Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 14, Number 41, DeMotte, Jasper County, 25 August 1944 — Page 2

THE STORY THUS FAR: Lieut. Col. Frank Kurtz, pilot of Flying Fortress •‘The Bwoose,” tells of that fatal day when the Japs struck in the Philippines, killing eight of his men and demolishing Old 99, with many other Forts, before it could get off the ground. After escaping to Australia, what is left of the 19th Bombardment Group flies to Java, where they defend the island until it falls. U. S. fliers evacuate to Australia to carry on the war from there. From its base in North Australia the 19th, plus the 7th, paste New Guinea and New Britain Islands. Red Varner, Swoose crew chief, tells of a close call, with the general aboard. He had to hug the ground to prevent being dive-bombed.

CHAPTER XXIII “So the Major started out then on an ordinary box-search problem, trying to find this Cloncurry—you fly bo many minutes north, and then east, and then south, and then west, and then, lengthening your time, north again, and so on. We kept this up for quite a while, but no Cloncurry, and our gas was running out. I’ll say this, though, the Major sure wasn’t running short of advice. What with his cockpit full of air generals of all nations, he had plenty of that, and every different kind you can imagine—they all knew just what to do. “They w’ere all looking pretty worried by now, except the Swoose crew. One particular high officer was really carrying the ball here, only he couldn’t wory so well sitting down, so he’d pace back and forth from the cabin up to the cockpit, asking Frank did he think he had enough gas, and why did he think so, and how could he be sure? “The trouble was, every time he paced from the nose of the plane back to the tail, it would throw the plane out of balance, and Frank here would have to trim ship, in addition to all the questions he was answering. I guess this pacer had never thought of that “By this time Frank had decided the only thing to do was to make a forced landing, so he was leaning over the side trying to pick a spot.’’ “We have a saying in the Air Corps that any forced landing you can walk away from is a good one,*’ said Frank, “and yet with all this rank aboard I knew if I spilled them all over Central Australia, there would be hell to pay. I wanted to make it as easy as possible. None of that country looked any too good, but we finally spotted a couple of white houses where we thought there might be some help in case we cracked up badly and yet some were still alive. So I dropped down to what was the most likely place near them and dragged it a couple of times —flew over low, circled to come back and buzz again, looking for gullies I mightn’t have seen from upstairs. The sun was very low, and we wanted to get it over with (whatever it was going to be) while it was still light.’’ “With all of those guys yammering at you, telling you what to do,’’ said Red, “and this guy pacing. Only for a while he stopped, but just for a minute, while he was putting on a parachute. Why, I wouldn’t quite know. Because we were down to 500 feet, and if he did jump of course it would never have time to crack. But I didn’t say a word, because buckling himself in was keeping him quiet. Only right away he starts this pacing again, with the poor Major trying to nose her down for a crash landing, and he tells me to tell them all to get back in the tail so it will act as a brake, only this guy starts pacing again. “Now I was getting the jumps, for even if the Major is the best pilei in the business, a crash landing

