December 4, 1944 (4 pages)

OW. nds, ices, Etc. r by IS RE i \ / NEVADA CITY NUGGET ms Col. Robert L.Scoft ‘NEVADA CITY LAD ay ~— (Continued from Page One) the force were doing their part. Destroyers darte@ down either side of the straits after the cruisers and other battelsips, launched their torpedoes well into the enemy battle lines. Flames leaping miles ahead of our main body ‘told how well thay were succeeding. Another battleship burst into flames, then a cruiser. By now the American ships were picking out other likely targets arching lazy shells that seldom missed. Once our destroyers got in so close to the enemy ‘that we were forced to cease firing until they got out of the way. For forty five minutes the Japs refused to ‘admit defeat, but finally after finding--their major ‘ships aflame and sinking, the few. remaining destroyers launched their torpedoes and sped south. Their aim poor in their haste, the tin fish passed wildly through the conquering force and the Japs were done. Early the following dawn, we set about to find the actual. damage oar. _ ships had done. Jap ships ablaze 95n the horizon belched smoke thousands of feet into the air. As we came mpon them destroyers turned their guns on the sinking cripples to finish them off so they would never again menace the American flee?. Hundreds of American boys got ‘the thrill of their lifetime when a great salvo ‘burst into what was once a proud Japanese battleship and sank it. The inferno that was blackening the sky two seconds. before disappeared. Other destroyers were busy further ahead polishing off the remains of other ships. W.NV. RELEASE ——~ All hands were tired, but supremely happy, after a hectic night. One of the greatest victories in naval his. “y Ws ours and we knew it, and it Was a proud crew that sat down} to breakfast, Physitians’ credit the Grass Valley fire department’s resuscitator and its life saving squad with éaving the life of the two weeks old son 23f (Mr. and Mrs. John V. Hallenberg. The infant collapsed of shock during a minor surgical operation. Efforts on the part of two doctors failed to revive him and a hurry call Was sent the city fire department. Under the expert handling of Tom Pones, -Frank Musee, Clair Hughes, der an oxygen, tent, he was reported the resuscitator within a few minuteg restored the baby’s breathing and the color in its cheeks. He was then removed to the Community Hospital in Grass Valley where unSouth Yuba River canyon above as responding well, though not yet completely out of danger. u SUES ‘FOR DAMAGES Alois Buch hag filed suit against Mary Ann Kochi: and Wells IncorPorated for damages amounting tro $590, allegedly resulting an auto-!' mobile collision in Grass Valley on September 30th. The plaintiff asks $340 alleged to have been spent in repairs and for $250 due to the loss of use of the car while being repaired. It is alleged that MaryAnn Kohcis, negligently driving into an interséction, foreed the Wells Inc. truck and trailer loaded with lumber to deviate from its cpurse, causing a collision with the plaintiff’s parked car. oe : Grandparents, _ the little ones, friends or a boy in uniform with friends, neighbors or boys in the service. # For this = family-style entertaining your many electric cords and plugs now. Tighten up screws or nuts that may percolator, waffle iron or sandwich grill. *x Why not share holid y season with a servicem an? He may You can make arrangements through your local USO. PACIFIC GAS AND ELECTRIC COMPANY . “> “ T'S FAMOUS “Tl AND K STREET, oa SS lotel Clunie COFFEE SHOP AND RATES FROM $1.50 UP rs . three to four thousand enemy air. five hundred dollars for each ene. permit the first group to go home CHAPTER XIill Word had come now that the AVG, with General Chennault as Commander, was to be inducted into the Army Air Corps. Chennault, then a . General in the Chinese Army but a retired Captain in the U. S. Army, was to be given the rank of Brigadier General to head the China Air Task Force. But from what I had gathered from the few newspapers we had received and from rumors that filtered through, I knew that not many of the .VG were going to accept induction. There were officious men around the China-Burma-India theater who thought the AVG were unruly and undisciplined. To these statements I always remarked that I wished we had ten such undisciplined groups— ‘for they would have destroyed some Planes, and that would certainly have hindered the Japanese. There were others who claimed that the fighters of the AVG fought for the high salaries and the extra bonus of my plane they shot down. That made me laugh, for I had seen the AVG fight, and later on I was to fly with them against the enemy. I knew those great pilots—I knew that they were great American adventurers who would have fought just as hard for peanuts or Confederate money—as long as they were fighting for General Chennault and were flying those