, when we were in Java, its commander visited our field for a brief rest while the, sub was tied up at Surabaya for service and repairs. There wasn't more than one hundred feet of clearance; the sub was almost as long as the cove. The men in the submarine service had learned the same lesson we were learning that in war, there are a lot of things that can be done never so much as dreamed of in the quiet days of peace.

I circled while Keiser dropped down for a good look. As soon as the sub crew sighted us, they hoisted the flag, but there was too much monkey business afoot to take any things for granted. Keiser was like a big, hungry chicken hawk, hovering over a promising chicken coop. But it was all right. It was one of ours. We climbed back to altitude and headed south.

Installment IV

19th BG Lives on Tales of US Reinforcements

While we were still in Mindanao, we lived on stories of reinforcements.

There was a story that a convoy had gotten into Manila with a load of dive bombers, and they were being assembled right on the pier, and that they were going to fly them off the waterfront boulevard.

There was another that a big convoy was just off the islands.

Tracing such stories was like trying to grab a handful of fog. They weren't true. They sprang up like toadstools, and no one really believed them.

"Why the hell don't they, do something?" somebody would growl. and then everybody would chin in his two cents' worth. Have you heard this? Have you heard that? It was a game we all played but, down in our hearts, we knew it was a game. Underneath the growling, every man at the base knew that "they" were doing something -- that "they" were straining every nerve to get help to us, but that they just couldn't.

You weren't wondering how you were going to get out. If you had time to wonder about anything, it was what was going to happen next.

* * *

That first week, we got our rest in catnaps under the wings of our planes. You might not get any all night, two or three hours sometime the next day, and then none for another day.

From the time we left Del Monte on Dec 8, we didn’t get any rest. It was either nil or at a minimum, and the food wasn’t any good. Our personnel was so limited we worked continuously day and night.

On a mission, the plane came first ... food second ... sleep third. That was just about the priority. Sometimes sleep came second if there wasn’t any food -- or if you just fell apart and said to hell with it. In Java, we enjoyed a little more rest and good food -- at least through January until things started getting rough around our home bases, with occasional bombing and strafing raids and many alerts. Then rest diminished again to a minimum.

Don't misunderstand me- We weren't bitter and we weren't licked. Morale was high. We were in good health, although of course all of us lost weight and there were a few cases of malaria. We had plenty of gas, sufficient bombs, oxygen for high-altitude operation, and adequate quantities of machine gun ammunition. But the combination of insufficient rest, inadequate food and poor communications beat us down to the point where we were just hanging on. The strain was terrific. Toward the last, we were so completely fagged that everything we did, we did automatically.

* * *

While we were in Mindanao, we listened to a radio station back in the States every night. We threw most of it out. We got the impression that no one back home was in a position to talk publicly about what was going on. Everyone was going wild, in the first burst of war hysteria. Everyone wanted every scrap of news that could be gotten, and it seemed to us that some of the broadcasters manufactured what they didn't know ... and they knew so damned little.

Even up to the eve of evacuation of Manila, we still figured we wouldn't lose the Philippines. We knew what the Nips had, we knew what we had.

We knew that if we didn't get reinforcements in, we were going to lose the place. It was a simple problem in arithmetic. We felt that, somehow or other, we would get help, but it was just wishful thinking.

The primary fact in the whole situation was just this: We had to go some place where we could get decent maintenance on the planes; and where the crews could get some rest.

We knew -- both the flying personnel and the ground crews knew -- that wherever real work might be done on the planes, it couldn't be done in the Philippines. Oh, we could repair an engine and handle minor maintenance even with little or no equipment but a hoist and a few tools, but any major maintenance was out of the question. Our engines were getting lots of hours on them, and there was no way of making up the careful checks that they simply had to have. We couldn't allow a plane to fall, apart on a mission unless it was some life-and-death gamble where the game was worth the candle.

The maintenance problem was really acute. The only place where we could get spare parts was from damaged planes because Nichols Field, just south of Manila, was our principal air depot, and it had been knocked out. At one time, we had 12 engines from wrecked planes on mounts at Del Monte. The last time I was there -- with General Royce's raiding party in early April there were still engines available. We had no way to take them out when we went to Java.

* * *

We were flying our equipment. Every plane that was flyable was in the air continuously. We practically lived with the ships. When a pilot wasn't getting ready for a mission or on one, he was with his plane. Sometimes he ate under it. Most of the time he slept under it.

Not only then, but on through Australia and Java, our mechanics did things with those planes that were practically unbelievable. Every combat crew engineer was capable of being flight chief or a line chief.

Their knowledge of the equipment was such that, with their bare hands and the few tools they had, they performed repairs that would have constituted a problem in a fully equipped shop. It never occurred to them to wonder whether a job could be done. They did it, tools or no tools, in the flickering light of lanterns or the narrow spot of a flashlight. Many are the unsung heroes of our small force through all this period, for the boys who were in the planes in combat did all or most of the maintenance, too.

* * *

The whole problem of our evacuation of the Philippines turned on this:

Clark Field was out. Nichols Field was out. We couldn't go there for overhaul. We had to do something. We had no pursuit cover. The Japs already had established their beachhead at Vigan, and they were moving in on Lingayen, Legaspi in the southeast, and Lamon Bay in a vast maneuver to encircle Luzon.

What we wanted to do was to move out to Australia, get some rest and overhaul our equipment, and then go back to Mindanao, using Del Monte as an advanced base, and strike back at the Japs from there. Furthermore, we expected our carriers to move in.

I didn't have many missions before I pulled out for Australia, but the other men in the group were flying missions continuously. And we were losing planes. The first one was Colin Kelly's on Dec. 10. On the 12th, Montgomery made a forced landing in the water off Zamboanga. "Jack" Adams was jumped by 20 or 30 ME-109's and Zeros over Cebu, and had to make a forced landing an one of the little islands. On the 14th, "Shorty" Wheless' plane was almost shot to pieces in a raid on a landing force off Legaspi.

President Roosevelt told the Story of Wheless's exploit in a radio talk last spring. The story also is told in the citation accompanying the Distinguished Service Cross which was awarded him for carrying out the mission. It reads:

"On Dec. 14, 1941, while making an attack on enemy warships and transports in the harbor at Legaspi, P.I. as Pilot of a B-17 airplane (Flying Fortress), he was attacked by 18 enemy pursuit planes for a period of 25 minutes. During the attack all four gunners were wounded, one fatally.

"Returning to his operating base, with one engine out of commission, Lt Wheless found that the landing field was obscured by low clouds and a drizzling rain. In that mountainous country, it was impossible to reach the field under such conditions. Landing was made with three flat tires, the result of enemy action, on a small barricaded field in semi-darkness. The only damage sustained was four bent propellers. None of the crew was injured in the landing and wounded members were immediately taken to hospital.

“This conservation of personnel and equipment was possible only through the highest order of bravery and flying ability."

His plane was riddled. He knew he couldn’t get in to Del Monte. Only two or his engines were putting out much power. The plane looked like a sieve. I think someone said they counted over 1200 holes in it. There was a little field at Cagagan, and he didn't fool around. He got in and sat down. They pulled the ship off into the brush, stripped it of everything salvageable and left it.

Exclusive of those destroyed at Clark, we had lost four out of 17 available planes in the first six days of combat operation, and we lost two on the field at Del Monte. Again, it was simple mathematics: Dec. 8, 35 planes; Dec. 14, 11 planes; attrition, almost 6 percent.

Major O'Donnell had been called up to Manila as group leader to replace Colonel Eugene Eubanks who led the 19th Group out from the States in October. Colonel Eubanks was injured in an accident during the black out after the initial Jap attack He organized and directed the bomber command of Air Forces headquarters in Australia and Java..

(Eubanks now is a brigadier general and director, Bombardment Command, U. S. Army Air Forces, with headquarters in Washington.)

* * *

O’Donnell sat up there in Manila and cried his eyes out because he couldn't be out in combat with the boys' Finally the word came through We were ordered, to leave the Philippines.

It is 1700 miles from Del Monte to Australia. The planes were loaded up with all of the spare parts and key personnel that could be crowded into them. Every plane was overloaded far beyond it’s rated maximum. We couldn't make the trip without extra bomb-bay gasoline tanks, and all of the tanks were at Clark Field, which was under almost continuous alert and very nearly continuous air attack. The maximum number of planes which could be serviced there during the brief period that it was safe to stay on the field was three.

The procedure was for not more than three planes to fly in at night, pick up all the spare parts and personnel that could be taken aboard, and two bomb bay tanks each. Every tank not riddled by enemy air attack was taken out. .We also took up empty oxygen bottles and flew out full ones.

* * *

Two of us flew up to Clark on the night of Dec. 16. Only our top position lights were burning as we flew around Corregidor and over Mariveles. As soon as we got over Luzon, I saw light flash, then another, and another. In the neighborhood of Subic Bay, I saw one ground light come on, then two more ... and they formed a straight line pointing directly at Cavite. In the order in which they flashed on, it was evident that they were ground signals to enemy planes.

Just south of Mt. Arayat, a powerful beam light flashed on and blinked some kind of a signal. It wasn't Morse, but it could have been Japanese code. As soon as we arrived at Clark, we reported the lights. The fellows there were not surprised. They said that anyone who flew at night could see the signal lights flashing all over the island. Everyone had the same report. We didn't pass over the tiniest village without seeing the wink of a signal from the ground. The Jap espionage system was working to perfection.

* * *

At Clark, everything was blacked out. Guards were every where. We even put covers on our flashlights. We walked from the hangar out to the house where our quarters had been. A bomb had come through the roof and made a direct hit on Major O'Donnell's room. Everything in his room had been chewed to fragments. The back of the house, -- where our trunks cases in fact, everything we brought out from Hickam -- were stored, had been blown in. I was able to gather up a few personal odds and ends for myself and others who had lived in the same house, but only that.

We arrived at 9 o'clock, serviced, loaded up the tanks, spare parts and personnel, and took off at 3 o'clock on the morning of the 17th for Del Monte. Each plane was a complete unit, carrying three or four maintenance men in addition to the combat crew. with our extra gasoline, we were far over-loaded, but we didn't even think about that.

On the 18th, we made a nine-hour hop to Australia. One phase of the war for the 19th Group had ended.

Installment V

Fliers made Escape from Philippines by Small Boat and Submarine

Not all of our fellows got out of the Philippines.

No one man can tell the whole story of the 19th Bombardment Group, but one of the great untold stories and one that perhaps may not be told for months or years is how men of our headquarters squadron and one of the tactical squadrons fought as rifle-men in the fox holes of Bataan.

Whatever difficulties and hardships we may have experienced, they were nothing as contrasted with what those men went through.

Every plane that left Clark Field until it was evacuated, every plane that left our base at Del Monte until the Nips overran Mindanao, brought out the maximum number of personnel that could be carried.

We ignored the rated maximum load. There wasn't such a thing. The only criterion was how much we could carry and still get out to Australia. Some of the planes were so loaded that they had only a few minutes or fuel left when they arrived at our Australian base.

* * *

There must be dozens of yet untold stories of how our men straggled out of the Philippines by small boat and submarine. One group of several officers got out on a submarine which put into Surabaya from Manila shortly after we moved up into Java. These men were soon flying combat missions, some of them until we came back to the States.

Major O'Donnell and most of our squadron's ground and air personnel who were at Clark when the Nips hit came down to Mindanao in a small boat from Marivetes, the little port at the southern extremity of Bataan peninsula, after the evacuation of Manila. Only a few days before, another small boat loaded with personnel; ammunition, bombs and other military stores had attempted to run the Jap blockade. The Japs spotted it some where up around Cebu and, under their terrific strafing and bombing, the ammunition cargo exploded. So far as we were able to learn, not a man escaped.

Some of the men left on Bataan at first were organized into construction crews to build new fields for fighters which also could also be used by our B-17’s, in the hope that we could get back. That was the spirit of Bataan. They may have been defeated, but they were never broken.

The fellows who came out with O'Donnell were bombed and strafed all of the way down through the islands. They moved by night, hid out in island-coves during the day and somehow they got through.

* * *

Those left on Bataan finally were in the very thick of the fighting. They didn’t have any planes to fly or to repair; they had built their air fields, so they did the next best thing -- they went into the line as riflemen. Our men on Mindanao, while awaiting, evacuation of whatever was to come next, formed themselves into infantry and machine gun platoons. I’ll have something to say later on about one group of our mechanics there.

One of the classic stories of this unending struggle to get out to Australia concerns O’Donnell, Lt Ed Green and a kid whose name I have forgotten. There was an old B-18 at Del Monte. Lacking any other means of getting out, they decided to rig it for the flight to Australia. They tore our the bomb bay and somehow or other installed six gasoline drums. Their equipment comprised an old hand pump, a Rand-McNally map of the Southwest Pacific and a compass -- and that’s all.

When the gas in the wing tanks neared exhaustion, they would send the kid into the bomb bay. he would uncap one of the drums, and hand pump fuel 50 gallons at a time into the wing tank. That’s the way they flew to Australia. The ship was nothing but a flying gas tank. One static spark probably would have ignited the fumes from the open drum during the fuel transfer operation. There would have been one terrific explosion, and that would have been that. Any Nip plane with a gun on it could have knocked them down.

“Rosie” (O’Donnell) told us that they thought of landing at the Dutch air field on the island of Ambon, about 900 miles south of Del Monte, but when they arrived there, they estimated they had enough fuel to get on into Australia. Just 10 minutes after they cleared Ambon, it was attacked by the Japs.

The normal route from Mindanao to Australia for this type of plane was an easy stage flight by way of Celebes and Timour, but they didn’t dare risk that. It was all or nothing. They gambled -- and lived not only to witness but to help turn the tide.

As soon as Major O’Donnell landed in Australia, he hopped a ship and flew up to United States headquarters at Bandoeng in Java to report to L/Gen George H. Brett, then deputy supreme commander in the theater. It was agreed that it was vitally important to evacuate skilled flying personnel our of the Philippines, and plans were mapped to do so. Several trips were made soon thereafter, ferrying needed experienced men from Mindanao to Java.

* * *

There was one unofficial job of evacuation to which every man flying evacuees out of the Philippines was pledged. Colonel (then Lt) Donald Keisier’s wife was in Manila. She came out to the islands as a civil service employee, and continued in her position in Manila after they were married. When the war broke, Keiser was with us in Del Monte. He didn't talk much about it. He wasn't that kind. He didn't know whether she had managed to get out to Corregidor, or whether she had been interned with the other civilians left in Manila.

In his quiet way, he did every thing he could to discover any possible way of getting her out. He volunteered to go up to Luzon on his own. The strain was made even more intense by the uncertainty we could find out nothing. At that time, the Japs were bombing Manila, after it had been declared an open city. Later, we learned that the Japs and even some people in the States explained the bombing by pointing out that there were boats in the harbor which were legitimate military objectives. Hell the nearest boat was anchored out two miles. Even with their eyes shut, the Japs could have come closer than that.

* * *

During this period and well into April, planes were almost constantly flying missions, using Del Monte as a refueling base. Keiser tried to find a light, non-military plane with which he could make the flight from Del Monte to Luzon. Every man in the group understood, without having it set down officially, that if he had the slightest opportunity he was to have a go at evacuating Mrs. Keiser. I don't believe anything would have been said. No one would have said "No" to the proposal, even though it would have been a non-military errand.

So far as I know, Mrs. Keiser is still a prisoner at San Tomas, the Jap internment center in Manila, unless she had been exchanged. Her husband, who at the time of his appointment was the youngest colonel in the Air Forces, flew out from Java for India last February. He didn't know then and perhaps he never learned the fate of his wife. She may not know that he died three weeks ago in the Middle East, where he was chief of staff of the 9th U.S. Bomber command. He was only a few weeks over 28.

