Evening star., 1943-04-16

ing, he found that only one would
go down. The other was stuck. He
decided to slide in on the belly of
the plane. Then he discovered that
the wheel he had let down wouldn't
come up. The hydraulics had been
shot up and the hand apparatus,
too.
So there he was, after as desper-
ately fought an engagement as any
in the history of United States fight
ing men, after as laborious flight
home as can be made-there he
was. faced with the problem of
landing on one wheel, the stickiest
kind of landing known. But he did
that, too, all right. landed nice and
easy on the one wheel and let down
the other side nice and easy.
When Coffey and the other me-
chanlcs and the crash wagon and
the meat wagon, as the fellows call
the ambulance, gathered around no
body could figure out how the plane
stayed up. except that there were
so many holes in it that maybe it
had become lighter than air.
Back at 1t Again.
But two weeks later Earnest and
Ferrler were back flying with Tor
pedo 8, and when they saw Swede
Larsen's memorandum changing
the squadron S slogan from Attack"
to Attack and Vengeance" they
each said, That's where I come in
Then Missy, sitting home in Bir-
mingham with her baby daughters,
started a letter to her husband.
The newspapers she had been read
ing were describing torpedo bomb
ers as the American answer to Jap
suicide squads and to Nazi elite
troops, who ran singing into ma
chlne-gun fire from which they had
no protection.
Can you imagine poor dumb me-"
Missy wrote SWede Here 1 was
thinking you were as safe as in a
church and then I find out you're
In the middle of madhouse."
American women ordinarily get
from their men at war a feeling of
confidence in the machines with
which their men are working. The
women OF fighter pilots for instance.
and fighter pilots themselves think
that plotting a fighter plane-those
whlppy, snorting little platforms
that carry guns up to the mouths
OF other guns at 400 miles an hour
IS the best and safest Job in the
war. Soundly trained tank DESTROY
err men are positive no tank can
stand up against them. And sound
ly trained tank corps men shiver at
the = ga OF having to fight tanks and
feel very sorry for their friends in
the tank destroyer battalions. And
the women of tank corps men feel
glad their men are not in the tank.
These are natural feelings that
ARISE from something very deep in
Americans. Good morale is only a
small part of it. The ajor part of
1t is an understanding of their ma
chimes, an understanding so COM
plete that the men are able to
communicate it to their women.
For American war machines are
all able to do not only the jobs of
destruction for which they are de-
signed, but the jobs of conserva-
ton, too. American inventors. de-
slgners. manufacturers, military
men. in fact every last man con-
cerned with the making and using
OF our machines has insisted on the
same thing-that an American war
machine must not merely be able to
destroy the enemy but must also
be able to conserve the life of the
Americans using it. Their insist
ence is not because Of some legisla-
ton somewhere that can be put
aside in moments of stress or evad-
ed when nobody is looking. It is.
instead fundamental in us, a part
OF our temperaments. a natural
habit of thought growing out of the
democratic process which is tbo