beloved P-40’s. As it stood now: after long hours of combat the men were tired; they had been out of the United States under. the most trying conditions for nearly a year. They were all showing combat fatigue and needed a rest. Some df them were combatweary and ought never to be risked in combat again. _. Furthermore, the induction of the. AVG had hit a snag, from poor judgment on the part of one man. It seems that someone had lined the boys up for a fight-talk on the glamour of induction into the Army, and had ‘used very little tact. He recited. newspaper stories intimating that the AVG fought for the high pay of Camco—betweeén $600 to $750 a month, depending on whether or not the pilot was a wing man or a squadron leader. This salesman went on to state that he sincerely hoped the AVG would accept induction, because if they didn’t, and when their contracts with Camco expired, they would probably find their draft boards waiting for them when they stepped off the boat that carried them back to the United States. In that case, they would of course be inducted as privates rather than commissioned as officers. A large percentage of the AVG are reported to have got up and walked out on the speech. After all, they were high-strung fighter pilots who had fought one of the greatest . battles against superior odds that has ever been reported. In this case, they were being threatened without. complete knowledge of all the facts involved. I know that from that day on they taught the Chinese coolie boy on the refueling truck jokes about that reverse salesspeech. One involved an expression. that of course was never permitted to reach its ‘destination. The boy was trained by some of the AVG— who were leaving China—to run up to every transport, that landed, and, as the passengers got out, to repeat for their benefit an unprintable American expression aimed at the speech-maker. The gas-truck coolie would religiously meet every C-47 and with bland countenance would repeat the sentence. Most of the AVG used to make sure that he never reached the transport unloading the right man, but several times it took the best ef American flying tackles to stop him in time. Handled in another way, I believe that every one of the AVG ‘who was physically able would have stayed. As it was, only -five pilots ‘remained, and some thirty groundcrew men. We had wanted to: divide them into two groups—those who from a physical standpoint badly needed rest in the United States, and those who could stay out in China for six months longer without impairing their health. We were to. on July Fourth (the day their conto remain there on leave for no’less. fer. But as it was, five of the greatest pilots in the world stayed with : ‘ I kept right up the group when their contracts ex. . ™Y ‘atget area, but , pired. And those five were f agaist the cloud ceiling and circled I went back to India and . warily. I knew that I was in luck: my single-ship raids on the Japs. . 1 could fe ha ee ee After my flights with the AVG, right evereast, ing of the train in Indo. . 2° matter how many Jap fighters China, and the news of my. oneist ee Og ca mare ie at eee ot Le enough, there were loaded barges an egolin. I continued circling against the. thril] . Clouds at 11,000 feet. ce ige would For I had a plan. Dive-bombing engi : in . world: you can’t dive very Gide tope of Gartace maint sere in . ODA a Sw bomabacignt ea ee In the days that followed I sank . dive it’s hard to recover in the barges filled with enemy soldiers, . high speeds that are built up. It bombed enemy columns and strafed . seemed to me that the type of bombenemy soldiers swimming in the wa. ing one had to do in order to keep . ter from the barges I had sunk. But the speed under control and ‘to miss when I went back next day there . the prop, was more in the nature northward into upper Burma tohowever, are always short with their wards India. No, the title was an . bombs. elec ne ee of success in combat, knew by . get om the dine of approach, rather ; hooked on to the belly-tank relea tracts with Camco terminated) and . ‘ ‘was-with me, as it usually was in were fighting. I had the satisfaction; however, of knowing that I was learning things. I. had the experience of ten years of military flying, and I knew I was a good pilot. The day was going to come when that knowledge of mine, learned the hard way, would help train the new units that would come from home. There is no substitute for combat. You’ve got to shoot at people while you’re being shot at yourself. For the time being, though, there was just the one ship, and I nursed it like a baby. Flying it constantly, I had begun to feel a part of it. Sometimes at night I’d think of my wife and little, girl, but never in combat. Sometimes, coming home after striking the enemy, I’d think of them and they seemed far, far away. Towards the last of May,. after I’d flowh just about two hundred hours