When we saw our Australian base, for the first time, nine hours out of Del Monte, it was two roughly right-angled runways in the middle of a clear space in the brush. It was an “R-Double A-F" (Royal Australian Air Forces) base. The Aussies had a few Wirraways up there. The Wirraway was designed as a light training plane, and was never intended to be used for combat, but in those days, with the Japs sweeping down through the islands, anything that could fly was a combat ship. The Wirraways were used principally for reconnaissance. They wouldn't have had the ghost of a chance against a Jap fighter, but they carried depth-charges and if they spotted a sub, they were used for dive-bombing.

* * *

Incidentally, a story to make your hair turn is how those RAAF boys at Rabaul met Jap Zeros with Wirraways when the Japs hit New Britain. I've flown in a Wirraway, so I know.

The Australians were glad to see us, and they treated us like blood brothers. Anything they had was ours, without asking. We dispersed our planes off the runways and established quarters in the tents in the light timber, from which the field had been carved. Some of us were quartered with Aussie fliers.

We learned something about Australian wild-life there. It wasn't, merely the three-foot long, baby crocodiles we saw along the road on the way up to camp, killed by passing vehicles and incidentally, back in the swamps there mere some whopping fellows. I never had a chance to go hunting -- not for crocodiles anyway.

* * *

First there were the ants. You never saw such creatures. They were green; half an inch long, and as poisonous as the devil. They call them "green devils." How they do bite! They sting like bees -- like a wasp or a hornet -- and if you backed up against a tree, even a passing contact, you were in trouble. In two seconds, they were all over you, and you were on fire in a dozen places. They literally swarmed in the bush.

Then there were little red-brown ants, about a sixteenth of an inch long, that got into everything. They swarmed on the tent tie ropes and into and over anything you owned. Maybe you had forgotten a few crumbs or a cookie in your cross country bag, but the ants hadn't. You would open it and the inside of the bag appeared as if it had a red-brown lining.

You couldn't get away from the flies. If you didn't wear a fly net over your face, you spent the whole day batting at them. Sit down for a moment, and your back is black with them. They swarmed around your eyes, your nose, your mouth, by the thousands. They'd sit down on your eye-balls if they could.

* * *

We looked like a bunch of barn storming tramps. Most of us had one bag, containing a toothbrush, razor and towel and those of us who were really well equipped had an extra pair of pants. Some of us had exactly what we had in our pockets. In a few cases, that was the lining.

We became accustomed to such things. We were too busy to bother about mere physical discomforts. That week in the Philippines had conditioned us to a hand-to-mouth existence, a living by improvisation, in which the last figment of peace time routine had disappeared.

When the going got a bit tougher than ordinary, we would think -- as so often we did -- of our pals on Bataan or Corregidor, some of whom we had never met. Then you felt ashamed of yourself.

There was no rest. The planes had to be overhauled, such equipment as the Aussies were able to provide moved in -- and above all else, the job of smashing at the Japs from the advanced base in Del Monte resumed immediately.

Installment VI

Only 4 Bombers able to Blast Jap Invasion force at Lingayan Ref Fig 2

I celebrated my 27th birthday on Dec. 23, 1941; by bombing the Japs at Lingayen.

They got my bombs and I got my second citation, although I knew nothing of it until we arrived in Java in January.

We took off from Australia base in order to hit Davao, the main Jap stronghold in southern Mindanao, just at sunset. Due to the small formations which we were compelled to fly and to our lack of fighter support, we had to build every mission upon the element of surprise.

Every plane that was flyable (there were 9, the 10th failing to make the trip) -- loaded up with gas and bombs and we caught the Nips wide open. They didn't expect us and we got some hits in on transports and shore installations and then put in at Del Monte on the north side of the island. I logged 10 hours and 25 minutes of continuous flying from Australia to Del Monte by way of Davao.

As soon as we landed, the ships were serviced and re-loaded with bombs. We stowed away some grub, “corned willie” and stuff like that, held an operations meeting and had some ships ready to take off at 3 o’clock the morning of the 23rd. We could only service six ships at a time, so it was agreed that everyone who couldn’t hit Lingayen would gang up on Davao. Both raids were made at the crack of dawn.

* * *

One of the six ships didn’t get off and the leader of the second flight had to turn back shortly after take off due to trouble with one engine.

The other wing man of my flight, the second, turned to follow the remaining planes of the first flight as soon as we got into the air, and I followed him. At this time we were only about 20 miles from our base, and just off the north shore of Mindanao.

Just as I turned on a course to intercept and join the remainder of the flight, and could see the running lights of my wing man, Lt Earl Tash, I noticed a bright light about 30 degrees to the right of our course. It looked like the running light of a plane but we were almost positive it could not be one of our old planes ferrying supplies between Clark Field and Mindanao. I turned over to investigate.

It was very hazy at our altitude and a higher overcast shut down what moon and starlight there was, so that it was necessary to move in close to identify the plane.

When we moved to within 1000 yards we saw that it was a Nip ship. Our plane had an over-load of gas and bombs, but I tried to maneuver in order to get our top or bottom and side guns on him. It was maddening. He could fly much slower, and every time we turned or maneuvered, he merely followed us. It was like trying to evade our own shadow. When I realized that we couldn't shake him and get in suitable firing position, I started to climb.

My one thought was to prevent him, by any means, from spotting and following the other three planes. The Jap tried to climb after us, but when he found that he was being out distanced, he leveled off a few thousand feet below. Even then, we were too fast for him. We flew straight west for a while until the Jap gave up the chase and turned north to his base, and then we turned north in a parallel course toward the target -- the Gulf at Lingayen.

The Japanese were reported to have assembled a huge invasion fleet in the gulf, preparatory landing, establishing beach-heads and launching their main drive southeast toward Manila.

My navigator, Lt “Mac" McAllister, did a marvelous job. We maneuvered several minutes in the vain effort to get a good shot at the Jap reconnaissance plane, climbed through an over-cast, and then flew north, none of which upset Mac's calculations in the slightest. He calmly gave me a heading, we flew almost two hours more on instruments, and when dawn broke, we were within five miles of his calculated position.

* * *

There were scattered clouds at our altitude and although it was light up there, it was still dark in the gulf. In a few minutes, my Bombardier, Sgt Payne, who had come out with me from Hickam in September, yelped: There's a whole row of them!" I felt a kind of tightening up around my stomach.

He whistled softly and then reported through the inter-phone: “There's another row.... and another!"

There were four columns of vessels, the largest single collection of enemy shipping I have ever seen. They ranged in size from little 2000 ton freighters up to the huge Maru class of passenger ships, of about 25,000 tons.

* * *

It was a monster aggregation -- heavy cruisers, destroyers, cargo auxiliaries and transports. At the time, it was estimated that at least 60,000 troops were at sea, waiting to disembark. Payne later said that he counted up to 100 ships and then stopped.

“Pick out the biggest ship you can find," I ordered him.

For fifteen minutes we flew as we intently studied the ships spread out in their pattern of power beneath us.

We passed over at least a third of the convoy before the bombardier satisfied himself that he had spotted the biggest thing afloat, a xx,000 tonner. Then he spotted the second. Both were anchored, close together, off shore in the middle of the convoy. Six or eight big cruisers were putting up stuff at us but it was falling below and behind us. We didn't pay much attention to it.

“Bombs away!" Payne reported.

We turned sharply to observe the effect: a water-line hit at the bow of one, and another water-line hit at the bow of the other. They must have done plenty of damage, although they were only 100-pound bomb's. If we had had heavy bombs, we could have done plenty more, and if our full strength had been available, it would have been a field day.

If a couple of our carriers had been handy, so that we could have launched a mixed high level, dive bombing and torpedo attack, it would have been a slaughter.

If ... if ... if . Time and again, it was “if.” We didn’t seem to have enough stuff to hit them hard and then hard again. We hurt them. We got in plenty of damaging blows, but we didn’t have the reserve to follow through.

* * *

After taking a quick look -- we weren’t supposed to be in there alone -- we were scamming out when the bottom gunner called up, “There’s a Zero.”

Almost immediately he yelled: “Holy smoke, there are 14 of them!”

I opened the engines up to full power. We had been holding our breath feeling sure we couldn’t get away that easily, for up to that moment we had not seen a single pursuit. All our gun ports were open, which slowed the ship down considerably, but even so we were doing plenty miles an hour at our altitude.

Vincent, my bottom gunner and assistant radio operator, reported that the Zeros bored up through the overcast in a curious formation which made it appear they were chasing us in a formation front of 14 planes. They were about 3000 yards behind and possibly 2000 feet below us, climbing in a manner that indicated they hoped to pass under and cut us off.

* * *

Possibly they received a warning of other planes approaching, because they fired on us then turned back. The rear-gunner, passing along a blow-by-blow count of the action, said that the Zeros opened up with all guns simultaneously, the fire from the formation appearing like a fiery burst of blossoms in the lightening sky. He said it looked as though they fired 100 rounds from every gun in one long burst, but we didn’t get a scratch.

I don’t know if it was luck or not but I never had a ship shot up in aerial combat.

Out trick had worked. Parcell, Keiser and Tash, who were flying the other elements, saw a burst of ack-ack as we made our run, got in themselves, dropped their bombs, and got out again without interception.

As we withdrew, we could see clouds of smoke and small fires in the city of Vigan. The big Jap push to take Manila and isolate our ground forces was on.

* * *

We knew we couldn’t get back to either of our alternate bases -- Ambon, a Dutch island in the Moluccas, or Del Monte which was dangerous during daylight, for the Japs knew we had used it the night before -- on the gas we had, so we let down on a little field on the island of Mindoro, south of Luzon, just in time for breakfast.

We hadn't had any sleep since we left Australia 25 hour before.

After breakfast, we flew down to Ambon, spent the night there and went on into Australia the 24th -- the day before Christmas.

The rest of our planes had gotten off from Del Monte on the morning of the 23d in time to hit Davao at sunrise, as planned. The nine planes which took the air that day -- four against Lingayen, five against Davao -- were our total striking force. They, plus one or two on the ground in Australia undergoing repair. comprised the full bomber strength of the United States Far Eastern Air Force.

* * *

A main wheel tire on Lt Weldon Smith's plane had been punctured at Del Monte by shrapnel from a previous bombing, so that he was unable to take of for Lingayen or at dawn for Davao. However, he. was determined to carry out his mission.

There were no facilities there, no wing jacks to lift the ship while a main wheel tire was changed, but that didn't bother the crew. In some manner, they blocked a wing, dug a hole under the punctured tire, repaired the. damage, remounted the wheel, filled the hole, knocked out the wing blocks and wheeled the plane off to solid ground for the take-off, mean while dodging a violent strafing attack by Jap planes. Smitty calmly took off, bombed Davao solo, and returned to Australia.

Two days after we hit Lingayen, Lt "Al” Mueller and Lt George Schaetzel staged a two-plane raid on Davao. The ever increasing shipping massed there -- warships, troop and supply ships -- made it an obvious target. Not only was it an intermediate base for the jump-off against Celebes and Borneo to the south and southeast, continued Jap penetration from Davao northward would gravely endanger our continued use of Del Monte and-other fields in the vicinity as advance striking bases of our own. Eventually, that is precisely what did happen. Enemy landings at Cotabato and in the vicinity or Cagayan on Macajalar Bay early last May, made possible in part by release of troops which overran Bataan on April 9, cut Mindanao in half.

* * *

Purcell, Keiser, Tash and I received the Distinguished Flying Cross for the raid on Lingayen; Mueller the Distinguished Flying Cross and Schaetzel the Distinguished Flying Cross for the job on Davao -- as we all learned some weeks later.

"During the attack," Al's citation reads, "his airplane was twice hit by antiaircraft bursts. Shortly after, both planes were attacked by 10 enemy pursuit planes. The formation leader's (Schaetzel) airplane lost an engine on the enemy's first attack and his tail gunner was killed. This necessitated the taking of a much slower speed by the leader.

Despite the fact that his plane had already been hit twice; Lt Mueller stayed in formation with the leader, and for minutes fought off the attacking enemy pursuit. The effectiveness of the protection he thus afforded the leader was evidenced by the fact that upon returning to the field, it was found that the leader's plane had barely more than a dozen enemy hits on it, while Lt Mueller's plane had more than 100. The airplane also was so badly disabled that it was only by extreme skill that Lt. Mueller avoided a serious crash upon landing."

* * *

Mullers plane looked like the one Wheless brought back about a week before from Leggaspi, it was riddled.

“More then 100 hits” is putting it conservatively. It looked as though the holes had been put together rather than the plane. When Schaetzel lost his engine he lost altitude, but Mueller hung on his wing. Both got down almost to the wave crests in order to prevent the Nips from getting under them and in that way staggered 1250 air miles back to Australia.

We were rapidly learning a lesson that is still true: the Jap could riddle a B-17 until it looked like the old family colander, but it got home. It might be unfit for combat duty, temporarily or permanently, but it got home, just the same.

The B-17D, comprising the bulk of our ships was the last model of ships before the installation of the tail gun and top turret. They were the same planes that had been flown from the States to the Hawaii in April, and from Hawaii to Philippines.

* * *

The “D” was a great improvement, in my opinion, over the “C,” the preceding type, for though they were basically the same plane, the former had been greatly simplified from the pilots viewpoint. There was a great reduction in the number of instruments.

The “D” carried twin .50 caliber guns in the “bath tub” in the bottom, right behind the radio compartment; twin .50s in the radio compartment on top, a single on each side aft, and one .30 caliber gun which could be operated from the gun ports in the nose.

If we could get them before ground troops grabbed them for antiaircraft defenses -- and were converted for that -- we dismounted guns from wrecked planes and installed them, more or less efficiently in the nose.

Superior though the “D” was it had one great weakness. It had no tail protection and had to be flown like a pursuit ship to keep the Nips away from the blind spot in the tail.

We had heard of the B-17Es the first ship to be equipped with a “stinger” -- a tail gun -- and it’s putting it mildly to say that we were crazy to get them. The Japs were not as pleased as we later proved.

Installment VII

Fliers who Survive Java Infurno Praise Bravery of the Dutch

Christmas, 1941, just wasn’t Christmas to the little know of 19th Bombardment Group men huddled at a base upon the northern coast of Australia.

We thought about Christmas and home -- but that’s all, and I think most of us deliberately tried not to think.

That day will be forever memorable to us for an item so negligible in a normal, peace-time existence as to pass unnoticed -- a bottle of beer.

As soon as we returned from the mission against Lingayen and Davao we went to work immediately on the planes, servicing and overhauling them for our imminent transfer to Java. We worked all day Christmas and that evening the Aussies rounded up a few bottles of beer out of their allotment.

We had “V. B.” -- Victoria Bitter, a pretty good Australian beer, and some of Foster's export ale. It was so hot we had to drink fast in order to keep it from foaming on the ground, but no nectar of the gods ever tasted sweeter to us. It was the first taste of beer that we'd had since the war broke.

One of the welcome luxuries of the camp was a water tank tower rigged as a shower, but we had to do all our showering before 10 A.M., or after nightfall, when the tank had cooled off. Between 10 A. M. and sunset the water was so damned hot you couldn't stand it.

* * *

In our plans for what we hoped was only the temporary evacuation of the Philippines, there were, as I have said, two prime necessities: overhaul of our equipment and some relaxation which would break the terrific strain under which we had been working.

Actually, neither purpose was realized.

