Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 14, Number 20, DeMotte, Jasper County, 31 March 1944 — QUEENS DIE PROUDLY [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

QUEENS DIE PROUDLY

by W. L.White

©.WHITE

W.N.UrFEATURI*

THE STORY THUS FAR: Lieut. Col. Frank Kurtz, who was pHot of the grizzled old Flying Fortress known as “The Swoote,” which escaped from Clark Field, tells of that fatal day when the Japs struck in the Philippines. Old 99, a Flying Fortress, is struck down before it can get off the ground. Later, Lieutenant Kurtz bicycles to the scene of the bombing. He finds Old 99 a pile of Junk. He sees eight boys of her crew—his boys —lying in an irregular line. They had been killed as they ran for shelter. He counts them, pats each on the back, and talks to them as if they were still alive. Then he goes to where Tex is lying, at the end of the sprawling line, and makes a promise.

CHAPTER II “We weren’t licked; it was only the beginning, and from now on we would get to work, all of us, and win. I told him that whatever plane they gave me later, Old 99 would be flying right in the formation, and on night missions I would always see Old 99’s wing lights beside me, and know that she was protecting me with her crossfire, knocking down Zeros that tried to climb onto my tail. Yes, maybe that’s where the story begins. “The 19th Bombardment Group consisted of thirty-five beautiful shiny new Flying Fortresses, of which Old 99 was one —we had picked her up at the Boeing factory just before she came off the line. Of the Fortress series, they were D models —then the latest and finest in the business. About a dozen of our thirty-five were down at Del Monte Field on the southern island of Mindanao. The rest were at the main bomber base, Clark Field, about forty-five miles from Manila, which was the headquarters of General MacArthur, the Commander in Chief. Our immediate Air Corps commander, General Brereton. was constantly visiting us at Clark. “On November 27 General Brereton put us on the alert. He had received the same State Department warning they got at Pearl Harbor — that war might be days or maybe hours away. Within the limit of what we had, the Air Force was ready for it. The General was making all the reconnaissance he could, and had picked his targets in Formosa, from where we knew the blow would come. Our machine guns were in place and loaded. “As fast as our facilities would permit, our shiny aluminum Queens were getting their coat of dull war paint, and I was notified that Old 99 was scheduled to get her camouflage on December eighth. “That’s a date we who W’ere in the Philippines will never forget. With you it’s December seventh, but don’t be confused, for it’s really the same day, only because the Philippines are on the other side of the international date line, we give it a different number. “The Japanese struck at Pearl Harbor at exactly 7:35 *o’clock in the morning Honolulu time. At that same instant it was 4:35 o’clock in the morning of December eighth in the Philippines—a few hours before dawn reached us. I was asleep in the nipa shack which was the officers’ quarters on Clark Field. “I got up at seven as usual and, stumbling in sleepily to shave, snapped on my portable as I always did to get the early morning news broadcast by Don Bell in Manila. By the way, one of the first things the Japs did when they entered the town two weeks later was to shoot the poor devil. In even more rapidfire style than usual he told us the big news—that the Japs had hit Hawaii. “The other guys gathered around, and it stunned us all. There weren’t