in combat and had gathered about a hundred holes in my ship, I think T must have wondered if I’d ever see them again. I carried a Tommy gun with me in the cockpit of the ship, for at strafing altitude there would probably be no time to bail out with the chute anyway, and I knew that prisoners taken by the Japs receive very harsh tteatment, especially those who have been strafing the capturing troops when shot down. . With that gun, after my crash land‘ing I’d have one more crack at the Japs—I certainly didn’t intend to be captured. supply new tricks like painting the ‘nose different colors and changing Sergeant Bonner and my armorer ‘to attach a five-hundred-pound demolition bomb under the little fightér, A Jap bomber is shot down in ‘Col. Scott’s first aerial combat. for I was planning some real damage to the Japs. This bomb. was of the Kittyhawk and overloaded the ship somewhat, but I was to become used to that. With eighteenhundred-odd rounds of fifty-caliber pilot’s weight, and this 500-pound bomb, I was taking off with over 2,500 pounds in the little single-seater. Later we, were to increase even this load; but for the time being my wing loading. was enough. Well do I remember the first time I took off with this five hundred pounds of steel and TNT down under my ship. I pulled the heavy little plane off the last few yards of. the runway and tried to climb, The straining ship mushed. along. just over the tea bushes, and I told Sergeant Bonner when I got back that even ten miles from the field I was going along through the tea planters’ breakfast rooms, getting my ) wheels up. : My greatest bombing day came te in the month of May, when I dropped four 500-pound bombs at Homalin, down on the Chindwi where the Japs seemed to be concentrating. Early in the morning I headed South with the heavy yellow. bomb, slowly climbing over the Naga Hills and through the overcast, topping out at 15,000 feet. As I continued South on the course to where the Uyu met the Chindwin River, the cloyds lowered but the my single-ship war, and I found the overcast barely a hundred feet thick. I couldn’t see Homalin and When my imagination failed to . ‘the number on the fuselage, I got. . over the target again; I strafed the ammunition, three tanks of fuel, the . win, . ‘with plenty of ammunition, or some. strafed the engineers at work on Ht liad developed a rule of thumb: I would dive at some forty-five degrees; then, as thé target in my gunsight passed under the nose of my ship, I would begin’to pull out slowly and count—one count for every thousand feet of my elevation above the target. Then as the ship came almost level, if I was at two thousand feet when I reached the count of “‘two,’”’ I’d drop.the bomb. I let the four barg the makeshift wharf; then I dove . from my cloud cover. As I got the middle two barges on my gun-sight, I made a mental resolution not to be ; short—for even if I went over I’d hit the Japs in the town. As I passed . three thousand feet’ the nearest barge went under me, and I began to . pull outs and count: ‘One—two— three—pull’’—putting in the extra short. I felt the bomb let go as I jerked the belly-tank release, and I turned to get the wing out of the way so that I could see the bomb hit. The five hundfed pounds of TNT exploded either right beside the . leading barge or between the barge closest to shere and the docks. As the black smoke cleared, I saw pieces of the barge splashing into the river a hundred yards from the explosion. I went down and strafed, but the black smoke was: so thick that I could see very little-to con-. centrate on; so I climbed to-three —_ : get almost to ; : . te count to insure me against being . : wes * For Reel. 3 Enjoyment; _. Eat 35 MEAT Our patrons find that despite. ¢ rationing and. wartime condi, ; thousand feet and waited for the smoke to clear. Then I dove for the two barges that were drifting down . the river. hundred rounds into each of them. I got one to burning, and from the black smoke it must have been loaded with gasoline. The other would not burn, but I’m sure I left enough holes in it to sink it. Coming back Japs in the water. who were either floating dead or swimming towards Shore. — : On my second raid I dropped a five-hundred-pound bomb on the largest building in Homalin, which the British Intelligence reported the next day had been the police station. They said that two hundred Japanese were killed in that bombing, and that between six hundred and a thousand were killed in the series of bombings. Many bodies. were picked up about thirty miles down the Chindwin at Tamu and Sittiang. All four of my bombs had done some damage, and I was quite satisfied. In British Intelligence reports I read that Radio Tokyo had men-. tioned Homalin. One bombing had. taken place, it seems, with verySlight damage, and that only to the, innocent Burmese villagers, but the Imperial Japanese Army had evacuated Homalin because of the serious _ malaria that. was prevalent there. I must have put two '# tions the quality of our meats measures up to the same high-* stadnards) we have always ¢ from the best cattle, lambs and ¥ swine that money can buy. Our ‘ on @ foundation of high qual4 ity and reasonable prices. Ask your meighbors about us. They DAVE RICHARDS, Prop. 213 Commercial Street = ¥ Phone 67 Nevada City : < 2 a i ait, ths Rt sl, . 