Evening star., 1943-04-15

The Battle Of Midway had cooked
up to q boil. Il appreciate your
taking time out to tell me this"
ssid Swede..
The commander looked at him
strangely. Well" he replied. well
the others are all down somewhere
We don't know where they are, but
we're looking and hoping"
Yes, sir" said swede. Thank
you, sir"
Remembers His Anger.
swede doesn't remember much of
what happened the rest of that day.
He remembers he felt mad at the
Japs. That was his first emotion,
to get out and get after them. All
the other emotions he had that day
do not seem to have counted enough
with him to remember them.
The story OF the attack came to
the fellows gradually. 1t had been
4 hands-down situation. The Japs
had been a little over l60 miles
away. Everything in the situation
was made to order for them, but it
vas a question of hitting them then,
no matter what the conditions, or
OF not hitting them at all, so Tor
pedo g.. with some Army B-25s fol-
lowing them, hit them.
The Japs had anti-aircraft and
something between 20 and 30 Zeros
waiting for the attack. The weather
was as If the Japs had thought it up.
There was low overcast, and our
fellows had to come in under the
overcast and hustle along a rut less
than q mile wide. That was all
they had to maneuver in less than
mile. 1t may sound like a lot to
the infantry or artillery, but a mile
Is about IL seconds to an airplane.
Japs Lay In Wait.
All the Japs had to do was park
themselves along that rut and wait
and the farthest away they'd be
from any of our planes was IL Sec
onds. That's what they did, parked
their Zeros along that rut and
poured their anti-aircraft fire down
that rut and our fellows, going in.
got 1t from all sides. from top and
bottom and head-on.
Our bombers had no help at all
no fighters to break up the Zeros.
no dive-bombers to divide and. thin
out the anti-aircraft fire. That was
the way the thing shaped up. But
it was hands down there. It was
something that had to be done. and
Torpedo 3 and the Army B-25s went
ahead and did it. stuck their chins
out and followed their chins on
down along that terrible rut and
only Earnest,s plane came out the
other end.
Guns were working all over and
the big, vicious. bull-whip cracks OF
anti-aircraft fire were smacking all
over the place. Pilot Earnest was
trying to line up. his target. The
turret gunner cried, One down,
Zero down." into the interphone and
cried some, other things, but the
chugging of the machine guns made
it impossible to hear him. Then,
suddenly, his voice was very clear:
"One of ours down. no theirs, theirs,
the fourth of theirs down, hitting
now. Good-by him. He's hitting
like a ton of bricks"
Those were the last words he was
ever heard to say, for right after
that Pilot Earnest's plane got belted
and the big-bull-whip crack of anti
aircraft fire seemed to smack down
along the length of the plane inside
and the plane lifted into the air
crafty as If 1t had been kicked and
shied violently like a frightened colt
and began to fall.
Gunner Killed.
1t couldn't jink any more and it
couldn't corkscrew. That meant for
as long as it sat up there in the air
1t would sit like tin duck in a
gallery The air in the plane felt all
smashed and smelled metallic Man.