The Japs were playing around up in the Philippines, they were streaming down the Malayan peninsula and they were swarming like ants in their occupation of British North Borneo.

Java was the key to the defense of The Netherlands East Indies. When Singapore fell, the outlook for Java became black, and the Dutch knew it as foreboding as we did. But the fall of Singapore was six weeks away when, on Dec. 30, six or seven of our planes took off from Australia; hopped- 1300 miles and swooped down on the Dutch air field at Malang, 20 mile through the pass south of Surabaya.

Schaetzel, Keiser and I flew three planes up on the 31st. Each plane carried a combat crew of 8, three maintenance men and a few extra officer personnel. That was our entire force -- ten planes.

The Dutch practically turned over the town to us. On New Year's day they threw a dinner which. considering the kind of fare we had been subsisting on, was almost as threatening to the welfare of the United States Army Air Forces in the Far East as were the operations of the enemy. It was one of those typical Dutch dinners with about 16 courses, each one a meal in itself.

Before starting in on the missions which we flew out of Java -- and those in which I engaged were only a fraction of the total -- I want to say something about the Dutch.

Those of us who fought through that awful period from Dec. 6 until the evacuation of Java in late February brought back with us almost to the man, I think, two incentives.

* * *

The first is MacArthur's pledge that he'd going back to the Philippines. That is talk right down our alley. So are we. The other is to avenge the pillage of the Dutch East Indies. Between us and the Dutch there is almost a blood kinship. It Isn't an easy feeling to explain. Part of it is their sheer guts; they're the bravest people I have ever known. Part of it is the way they went into battle with the equipment they had.

There were no odds too great for a Dutchman. He was out numbered, he had his back to the wall, his equipment was insufficient in quantity, and much of it was either obsolete or obsolescent, but he would take them all on in one swoop. It isn't a suicide trait; there is just nothing in the world that they are afraid of. They were fighting against terrific odds. They knew it, and they faced it with their eyed open- They were fighting for their homeland and they, fought until there was nothing left with which they could fight.

There are several stories I would like to tell, but the Japs hold Java and what they don't know, can't help them.

* * *

The Dutch pilots were very well trained, but their equipment for the most part was second rate. The back bone of their bombardment force were B-10s, an export version of our old and long discarded Martin B-10s and B-12s. Their fighters were principally Brewster Buffaloes, of a relatively new type, but they also had a few trainers which corresponded to our Air Forces' PT-13, but heavier and with a larger engine.

They were maneuverable but slow, and they wouldn't compare favorably with our P-12 pursuit, the last biplane the United States Army used, which was hot stuff 10 years ago. It carried two or three .30 caliber guns mounted forward, and two .30s mounted in the rear gunner's position. The Dutch themselves regarded them only as advanced trainers, but we would not consider them even good training ships, past the primary, or basic at most.

Never the less, Dutch pilots took those armed trainers on patrol in areas where they knew there were Zeros, against which only the most skillful pilot could have a chance. His only hope, if caught, was to evade the Nip's first burst, then pull up and shoot him down from behind.

There are dozens of stories of their courage that I might tell, to add to the hundreds already told. There is the story of the raid on Tarakan, as an example.

* * *

The Japs hit over from Saigon in Indo-China at British North Borneo and progressively occupied the west coast. Then in January another big Jap convoy moved down through Macassar, its first objective being Tarakan, the big Dutch oil port on northeastern Borneo. There was only a small garrison force there. The Japs tossed a carrier in and blasted the everlasting Hell out of the garrison and the natives. The garrison defended its completely untenable positions as long as it could, then blew up the oil installations and faded back into the hills.

I was told by a Dutch air Officer at our base that part of the training of an officer in the Dutch East Indies is a three week period in which he must maintain himself in the jungle. He is sent in, he told me, with his light weapons, his uniform and a little bit of rice, dried fruit and snit. For three weeks he must live off and in the jungle.

The moment the Japanese approached the northern end of Borneo, through Celebes Sea, the Dutch hit them as often and as hard as they could, until their air force -- the Dutch -- disappeared. During the landing at Tarakan, some of the finest pilots in the N.E.I. air force were assigned to take a formation of B-10s in on a mission against the Jap invasion force. With a crew of two, carrying 1000 pound bombs, they went in low, hedge-hopping over the water -- the only chance they had to avoid anti-aircraft and fighter

interception. Actually, of course, they had no chance at all. Not one of the B-10; came back. So far as we could learn, every one was lost. Some went down in flames but the raid caused tremendous damage.

* * *

We heard that each pilot got a ship a Nip ship loaded to the guards with troops, ammunition and supplies.

There is another incident, of which I was not an eye-witness, but which is wholly authentic.

Just prior to the fall or Singapore a few old, shot-up wrecks of Hurricanes were evacuated by the British to Batavia, capital of Sumatra. The Hurricanes were just about worn out -- full of holes and badly in need of repair, worthless as combat ships. On the airfield at the time also were three Dutch Brewster Buffaloes.

The Japs, scenting the fall of Singapore and the collapse of the defensive keystone of the whole Ease Indies, were bombing and strafing every airfield which could supply or afford cover for the slightest air support of the big British base at the tip of Malaya. Three Zeros came roaring in at tree-top level over the field, spraying machine-gun bullets like rain. Two of the Brewster's were destroyed on the ground. Their fuel tanks were punctured and burst into names.

One lone Dutch pilot sprinted across the field, heedless of the strafers, climbed into the remaining Brewster, took off on a cold motor with his throttle wide open and shot down two of the Zeros in flames before the third got him. His plane caught fire, but he bailed out and landed safely, cursing his luck in good, resounding Dutch phrases at not getting all three of them. There was a reason.

Just before taking off, he had stood by helplessly as a Jap bomber destroyed a hangar in which his wife and two children, among others, were killed.

* * *

I think that the majority of our fellows, if and when they get back into combat, would prefer the Southwest Pacific theater. We know it as each knows his own backyard. We know every nook and cranny from Singapore to the Solomons. But, inside from familiarity, we would like to run a few missions for the Dutch when they're on the delivering instead of the receiving end.

On Jan. 2, we started on a long mission, intending to use Samarinda on the east coast of Borneo, north of Balikpapan, as our base for a mission against Davao. We pushed through about two-thirds at the way, and then the weather became so bad we had to turn back.

We tried it again on the 3d. It was stinking weather, but we made it in a little less than four hours. Samarinda is about 50 miles inland from Macassar Strait and 120 miles north of Balikpapan. It was just a field and we had to load Dutch bombs. The natives who helped service the planes were so slow they almost drove us frantic, and the food was uneatable. We had some bread, but none of us could go the stew. It was... well, let it go as uneatable.

There was a good bit of trouble getting the fuses of the Dutch bombs lined up right, but the next day -- Jan. 4 -- we hit Davao.

It was Lingayen all over again. There was all kinds of stuff up there. A convoy of six cargo vessels was heading up the gulf toward the city of Davao, and there were plenty around the piers, but on the way in we spotted a little cove on the west shore of the gulp -- Malalag Bay.

It seemed to me that half the Jap navy was tied up there. There was a big battleship, heavy and light cruisers and destroyers, and the whole works were tied up, deck to deck. If -- that word again! -- ours had been a formation of 18 to 30 planes, loaded with heavy bombs, right there we could have made a tremendous difference in the trend of the entire Southwest Pacific war. Such a force could have wiped out the whole fleet in half an hour. The fact was our force was the whole flyable force. Every plane not undergoing overhaul was in the formation -- all eight of them!

The bombs of the first flight hit the cruisers and destroyers. Elmer Parcell was leading the second flight. his first bomb hit smack in the superstructure of the battleship. The first bombs of the other wingman hit around the forward turret and my bombardier planted his first on right at the water line, the others falling across the destroyers near by.

* * *

Subsequent observations indicated that the battleship either sank or was beached in shallow water. Later attempts were seen being made to tow it out.

One destroyer was blown practically out of the water and the entire forward end of another was lifted clear of the water and spun around, the way a child spins a toy boat in a bath-tub.

At the time, we had learned largely to discount the effectiveness of Jap antiaircraft above 18,000 feet or 20,000 feet. With such small formation and without fighter escort, we had to maintain high altitude anyway, as our defensive fire with those planes wasn’t strong enough, especially to the rear. We had to get in, hit, and get out.

We had an axiom: “Hit ‘em high, hit ‘em fast, hit ‘em once!” -- and we did. We went in fast, made one good bombing run and didn’t stay around too long to find out what happened. In that way, we saved our equipment. We couldn’t afford to lose it. It was all we had. We sent out many a formation of three planes on missions where one of 18 would have been tactically proper. It was by no means uncommon to have individual planes flying in against these objectives -- and coming out again, after laying a few eggs in or near some Jap “bird nest”.

Installment VIII

Pilots Defied Dirty Weather to Save 23 Fliers in Philippines

Our first heavy bomber reinforcements began arriving in Sumatra on Jan. 9, after flying considerably more than half way around the world.

It was the 7th group, which originally had been scheduled to fly out to the Philippines, but which had to reverse its field and fly across the Atlantic, Africa, India and down Malaya to Java when things fell, apart in the Far East and the Southwest Pacific.

Its leader was Major Stanley K. Robinson, who was killed 20 days later in a terrific battle of Balikpapen, Borneo.

On the 6th we made a five-hour flight from Malang, our base in eastern Java, up to Palembang, Sumatra, where all of the Dutch high-test aviation gas was made. They were making it faster than they could find tankers to haul it away.

There was a low overcast blanketing the field on the morning of the 9th. We had gassed up, loaded our bombs and were getting ready to take off on a nine-hour mission to bomb an airfield 300 miles north of Singapore, which the British had lost in their withdrawal.

* * *

Our motors were idling, waiting for the take-off, when we heard the heavy growl of motors out of sight above the overcast. We knew that the B-17-Es were on the way and were due to arrive. When we saw the first one searching for the field, flying just above low, fog-like scud clouds, every man there -- and that included Dutch, I suspect -- was almost choked with excitement.

The excitement was reflected in the dash with which a Dutch pilot took off to lead the plane in. He hopped into his pursuit, gunned the motor, took off and his wheels barely cleared the ground before he shot almost vertically up through the overcast in a sharp climbing turn. A few minutes later he darted back through the overcast, with a big B-17E right on his tail.... and then another we hadn’t seen.

Our bunch had no time to inspect them, for we left immediately on the mission up north.

We were unable to get back to Palembang on the gas we had after completing the mission, so we put in at L’Honga, a Dutch auxiliary field on the extreme northwestern tip of Sumatra. They called it an auxiliary field. To us Fortress pilots it was a complement to name it an emergency field... but they did have gas.

That night afforded another instance of the manner in which we had to improvise in order to continue flying operations. Major Cecil Combs, leader of the flight, discovered on landing that he had a flat tail wheel. Naturally, we had no spares any closer than Malang, more than 1500 miles away to the east. If he had been unable to find a substitute, he would have taken off anyway, flat tail wheel and all, but it's the sort of thing you prefer not to do. There is always the chance of losing control at the take-off.

Combs prowled around the field and appropriated a heavy duty inner tube from a Dutch- truck. His crew managed to wrestle the plane's tail over a barrel. Then they wrapped the inner tube over the tail wheel hub twice, cut a hole in the tire sidewall for the valve, inflated it up to 35 pounds, and left it overnight. The next day the tube was still inflated and Combs took, off without incident..

We were no sooner back at Malang than we reloaded and, on the 11th, took off on a mission to bomb Jap shipping off Balikpapan. There were three or four of us, and we scored a number of near misses, but the weather was so bad that it was almost impossible to make accurate observation.

* * *

The whole area, lying close to the equator, is swept by a series of low pressure areas, which are known as "equatorial fronts." They are accompanied by torrential rain, thunder storms, clouds and fog which sometimes extends from the water level up to 25,000 or 30,000 feet. If a pilot tries to get on top of it, he picks up engine, carburetor and wing ice, his windows ice up and he's in a mess.

Long operation in the substratosphere requires the use of oxygen, and after four or five hours of using an oxygen mask your mouth tastes as though the Ethiopian Army had been marching through it with muddy feet..

The two "E"s flew on from Palembang and later, when more planes arrived, headquarters of the 7th group was set up at Madium, only a few miles west of our base at Malang.

I've said it before, but I cannot emphasize too strongly that these missions were being flown constantly. No one man could keep track of them all, and I suppose that the only place where all of the details are preserved is in the 19th Group Journal. We began it in the Philippines, and after we got out to Java, four of us sat down and tried to bring it up to date.

* * *

By this time, too, we were pretty well whipped down physically. Nothing mattered but your own job. So-and-so went on a mission and bombed such-and-such. Somebody else “lost” and engine and was lucky to get back. You nodded and kept plugging.

On the 14th, we flew up to Kendari, on the southwest coast of Celebes, but again the weather separated the formation and I had to bring back my bombs.

On the 19th we took off in absolutely stinking weather on a mission to bomb Jolo in Suluarchipelago, a string of islands extending southwestward from Mindanao to the northeastern coast of Borneo.

They radioed us every hour from Del Monte, the Mindanao base where we expected to land after completing the flight, ordering us to turn back -- fact which we learned upon our arrival there! The weather was “zero-zero” from the water to 20,000 feet. When we found that it would be impossible to bomb Jolo, where, we understood, the Japs were assembling planes for a push against Celebes and Borneo, we decided to take a course which would bring us to Del Monte direct. Our alternate plan was to bomb Davao, get into Del Monte, pick up all the flying personnel we could, and hit Jolo on the way back to Malang.

* * *

The formation, led by Jim Connally, who was awarded the D.F.C. for it, was at medium altitude, plugging through the stuff on instruments, when we emerged suddenly into a kind of trough in the weather -- a channel in the clouds about 16 miles wide.

My bombardier, Sgt Payne, suddenly called up through the inter-phone: "There's a big one right under us with a destroyer escort!"

I called Connally, but my receiver was on the blink and I didn't know whether he heard me or not. Then I saw his bomb-bay doors open, he turned and, the rest of the formation following, we came back over the target course. The ack-ack guns on the destroyer were tossing a lot of stuff at us.

* * *

The boat was a big, 15,000 ton tanker, loaded to the water line. The bombs of the first three planes hit the stern. Schaetzel and I (Kaiser failed to drop his bombs as his bomb-bay door motor burned out at the critical moment) hit the same spot. As we turned away for Del Monte, the tanker was burning and smoking, turning in a circular starboard coarse as though steering mechanism was jammed, and was sinking by the stern.

We couldn’t stay around too long, as we had used all our reserve fuel trying to get through to Jolo. There was no alternative but to make for one of the fields on Mindanao or Cebu, in spite of weather or visibility.

A few minutes later we saw weather that looked worse than anything we had encountered. Big, black thunderheads reached to a tremendous altitude -- too high for us to get over. Connally decided to chance it -- to “make a penetration,” as pilots call it -- and we bored right in. The flight of six planes became separated after flying through some vile stuff.

We plowed through on instruments, getting a shore-line position check through a break in the clouds before penetrating some more bad weather over the mountains of Mindanao. Only 45 minutes before we reached Del Monte the field there was fogged in completely, but suddenly -- they told us on arrival -- the whole valley opened up to 8000 feet, we got in without difficulty.

* * *

Connally’s citation for the flight reads:”.... Over the entire route the weather was bad, with very heavy rains, low visibility and severe equatorial thunderstorms. Had it not been for Connally’s determination to complete the mission and his skill in keeping the flight together, the flight would have had to be abandoned. In the vicinity of the target an enemy tanker of 15,000 tons was intercepted. In the face of heavy anti-aircraft fire from its convoy vessel, it was attacked at low altitude and destroyed, after which Lt Connally led his flight into a base after dark. From the base, the flight evacuated 23 pilots who were sorely needed....”

