The Bluffton news. [volume] (Bluffton, Ohio) 1875-current, 1944-07-20

always felt the old Swoose was lust
a few miles faster and answered the
controls little more smoothly than
the others.
so now, as pilot and crew of the
commanding Air Force Generals
plane, we in the Swoose were max
ing weekly trips into the war zone
from Headquarters far down in Mel
bourne, up to Darwin and Port
Moresby, which we're then far-f1ung
outposts on the battle line. The Cen
eral would average sixty hours
month in the air-thirty of them at
least in this combat zone. To get
him in and out of it, the Swoose often
hit $50 air hours per month.
"At Moresby it was never safe to
leave the Swoose on the ground by
day. We'd sneak in at night, leave
the General, and be off back to
Townsville by dawn, coming in to
pick him up again the next night.
Sometimes the General would Just
have time to scramble aboard while
we cleared the field as the alarm
sounded. He was bound he wouldn't
lose the Swoose.
1--WE now began to get a peek out
over the top at the broad picture of
this Far Eastern war. There were
differences over strategy, but it was
never Australians versus Ameri-
cans. The cleavage was ground
minded versus air-minded thinking.
The Australian air generals saw eve
to eye with our American air lead
ers. Likewise the infantry gener-
ais of both armies thought alike.
"And there was much to the in
fantry side of the argument. After
Java fell. Australian civilians were
panicky. Thousands of Australian
boys had gone out to die in Africa
and Singapore. Now the danger had
suddenly rolled down on the Home
land. They wanted all the troops
they could get right down there in
that lower right-hand (southeast)
corner of their continent, where
ninety per cent of its population
lives.
mot in New Guinea, or Tulagi, or
Guadalcanal, or even in Darwin,
which, although on their own conti-
nent, is to the average Australian
as remote as the Aleutians seem to
New Workers. They think of Dar-
win as a tiny outpost separated from
them by thousands of miles of i'm
passable desert. They wanted the
soldiers near the great cities of Sgd
ney and Melbourne, where they
could hear the marching and the
military bands.
This was also sound infantry
strategy. The only populous parts of
Australia are down in this southeast
corner. We didn't yet have many
battalions, supply problems were
enormous, so our infantry generals
agreed with theirs and with their
civil leaders. They wanted to keep
the army near valuable detectives,
not scatter it out across seas and
jungle islands, where supply prob
lens would become formidable.
"But we of the Air Forces (both
Australian and American) felt that
to defend this continent we must
build our fighter fields not in Aus
tralia itself, but on the outlying is
lands. Having these, with few
ground troops to hold our airdromes
against Jap landing parties, no fleet
would dare venture through our air
screen to threaten the continent il
self.
WED defended Java by pound
ing the Japs from Borneo. The Japs
had not dared send their transports
and landing barges through until
they'd taken our advance bases and
held air control over the Java Sea.
"The Australian Air Force was as
anxious to move into this outlying
island chain as we were. Early in
April they'd wanted to seize Lac on
New Guinea, before the Japs had
had time to dig in on its north coast.
At that time the Japs had only
about four hundred men in the area,
and it would have been easy.
'But we lacked the men and the
ships-the Japs pressed on and pres
emily took Tulagi in the Solomons,
threatening our supply lines home.