The midland journal., 1945-03-30

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the Japs were moving the Chinese
rice out by junks and barges-rob-
bing the breadbasket of China In the
yearly rape of the rice. Hill took
eight of the P-40's and / took the
other eight.
Elias was on Tex Hills wing. We
split at Nanchang and my eight
went to the South to catch some
gunboats that had been reported in
the Sintze-FIukow Strait, near Kuki-
ang, coming from the Yangtse to
the Lake. heard Hill call that he
had caught the rice ships and was
burning them. Later he told me
that he found twenty-six Of them,
junks and steel barges; he sank
some and saw others with their sails
on fire, floating for shore where the
hungry Chinese coolies would sal
wage the rice.
Through the four passes at the
Japs Elias was right on Tex's wing,
but on the fourth pullout he dropped
behind the formation, perhaps to
shoot at something Hill hadn't seen.
Maybe he'd seen Jap fighter and
had gone for it; we knew there were
eight Zeros supposed to be over Nam
chang. Elias didn't return with the
fight, and for two days we carried
him as missing"
Then the Chinese net reported that
a group of Chinese soldiers had seen
a lone American P-40 engaged by
four Japanese Zeros. The Ameri-
can had fought them but his ship
had been shot down. The American
had jumped out in his parachute and
four Japanese had strafed him on
the way down.
The body had been found, with the
Identification flag number listed.
The pilots name was Lieutenant
Elias. All of us watched for Japs
bailing out, so that we could shoot
one or two down for Elias, but we
didn't get the chance.
We sent Captain Wang down to
Khan to get Elias's body. Wang had
to travel a hundred and sixty miles
by buffalo cart, by alcohol bus. and
on foot, but he finally got there. The
trip took him twenty days. When
the body of our lost pilot finally ar
rived at the field from which he had
last taken off, it was in Chinese
coffin that Wang had gotten at Khan.
We placed the flag over the grim
reminder of war and sent it by
transport to Running, to lie beside
his other brother pilots in that Bud
dhist graveyard in Yunnan.
And so it went: tragedy-humor
tragedy. For on the same raid I
had led the other eight ships, with
elements led by Holloway, Schiel,
and O'Connell, and had caught the
Jap gunboats, ten of them, at Sintze-
Hukow Strait. They were coming
to Puyang HUI to convoy those rice
barges-but we were going to in
terfere with their rendezvous.
Even as we circled them from six
teen thousand feet, think they knew
they were going to have lots of trou-
BILE. They had to stay almost in
line, nose-to-stern, for they were go
ing through the narrow strait. We
circled warily for minute, looking
the sky over for enemy fighters, then
spiralled down. AS soon as we got
close enough to the Jap ships to see
distinctly, we noticed that the sea-
men were jumping over the side
into the water. Only few seemed
to have ,-.naIned to fire the anti
aircraft guns, and Schiel and Hollo-
way silenced most OF those with
their initial pass.
think most of the ammunition
had been fired at us while we cir
cled at sixteen thousand feet, for
we were the whole show now. We'd
rake the steel decks from stem to
stern and then swing out low to the
water and come back with quarter
ing shots from the beam. We were
SO low that we were actually shoot
ing up at the decks of the boats. I
saw many human heads above the
water as the Japs tried to swim
from the boats, and fired at them.
Those bullets ricocheted from the
water ultO Tic StCCl o10C OA SlAS Slil-
boat and went on through. AS my
range would reach the "sweet spot"
of some 287 yards, where the six
lines of tracers and armor-piercing
Fifties converged, it would appear
as though an orange-colored hole the
size of a -four barrel was being
burned into the side of the Jap yes
sci at the water-line.
We S-ed along the ten-ship line
and shot at them all from both sides.
On the second pass, two of the YES
sells were listing, and others were
smoking. On the fourth attack, sew
en- out of the ten were smoking and
burning and some of these were on
the bottom with their masts barely
out of water. Photographs taken
later from an observation plane
showed that seven had sunk immedi-
ately in the strait, and that the 9TH
er three had sunk within thousand
yards of the battle area.
I was so happy, so excited and
eager, that I tried to be glamorous
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