On the 20th Schaetzel, unable to carry our a bombing mission due to engine trouble, took on a full load of personnel and left individually for Malang direct. The rest of us gassed and serviced our ships, loaded bombs, and took off in time to hit Jolo at daylight, but we couldn’t get in.

The stuff closed in from water up to high altitude. We couldn’t get on top of it because we didn’t have oxygen for the personnel we were evacuating. We tried to get through to Jolo, but we picked up too much carburetor ice that we finally gave it up as a bad job and headed for Malang. That stuff was solid right down to the swells, all around the area west of Mindanao and north of Borneo.

* * *

These operations will give the ordinary layman some idea why observation of the results of a bombing mission often can be expressed only in the most general and tentative language. It will explain why so often reports of combat missions contain such phrases as “possible” or “probable” hits. Unless subsequent reconnaissance can check back on the initial combat reports (it so happens that this was done in the case of the tanker which we bombed off Jolo), there can be no certainty.

In late January the Japs were on the move into Macassar. The Dutch were throwing their air force at them, day after day, in a heroic effort to smash the invasion convoys before beachheads could be established. Every plane we could put in the air was practically on a shuttle-line through the straights, running either reconnaissance or bombing missions.

The weather was terrible. On Jan 22 we took off at 3 o’clock in the morning from Malang and flew Macassar straight -- up the west side of Celebes, and down the east side of Borneo -- looking for a convoy that was reported coming in.

* * *

The weather became so bad, with blinding rain and low clouds, that we had to fly mostly on instruments at an altitude of only 100 feet above the water. We searched the coast-line from the city of Macassar north toward Menado, and then South along the Borneo coast with out spotting the Nips. On the return flight we were about 150 miles north of Balikpapan when we made out, which we believed to be traces of smoke in the low hanging clouds and farther south an odd-shaped cloud, jet black and flattened out on the horizon at low altitude. We didn’t believe it to be cloud, and when we got into it we knew what it was -- It was oil smoke.

The Dutch had dynamited the refineries at Balikpapan.

On our way we calculated the wind drift and the compass direction and estimated the time when the oil must have been touched off.

We learned that our estimate was off only 45 minutes, the refineries having been dynamited the previous day and night.

We checked into Balikpapan on the way down for enemy ships, and the place was just a huge oil smudge. Under the monster cloud, huge flames were roaring, lapping up the oil which the Dutch were determined should not be turned against them.

Installment IX

Worn-Out Equipment No Match in Dutch East Indies

The bad dream of the Philippines was being re-enacted at the nightmare of the Dutch East Indies.

The 19th Group was trying, to meet and hit over whelming forces with worn-out equipment.

Our engines had over 500 hours on them. Most of them had over 200 hours of combat flying, and some more than 300 hours, since the outbreak of war, and none had had any major overhaul. They had gotten to the point where their power out put was so low it was suicidal to use them in combat missions. They were all right for low-altitude ferrying and transport, but nothing more.

There was barely a mission flown in which every plane assigned to it reached the target. Some were shot down, but usually they had to turn back.

It's getting ahead of the story, but a mission which we flew on Feb. 27 is typical. Our mission was to search for the big Jap convoy fleet which was coming down on Java, and which was reported about 100 miles north. We were under orders to go up, find them and bomb them.

* * *

Four of us took off -- Captain Dean Hoevet, who came out of Manila on a submarine, and who was killed in an accident in Australia last September; Captain Phil Mathewson; Captain Red Key who, with his brother, Al, established a non-stop refueling record with an old Curtiss Robin down south some years ago, and myself.

Only one ship got over the target. The other three had to turn back because of engine trouble. Mathewson found some ships and bombed them, but couldn't observe the results. A lone ship couldn't fool around with the stuff they had up there. Once again, it was “hit 'em high, hit 'em fast, hit 'em once" -- and then scram as though the Devil were after you. Actually, he went in low, but was forced to take cover in nearby clouds immediately after releasing his bombs.

The condition of the field at Malang didn't help any, either. It had a 4000-foot turf runway which was fine when we first got in, but about the middle of January the heavy rains came. There was a dip in the middle of it and by the end of January that section was a sea of mud and water. We had to close off half of it, along one side,- while native workers filled the mud hole with rock, leaving just about room enough to take off.

Our big Fortresses cut grooves in the rest of the field a foot deep. Taxiing a B-17 with a full load of gas and bombs was exactly like maneuvering a boat. If the pilot so much as thought of touching the brakes, the wheels would slide and sod would start to pile up in front of them, but at the same time it was necessary to taxi at good speed in order to prevent bogging down.

* * *

A good example of what happened almost every day was the day Elliott Vandevanter came in to land. The field was at its bottomless worst.. He braked gently and away he went. The plane seemed to pick up speed, which was often the case. He was fairly heavily loaded but the mud didn't slow him down much. Near the end of the field, just before he reached the intersection of the two run ways, he tried to ground-loop his plane. Spraying mud in every direction, the plane slewed around in a complete half circle and was sliding backwards.

Using full power on all four engines; he managed to halt the skid barely more than inches short of some barricades along a railroad at the edge of the field, without damage to any plane.

The whole episode consumed only seconds, but you could almost hear the roar as we let go the long breath we had been holding. It seemed like hours.

Take-off from the field was always an exciting experience. We would take off with just as much speed as could be developed before we hit the low spot In the middle, roar through the mud, and hope to pick up enough of our lost speed on the other side to get off the ground -- a pastime very conducive to turning the hair gray. A lot of us probably prayed more fervently during take-offs than ever in our lives -- and sometimes that's just about the only reason our planes got off the ground.

* * *

We were losing pilots in combat, too. One pilot had a ship out on a test run and did not have radio contact with the field. He returned just as the Japs came over for a strafing raid and they jumped him. He was hit, but we never could determine whether he crashed into the mountains in the clouds or went down in flames. In any event, his plane crashed, burned, and all of the crew were lost.

Two of my classmates were lost on their first mission. Major Robinson had flown four missions in about a week, which is plenty of combat hours. He was due for a lay-off, but insisted on leading a flight on January 29 up toward Balikpapan, because three of the crews which were booked for the formation were going into combat for the first time. Lt Walter Sparks was his co-pilot. Robbie's citation for the D.S.C. which he received posthumously only two days after he was awarded the D.F.C. for an earlier mission, reads:

"On January 29, Major Robinson, who had been directed by his immediate superior that he should not fly any more missions for a few days, having completed four well-led and well-executed attacks averaging over 10 hours each in the past nine days, beseeched and obtained permission to fly on the particularly hazardous mission scheduled for that date. He insisted because of the fact that in the formation to be led were three crews who had just arrived from the United States, and were entering combat for the first time. Major Robinson successfully led his formation to the target, but upon withdrawal, was attacked by strong pursuit opposition, Which resulted in his crashing into the sea due to damage inflicted by the enemy "

* * *

The formation was jumped and pretty well worked over. The fellows who flew the mission with them told that Robbie's plane was gradually losing altitude. When it was down to about 2000 feet, it began to wobble as though the pilot was fighting the controls. Then it peeled off to the left and nosed into the strait. Later, Radio Tokyo reported picking up a Fortress crew in that vicinity, but whether it was that particular crew we never heard.

Then we lost Pritchard on his first or second mission. The formation was going out at high altitude and had passed north of Surabaya on its way to bomb Balikpapan when it ran head on into 15 or 20 Zeros.

It was sheer accident. The Zeros probably were coming in to strafe Surabaya and Malang. Our formation was carrying bomb bay tanks, due to the length of the mission. The Zeros dove in with all their guns going. One of our B-17s exploded in the air. Others in the formation reported that there was one blinding flash, and a puff of smoke. Another plane went down in flames.

* * *

Four of our ships were lost on the ground at Malang in a single strafing attack. It was about 4.30 in the afternoon, and those of us not on alert had gone up the field about a mile from the hangars to the Dutch officers quarters, where we were living. Half an hour later we saw some planes coming up the valley from the south at about 5000 feet. There were nine of them, flying above light scud clouds and from a distance they somewhat resembled Douglas A-24 dive-bombers. I they looked to be just a little shorter in the nose and the wing was not quite the same shape, so one or the fellows rung up the field control officer.

“They are American planes of an unidentified type,” the Dutch officer assured him.

That was the first time our air raid warning system failed us. On every other occasion they didn’t sound the alert at Malang until enemy planes were sighted at Surabaya, 40 miles to the north on the other side of the mountains, or when spotters sighted them to the south, over the coast. The entire coast was patrolled by observers but most of the time there were clouds in close and it was possible for planes to use cloud cover until they were only 10 minutes distant from our field. Evidently the watchers on the coast had reported them to be American planes of an unidentified type.

* * *

We weren’t certain our selves. New types of aircraft had been reported on the way to Java as reinforcements and we weren't too familiar with their characteristics.

As we watched them swoop up the valley, one of the fellows muttered uneasily: "Operations could be wrong."

“Maybe they're Navy planes," someone else volunteered.

We were not in doubt long. While six of the planes stayed up-stairs as cover, the other three turned, swooped and went right down the hangars line, strafing with all guns.

Four of our B-17s were on the field. Due to limited hangar space and dispersal bays, flyable planes were kept on the field with their crews standing by on alert. The hangars and dispersal bays were reserved for planes under repair. When an alert warning or an impending raid was sounded, the alert crews took the flyable planes off to avoid being ground strafed.

The crews of the four Fortresses were sitting under their wings of their planes killing time. There was always a lot of noise about the field, with the Dutch planes taking off and engines being run up by mechanics therefore as the siren hadn’t sounded they knew nothing of the attack until the strafing started. Three or four of the fellows were seriously wounded although none of them died.

One of them -- Keisers co-pilot -- caught an explosive bullet on the shin. Keiser and several others were in a split trench at the corner of the hangar, saw him fall and heedless of the certainty that the strafers would circle for a second run, dashed across the field, picked him up and carried him to a fox-hole.

He was hospitalized at Malang. When we flew our the personnel other than that absolutely necessary for combat operations, he was set to go out to Australia on a sling stretcher which had been rigged up in one of the bomb bays. His leg wasn’t getting along too well. It had been pretty badly torn up, was draining profusely, and at the stage where the dressing had to be changed every hour. He was told that if he made the trip he probably wouldn’t be able to receive medical attention for at least 18 hours ant that in that time infection might set in which would compel amputation. If he remained in Malang, the leg probably could be saved. The left the decision whether to go our and risk losing his leg, or stay in Java and save it. He elected to stay.

* * *

After the zeros passed the hangar line on their first run, they turned over the town and strafed the main street, evidently the Dutch headquarters was their objective. When they circled for their second pass over us at 75 feet, and we could clearly see the pilots in their cockpits and the big blossom of the Rising Sun on the fuselages. They were the first Zeros which we had seen which were camouflaged the same color as our own underside.

Two of our B-17s burned up completely, the third partially, and the fourth was so badly riddled that it could not be used on a mission until extensive repairs had been made.

When the shooting stopped, we ran out on the porch and looked down toward the hangar line. My first glimpse was one of those three of the ships were burning and the angle of our view was such that the smoke columns formed a perfect inverted "V."

* * *

That was a rough day for the 19th Group. Each of those ships would have taken off on a mission the following day.

Early in February, the Nips came over on a strafing party while I was absent on a ferrying mission to Australia. It is one personal gripe I want to settle some time with the Japs.

A few days earlier, Jim Connally told me that he wanted me to fly a plane out to Australia for overhaul. I was hoping that it would be mine. The engines were worn out, for they had 500 hours on them without major overhaul, but the plane itself was in perfect condition. It barely had a scratch on it. When I found out that I was to take out an old, battered wreck, one that was all shot up, I was griped.

* * *

It had no hydrairlic system. Three of the engines seemed to be running okay aside from a slight roughness, but the fourth had been hit, and a 37 mm anti-aircraft shell had hit and weakened one of the wings. It had to be flown with one wing about 10 degrees below the other, so that it just crabbed and sobbed along at low altitude and low speed. We made the flight out to Australia in seven hours, the last two and a half hours on three engines.

* * *

The following day an engine failed at a critical time of the take-off, when we could neither get off the ground on three engines, due to the heavy gas load, nor ground-loop because we had no effective brakes. In the few seconds available, we did every thing possible to avoid a crack-up, but the plane was demolished.

One of my best friends and one of the Army's best navigator, Lt "Mac" McAllister, was fatally injured.

I got back to Malang on the 7th to discover that the day before the Japs had strafed the field. Two planes, fully loaded with gas and bombs, were caught on the runway and blew up. My old "78" was burned in a bunker (dispersal bay).

All that remained of it was a charred carcass on the bunker, and an area of burned grass. My feeling wasn't one solely of sentimental regret at losing a plane whose capacity and idiosyncrasies I knew as familiarly as I knew the back of my hand. That was part of it, but my main gripe was that it was a good plane, one badly needed in operations and it was gone.

The long shadow cast by the little men of Nippon was stretching across Java.

Installment X

Singapore Fall Sealed Doom of Java, Forced US to Evacuate Area

Singapore fell on February 15.

It was the key to the defense of .the Netherlands & Indies, and the doom of Java was sealed..

As far as we were concerned, Java rapidly was becoming untenable. The Japs were in position where they could hit our bases at will. Early in February, they were getting in close.

They poured down through Macasar and Malacca straits, gobbled Borneo and Macassar and started to hammer at the mass of islands forming the Indies' east flank. Palembang fell on Feb. 16, after a savage defense by the Dutch, who wiped out one entire force of Jap parachute troops two days earlier. Darwin was bombed for the first time on Feb. 19, and the next day, the little men invaded Bali and Timor.

The 19th group had participated with sea forces in smashing at the big enemy invasion convoy which came down through Macassar strait in January. We had the force only to hurt them-not to halt them.

We were to busy and too fagged then to see the drama of the whole show. All we grasped was that for the second time in less than three months, a delaying action would have to be broken off by withdrawal in the face of overwhelming enemy offensive superiority.

* * *

On February 24, our first plane-load of group personnel who were not available for combat duty went south to Broome, Australia. The following day, two of us flew out a group of personnel not available for or requisite to combat operations and put them down at Broome, roughly 900 miles in an air line southeast of Malang.

The pressure was on. We left Malang at 9 o'clock in the morning, got into Broome at 8, gassed up and flew north at noon, and got in at Malang at 6.30 P.M., and we made the entire trip with one bad engine, and 5 1/2 of the 6 1/2 hours of the return flight on three engines.

The night of the 26th, more personnel were evacuated by air.

The following day the four ships which I mentioned yesterday took off at 6 o'clock in the morning to look for the big Jap convoy coming down from Indo-China and which we anticipated to land invasion forced somewhere on the north coast of Java between Surabava and Semarang.

Unable to complete the mission due to trouble with our almost worn out engines and ordered not to return to Malang because it was under almost constant attack; Capt. Fred Key, Dean “Pinky" Hoevet and I landed at Djodjakarta, an air base a few miles inland from the south central coast of the island approximately 150 miles southwest of Malang.

It was out of the frying pan in to the fire, for the field at Djodjakarta was expecting a raid any time. The operations officer told us that a yellow flag was flown for the alert, but that when a black ball was run up on the mast of the control tower, it meant that enemy planes had been sighted. We stood by our planes at the end of the runway. when the yellow flag went up, we started our engines, and the black ball was still rising toward the mast-head when we roared past, on our way. We had no intention of playing fish in a barrel to Jap strafers.