500-pound packages of good old thing to do with the monkey-men’s' deciding that the malaria was too bad along the Chindwin. My raids with ‘Old: Extermina-. tor” continued through May and into June. Some days I’d climb out of India through the rain-clouds of the monsoon and fly on into Burma. The trip back would then be one to worry me, for I never knew exactly when to let down. Almost every day, however, if I worked my takeoff time properly I’d get back from the mission as the storm clouds were breaking, and I’d have a nice, welcome hole to dive through. On other days when I wasn’t so lucky, Pd just have to roll over and dive and that’s where I always came out, or I wouldn’t be here to tell about it. Some of the flights into Burma were just a waste of gasoline; I would see nothing. It follows that I have written of the more nous as to fly for four hundred miles times for two hundred to three hundred miles with a heavy bomb at-— tached, and find nx » it. dark monsoon clouds, land the 500 pounds of TNT as if I had a crate of eggs aboard. After all, we didn’t have bombs to waste. Early in June I did have one ex. . citing trip. From reports of the ferry pilots I heard that the Japs were Anyway, I always like to think that . my four trips to Homalin with four ” ‘ American Picatinny TNT had some¢ for the valley of the Brahmaputra— . ones. There’s nothing so monotoplace to drop it. . } J building a bridge over the report reached me, I went over bridge. And I nearly got for the efficient Japanese had moved ient Japa had : enges E F H 3! E i g g 8 : a iT 9 ij § : & 5 i

OW. nds, ices, Etc. r by IS RE i \ / NEVADA CITY NUGGET ms Col. Robert L.Scoft ‘NEVADA CITY LAD ay ~— (Continued from Page One) the force were doing their part. Destroyers darte@ down either side of the straits after the cruisers and other battelsips, launched their torpedoes well into the enemy battle lines. Flames leaping miles ahead of our main body ‘told how well thay were succeeding. Another battleship burst into flames, then a cruiser. By now the American ships were picking out other likely targets arching lazy shells that seldom missed. Once our destroyers got in so close to the enemy ‘that we were forced to cease firing until they got out of the way. For forty five minutes the Japs refused to ‘admit defeat, but finally after finding--their major ‘ships aflame and sinking, the few. remaining destroyers launched their torpedoes and sped south. Their aim poor in their haste, the tin fish passed wildly through the conquering force and the Japs were done. Early the following dawn, we set about to find the actual. damage oar. _ ships had done. Jap ships ablaze 95n the horizon belched smoke thousands of feet into the air. As we came mpon them destroyers turned their guns on the sinking cripples to finish them off so they would never again menace the American flee?. Hundreds of American boys got ‘the thrill of their lifetime when a great salvo ‘burst into what was once a proud Japanese battleship and sank it. The inferno that was blackening the sky two seconds. before disappeared. Other destroyers were busy further ahead polishing off the remains of other ships. W.NV. RELEASE ——~ All hands were tired, but supremely happy, after a hectic night. One of the greatest victories in naval his. “y Ws ours and we knew it, and it Was a proud crew that sat down} to breakfast, Physitians’ credit the Grass Valley fire department’s resuscitator and its life saving squad with éaving the life of the two weeks old son 23f (Mr. and Mrs. John V. Hallenberg. The infant collapsed of shock during a minor surgical operation. Efforts on the part of two doctors failed to revive him and a hurry call Was sent the city fire department. Under the expert handling of Tom Pones, -Frank Musee, Clair Hughes, der an oxygen, tent, he was reported the resuscitator within a few minuteg restored the baby’s breathing and the color in its cheeks. He was then removed to the Community Hospital in Grass Valley where unSouth Yuba River canyon above as responding well, though not yet completely out of danger. u SUES ‘FOR DAMAGES Alois Buch hag filed suit against Mary Ann Kochi: and Wells IncorPorated for damages amounting tro $590, allegedly resulting an auto-!' mobile collision in Grass Valley on September 30th. The plaintiff asks $340 alleged to have been spent in repairs and for $250 due to the loss of use of the car while being repaired. It is alleged that MaryAnn Kohcis, negligently driving into an