too many details, but it sounded like they’d split the place wide-open. Precious days had been slipping by, now it was precious hours sliding away, but I don’t pretend that I realized this then. I only knew something was likely to happen, but in the meantime I rushed over to mess on my bike and sat down by Bill Cocke, our brilliant young engineer officer, because I wanted his reaction to what little facts the radio had told us. “Sure enough, Bill had it figured. The range was too great from any Jap island to Hawaii; they must have been carrier-based—carriers which had slipped by our patrols the night before, made the last leg of their trip at top speed in the night, and loosed their planes just before dawn. Lucky it wasn’t us, instead. “We gulped breakfast, and then all the pilots rushed over to operations meeting in the squadron’s operations tent, where Major Don Gibbs went over the situation with us. I can see him now, trim, alert, boyish-looking for his rank and years—if he’d lived out the war he would surely be a brigadier general by now. He was as shrewd as he was modest. It was his second tour of duty out East, and he knew the lay of the land. “ ‘Well, gentlemen, this is it,’ he said. Then he stepped over to the open flap and faced us. ‘lf they’ve hit Hawaii they can’t miss hitting us. I can’t tell you when it will come, but it w r ill come. How r ever, I can tell you where it will come from.’ Here he raised the canvas flap with one hand and pointed up and to the north. ‘lt will be from right over that hill,’ he said. “We looked at the hill, tree-clad, velvety, beautiful in the sunrise. Beyond it was Iba Field. Still farther was the China Sea and then came Formosa, the black forbidden hunk of something I had looked down on the week before. “As we left, Gibbs said: ‘You’re on the stand-by. Orders will be coming through fast all morning.’ Then I went back to Old 99. She was one of the few which hadn’t been loaded with bombs, as she had been scheduled for camouflaging that morning. Only the orders that now came seemed conflicting as those final hours slipped away. “First came one countermanding the camouflaging. Seemed something was afoot, and they couldn’t wait for it. Instead we were to load bombs, so we taxied over toward the ammunition dump. Then Bill Cocke, who was to be running back and forth all morning with conflicting orders, came screaming down the field. ‘Take her back to the hangar; they want the camouflaging finished by all means!’ “Presently came another order for me and two other planes of this 30th Squadron to unload our bombs and insert cameras. Nothing more than that, but it was clear they were preparing us now for reconnaissance over Formosa. **T didn’t then know that our little field only reflected what was going on at Manila Headquarters, where our Air Force General Brereton had been up bucg before dawn and was at a big conference all morning. Of course it’s very easy to be wise after the event. “And of course, even though Pearl Harbor had been attacked, our American Congress had not yet declared war, and perhaps it was too great a responsibility for our Philippine command to strike back when someone might argue that war did not exist technically. “Cheap people can laugh at this now, but General Brereton did not laugh then. But he insisted that,

even granting the Japs might not invade our islands, yet they would never leave us a striking force intact—a Navy or an Air Force in the Philippines which might move in on the Japanese flank. “General Brereton knew our position at Clark Field was so dangerous that if we did not at once strike at Formosa, we could probably never strike at all. He wanted permission to make a reconnaissance flight over there, so we could at least see if the Japanese were making preparations to strike us. Surely, now that they had hit Pearl Harbor, it would be only a minor neutrality violation to fly close enough to Formosa to take a few pictures. “Consequently the turndown on this wasn’t complete; Headquarters said, well, maybe this would be possible. Wait and see. “Back on the stand-by with Old 99, I couldn't then know this was why I had been ordered to jerk her

bombs, reload her with cameras, and rush the camouflage in the hope that permission would soon come. I only knew big things were moving, and suddenly I thought of my little portable radio. Why not find out what I could? So I sent Tex back to the barracks to get it. “When he returned, I had fair reception when I took it outside the steel hangar door. “It crackled with rumors—some already true, some not yet true. They reported a big concentration of Jap ships off Luzon —Manila was expecting an air raid every minute —bombs were reported already dropping on Clark Field. I understand that early false report reached the States. k “It was curious,” said Kurtz, “standing right outside that hangar door, looking at Clark Field in the mid-morning sunshine and hearing the radio hand saying that bombs were dropping on it. It was crazy, and yet it made us apprehensive. “A classmate of mine at Randolph Field who had been flying one of two old Douglases we used for transportation to Manila had just pulled