The alert happened to be a fake although we didn’t learn that until we returned. We knew that we had an hour or so to kill so we loafed down along the south coast sticking close to the clouds, ready to duck for cover if any Nips showed up.

* * *

On our way back, we spotted a large formation of enemy planes far above us off toward the west through the low scud clouds. We sat down almost on the wave caps in an effort to avoid detection and sometime later we saw them head back east.

The first word we received on landing at Djodjakarta was that the United States sea plane tender Langley had been bombed and, later, that she had been sunk. We had no doubt whatever that this big formation which we had seen and evaded was that which bombed the Langley and we estimated that had we flown 50 miles east we would have seen her.

(The Navy Department announced on April 3 in Communiqué 65 that the Langley, an old 11,000-ton seaplane tender and the United States first aircraft carrier, “was sunk after prolonged attack by the enemy south of Java in late February.” The same communiqué disclosed that most of the personnel was rescued by the tanker Pecos, which itself was sunk in enemy action a few days later. J.M,M)

We were able to grab about three hours’ sleep before taking off for Broome with a load of personnel. The crew worked all of the rest of that day on the ship, and at noon on March 1, Ed Green, who was Maj O’Donnell’s co-pilot on their famous flight out of the Philippines in the hand fueled B-18, and I started back for Djodjakarta.

We flew together all the way up. The visibility was poor. A lot of stuff was socked down all over the mountains and we had difficulty finding the proper spot along the coast to turn in. Ed had lowered his wheels for identification purposed and was turning inland to approach the field and I was preparing to follow him when my tail gunner reported a strange two engined plane promptly increase it’s speed. We chased it for ten minutes before getting slightly above it and closed enough to be in favorable position to attack. With all guns manned, we closed to within 500 yards before we could see RAF markings on the vertical tail surface.

We had no means of communications, of course, since we didn’t know what radio frequency the plane might be using, but he hadn’t altered course or made a false move -- and the Royal Air Force markings seemed to settle the matter. Satisfied, we turned and flew back to our base and reported about the incident to the Dutch operations officer. He smiled grimly.

“Oh yes,” he said, “effective ... lets see ... just three hours ago; tow types of British planes are to be considered hostile.”

* * *

The plane we had overtaken was one of the types. The Japs caught some planes on the ground at Singapore and Palembang which it had been impossible to demolish or evacuate. They promptly fixed them up and used them for reconnaissance. It was beautiful irony that for some reason we had been in position to blast that Jap crew into the ocean, or some place hotter than their own rising Sun -- and didn't.

We had to use all of our persuasion that night on the Dutch. They wanted to blow one of the runways, leaving only the other open. We were afraid that the debris tossed up by the demolition would riddle our planes, which were scheduled to leave just before midnight with the last of our remaining personnel. When we were forced to leave Malang the previous day because it had become untenable under constant attack, a clean-up crew of our men demolished all of our property which could not be taken out or repaired. Some of the 7th Group boys had been drifting in all that day from Madiun. They had had the Hell bombed out of them that day and the day before, and Madiun also was untenable.

We managed to persuade the Dutch to hold up their demolition until we took off, and ad 10:45 o'clock on the night of March 1, we took off for Broome. At that time our planes were in such bad condition that a maximum safe load of 30 personnel to each one had been established. That was the maximum load we were supposed to carry because the flight from Djodjakarta to Broome is entirely over water, and if we were forced down by an impossible overload, we would be out of luck, having no extra rafts and few life vests.

At the last minute, twenty fellows showed up, most of them American pursuit pilots who had been shot down and had been beating their way out through the bush. -With the two planes Ed Greene and I flew up from Broome that day we had seven planes on which to load all remaining personnel and they were full.

Captain "Shady" Lane, a fighter squadron commander and a class mate of mine at Randolph and Kelly fields, who was to ride with me, asked me if I could take any extras. I explained the situation to him but told him that if any of them wanted to risk it, we would gamble. We took five of them, and sent the others over to Greene, who took five more. The other ten climbed aboard some of the other planes, for I saw them at Broome later.

My plane, loaded to the guards, hit Broome just at sunrise, refueled immediately, and went on through to Perth on the Southwest coast of Australia, 7 1/2 hours and 900 miles in a direct air-line farther south.

* * *

Out of the preceding 60 hours, we had spent 40 of them in the air without sleep. The whole crew did that. It corresponds to the job the fellows did at Midway, when they flew 40 continuous hours of combat. The five planes which joined Greene and I that evening at Djodjakarta, landed there from the last bombing mission U.S. planes conducted in Java.

Every flyable plane we had was in action up to the last minute, either bombing in a desperate last minute effort to hold off the Nips until evacuation was completed, or until the planes were unfit for bombing use. On the morning of the day we left Djodjakarta, a strafing raid on the field damaged two "Liberators" so badly that they had to be destroyed that night to prevent their use by the Japs.

It had been our intention to fly from Perth straight through to Melbourne, a distance of 1800 to 2000 miles, and we came out on the field in the morning with that thought in mind. Just as we were making preparation for our take-off, Major Hobson, who was there with 5 or 6 planed of the 7th Group, and who was acting as commander of our detail of gypsies, received an urgent message from Broome. It directed all available planes to stand by for immediate evacuation of "surviving" refugees from that port.

Broome is just a little fishing port, much used by Japanese pearl fishermen before the war, situated almost on the edge of the great Sandy Desert of central west Australia.

There are only two ways of getting out of it, other than by walking -- by water or air. It is one of the most desolate places I have ever seen.

The message concerning evacuation of "surviving" refugees was puzzling at first, but not for long. The day before -- March 3 -- the Japs had strafed it unmercifully.

We abandoned all plans for flying east, ripped out our one bomb tank and replaced it with baggage racks, and took off once again for Broome.

The day before, the civilian evacuation or Java had been, at its height: Sunderland flying boats, Australian and Dutch Catalinas -- literally everything that would. fly -- were concentrated there. The Dutch were flying civilian evacuees, principally women and children, out of Java, and the Aussies were picking them up at Broome and flying them on south.

These evacuees -- wretched folk who had left their homeland, and many of them their heroic loved ones, with hardly more than the clothes on their backs jammed the air field, waiting for land plane transportation. There were some on the beach. Still others were either in small boats or already had boarded the flying boats.

Then the Zeros came in -- off carriers, we assumed. There was practically no protection. About 16 flying boats were caught on the water and riddled. One of our ships-either an LB-30 or a B-24, but in any event one or the North American Liberator type --was just taking off with 24 people on board, but had not gained altitude. So far as we were able to learn, the sole survivor of that plane was a sergeant who was in the water 24 hours and who came staggering up on the beach while we were there, clad only in shorts. We took him out with us that night, wrapped in blankets to present illness from long exposure and shock.

* * *

The place was a shambles. It was no place to tarry. As rapidly as we could, we rounded up our complement, loaded the baggage racks, refueled and at 11:15 took off for the last time from the grim port of Broome.

We flew directly through from Perth to Adelalde the following day over country no member of the crew ever had seen before and finally put down at Melbourne on the 7th of March.

Just two planes of the original group that had been based at Clark Field survived to make Australia. One was a B-17C, which still is being used as a ferry plane for the transport of freight and personnel. The other is the justly famous B-17D, known to the American public as “Alexander the Swoose" -- the plane which Lt General George H. Brett used as his personal plane in directing the Allied air forces in the Australian theater, and in which he flew back to the United States. It was the same plane which had been flown out to the Philippines from Hawaii by Lt Weldon Smith, and from Del Monte to Australia to Malang.

Installment XI

Weary Pilots Battled Sleep on Mission to Bring Out MacArthur

Our total air force in Java at the time of the evacuation in late February and early March included the 7th and 19th Bombardment Groups, one squadron of A-24 dive-bomber and, so far as we knew, one squadron of P-40 pursuits.

It is only courtesy to call the two bomber forces “groups.” They were hardly better than provisional squadrons, with few planes; few maintenance personnel and only enough combat. personnel to crew the planes we had.

The gang of P-40 pilots did a wonderful job. They were north of us, in the vicinity of Surabaya, and the Japs couldn't locate the field they operated from until the very last. Even we, knowing where it was; could not detect it from the air.

Maj Charles Sprague, who commanded the pursuit squadron, and Colonel “Buzz" Wagner tossed a coin in Australia to see who would take the P-40s into Java. Sprague won. He is reported missing in action. Buzz stayed in Australia to train new pursuit pilots, and only a few weeks ago, he was killed on a routine flight in Florida.

My recollection is that Sprague brought his bunch of wildcats into Java in the latter part of January and what a hard-hitting, hard shooting bunch they were! They fought the Japs from water-level to the ceiling; they flew their planes until they literally were shot to pieces around them -- and thumbed their noses at the odds.

* * *

At the very last, those boys were strafing landing barges and transports off the coast in the area between Pekalongan and Semarang, where the main Nip invasion force hit in its successful effort, as it turned out very soon, to split the island. The Japs had established a firm beachhead and while advance elements were striking east, and west along the coastal roads, heavy anti-aircraft batteries were employed to protect the main landing operation.

The situation in Java was identical with that which had existed in the Philippines save for geography, so far as we were concerned.

There weren't enough pursuit ships to supply fighter protection for us, so they were used for reconnaissance and interception and, at the last, were thrown in against the Jap landings. They were fighting overwhelming enemy superiority in the air and they were fighting with ships of steadily deteriorating efficiency, due to non-existence of effective maintenance.

The caliber of our pilots is the best indicated by the fact that knowing they faced hopeless odds, knowing that all they could win was a few precious hours of delay, they slashed at the Nip landing operation on the north shore at low altitude in the face of violent anti-aircraft. It has futile, it was suicidal -- but it was magnificent.

One boy -- I can't recall his name -- was shot down a couple of times. On his last trip he was shot down right over the beachhead and landed by parachute just out side the Jap lines. He wriggled out of his ‘chute harness and sprinted across the fields for the highway. Fortunately for him; a native boy was pedaling along the road on his bicycle... but not for long. The pilot dismounted him sort of unceremoniously, jumped on the bicycle and with the Japs in close and hot pursuit,. poured on the coal. Either he was ones on of the fastest bicycle peddlers in the Dutch East Indies or the Japs were lousy shots. He got away without a scratch.

He was one of the group of 20 extra passenger-evacuees we had not counted on but whom we hauled aboard on the last evacuation flight out of Djodjakarta on the night of March 1.

* * *

Of the 18 passengers we had aboard our ship, nine were fighter pilots. They had been shot down all over the island and some of them had been beating their way through the brush trying to reach Djodjakarta for hours and even days.

We didn't have enough parachutes for them... we didn't have enough life-vests... we didn't have enough rafts... but they didn’t care, they were hell-bent on getting out of Java, but only in order to re-form, re-equip and go back after the Nips.

The dive-bomber pilots had their big show in the mass air and sea attack on the Jap invasion force off Bali a few days before we began our evacuations. They flew their equipment until it was worn out. One pilot told us that the engines on those A-24s had so little compression that you could turn the prop of a cold motor with one hand. There were no replacements.

* * *

During the week of March 7 to 14, we were in Melbourne and the last two days of that week, some of us were on 30-minute alert, didn't get any sleep. A bunch of the fellows next door were celebrating a promotion or something. We had to turn out at 2 A.M., to fly up to a northern base.

We knew what we were there for:

We were to fly up to Del Monte, on the north coast of Mindanao, and bring out MacArthur.

Frank Bostrom was pilot of that plane. I was co-pilot. The four of us making the trip as co-pilots had operated from the field at Del Monte on many missions the crews and pilots had never been there. It was a tricky place to find and safely approach. even in good weather, without knowledge of the surrounding terrain. Bostrom was a member of the squadron which came out from Hawaii under command of Maj (now Col) Carmichael in late January and early February.

We left Australia at 2 o'clock on the afternoon of the 16th and got into the field at Del Monte, south of Cagayan, at 11:30 that night.

The night before, when we had briefed the trip, we had been told that the American side of Mindanao -- generally the northern side -- was completely blacked out. It was a perfectly clear, black night and we flew on instruments about a third of the way. There were a few whispy clouds up around Davao on the south coast of Mindanao and as we passed to the north we could see the lights of the Jap-occupied city shining in the distance.

The American side of the island was not blacked-out. There were brush fired all over the place. When we thought that we were at the northern coast-line, we let down to a medium altitude just above the mountain height. When we knew definitely that we were over the water, we let down, picked up the coast and followed it to a little island just north of Cagayan Bay, one of the small indentations of Macajalar Bay. We knew exactly where we were then. We turned in and flew right up the valley until we approached the vicinity of the field and signaled with our landing lights. The third time we blinked, they caught our signal and flipped on the field lights right under our right wing.

* * *

We wanted to leave the minute we could re-fuel and get the personnel and cargo aboard. The island was swarming with Japs, and there was always the possibility that some Jap patrol had spotted us. Furthermore, we rather anticipated that we were going to run into some rough weather going back.

The last time I had seen General MacArthur had been at Clark Field several months before. It didn't seem to me that the hell he had gone through in the meantime had changed him much. A man with his hawk-like features can absorb a tremendous amount of punishment before it is reflected in his face. Mrs. MacArthur looked very well and someone in the party which came down to the plane remarked that it didn't seem possible that she had stepped off, Corregidor only a short time before. Their son was hugging his favorite little rag doll and I don't think that he was more than half awake.

We had rigged a mattress on the floor of the radio compartment where Mrs. MacArthur, the youngster and the old Chinese amah could sit down, at least. The General sat in the radio operator's chair.

There were ten in the party. One was Maj/Gen Richard Sutherland, General MacArthur's chief of staff. Another was Brigadier General Harold H. George, his air officer, later killed in an accident in Australia. The others I didn’t know at that time. Maj Henry “Hank” Godman, then a captain, was one of our passengers. He was designated as one of the first pilots to go in after the MacArthur party, but landed in the water off Mindanao and lost two members of the crew. Hank came out on our plane, and his co-pilot came out in the other.

We had gone without sleep for two nights, and we weren’t thinking too much about individuals. Our main interest was to get going and get the plane back to Australia with everyone safe on board.

As it happened, the trip was completely uneventful. We flew on instruments until daylight, leaving at 2:30 A.M., March 17, Australian time, and arriving at our northern Australia base at 10:30.

Bostrom and I took turns at the controls at 30 minute intervals. We had to do it to give each other a little chance to rest his eyes. The strain of flying by instruments at night is bad enough, and we were fagged. My eyes felt like two red hot coals, & if I closed them, the lids felt as though they were lined with sand paper. I thought they would pop out of my head.

* * *

We were getting to the stage where we had to concentrate every ounce of our energy to keep our minds clear. We just had to relieve each other.

When we slid smoothly into our Australian base, Brigadier General Ralph Royce was there to welcome General MacArthur and his party. They had lunch, then piled into a transport which flew them down to Alice Springs, the head of rail where a train was waiting to take them to Melborne.

* * *

In the preceding ten days, all available bomber personnel were reorganized into the 19th Bombardment Group. We considered that the reorganization was completed on March 14, and on that day, the 7th Group ceased to exist in our theater.

Starting with the first of April, our squadron was given priority, ahead of the others in the group to build up to it’s full plane strength.

It was not yet the turning of the tide, but it had reached it’s flood.

We almost dare to hope that the black days were behind us.

Installment XII

US Fliers Blew Up Jap Ammunition Ship, but Raid Balked 2nd Trip

In early April -- only a matter of hours after the fall of Bataan -- we bombed the Philippines.

