Evening star., 1944-04-21

of heavy bomber group which has
past eight months.
me every time an attack started and
would give the ship everything
could to keep away from them.
Saved by Clouds.
What finally saved us was some
cover of scattered clouds. We dove
into it at $50 miles an hour. The
tail is supposed to break off at $50,
but it didn't, although it was already
half broken away. So from then on
II didn't worry about speed. The
fighters would wait for us at the edge
of the clouds and come in when we
appeared. So began making 90
Idegree turns inside the clouds and
looming out at the sides. This work
led for while, and then the ferries
Igot wise and waited for us where we
Iplanned to come out. So then I
went into a cloud, made a 180-degree
turn and came out where I went in.
This fooled them, and I went from
cloud spot to cloud spot and finally
they lost us. Somewhere in those
clouds Bob Lovin, the left waist gun
ner, got Stukka. I guess he was as
surprised to see us as we were to see
lhim.
when the fighters left I was
hopelessly lost. We were down on
the deck by this time, gas was get
ting low and I asked the radio oper-
ator to get me fix. His set was
shot to hell, but he managed to get
me a heading and we came out of
the clouds on the coast. There
wasn't cloud on the ocean and we
expected trouble But no fighters
came up and few northward along
the coast of France. 1 don't know
how far south of England / was
One of our life RATS was gone and
didn't want to fly too far from the
coast until 1 was sure. Several
times we few out to sea 40 or so
miles, saw no land and came back to
the French coast to try again far
ther north. Finally I saw haze on
the horizon. I took a chance and
after bit we could see the coast of
England.
"Our gas was getting very low on
account of the leaking tank and
Pope had to take time out every now
and then to transfer gas from a
good tank to the leaking one to
keep that engine going. About that
time I thought of our bombs. We
were carrying incendiaries and
didn't want to land witf them, espe-
cially with the wounded bombardier
down there in the nose. I asked
Pope to crank the bomb doors open
but he ceSlldn't. The bombardier's
switch had been hit by a shell frag-
ment and locked itself. Pope went
down in the nose again with the best
instructions l could give him. He
got the switch open and the doors,
too. salvoed the bombs from the
pilots seat. Then we couldn't close
the doors again Pope went down
again. To get at the mechanism he
had to move the copilot who had
been lying dead on the hatchway
all this time and had so stiffened
in the cold that it was an almost
impossible job to get him away from
the panel. But Pope did 1T single
handed and cranked the doors back
Searched for Field.
Then we started looking for
field. There are thousands of them
in England, but it seemed as If
every one was a fighter base, too
small for us to land on. Finally
saw Bit on a field and came in.
Pope came up and copiloted for me
and let down the flaps and wheels
as If he had been doing it all his
life. Then I found that my brakes
had been shot out but by that time
nothing seemed to matter much
We came in firing red flares for an
ambulance. The flare chute didn't
work so Pope was firing them out Of
the broken window"
/
| Sergt. Ping is now in a hospital
in England suffering spinal injury
he received from the forced land
ing, his sister, Miss Virginia Ping
of the Arlington address, said Be-
fore joining the Army in November,
1942, he lived with his wife in Los
Angeles and worked there in a Cali
fornia shipyard.
According to his sister, Sergt. Ping
was awarded a medal for his top
lgunnery out of class of 800 men
at Las Vegas, New, where he re-
ceived his training, and was the first
of the men to get his wings He at
tended school in Illinois.