ENTER TAINMENT for everyone in the family

is no joke, even for old-timers. So I grabs this pacing guy and ‘Now look,’ I says to him. ‘You may carry plenty of rank on your shoulder*, but to this pilot you’re just two hundred pounds of ballast. So now you quit shifting around—you get on back there and sit down.’ And I herded him back to the very tip end of the plane, and pushed him down, parachute and all, on that little seat. You’ve probably been wondering all along, just where this little seat is, on a bomber. Well, it’s just where it would be any place else—even on a farm—all you do is follow the clothes line, back down to the end of the grape arbor, and there she sets. “Well, I pushed him down on the seat, and in about a minute there was quite a bump, but still it was a perfect three-point landing. In four seconds the Major had her rolling smooth. The ground was soft. Twenty-five tons is a lot of bomber, and her wheels began to sink in —about six inches. But the Major could sense this, so he gave gas to all four engines to keep her rolling, and taxied her up to high ground hard enough to hold her up. “We get out. Pretty soon Australian ranchers begin crawling out of holes in the ground—l don’t know where else they came from—and right away Lieutenant Commander Johnson gets busy. He begins to get acquainted. They tell him where we are and some of them go off to get a truck to take us into town where we can telephone, and more keep coming, and Johnson is shaking hands all around, and he comes back and tells us these are real folks —the best darn folks in the world, except maybe the folks in his own Texas. Pretty soon he knows all their first names, and they’re telling him why there ought to be a high tariff on wool, and there’s no question he swung that county for Johnson before we left. He was in his element. I know he sure swung the Swoose crew. He can carry that precinct any day.’’ “Listening to him made us all homesick,” said Frank, “so I suppose it was a good thing we got suddenly ordered back to the States at the end of the month. In a curious way I was ready now to come. I’d turned it down before, because after we were thrown out of Java we all had that sick feeling—trying to hold onto something that was slipping away in spite of everything you did. You couldn’t walk out feeling things might suddenly cave in again. “But now it was different. In Australia and that island chain above we were getting firmly set, the way we should have been in the Philippines and Java, and didn’t have time. “But we’d had it now, and knew how to use it. Best of all, we were finally getting some fighting equipment, not just production figures. So even though we were soaking up plenty of heavy punches in the island chain, we were sure now we could at least hold them. But as yet I hadn’t dared hope for much more. “Only now I come to the thing which at last changed that, because I had to see it before I could believe it. “It happened out on that long trans-Pacific trail where we’ve almost worn ruts in the sky between the States and Australia. It was like this. We were letting down for one of the island steppingstones which, according to Harry’s navigation, should be somewhere ahead of us. It was very early in the morning. Harry’s the best navigator in the business, and he had said we should be tn there six hours from the time we left the last island.

THE KANKAKEE VALLEY POST, DE MOTTE, INDIANA

QUEENS DIE PROUDLY

©.WHITE

by W.L.White

But of course his figures could be a little out, or maybe the wind drift would change—you never know. The Pacific is too big a place to take chances in, as Eddie Rickenbacker’s party found out. So after we’d been out five hours we got the island on the radio, and asked them to give us searchlights, just so we wouldn’t miss their little pinpoint in the dawn. “We’d flown without change of course for five hours. Now Harry took his final shots and we started down the line to that island. Harry had said six hours—it took us just five hours and fifty-seven minutes. The island was an atoll around a shallow basin where Navy PBY flying boats could light. The atoll is two feet above high tide at its high

Now, over the interphones, comes a shout. They’ve spotted another carrier.

point. On one side are labor construction tents, a cantonment building for the tiny garrison, ack-ack, searchlights, and even a tiny movie theater. On the other side is the landing strip. I’ll swear Harry must have navigated not for the island, but for that landing strip itself. For without change of course, all we have to do is let our wheels down. Some day I want Eddie Rickenbacker to meet Harry. “As we climbed out of the Swoose, the island garrison asked us, very excited, ‘Did you see anything?’ When we said we hadn’t, they went off by themselves, whispering. I wanted to know what was up, so I asked their Colonel. Told him we were on an important mission ourselves—had a top-ranker aboard—and what did he expect here at this atoll? “ ‘Trouble,’ he said. Looking at his little setup, I couldn’t help thinking of those poor guys who were overwhelmed on Wake Island. But the Colonel wasn’t sure what kind of trouble was coming. He only knew orders had mysteriously come putting the Navy patrol planes on extra-long hours, doubling shifts. Somewhere, somebody was certainly on the lookout for something, and those poor devils had to sit on that