It was my last visit to the familiar cow-pasture air field at Del Monte, on the north coast of Mindanao. It came very near to being my last visit anywhere.

General Royce was in command of the mission. He asked for it.

The three Fortresses on the mission, piloted by Captain Frank Bostrom, Captain Rawls and myself, took off individually from our North Australian base at 11 o'clock on the morning of April 11 and flew to Del Monte. The B-25s, (North American medium bomber) flew up in formation.

That night we met at General Royce's headquarters and the objectives were selected. The B-25s now, incidentally, officially known as "Mitchells"-were to work on Davao, Zamboanga and Cebu. The first objective of the B-17s was Nichols Field, the former Air Forces depot just south of Manila.

* * *

Bostrom’s ship had a bad engine so on the morning of the 12th, he took Rawls' ship. It was agreed that my plane was to find and. bomb a convoy which had been reported in the vicinity of the island of Panay in the Visayas; the middle group of the Philippine Islands, midway between Mindanao on the south and Luzon on the north. It was thought that this convoy. was headed for the city of Iloilo, on the southeast coast or Panay.

My first objective was the convoy, while Bostrom was to go on to Nichols Field. If I located the convoy, I was to radio him to join me for an attack; if I didn't, I was to proceed to Nichols as the alternate target. If our plane couldn't reach Nichols, in the event or our failure to find the convoy, we were to attack either the air base at Batangas, slightly less than 60 air miles due north of Manila or shipping at Cebu.

We carried a full load of bombs and if we had to refuel, we were to put in at a field at Iloilo on Panay. The Japs at this time had begun their invasion of Cebu, were fighting in Cebu City and had taken the air Field at San Jose, Mindanao -- the field where, on our return from Lingayen on Dec. 23, had enjoyed our rum-laced, coffee.

* * *

The convoy which later did reach Cebu as reinforcements for the. initial Jap landings, was reported to be made up of five or six transports and about the same number of cruisers, most of them heavy. We took off at sunrise and searched all over the area between Negros and Panay and up as far as the south tip of Mindoro, but we couldn't find it.

We were, just about off the Southern tip of Mindoro when we developed engine trouble of a nature which compelled us to use a great deal more fuel than we had anticipated. At the rate of fuel consumption, it was plain as the nose on your face that we couldn't bomb Nichols and get back. Our alternate course was either to bomb the airfield at Batangas or shipping at Cebu. Since the B-25s were taking care of the latter; we decided to hit Batangas.

* * *

It was a beautifully clear day and from our altitude almost mockingly, all that we had lost was laid out below us.

We could plainly make out Mt. Arayat, 60 miles north of Manila, familiar landmark in the approach to Clark Field. We could see the highway and the railroad which runs up from Batangas to Manila and although we couldn’t see the field, a group of metal buildings at Nichols were glistening like mirrors in the morning sun.

The long tongue of Bataan crouched behind the wooden shoulders of Marlveles Mountain, was clearly visible. Corregidor and the other island forts stood out boldly against the blue of Manila Bay, but there were no signs of military activity either of attack or defense.

* * *

It was useless to waste bombs on the air field and we turned back over the port. A boat was anchored just a little off the end of the pier -- a nice, big, long boat -- and a lot of stuff was piled on the pier. Lighters were working the ship, seemingly in the process of unloading.

We turned, made the run and the bombardier lined up his sight on the large, box-shaped end of the pier. There was not a hint of interception or anti-aircraft.

"Bombs away" the bombardier reported from his seat in the nose. Since then I have often thought that the glee in his voice was not unrelated to the thoughts called up by the sight of Bataan, where our pal's had put up such a tooth-and-nail fight and of bomb-and-shell-battered Corregidor, lying just off our rear starboard quarter as we made the run.

The first two bombs "hung” -- released too late and then both plummeted down together. The first one struck just aft of the ship's superstructure, almost dead upon the rear cargo hold. The second smashed into the stern.

* * *

One of our engines had been kicking up, and the moment the bombs were released, I cut it and feathered the propeller -- streamlining to prevent vibration -- caused by the wind pressure turning the blades.

I banked the ship sharply to see the results of our hits. The whole stem of the ship was afire. Dense clouds of black smoke were rolling up, rapidly obscuring the entire vessel- Three minutes later, as we were speeding toward Del Monte, the bombardier exulted: “The whole damned ship blew up!”

There was deep satisfaction in his fatigue-cracked voice.

Bostrom got into Del Monte a little later, to report the same hardly-believable lack of enemy interception or anti-aircraft. He had laid a stick of bombs diagonally across Nichols Field, scoring direct hits on the big metal-sided depot building which the Japs evidently had built as store house for parts and supplies. One was blazing furiously as he left the target area, the result of a direct hit.

As soon as we landed at Del Monte, the ground crews-hustled to get the ship Bostrom had flown serviced, gassed and armed for another mission that afternoon.

We had either to change an engine or replace a cylinder on my plane.

We were down at the ships when we heard a sudden scurry of rifle shots from the hills -- the signal of an air raid -- and within a few moments, a couple of Jap float planes came over and bomber us. The echoes of the rifle shots barely had died away down the valley before we dove for a pile of rocks in a gully off the edge of the field, and burrowed under the bush. We had no protection whatsoever against hostile raiders.

* * *

One bomb fell 25 feet off the tail section of my ship and cut the elevator cables. The tail was riddled. Fabric was torn from the elevators and control surfaces. Rawl’s ship -- that Bostrom had flown in the morning and which Rawl’s intended to take out on another mission that afternoon, was badly damaged at the tail. It couldn’t possibly fly a mission that afternoon, while mine could not be repaired for a combat mission, if at all, until the following day.

We went up to headquarters and reported the critical turn in our plans. While there, we were told that all of the evidence indicated that the ship which we had demolished at Batangas was a munitions carrier, unloading ammunition for the heavy Jap batteries which were bombarding Corrigidor, Hughes, Fran and Drum from the Cavet shore. That made us feel a little better.

* * *

Bostrom had just started snoring and I was drifting off luxuriously when there was an excited yowl of rifle shots in the distance. Waiting only to pull on our shoes, we ran out to the porch just in time to see four Jap float planes circling the field.

After the first raid, the five P-40s still in service at Del Monte were sent out to attempt to intercept the raiders -- if possible to catch them on the water at Davro while loading -- for we fully expected them back. Cloud formations over Davao favored the Nips and they were able to avoid the attempted interception by our fighters, but the P-40s followed them back and interrupted their second bombing of our field.

One of those fighter planes was flown by a flying school classmate of mine --”Brownie” Brownwell.

* * *

Brooks could -- and I hope some day may be written -- about those fellows. Brownie, like “Buzz” Wagner, "Shady" Lane and Charlie Sprague, was an expert fighter pilot, a crack shot. a man to whom odds meant absolutely nothing. He flew daily missions against odds in his quiet modest, unassuming fashion, as though it was the most natural duty in the world. To those chaps, any mission from which they returned alive was “routine." Time after time, when Brownie brought his wheezing P-40 back, showing scars of combat, his ground crew would eagerly press him for details of his mission. Invariably, his reply would be: "Nothing unusual. Nothing exciting.”

On one occasions he went into the Davao with just one 50 caliber machine gun in working order, and gave the airfield and the dock area a thorough working over until his one gun jammed. Then he evaded the machine-gun fire of a couple of Zeros, leading them a neat chase around, and among mountains and valleys, and brought his plane back to the base bullet-riddled and almost out of gas.

* * *

Another one of be fighter pilots, whose name I can't remember right now, was jumped by Zeros on a similar mission. He evaded them in a close chase all of the way back to his base but finally had to abandon his bullet riddled plane. He crash-landed on the water just off-shore, planed it in on the smooth water and up on the beach like a surfboard, jumped out and managed to take cover unharmed. Huddled in the brush, he helplessly watched as the Zeros proceeded to strafe his stanch mate on many perilous missions, leaving it a useless hulk on the sand.

Every one of those chaps was a hero in his own right. In the language of the citation of the Far Eastern Air Force, they “fought their equipment to exhaustion.” Tremendous odds to them were daily routine.

Had it not been for them, we might have taken an even worse drubbing that day at Del Monte than we did. As Bostrom and I stood -- in shorts and shoes watching from the porch one of the float planes peeled off and dove to release his first bomb. Our fellows, a mile away across the valley, were shooting at him. We heard some of their bullets whining over out heads and then one hit the dust about a hundred feet in front of us and just missed us in a screaming ricochet. We promptly decided it was time to take to the slit trench.

* * *

The Nips released their bombs at about 2000 feet and we knew from the detonations -- the heavy “w-u-u--u-m-p” -- that they were heavier than the bombs employed on the first raid.

Bostrom’s own ship the one with the bad engine -- had been hit. A tall column of smoke was ascending from the parking area, and when we reached it, Bostrom's plane was practically consumed.

The Japs dropped some other bombs. The first one fell about 50 feet off the right wing tip of my plane and another about 75 feet off the left. The shrapnel tore up the wings badly, the rear spar of the left wing was practically knocked out and there was a lot of damage to the sides all of the way back. :The-oil tank on the number four engine was ruined. The tank had a hole the size of a man's fist in it, but fortunately the oil itself cushioned the splinters and saved the engine.

* * *

For the second time, we had to change our plans. It was decided that we would attempt to repair Rawls' ship so that the men of his and Bostrom's crew, and some passengers they planned to carry, could get out during the night. It also was decided that we would work on my plane through the night and before sunrise come to a decision as to whether to attempt to fly it back to Australia from Del Monte, or fly it to another nearby field where there was some cover to complete repairs.

We knew we wouldn't be safe at Del Monte. The Nips would be up from Davao at dawn. If we didn’t get out of Del Monte by daylight, we wouldn't get out at all.

Earlier in the day; one of the junior officers of our squadron, Lt Taylor, commanding a group of ground crewmen, who were manning the beach defenses some distance from Cagayan, asked us if we would need any maintenance men. I told him to get a few of them up to the field in case of emergency. That order saved our two remaining B-17s -- and possibly our lives.

Installment XIII

Patched-Up Bomber, Crippled, Overloaded, Escaped Jap Raiders

Between the two raids, which destroyed one of our three B-17s and seriously damaged the other two, a busload of maintenance men arrived.

The men were tickled to death to get some work to do, for they hadn't worked on a plane since we left Mindanao for Australia, four months before. They had been crouching behind sand bags with rifles and dwindling ammunition supplies for weeks. That sort of thing -- waiting for the inevitable to happen, but no one knowing when -- can get very monotonous.

In the next 19 hours that gang of 12 or 14 men performed the greatest job of emergency repair I personally have ever witnessed. I have never heard of anything to match it.

We worked through the night. We had a good dinner the night before, but no breakfast, and lunch was a watery stew with a couple of acorn-sized new potatoes in it and a microscopic piece of meat -- hardly good supporting fare for heavy labor. About 9 o’clock that night a truck drove up with some stew, watered a little more and a tank of coffee.

With nothing but a pair of pliers, a screwdriver and their bare hands, that gang spliced the heavy control cables. They had a soldering iron but the blow torch would not work. Un-discouraged they built a tiny fire of grass and shavings and heated the soldering iron that way.

* * *

Each heating was sufficient to melt one or two drops of solder but, one or two drops at a time they soldered the turn buckles on the control cables.

They took an oil tank out of an old B-17 carcass, left over from the Dec show, plugged six holes made in it by shrapnel fragments from numerous bombing raids and installed it.

They cut sections of metal from the skin of the old B-17 and covered up the worst rips in the wings and tail section.

By three o’clock the next morning they had done everything but check the engines. Those men were very tired, they weren’t too well fed, and they probably knew that their chances of getting out of the Philippines were nil, but they went at that job not only uncomplainingly but with a dash and a good humor and skill that was beautiful.

* * *

Without additional facilities, of which there were none available to us closer than Australia, we could do nothing more. Either the plane would make it to Australia or it wouldn’t. After carefully weighing the chances, I decided we could make it.

The engineer and I checked out the bad engine and then he and the crew ran up the other three engines while I went to a field phone. I called Col Elsemore, the base commander, to report our plan to attempt to fly to Australia instead of going to another field to do further maintenance, and to check for passengers.

Bostrom and Rawls were still working on their plane. There was a leak in the hydraulic system. They worked all night by flashlight, but when they found that repair was impossible they kicked off their passengers and part of the crew. Eventually they got away about 5:30 A.M., a half or three quarters of an hour before we did.

* * *

After talking to General Royce, our task force commander, and General Sharp, commander of our forces in Mindanao, Col Elsmore approved our plan and said the passengers would be sent down immediately. All I knew about the passengers was that there were a couple of Bostrom’s crew, two Air Corps colonels, a young Lt who had been assigned to my squadron at Clark Field just before the war broke, a naval officer and a private.

It was not until he came aboard that I knew the naval officer was Lt Commander John D. Bulkeley, commander of motor torpedo boats which had played such merry dancing Hades with the Nips in the water around Bataan and Cebu. I had heard of Bulkeley, of course including the story of his latest exploit, only a few days before, of sinking a cruiser up around Cebu, but I had no opportunity to talk with him.

Dawn was our dead-line. We had a badly damaged plane on our hands, and we were dog-tired. I had no sleep for two nights. It took every bit of concentration I could summon to keep my mind clear and intent on the job. Not even the Nips are worse enemies of a pilot than fatigue.

* * *

Lt “Ted” Greene, my co-pilot; Lt Walter Seamon, my navigator, and Lt Stone my bombardier, all turned in for a few hours sleep. Greenes back bothered him a little. He had not jumped for cover quite soon enough that afternoon, when the second formation of Jap bombers came over, and some shrapnel splinters had caught him in the small of his back a fraction of an inch from his spine. The other two couldn’t really help much with the plane and needed the sleep.

We got the ship on the runway, ran up the engines and cut the throttles. The engines were idling, as we waited for the field lights to be flipped on... and then I heard a plane. At the same instant I saw it vaguely, off to the left and at about 2000 feet. It was a float plane, and while we weren’t positive he was a Jap, one thing was beyond argument: if he was , the other dive bombers would not be far behind him.

We just sat there, the motors turning over slowly. The moment the unidentified plane was sighted, the field lights were doused. It was so black we couldn’t make out the bushes within a few feet of us, at the edge of the veld. A vague outline of mountains was visible off to the east in the first, faint ghost of dawn.

I don’t think any of us took so much as a deep breath until the float-plane passed the end of the runway and reached a position where we knew he could not turn in and catch us at the take-off. Fortunately for their pence of mind, most of the personnel aboard did not know about this until later.

It was nice timing. The field lights flicked on; I yanked open the throttles and the plane roared down the runway and got into the air before the Jap, if he was a Jap-could catch us on the ground. We knew about how fast his type of plane could travel, and that if we could reach maximum speed without our plane falling apart, we probably could outrun him.

Pouring on the coal; we steamed down the valley picking up speed, then turned and came back climbing at a rate at which he might stay with us but at which he could not overtake us.

* * *

We slipped along-below the tops of the ridges so that the Jap plane, if that's what it was, would be unable to spot us against the sky. Just after we started climbing back along the mountains, the engineer who was manning the almost useless top turret reported he saw something diving on the field and then saw a flash. General Royce later told in Australia that the Japs came over and bombed the hell out of the field, just at dawn.

Thirty minutes out, we "lost" one engine, and I had to stop it and feather the prop. The top turret had only one gun that would fire, and the turret itself would turn in only one direction.

Our bottom turret was out of working order. A large piece of shrapnel had torn quite a hole in it, ruining both guns. To save weight, before the take-off we unloaded all the ammunition from it, and carried only 100 rounds per gun for the others. When we lost the engine, I had the gunners "ready guns" and stand by in the radio compartment from which position they could man the available guns in a hurry if necessary.