interséction, foreed the Wells Inc. truck and trailer loaded with lumber to deviate from its cpurse, causing a collision with the plaintiff’s parked car. oe : Grandparents, _ the little ones, friends or a boy in uniform with friends, neighbors or boys in the service. # For this = family-style entertaining your many electric cords and plugs now. Tighten up screws or nuts that may percolator, waffle iron or sandwich grill. *x Why not share holid y season with a servicem an? He may You can make arrangements through your local USO. PACIFIC GAS AND ELECTRIC COMPANY . “> “ T'S FAMOUS “Tl AND K STREET, oa SS lotel Clunie COFFEE SHOP AND RATES FROM $1.50 UP rs . three to four thousand enemy air. five hundred dollars for each ene. permit the first group to go home CHAPTER XIill Word had come now that the AVG, with General Chennault as Commander, was to be inducted into the Army Air Corps. Chennault, then a . General in the Chinese Army but a retired Captain in the U. S. Army, was to be given the rank of Brigadier General to head the China Air Task Force. But from what I had gathered from the few newspapers we had received and from rumors that filtered through, I knew that not many of the .VG were going to accept induction. There were officious men around the China-Burma-India theater who thought the AVG were unruly and undisciplined. To these statements I always remarked that I wished we had ten such undisciplined groups— ‘for they would have destroyed some Planes, and that would certainly have hindered the Japanese. There were others who claimed that the fighters of the AVG fought for the high salaries and the extra bonus of my plane they shot down. That made me laugh, for I had seen the AVG fight, and later on I was to fly with them against the enemy. I knew those great pilots—I knew that they were great American adventurers who would have fought just as hard for peanuts or Confederate money—as long as they were fighting for General Chennault and were flying those beloved P-40’s. As it stood now: after long hours of combat the men were tired; they had been out of the United States under. the most trying conditions for nearly a year. They were all showing combat fatigue and needed a rest. Some df them were combatweary and ought never to be risked in combat again. _. Furthermore, the induction of the. AVG had hit a snag, from poor judgment on the part of one man. It seems that someone had lined the boys up for a fight-talk on the glamour of induction into the Army, and had ‘used very little tact. He recited. newspaper stories intimating that the AVG fought for the high pay of Camco—betweeén $600 to $750 a month, depending on whether or not the pilot was a wing man or a squadron leader. This salesman went on to state that he sincerely hoped the AVG would accept induction, because if they didn’t, and when their contracts with Camco expired, they would probably find their draft boards waiting for them when they stepped off the boat that carried them back to the United States. In that case, they would of course be inducted as privates rather than commissioned as officers. A large percentage of the AVG are reported to have got up and walked out on the speech. After all, they were high-strung fighter pilots who had fought one of the greatest . battles against superior odds that has ever been reported. In this case, they were being threatened without. complete knowledge of all the facts involved. I know that from that day on they taught the Chinese coolie boy on the refueling truck jokes about that reverse salesspeech. One involved an expression. that of course was never permitted to reach its ‘destination. The boy was trained by some of the AVG— who were leaving China—to run up to every transport, that landed, and, as the passengers got out, to repeat for their benefit an unprintable American expression aimed at the speech-maker. The gas-truck coolie would religiously meet every C-47 and with bland countenance would repeat the sentence. Most of the AVG used to make sure that he never reached the transport unloading the right man, but several times it took the best ef American flying tackles to stop him in time. Handled in another way, I believe that every one of the AVG ‘who was physically able would have stayed. As it was, only -five pilots ‘remained, and some thirty groundcrew men. We had wanted to: divide them into two groups—those who from a physical standpoint badly needed rest in the United States, and those who could stay out in China for six months longer without impairing their health. We were to. on July Fourth (the day their conto remain there on leave for no’less. fer. But as it was, five of the greatest pilots in the world stayed with : ‘ I kept right up the group when their contracts ex. . ™Y ‘atget area, but , pired. And those five were f agaist the cloud ceiling and circled I went back to India and . warily. I knew that I was in luck: my single-ship raids on the Japs. . 