The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1945-05-18


The others of US broke away look
ing for struggling Japs. / took my,
fight over towards White Cloud air
drome, where ack-ack was so heavy
that It was just about making the sky
black. / guess / must have thought
Of Lieutenant Daniels-for ] dove.
hadn't heard a single P40 call for
help; SO I was fairly confident that
we had won the battle. My wing
man must have got lost in my dive.
From the altitude at which had
started my dive ] couldn't see what
was on White Cloud field, but as ]
pulled half out Of the four-hundred-
miie-an-hour dive over the hills
South of the airdrome, saw an air
plane. It was a big ship, which I
soon saw had three engines. The
door was open, and think men
were hurrying to get In or out. Two
cars were driving away from the
ship. Even at my speed tried q
burst at the tri-motored Junkers 81,
but saw the tracers 60 short, and
when / got closer / coud see the
dust far to the left of the target. My
speed was so great that ] couldn't
hold enough pressure on the rudder
steadily for accurate shooting. But
] must have gotten a few tracers
in, for as swept low over the ship
it seemed that dust was churned up
all about.
Turning low, I came back for a
better shot. The ack-ack was SO
thick that nearly forgot and turned
back. After all, that which could
see had already exploded, and IL ]
wasn't hit yet I was as well off one
place as another. My burst caught
the engines Of the transport, which
! could see now were running. Uni
formed passengers were jumping
out of the door. I turned steeply and
fired on the door, then into the
fuselage. The ship was smoking,
and the engines had either been shot
up or had been cut off, for they had
stopped.
My engine missed several times,
as it had done from some poor gaso-
line earlier in the fight, and I de-
cided to let well enough alone and
get away from White Cloud. Keep
ing just about down in the rice, I
went straight North to the river.
With the engine missing every now
and then, I spent miserable few
minutes that seemed like a year
until got out of Jap territory.
I landed at Kweilin, and while /
counted the holes in my plane I
watched for the last Of the fighters
to come in-haf trying to count the
twenty-seven holes from the ground
fire around White Cloud and half
trying to sweat all the twenty-five
fighters back. All the bombers were
In and were being serviced and
bombed up again. Eighteen fight
ers finally came in, and we worried
until we got word that the other
four were at another field and would
be back later in the afternoon.
We made our reports to the Gen.
eral and we knew he was pleased.
Out of As Zeros that had come up
for us over Canton we had shot
down 20 that were confirmed. Ali
son had stayed back there for twen-
ty-five minutes and definitely had
seen that the two freighters loaded
with Zeros and engines had been
sunk. The nature of the cargo was
eventually confirmed. Three weeks
later we dive-bombed the salvage
parties that were diligently trying
to raise the sunken freighters. Evil
IDENTIFY there had been something
very valuable to the Japanese on
the two big vessels.
We went on back to Running.
Sometimes wonder if the Jap ever
did find out where General Chem
nault was going. Years after may
be they'd still be flying that patrol
over Hongkong, waiting for the at
tack that we were supposed to make.
AS we carried out the long mis-
sions into Burma in the days that
followed, 7 thought about how the
spirit Of our air warfare had changed
from what I had heard about and
read of the last World War in the
air. There had been an element of
knighthood depicted in that first
struggle in the skies. Now thought
! knew why.
Back there the pilots had been
carefully hand-picked. They were
the adventurous, devil-may-care hot
bloods. like those boys who had been
the Confederate cavalry in the War
Between the States. More than like
ly when they fired at another pilot
and then saw that their victims
guns were damned" they may
have "saluted" and dived away, UNI
willing to destroy the helpless enc
my. But this was a different type
of war, against race of fanatics.
who had been repressed for so long
in their warped minds that they
were barbaric madmen.
From what I had already seen. I
knew that the Japanese soldier and
the Japanese war machine were not
out merely to beat us in war-they
were out to ExTERMINATE US.
even to the extent Of killing our pi-
lots whom they captured as prison.