The Bluffton news. [volume] (Bluffton, Ohio) 1875-current, 1944-05-18


bombs 60 down. BY the time they
arrived, the cruiser is three-fourths
through a turn of 180 degrees. The
first bombs are falling short-three
of them. Now mine conceive direct
hits on the cruiser, the other two.
going over. The plane back of me
gets some direct hits. My left wing
mans string is barely in front of
the cruiser, my right wing mans
string is barely behind it - the
damned thing seems enveloped in
bombs churning the water, and de-
bris flying above the foam. Boy,
that Japanese captain just turned
the wrong way!
"But now our formation swings
and heads for home, Zeros still
swarming around us, and we're still
losing altitude to stay back to pro-
tect the Major, who seems able to
use barely enough throttle to keep
her in the air. After forty minutes
the last Zero drops away; they're
short of gas and daren't chase us
any further.
Presently, over the command ra-
dio:
Robinson to Skiles. Go ahead
'Skiles answering
Radio the base at Malang to
have an ambulance ready. We have
two badly wounded men aboard
I'VE wonder who they are. One
is probably the tail gunner, since
we saw Robinson's plane taking so
many tracers there. The other must
be their radio operator, or else they
could have sent their own dot-dash
message back to base.
Meantime our radio operator is
telling Malang to have the ambu-
lance out. Our plane is now leading
the formation. Major Robinson's just
behind us. We've drifted slowly
down to 1000 feet altitude, protect
ing Robinson. Then, all of a sud-
den, Robinson's plane swoops down
beneath us about 1000 feet, and the
incline sends it scooting on out in
front of us, heading little toward
the coast of Borneo. Is Robinson
going to beach her? And now over
the command radio:
'Skiles to Robinson. Is there
anything wrong?' our pilot asks.
'But there is no answer. We
watch. Now Major Robinson is max
ing a gradual turn, as though to
rejoin the formation. But halfway
in the turn his plane starts nosing
over, goes into dive, goes faster
straight down at the sea. We
watch, holding our breath. Just be-
fore he goes in, his tail elevator
blows off. The poor guy must have
had the stick clutched back into his
stomach trying to pull out of that
dive, and the terrible air pressure
on those elevators ripped them off.
There's huge splash-flame-a spi-
raj of black smoke, and widening
circle of yellows, reds, and black,
which is burning gas and oil on that
topaz-green water.
"The second after it hits / call
Lieutenant Duphrane on the inter-
phone.
my God. Duke I said, did you
see that?'
"'Yes,' he said. And then in
minute he said, Thank God those
Japs didn't see it.
''The formation circles above the
dead Queen. We circle until the fire
dies away, peering down at the wild
ening disk of oil. But there is no
sign of anything else on the surface.
Until then it hadn't seemed like
battle-just game. But now
feel like someone had kicked me in
the CUTS. There were guys on there
I'd drunk with. We'd sat around
and lied to each other. I'd seen it
happen, but couldn't believe what
! saw-it seemed like bad dream.
"When we landed, all the crew as
sembled for the critique, each mem
Der debating just what he had seen
to the officer. That's when / was
credited with three of the eight Zeros
we knocked down. After the critique
no one had much to say. We were
all thinking about what we saw hap
pen.
racks and get some rest. But an
hour later I found that the whole
crew had, one by one, drifted back
out to the plane-cleaning guns, i'm
proving gun positions, doing things
we'd suggested back in the States
but no one had ever got around to
doing. Throwing away those small
inadequate ammunition cans, and
rigging the guns SO you could set a
whole box of ammunition in there,
| figuring ways of putting more guns
in the -.50-caliber ones that
really pack a punch. And cussing
hell out of the bottom turret. 1t
has remote control-you look through
mirror and everything is back
wards, and you have to know exact
ly where the plane is going before
you can line the sights.
"We'd found out our machine-gun
| oil would freeze at high attitudes,
and we were figuring how to clean
and oil the guns so they would best
operate up there. You couldn't tell
| the officers from the men (remem-
Der, we had no maintenance crews
| in Java; we did all the work our
selves) and my pilot had his cover
alls on, installing an extra oxygen
outlet in the tail. After seeing what
had happened to Robinson's tail gun
ner, he figured If his tail gunner
got wounded, another man in the
crew could 60 back there and they
would both stay on oxygen.
1.-THE E of course was big ad-
vance over the D. But any new
model will have little things wrong
that you never find out until you
take one up and fight it.