We had a big overload of gas aboard and 16 people. Two of the remaining three engines were acting a little rough -- just enough to make us wonder whether they would get rougher and, if they did, what we would do then. Our passengers were jammed together like sardines in a can on the bomb bay catwalk and in the radio compartment to beep the weight as far forward as possible.

* * *

With our heavy load and the reduced power, we could not pick up either speed or altitude. If we increased the power output, we would burn too much gas and the other two engines might quit on us.

To complete the picture, the sliding side windows on both sides of the cockpit had been shattered by a large piece of shrapnel during the bombing. We had no replacement windows, so we faced the attempted return flight to Australia without a window by the side of either the pilot or the co-pilot. Both of us, fortunately wore heavy winter flying suits and helmets. He had the only pair of goggles. I wore a pair of sun glasses. The shrapnel wounds in his back were beginning to bother him, for they had been treated only with a dab of iodine.

We were at medium altitude when the engine went bad; just above a smooth-rolling overcast which looked like fog, and which topped a very turbulent formation of low cumulus clouds. The cumulus extended right down to the water.

* * *

We managed to stagger along just above or in the top of the fog-like overcast, at stalling speed, doing everything possible to stay above the turbulent area of clouds. We maneuvered as little as possible, as every turn lost us a few feet of precious altitude at our speed. We were taking the maximum allowable power from the three engines, short of damaging them more than they already were.

It was practically a miracle how that plane flew, considering its structural and engine weakness and the fantastic overload. It took us ten and a half hours to get back to Australia.

We had to maintain excessive power to compensate for the dead engine and the overload. We were burning fuel at a rate which might exhaust it short of Australia faster than would be the normal consumption on four engines. Our engines got no rougher and Greene and I decided to push on to the half-way mark of distance and fuel consumption, whichever came first. Then we would decide, of necessity, whether to turn back and attempt a landing on Mindanao somewhere, incidentally running the chance of being caught by fighters in the air or enemy troops on the ground, or to keep on going.

* * *

My recollection of those hours is blurred. Everything we did was almost purely mechanical. There wasn't any personal feeling in it. I suspect that if, half way out, someone had tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to name our passengers, I would have been unable to do it. I think I would have had trouble recalling my own. That was how tired we were. Greene was a hospital case, but he stuck to his job without a whimper although he was suffering intensely from the pounding wounds in his back. The passengers, jammed in cramped positions, barely moved a muscle In order not to affect the trim of the plane.

Aside from flying it -- maneuvering, as little as possible while at the same time fighting to keep out of the rough air below -- our whole attention was centered on the steady retreating fuel gauges. We knew, although our passengers may not have known; that if we dipped into that turbulence, we were in for trouble.

Hour after hour passed, with the two rough engines grinding along, getting no smoother but evidently getting no rougher, and steadily the weight of the plane lightened with the reduced load of fuel. Before we reached the halfway point, I knew we were going to make it. Slowly, but stubbornly, the plane was picking up speed and altitude, fighting almost like a living thing for survival.

* * *

As the load lightened, we were able to reduce the power out-put and finally to get back to normal consumption on three engines.

When we finally put the ship down at our base, Bostrom was out on the field, waiting for us. He ran over to the ship, wearing a broad and relieved grin on his face, and shouted: "We had about given you up. I didn't think you could get off the ground before daylight.!”

Our passengers were out of the plane. I was too tired to make a move. Ted and I just sort of folded up over the controls.

I would like to see Bulkeley sometime, to talk over that trip. He is quite a chap.

Installment XIV

US Soldiers Defeat Fever in Australia before Tacking Japs

Australia in the middle of March, 1942, was no paradise for us.

The squadrons moved into locations where they practically had to build the bases themselves.

They had runways of a kind -- and that was about all.

The facilities for the men were deplorable. In many if not most instances, water supply was notable for its absence."

Of course, we griped about it, but we weren't kidding ourselves. It was war. For weeks, military and civilian debris, including ourselves -- forced out of Dutch, British and Australian possessions and mandates from Sinapore to the Solomons -- had been spewed helter-skelter upon Australia.

Broken fragments of the United Nations' armed forces were fighting to re-orient and re-equip themselves in the face of the final threat -- a Jap push through the Malayan barrier on Australia and our Southwest Pacific supply line.

* * *

Misunderstandings, irritations, lost motion -- all of the handicaps and obstacles that mushroom in chaos -- were inevitable.

From mid-March through June our squadrons were extremely limited in equipment. It wasn't often during that period that any formation larger than six planes could be sent on a mission from a single squadron. In order to put out a flight of 10 to 12 planes, it was necessary to draw on other squadrons of the group.

It was a period of reorganization, of building back up to operating strength, getting things moving for the business that any blind nun could see was building up in the north and northeast: The business of pounding at the Nips to keep them off our necks and our supply lines.

When we finally were settled in our bases, our health was pretty fair. We should have knocked on wood, for dengue fever hit us or, more specifically, the mosquitoes hit us.

From the middle of March well into June we always had a few men in the hospital. Our fellows were not in shape to standup under that stuff. Dengue fever isn’t recurrent, as is malaria, but one attack does not confer immunity. There really isn't much to choose between them. The fever smacks a man down without warning. He aches all over. Food -- even good food -- has no attraction at all. He not only doesn’t want to, but he can't eat. It was not at all unusual for a man to lose 15 to 20 pounds in a week, and two or three weeks generally were required for full convalescence.

A number of our men were beginning to be pretty well burned out and the wave of dengue fever almost smashed up the works. They took things in their stride -- missions, maintenance, reconnaissance, the endless routine of fighting a war -- but they hadn't gotten the break when they needed it.

Those first three months drained every man down to his last reserve, mental and physical. Only those who were ill or "grounded" by the flight surgeon for absolutely necessary reasons got a break from the continuous hectic alert. In three months not a man had been absent from his base except on official business. There was no such thing as letting down, getting away from the whole mess periodically for two or three days. Finally, it got to the point where every man had to exert himself, dive himself, to do what he was supposed to do. There was no break.

* * *

I was lucky. I had skipped malaria. Once or twice I felt lousy and thought the bug had caught up with me...a touch of fever, a buzzing in my ears, a general "Oh, the Hell with it" feeling, but I shook it off and kept on going and I was by no means

alone. They took good care of us in the Philippines, as far as facilities permitted. At Del Monte, for instance, we kept a big jar of quinine tablets on a table and each man was supposed to pop one into his mouth before every meal, but with meals on a catch-as-catch can basis, with the pressure of missions, it is hardly believable that we managed to keep going in as good shape as we did.

Actually, plenty of our fellows were on the ragged edge, but they kept going. It wasn't heroism. There was a job to do, and not anywhere near enough equipment and men to do it.

An instance of the pressure was the case of Walter Ford, then a Lt. You will recall that in late December, we flew every flyable plane we had from Australia to bomb Davao and then, after gassing and loading at Del Monte, flew two combat missions against the Jap invasion fleet in, the Gulf of Lingayen, the other against Davao.

* * *

Ford, then a Lt, had malaria, but we were desperately short of pilots, most of whom still were stranded in the Philippines. Ford knew that, so he said nothing about his own condition, we knew that he was feeling rocky, but none of us was feeling really chipper.

How he managed to carry out the mission against Davao, fly up to Del Monte after dark and land on that field is, I suppose, just another example of what a man can do if he must. When the plane pulled up alter landing at Del Monte he was practically on fire. He was so weak he had to be lifted from his seat, and I don't believe he was entirely rational. For that, he won the D.F.C. His citation, well-deserved, read:

"On Dec. 22, 1941, Lt Ford commanded one of the B-17 airplanes (Flying Fortresses) which departed to attack enemy ships and transports in the Gulf of Davao, Mindanao, P.I. His bombardment group had just a few days previously, evacuated its airdrome due to constant ground strafing attacks and hence there were no alternate crews available. Although at the time suffering from a severe attack of malaria fever, Lt Ford insisted on making the flight which was over 1500 miles over open seas and involved a night landing for refueling. The seriousness of his condition was withheld because or the shortage of pilots and the importance of the mission. He landed upon completion of the flight in a state of near collapse and was immediately hospitalized. The courage, determination and devotion to duty and piloting skill shown in this instance are of the highest order and have set a high standard in his organization and the service at large."

* * *

Three months later, again back in Australia, we were fighting mosquitoes, supply problems and the Japs simultaneously. We ran occasional missions against Timor and Ambon, former Dutch possessions with air facilities which the Japs had taken over, and we flew continuous reconnaissance missions, but most of the attack missions were against Lae and Salamaur on the east coast of New Guinea and Rabaul, on the northern end of New Britain.

Practically all of the reconnaissance was flown by one squadron out of Townsville, commanded by Maj “Bill” Lewis, and a darned good job was made of it. The was basically the same crowd that Col Carmichael had led out to Australia as a task force in late January and early February. Frank Bostrom, whose plane I had been co-pilot in flying out MacArthur and who was one of the B-17 pilots on General Royce’s raid in April; Fred Eaton, and Ted Faulkner, who became the 19th Group executive in July, all were in this outfit. [Which in time was given the designation “435th Sqd” assigned to the 19th BG and called themselves the “Kangaroo Sqd”]

As airplanes straggled in over the Pacific, we built up our strength -- and how we needed them! Although Port Moresby had a good air-raid warning system, the field there was totally inadequate for use by our B-17s as a full-time advanced striking base.

* * *

At that time it was merely a single runway without adequate dispersal areas. One end of the runway was low and in wet weather water undermined the base so that loaded Fortresses broke through while taxiing. Furthermore, if a Fortress was dispersed off the runway, It usually had to be pulled out.

It was impossible at that time to conceal our big bombers because of the smallness of the field. At times, it resembled a parking lot at a football game, with planes lined up in depth, wing-tip to wing-tip, or grouped at the higher end of the runway like plans on a carrier deck.

Our planes had to be flown up to Moresby, re-fueled there and then sent out on missions. If they had sufficient fuel upon returning to the vicinity of Moresby after completion of the mission, they could grind right on through to their bases in northeastern Australia; if not, they had to pick up more fuel at Moresby.

In other words, we could use Moresby only as a staging center for attack and reconnaissance missions, just as we had used Del Monte.

* * *

The Japs knew that quite as well as we did, and they strafed and bombed the field continuously, trying to knock out our planes on the ground, cripple such servicing facilities as there were, and chew up the field to the point where it could not be maintained for heavy bomber operation. We didn’t dare leave planes parked too long at Moresby, and of course that increased the number of hours each plane was required to be away on a mission. At the same time, We had to use Moresby as an advance base for striking at Salamaua, Lao and Rabaul. It was the only one we had.

It isn't telling the Nip anything he doesn't know to emphasize that the situation has been vastly improved since those days only ten months ago.

When that full history can be told -- and for obvious reasons the time is not yet -- it will set every American's spine tingling with pride. No one who saw it done who, literally hour by hour, saw order emerge from chaos, strength from weakness, effective organization from almost prostrate disorder can be in any doubt how this show is going to end.

Installment XV

Crippled US Plane Escaped Safely after “Trailing” Dozen “Zeros”

Didn’t see much of the Coral Sea show.

Our fellows, flying through fair weather and foul -- and by foul, I mean the kind that could discourage a sea-gull -- kept the Japs under constant surveillance up to early May, when the big invasion fleet formed and moved out from the northeast bases southward toward the Coral sea.

The Navy caught them on the way down and we caught them on the way back.

From May 7 through May 12, every available plane was in the air almost continuously. No sooner would one mission be completed than the ships would be gassed, serviced, loaded with bombs and either sent out again or held on continuous alert waiting orders to hit a suitable target.

The chips were down. The Jap held some good cards -- good enough to encourage him in the belief that he could knock off Moresby, and get set to smash our vital supply line in the Southwest Pacific.

* * *

But we held a few good cards of our own. We didn’t know much about our naval dispositions, but we knew that the Navy was itching for a scrap out in the open, where the odds would not be too heavily against them and where the best man would win.

Just as a foot-note to now well known history, the best man did win.

Several missions had been flown against the Japs and on May 8 reconnaissance reported 15 or 18 vessels gathered in a convoy and retreating to the northward, just north of the passage through the Louisiade Archipelago.

(The Louisiade Archipelago is the cluster of islands southeast of New Guinea which, geological are an extension of the Papuan Peninsula. Navy Department Communiqué 68, issued June 12, 1942, which comprised the final summary of the Coral Sea action, revealed that on May 7, the United States task force under Vice Admiral Frank V. Fletcher "hit the main body of the Japanese force in the Louisiade Archipelago off Misima." Misima is an island approximately 375 air miles south east of Port Moresby -- J.M.M.).

* * *

On May 7, group headquarters at Townsville called for two crews to replace the crews which had been flying missions or on alert since the first reports were received of the approaching Jap force. Lt, (now Captain) Charlie Hillhouse and I, with crews, were ordered in as replacements and I was assigned the lead plane of eight B-17s which were standing by loaded for business.

We took off immediately in two flights of three planes each and one flight of two, the latter mine. We were to find the Jap convoy and hit it before sunset, if possible. Two of the planes' were forced to turn back at take-off, because of engine trouble, so our three flights of two B-17s each headed off at full speed at five minute intervals.

Just about the time we spotted the second flight ahead of us, my bombardier, Lt Stone, reported a convoy ahead and then we saw the first black bursts of ack-ack at fairly high altitude quite a distance in front of us.

* * *

We were all flying at fairly high altitude-on about the same level. I didn't see the first flight until they had flown across the convoy of about six or eight troop or auxiliary vessels and eight or nine war ships, including cruisers and destroyers.

The second flight went in. We could see the convoy clearly. All ships were maneuvering wildly in all directions, like an aggregation of excited water-bugs. We were too busy to observe what damage the bombs of the first and second flight had caused, other than to notice that no direct hits had been scored.

Watching the ack-ack ahead of us, I climbed a little higher, but just as Stone announced that he was ready to make his bombing run, and we turned on the course for his selected target, a string of heavy ack-ack started popping about a quarter of a mile ahead of us right on our level and right on our course. I immediately dropped several thousand feet, to mess up the Jap gunners range, and continued on course.

* * *

Neither before nor after have I seen such heavy and well placed anti-aircraft fire as those cruisers and destroyers threw at us. We could see the orange flashes as the ships batteries fired. Things grew hotter and hotter. The side gunner reported some close behind us, and then my wing man peeled off and took some distance because one burst was so close the side-gunner thought the plane had been hit.

The split-second the bombardier reported "bombs away," I made a sharp diving turn away to the left and at that same instant, the tail-gunner began to chatter excitedly through the inter-phone. On the turn, I saw a line of shell bursts on the level course we had just left, and later the tail gunner reported that one burst really had our name on it. If we had not turned when we did, someone else might be relating this story of the 19th Group but it wouldn't be me.

I knew that those Nip gunners were in the groove, and I also knew that they were getting close. The gunner reported that the bursts started about a mile behind and each one came a little closer, directly on our level. By his report, we evaded by a split second either a direct hit, or one just as bad. As we turned away, we noted one very near miss on a heavy cruiser but figuratively, I tipped my hat. It was beautiful anti-aircraft gunnery.

* * *

About mid-afternoon of May 10, I received orders to lead a flight of six planes on a "search-strike" mission over an island area in the Louisiade Archipelago, thence toward St. George's channel between New Britain and New Ireland, proceeding as far as possible before dark and then returning to Port Moresby. Three other planes standing by on alert were to go direct to Moresby and stand by to carryout further search or strike with our flight the following day.