up and got out, and he was listening beside me. Now he said, nervously, ‘Why in hell don’t we get out of here and save these airplanes?’ I could see he was thinking not only of the planes, but of our necks as well. “I said to him, ‘What the hell, now, old man, take it easy—we’re under orders.’ But I was getting jumpy myself. I remember fussing like an old woman at the boy with the spray gun. I wanted to be able to get out of there quick wherever they ordered us—anywhere was better than here. “Then quick came another order —early chow for us pilots and our navigators at eleven o’clock. So I told Tex that Eddie Oliver (my navigator) and I were going to shoot on up to the mess hall, eat fast, and get over to the operations tent quick and find out what plans they had lined up for us. Meanwhile Tex was to oversee the unloading of the bombs and the replacing of them with cameras in the bomb bays. “The Filipino waiters were always slow, but today it seemed as though we would never get our food. And while we ate I kept thinking. ‘Suppose they do hi,t us—what will they look like?’ “I’d never seen a Japanese plane except those slides of them they throw on the screen in plane-recog-nition courses at school. “I remembered one of the Mitsubishi bomber —w r e laughed and said, ‘Hell, that’s nothing but an old B-18 —look, they’ve stolen its wing.’ Then another slide—‘Nakajima 97,’ but to us it was a copy of an old Boeing P-26, long ago obsolete in our Air Force. Zeros—yes, we’d just heard of them, although we didn’t call them that; it was only ‘Navy type oo’ on the slide. We’d been told there was really no such thing as a Japanese fighter plane. We didn’t know they had a fine new type which was about to kick hell out of us. “Sitting there in the mess hall finishing, I felt tense, but I didn’t dream that all the valuable months and weeks and days had slipped away now—that there remained only priceless minutes. “I left the mess hall and ran into Tex, looking for me. He had everything under control with Old 99, the crew was standing by, and were there any more orders? “I told him not yet, I was going over to the operations tent and would be back with them in a very few minutes. Good old Tex, standing there, apparently casual and yet really alert as a fox terrier, getting every word I said. A fine-looking kid, twenty-two years old, he was for me those extra eyes, ears, and hands that every co-pilot should be. “I was worrying about what would happen if while I was in that operations tent, scout planes might report a Jap bomber formation headed down toward us from Formosa. I trusted our fighter pilots at Iba, but —you never could tell—a few bombers might slip through to Clark. “So I said to Tex: ‘Now look, boy —here’s the dope. Make no mistake, I don’t want any slip-ups. Up to now it’s been all play-acting and Boy Scout stuff, but this war has really begun. If we get word in Operations that we’re about to be hit here on Clark, we can get Old 99 off the field from where she is, without the usual runway procedure. So watch for me to come pedaling toward you on my bike from operations tent. If I drop my arm as you see me come over the top of the runway crest, that means I want the motors started by the time I get there.’’ “ ‘Okay, Frank,’ he said quietly. No saluting or heel - snapping

there’s not room for much of that in the Air Force. Then he assured me that the men had all been sent to chow, the engines warmed and checked. Now he turned, and went on back to Old 99. “The operations tent was crowded with about forty pilots and naviga> tors waiting {pr briefing to begin As we waited, I snapped on my ra did and we all listened to Manila This time Don Bell was really packing it across in his excited delivYet we didn’t know that the precious minutes had all slipped away and only seconds were left We didn’t know that General Brereton had permission from General MacArthur for us to take off on our photographic expedition over Formosa, to see if just possibly the Japanese might be making preparations to attack us. We didn’t realize that General Brereton had already rushed to the telephone, and was even at this instant clicking the receiver, trying to get through to us with this order. “Now Don Bell was saying that bombs really were dropping on Clark Field —he was broadcasting from the top of one of Manila’s tallest buildings, and from .there he could see big "plumes of smoke rising from Clark Field. “We all srniled at this. We didn’t know that he, from Manila, could see around the little hill over in the direction of Iba Field, and that these plumes of smoke were from burning P-40’s there. The Japanese were already tearing our American fighter force to pieces. But we smiled, and were listening for whatever crazy thing Don Bell would say next—General Brereton still trying to get through to us on the phone—when a private, standing just out-side-the flap of our operations tent, said, y in an awe-struck, admiring voice: “ ‘Oh, gee! Look at the pretty Navy formation.’ v “It froze me. I could hear a drone. I think it froze all of us. The next second, Lieutenant Lee Coats, who was standing nearest the tent flap, stepped to the opening. We watched him look up. “‘Navy, hell! Here they cornel' “We turned over tables in the confusion of piling out of that tent, but we’re not yet frightened rats, we’re still human beings, still organized. “There they came, the drone rising, right over the hill as Don Gibbs had predicted Jhey would—in an enormous V of V’s, three V’s in all and about twenty-five Mitsubishi bombers in each V, at about 18,000 to 22,000 feet altitude—coming right at us. “I heard a scuffling and looked around to see that I was alone except for Lieutenant Glenn Rice—he'd been detailed as photographic officer and was grinding away with his camera at that V of V’s. The rest had all taken shelter in a big drainage ditch near by. “I stood there because I thought it would be five or ten seconds more before they came to their bombrelease line, and I ought to see the glint of their bombs turning over as they came out of their bomb bays—they seem almost to pause under the plane before they start down—several seconds surely before I saw that glint, and then would be time to jump for the ditch. Meanwhile I wanted to see what kind of pattern this formation planned to lay down over this field, just as, many times before—back in the dry bed of Muroc Lake in California, our practice bombing range in the Mojave Desert—l’d watched a formation of our own to see how good they were. ITO BE CONTINUED)

Don Bell was broadcasting from one of Manila’s tallest buildings.