The Bluffton news. [volume] (Bluffton, Ohio) 1875-current, 1945-05-31

sszsssSss B. - . -
Fighter pilots ready to take to the
air on moments notice. They had
plenty of opportunity to fight all the
time. They never had to sit on the
defensive and worry. And, strange
iy enough, they liked 1t.
first Jap, and Charlie Sawyer got
his third. In the next raid of the
bombers General Haynes again led.
Maj. Butch Morgan-who the news
papers used to say was the only
Yankee on General Chennault's staff
:. Wonder how he got there?"-
was leaning over the lead bomb
sight and directing the bombing.
This objective was to burn the docks
of Haiphong, on the coast of Indo-
China.
The small bomber force of six
B-25's went in with only three P-40's
for escort. Maj. Ed Rector led the
fighters, with Lieutenant Marks on
one wing and Pat Daniels on the
other. Just to make the bomb load
against the Japs heavier, the fight
ers carried a Northumberland
bomb on each ship. With these they
dive-bombed the docks after the
bombers had blasted them and set
them on fire. Here the attack was
entirely successful; the fighter boys
came back and said it was the best
bombing that they had ever seen.
The bomb train had covered the
Haiphong wharves from one end to
the other, and when the ships went
back to their forward field to refuel
and return to base. the smoke was
covering the town. Rector led his
three fighters down in strafng at
tack over the wharf fires and kept
the fre-fghters from working.
We were brought back now from
the Kweilin-Hengyang front to watch
the situation in Burma and to harass
the Jap to the South in 1ndo- China.
Our situation was peculiar in China
I'VE were just about surrounded by
the Japanese on all sides except to
the North, toward Russia, and that
was so far and over such noun
tains that il seemed not to matter.
To our backs was Burma, filed with
Japs. To the South was Indo-C China
and Thailand, and out to the front
and Northeast were japanese.
Where in hell could you find worse
situation?
But we got to fight all the time;
we never had to sit on the de-
fensive and worry. We liked it and
there was never word of COM
plant.
I had to wait at Hengyang a day
longer than the others, for my ship
was being repaired enough for me
to fly it to the repair depot at
Running. At Running the blow
fell: the engine of "Old Extermina-
tor" was bad and there were no
more new or serviceable engines.
The cannon from the Zero had DAM
aged the wing so badly that pullouts
would be dangerous. The fuselage
was peppered with over two hum
dred holes from the last FIVE months
of combat.
But the old ship wasn't junked or
salvaged, for we needed parts too
badly in China. There were new
planes on the way to us now in
monthly increments, but we could
take this plane and put several back
in commission. The scheme that we
devised helped my morale greatly,
for to have junked the old ship that
had been my fighter for five months
would have been like seeing the
horse that you've ridden for twenty
years cast aside and destroyed /
could remember too well that day
when landed at Hengyang and
looked at the damage the ship had
suffered. There had been lump in
my throat and I had felt as though
my sword had been taken away.
"Old Exterminator" had taken me
nearly five hundred hours into COM
bat against the enemy. That's over
a hundred thousand miles--and you
just ask any pilot if that isn't long
way on trips where people shoot at
you.
We took the guns out of the ship
that General Chennault had given
me in April and put them in my new
PAGE. They were well broken in,
and the Armament Officer, Captain
Hoffman, who had been with the
AVG and in my squadron in Pana-
ma seven years before, had worked
them into perfection. I had had no
jams or stoppages in over a month.
The landing-gear we put on another
ship; the instruments were scat
tered throughout the group; the ar
NOR plate was taken out to make a
hot-cake griddle for the mess. All
parts of the fighter were cannibal-
lied, and in month were spread
out over eighteen P-40's in the or
ganization. I remember especially
that the automatic fuel-pump was
put on P40B, which permitted the
lighter ship to go higher than it
had ever gone before, and on its
second flight with the booster pump,
the pilot, Lieut.. 7. r. Smith, shot
down a japanese observation plane
over Running.
I never did go out and look at the
old engine that had come out OF my
first fighter. After all, an engine
is exchangeable anyway, and we get
used to different ones. The shot-up
shell of the fuselage, and the wing
that had held me up over hundred
thousand miles of enemy country,
I didn't want to see again. I just
thought of my six ffty-cahber guns