The object of the search was either an aircraft carrier or a seaplane tender which had been reported badly damaged in the Coral Sea engagement.

We reached the area to be searched just at dusk and had only a few minutes available until total darkness closed in. Low clouds forced us to abandon the search and return to Port Moresby. I landed last in the six plane formation and, due to congestion, I had to park my plane a short distance from the end of the runway along the edge. Due to the softness of the parking strip and the many hastily-filled bomb craters, we stuck four times before we could park satisfactorily.

* * *

The next morning a “recco" (reconnaissance ship) took off to search for the main body at the retreating Jap forces: I led out our formation of nine B-17's about an hour later, before dawn, expecting to receive either a contact report or a bombing signal from him as we neared the target.

About two hours out, one of the third element planes developed engine trouble and turned back. Half an hour later, I was forced to cut out one engine, which had become dangerously rough in operation, and turned back.

I turned the formation over to the deputy leader and headed for Moresby, flying about 100 miles off course to make reconnaissance among some islands farther south. The remainder of the planes failed to receive any signal from the reconnaissance plane or to contact the Jap force themselves; so about half of them plowed through miserable weather to bomb the airdrome at Rabaul and then came home.

On the way south, we jettisoned our bombs, made as lengthy a reconnaissance as we could with the fuel available, and then turned in for the long, slow flight back to Port Moresby on three engines. We ran into bad weather, and finally had to get under the clouds at only 500 feet as we approached the southeastern end of New Guinea.

* * *

We were within sight of Moresby when we saw a Fortress take off and head directly south, flying low over the water, while fighters were taking off from a nearby strip. We came lumbering in on approach with one prop feathered, our wheels down and little gas left, only to receive a peremptory signal from the ground not to land. When the signal was repeated, we pulled up our wheels and flew south over the water a few miles and then headed in to shore again to land. We had to, for the tanks were practically empty.

To-our surprise, the radio operator reported over the inter-phone that he had received the "all clear" from Moresby. When we got in, we learned that we had followed a flight of twelve Zeros" for 100 miles up the southern coast of New Guinea, only 30 minutes behind them. We had missed the original warning signal. If we had blundered into the flight of Zeros, crippled as we were, we would have been in trouble.

In June and July, we operated principally against Salamaua and Lae, with occasional missions against Rabaul, but we still were confronted with a maximum availability problem -- the missions we flew required every plane that we could get into the air. Planes and supplies were straggling in, but not then in sufficient quantities to operate with an effective reserve either of ships or crews.

* * *

An instance is a mission against Rabaul flown by "Jack" Dougherty. He had one close call when we were operating out of Java. Flying an old LB-30 on a bombing mission up in Macassar Strait, he was shot up pretty badly, ducked into a thunderhead to get away from the Zeroes, was caught in a spin and finally forced down on a small island south of Borneo.

One of the crew managed to hobble to a mission and the natives took care of them until the wreck was spotted by a plane returning from a mission and the crew was picked up. We had given them up for lost, for they were missing almost two weeks.

On the Rabaul trip, Dougherty's ship was to drop flares to illuminate the target area. Major "Ben" Schriever, the group engineering officer, was his co-pilot, and Lt “Maggie” Magee, the group armament officer, his bombardier. The plane was one of the old "Es" which had been shot up pretty badly, overhauled and restricted as to it’s top speed because of the weakened condition of the structure.

* * *

After they dropped their flares; they were to bomb shipping in the, harbor. Each time Jack maneuvered his plane to the approximate point where the-bombardier could make final adjustments for release of the bombs, a. cloud threw a shadow over the target. This happened six or seven times and both Dougherty and Magee were getting riled at Jack's suggestion that they get down lower, Magee heartily assented but he certainly didn't expect what followed -- the nearest thing to dive-bombing that a B-17 can do.

Jack circled the volcano which overlooks Lakani airdrome, one off the most heavily defended spots in. the whole Rabaul area; opened the throttles wide and dropped down -- "just like an elevator;" one of the crew swore later that he could pick up the Jap ship at extremely low altitude under the overcast.

The B-17 was restricted to 210 miles an hour, but the air speed indicator read over 300 when they pulled out and made the run for the target. "Maggie" lined up two big ships. His first bomb scored a direct hit on a large transport and the other was a water-line hit or a near miss -- both with heavy bombs.

* * *

The whole area was lighted up like a Christmas tree." Every anti-aircraft gun was tossing stuff at them. Jack bored through it, crossed the bay and then dropped down over a hill on the other shore to get out of the line of fire.

"When we went over that hill," Magee insisted, "we dropped so fast I was hanging in midair a couple or feet out or my seat, and a .30 caliber gun was hanging right beside me. Everybody who didn't have their safety belt fastened was up against the roof."

The transport sank, not a single member of the plane’s crew was injured, but Dougherty, Magee and Schriever took a solemn oath when they got back.

"That," all three declared, "is the last time we try dive bombing with a ‘lame-duck' B-17."

Conclusion

Surprise US Attack caught Japs Napping, Destroyed 30-40 Zeros

I led one big mission in June before becoming the group's plans and training officer at our Australian headquarters -- the longest combat mission ever flown by the group with return to the same base.

Two of our fellows had spent the week previous flying reconnaissance missions over the main Jap bases and positions in the area within range north of Darwin. Photographs obtained by them showed that Kendari, almost 1000 air miles northwest of Darwin on the southeastern coast of Celebes, was being used as a huge staging center for Jap planes. They revealed that over 100 Zeros and a great number of bomber -- well over 150 aircraft altogether were massed on the field.

The Nips were sitting up there, licking their chops, probably not even dreaming of an attack. We planned the whole mission on a basis of surprise and we caught them so flat-footed they didn't even fire a shot.

Five ships -- three from another squadron, two from ours -- took off at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, Darwin time, on June 30, in order to arrive over the target just before sunset. The weather at the target was not accurately known, though a frontal area was known to be in the vicinity of Kendari.

We had used the base before, and planned to capitalize on our knowledge of the area and terrain to make an attack at low altitude, if necessary. As we approached, we saw that it would have to be a low-altitude approach. There were three separate layers of overcast. We used them to conceal our approach to the field after we were over the bay, only five minutes run from the airdrome.

* * *

It was so hazy over the bay that we didn't know, until photographs taken on the mission were developed, that there was a 3000-ton cargo ship anchored there. We couldn’t see it, but the camera lens did. After we got down to low altitude under the clouds, we made a straight run for the target. There was not a single Jap stirring -- not a plane in the air, not an anti-aircraft battery manned. One bomb made a direct hit on three bombers on the field, another on one of the largest buildings in the camp area. We figured that we did serious damage to between 30 and 40 planes. As we passed over the target area, the crew were heaving bundles of incendiaries like kindling out of the side gun port.

It was the story, of almost innumerable missions that had been run before. We didn't have enough. If we had had only 18 Fortresses, it would have taken the Japs several weeks to get replacements through for the planes we could have destroyed. The surprise was absolute. Smashing up that field would have been child's play for a big formation.

* * *

As soon as we passed over the field, we used the feathery low clouds for cover as much as we could. We expected to be jumped. It was just unbelievable that the Japs could have been caught so completely by surprise, for they must have heard us 15 minutes before we hit the field..

Only one Zero came up to intercept from one of the little satellite fields about 20 miles south of Kendari, but he shot up Lt Weldon Smith's plane badly. Smitty's ship, leading the second flight, took all of the hits and the others none.

That Zero's pilot had plenty of guts. He made six separate passes, and the last one was so close to the plane that he passed only 20 or 30 feet over it. Both planes of the flight had all guns trained and as the Zero made his last pass, they got him. He continued in a shallow dive, all guns firing, until he passed out of sight in the clouds below. Evidently, the pilot was killed or badly hit and “froze” to the gun triggers; but his last pass got one of Smttty's engines. The plane was hard to fly, hard to keep trimmed and they were a long way from home.

* * *

When he took off on the mission, Smith knew that one engine was burning too much oil and he planned to come back on three after he dropped his bomb load on Kendari, knowing he would have the cover of darkness. As soon as he dropped his load, he feathered the prop and started back on the remaining three engines.

They were limping along only about 30 miles north of the Australian base at very low altitude, trying to pick up the field in the heady ground haze, when the engine which had been hit suddenly cut out. Unfortunately, it was on the same side as the one that was feathered. as they were trying to get the inboard engine started, the controls on the same side, which had been badly shot up, gave way and the ship spun in on her nose.

Three of Smith's crew died that night from injuries sustained. in the crash, one of the fellows on the operating table. All of the others were-injured. Lt "Stinky" Davis, Smith's tall bombardier and a powerful chap, lifted and held up parts of the wreckage which. as Smith said later; no human being normally could have budged an inch, and pulled the injured members of the crew out of the wreckage. Smitty, who had been knocked out, regained consciousness when flames were only a few feet from his head, and with one arm useless managed to release himself. Then he helped Davis extricate the injured In the rear of the ship before help from a nearby camp arrived.

On August 1 the entire group moved into one base. The squadrons were united as an operating unit at full strength for the first time since December 7.

That was when the tide began to turn, Things began to smooth out. New crews, new planes and supplies were coming through in a steady stream. We had lots of difficulties, but contrasted with the ones we already had licked, these were simple.

We pounded Rabaul mercilessly to provide cover for the landing operations in the Solomons.

That was a maxim effort, calling for prolonged and continuous day and night operations against Rabaul to knock out the main Nip airdromes, stripping away the power with which they might contest our landing operation.

* * *

No story of that period -- and there must be literally hundreds -- is complete without .the story of Captain Hart Pease. On August 6, he flew on a large formation attack against Rabaul but upon return to Port Moresby, one of his engines failed. He requested permission to return to Australia pick up another B-17 which should be in commission by that time, and fly back into Port Moresby to take part in another mission against Rabaul that night.

He had had no sleep the night before, and had just finished one combat mission of 11 hours, but he flew out to Australia, another three hour flight. The plane which he was to bring back was of an old type and not in the best of condition. Anyone could have refused to take it on the projected mission against Rabaul without censure. He grabbed a hasty lunch and flew back to Moresby just in time to prepare for the mission. Every man in his crew was a volunteer.

He flew a wing position in a formation which received the brunt of the Nips' fighter attack. For almost half an hour, they fought, off 30 Zeros and shot down several before they dropped their bombs and ducked for cloud cover. Harl’s plane, one bomb bay tank blazing, fell behind the rest and when last seen, was losing altitude under heavy attack.

* * *

The citation in which he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor "for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty stated that he was seen to drop the blazing fuel tank, but that it is believed his plane "subsequently was shot down in flames." Every man in the 19th who knew Hart admired him, and deep down inside we cling to the hope that he and his boys managed a crash landing and are alive this day -- a hope that never dies among comrades until the final word is received.

For the first time in eight months, we could afford to effectively alternate combat crews and operate with a maximum number of planes.

Now and then, as some of the fellows got in fresh from the States, we heard vague hints of some of the new types of planes that were being produced or planned, and the usual reaction from a grumpy 19th Group man was:

“When the Hell are WE going to get them?"

* * *

The last few months -- from the beginning of the Solomons operation until we left for the States in late October -- were much as they must have been anywhere over here. Things would go wrong and the fellows would grumble and growl, but matters were on the mend; the grumblings and growlings for the most part were the healthy reaction of men in fighting fettle who must have something to gripe about.

We would hear that, up in the Solomons, they had knocked down 15 Zeros. We got the value of that. We felt its lift. We knew what those victories cost in planning, in training, in production, in supply, in bone-weary commanders, in haggard-faced ground crews, in combat crews staggering with weariness from the grind between sweltering heat and marrow freezing high altitude cold.

We were downcast when the Japs began their push across the mountains toward Moresby from Kokoda, but the Aussies and our boys stopped them at Ioribaiwa Ridge in late August. The Nips tried to chisel their way in to Milne Bay, and we blasted them out of there in late September. If I had the records available, I could cite page after page of the operations in the Milne Bay area alone, where we lost a few planes and some men, who were tops, but where the Nips lost incalculably more.

* * *

Men like Maj Felix Hardison and Maj "Butch" Helton led their squadrons through almost impenetrable weather, literally hugging the waves with their big B-17s to smash at Jap shipping and installations, in the Buna-Gona area.

It was a seesaw battle, but there was a different spirit in the air.

We had waited eight months for it, but now it was coming -- the power of "the folks back home," the inexhaustible strength of the United States of America being brought to bear, as never for one second had we doubted that it would be, against the enemy.

Where there had been a mere trickle of reinforcements, there now was a stream-small, to be sure, but steady-and before long, we knew, it would be a flood.

Those of us who had been out there in the early weeks were tired. Some of the boys were edgy and irritable. Some of them were just dull. All of us were going stale. We knew it. We had been “alerted” too long. Crew by crew, we were relieved and shipped back to the States every man who had been in active combat prior to May 1.

In late October, just before I left, I brought my log book up to date. I had flown 26 bombing and reconnaissance missions and. had more than 41 other flights in combat areas for a total of 390 hours since that day when, completely unsuspecting, we had strolled up from sunrise. breakfast to the operations tent at Del Monte on Mindanao. During that period, I estimated that I flew somewhere between 80,000 and 100,000 nautical miles ... 100,000 statute miles would not be far off. That is close to four times around the world at the equator. A few of our boys navigators, bombardiers ,and. gunners had flown many more than that. Frankly, it seemed further.

When I learned what plane I was to fly in as a passenger out of Australia, I couldn't repress thrill. It seemed, somehow, symbolic of the 19th Group.

It wad the same old B-17 I had flown up to Del Monte on General Royce's raid... the plane over which we had labored with only watery stew under our belly that sweltering night last April ... the same battered veteran we had coaxed and coddled on three engines back to Australia with Bulkeley and the other passengers aboard.

It had new engines. It had a new wing. It had undergone a major overhaul. It didn't have a creak or a rattle or a sag, and its four big engines roared with unfaltering and unquenchable life as we took off into the east.

* * *

We had to learn air warfare the hard way, and we lost good men doing it. We made plenty or mistakes, but we never made the same one twice. The quality of the planes we are sending out to the combat theaters is equal to or better than any they can send against us. Our crews are better, trained. I like to think that these beautifully trained fellows moving out now, confident and enthusiastic and as full of fight as hungry bob-cats, are better prepared because of the mistakes we made.

This story has been only-a resume. It has been largely personalized because one's own experiences are the easiest to recall. But for all the men I would like to have mentioned here, and their many deeds which are history, although they may never be printed for all the world to know, I would like to say this:

All over the world today, men are fighting with all that is in them against every kind of discouragement for their countries and their beliefs. We have our heroes, living and dead. men, like Colin Kelly .. Parcell .. Keiser .. Pease .. Robinson .. and many, many others who have agonized and died for the things they believed in -- freedom, democracy, a decent world.

* * *

They would be the very first to nod agreement that the 19th's fight was only one corner of it. In its eventual perspective, it may prove to have been only a small corner.

But great or small, living or dead, one day they will know that they weren't misguided kids, raising Hell in the sky for the fun of it. They will know that their sacrifices were not in vain.

They will know, sooner perhaps than those of us who survived dared at one time even to dream -- for the tide is turning.

One of these days, I want to be in a new ship that will be flying a mission above those green islands. There'll be others of the old gang flying the wings, flying the flights ahead and the flights behind. The bomb-bay doors will be open, the bombardiers will be manning the final adjustments for the run...

The tide is running with us now and, as I said at the outset and repeat now at the end --

We've got some unfinished business down that way.

THE END