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atoll and guess what it might be. “It didn’t smell good. We gassed up and got out forty-five minutes later, just as it was cracking dawn. By now, the equatorial front had dissolved into a spotted ceiling. I suppose we’d been going an hour when, through a hole in this ceiling, out suddenly popped four or five ships down on the wrinkled sea. But I could only look at one of them. “Now you think you’re a man, with everything under control, yet I’m telling you I reacted to this one the way a fox terrier does to a rat. Because it was a whopping aircraft carrier! And after Java and the Philippines, say ‘carrier’ to a pilot, and he steadies everything for his bomb run, tense as a violin string, hoping his bombardier has the hairlines of his bomb sight crossed on its flight deck just over the engine room. It’s like a bird dog pointing quail, with his tail tip quivering; Only, after half a second, I’m a man again and can think, can remember we haven’t any bombs swinging on their shackles in our bomb bays—nothing we can drop on this beautiful target but the highranking passenger who is riding with us - •' “Then comes reaction number two. No bombs, but what, about the carrier’s covering fighters? You talk about a mother tiger fighting for her young—that’s nothing to the way a patrolling carrier fighter will defend its mother ship. Because every car-rier-based fighter knows that once his carrier is hit and the waves begin to sweep over that long flight deck, and one end of her hoists up in the air, then he’s out in the big sky by his lonesome—no pontoons, nothing to do but sink into the sea when his tanka are dry. Those Zeros will come screaming in to hit me from almost any cloud. Since I can’t make a bomb run, I must get away quick! “But now, over the interphones, comes a shout—they’ve spotted another carrier. I look see it too. Then another! And now—my God, it can’t be, but it is—four! It makes us frantic we haven’t got something to plunk through those smooth flight decks into their engine rooms, and maybe blow a few square yards out of the bottom of their hulls! “Only we now grow’ cold, because where are the escorting fighters? We can’t speed up, because they should be up ahead, but they might show up any place—come leaping up at us out of this fleecy blanket of overcast like dolphins jumping through the foam. “Down there are not only four carriers but a gang of pther stuff—a fog of destroyers, at least fifteen cruisers, and one thundering big battleship. Only as a bomber pilot I’m fixed on those carriers, enormous brutes. Too enormous. Say, what’s going on? Because Jap carriers are little devils—you can hardly pack forty planes into them, while these might hold double that, like our best ones. Now wait. Maybe we’re too low and these just look big, but n0 —i glance at the altimeter and w’e’re at 7,500. “So they’re ours! This big parade of surface strength is us Americans! I change course just the same —3O degrees, swinging w’ide of this big naval parade, because we can take no chances on their air patrol. Even an American carrier fighter,

when he sees a bomber over his mother ship, should shoot first and ask questions later. We don’t want to tangle with Grummans. “We swung out wide and away, but with what a different feeling! Because it’s our own boys down there on that big gang of ships! At last, even after Pearl Harbor, we can hold up our heads in these Pacific waters! We’d stopped them in the air, holding them back to Timor and Lae, and at last I can see w’e’re beginning to sweep them off the top of the waters. A long job, but we’ve begun it! “Well, I guess that’s about all, except on our homeward trip, we cracked the trans-Pacific record wide open. The old Swoose, with her war-worn motors, made it from Brisbane to San Francisco in thirtysix hours ten minutes flying time, the only one of the original 35 on Clark Field to see home again.’’ j “Then there was our last night flight in. Clear, so the stars were out. even down to the horizon. And I calm, so I could put the Swoose on automatic pilot and sit there half- ! dozing, thinking about all those months. Mostly about my trip out, j in Old 99 and with my other crew. And the way old Tex used to sit beside me, slumped in his seat. You’d think that happy-go-lucky kid ' was asleep,; and yet somehow he alI ways kept an eye cocked on the instrument panel mid 'he horizon, so if anything started to go even a lit- ■ tie funny, Tex would snap up, quick i as a fox terrier pup, bless him. And • so much had happened since then — ! two wars, really three. And then I thought of that sprawling line of 'my crew on Clark Field. And of • Old 99. so crumpled; sagging on j the ground. Bnt something had 1 somehow happened to wipe that out. • Because at times like these, halfI dozing, it seemed like I was back j with the old), gang again, who had I brought me safe out East and now : were bringing me home again. Everything easy and comfortable; old Tex beside me, and Sergeant Burgess probably catching a few winks on the bunk in the cabin, and all I j had to do was sit here and follovy I those two wing lights, so steady | ahead in the dark, those unwavering ; wing lights which would lead me safely back. On calm nights like I this, in formation, there’s little fly- ! ing to do; those wing lights ahead ! seem to pull you home. “I guess I must have been dozj ing, because a little motor undulation aroused me, and I realized of ! course there was no plane ahead—j never had been one. It had only : been two blue stars which are close I together in the eastern sky, and the Swoose was alone, over the Pacific. Yet somehow I didn’t feel alone. And Old 99 didn’t feel far away.’’ “When they said long distance was calling from San Francisco, of i course that didn’t mean anything to • me,’’ said Margo. “With two brothj ers in the Air Corps, one in bombardment and one in pursuit, it ; might be either one. Then I heard Frank’s own voice saying ‘Margo?’ Because I hadn’t heard any overseas operators, or any censor clicki ing in, I knew he must be here in \ the States. For the first time I could 1 cry on the phone . . . It’s nice to 1 be strong, but so much more fun to i let down when you can, and I did (THE END)