1 could fe ha ee ee After my flights with the AVG, right evereast, ing of the train in Indo. . 2° matter how many Jap fighters China, and the news of my. oneist ee Og ca mare ie at eee ot Le enough, there were loaded barges an egolin. I continued circling against the. thril] . Clouds at 11,000 feet. ce ige would For I had a plan. Dive-bombing engi : in . world: you can’t dive very Gide tope of Gartace maint sere in . ODA a Sw bomabacignt ea ee In the days that followed I sank . dive it’s hard to recover in the barges filled with enemy soldiers, . high speeds that are built up. It bombed enemy columns and strafed . seemed to me that the type of bombenemy soldiers swimming in the wa. ing one had to do in order to keep . ter from the barges I had sunk. But the speed under control and ‘to miss when I went back next day there . the prop, was more in the nature northward into upper Burma tohowever, are always short with their wards India. No, the title was an . bombs. elec ne ee of success in combat, knew by . get om the dine of approach, rather ; hooked on to the belly-tank relea tracts with Camco terminated) and . ‘ ‘was-with me, as it usually was in were fighting. I had the satisfaction; however, of knowing that I was

learning things. I. had the experience of ten years of military flying, and I knew I was a good pilot. The day was going to come when that knowledge of mine, learned the hard way, would help train the new units that would come from home. There is no substitute for combat. You’ve got to shoot at people while you’re being shot at yourself. For the time being, though, there was just the one ship, and I nursed it like a baby. Flying it constantly, I had begun to feel a part of it. Sometimes at night I’d think of my wife and little, girl, but never in combat. Sometimes, coming home after striking the enemy, I’d think of them and they seemed far, far away. Towards the last of May,. after I’d flowh just about two hundred hours in combat and had gathered about a hundred holes in my ship, I think T must have wondered if I’d ever see them again. I carried a Tommy gun with me in the cockpit of the ship, for at strafing altitude there would probably be no time to bail out with the chute anyway, and I knew that prisoners taken by the Japs receive very harsh tteatment, especially those who have been strafing the capturing troops when shot down. . With that gun, after my crash land‘ing I’d have one more crack at the Japs—I certainly didn’t intend to be captured. supply new tricks like painting the ‘nose different colors and changing Sergeant Bonner and my armorer ‘to attach a five-hundred-pound demolition bomb under the little fightér, A Jap bomber is shot down in ‘Col. Scott’s first aerial combat. for I was planning some real damage to the Japs. This bomb. was of the Kittyhawk and overloaded the ship somewhat, but I was to become used to that. With eighteenhundred-odd rounds of fifty-caliber pilot’s weight, and this 500-pound bomb, I was taking off with over 2,500 pounds in the little single-seater. Later we, were to increase even this load; but for the time being my wing loading. was enough. Well do I remember the first time I took off with this five hundred pounds of steel and TNT down under my ship. I pulled the heavy little plane off the last few yards of. the runway and tried to climb, The straining ship mushed. along. just over the tea bushes, and I told Sergeant Bonner when I got back that even ten miles from the field I was going along through the tea planters’ breakfast rooms, getting my ) wheels up. : My greatest bombing day came te in the month of May, when I dropped four 500-pound bombs at Homalin, down on the Chindwi where the Japs seemed to be concentrating. Early in the morning I headed South with the heavy yellow. bomb, slowly climbing over the Naga Hills and through the overcast, topping out at 15,000 feet. As I continued South on the course to where the Uyu met the Chindwin River, the cloyds lowered but the my single-ship war, and I found the overcast barely a hundred feet thick. I couldn’t see Homalin and When my imagination failed to . ‘the number on the fuselage, I got. . over the target again; I strafed the ammunition, three tanks of fuel, the . win, . ‘with plenty of ammunition, or some. strafed the engineers at work on Ht liad developed a rule of thumb: I would dive at some forty-five degrees; then, as thé target in my gunsight passed under the nose of my ship, I would begin’to pull out slowly and count—one count for every thousand feet of my elevation above the target. Then as the ship came almost level, if I was at two thousand feet when I reached the count of “‘two,’”’ I’d drop.the bomb. I let the four barg the makeshift wharf; then I dove . from my cloud cover. As I got the middle two barges on my gun-sight, I made a mental resolution not to be ; short—for even if I went over I’d hit the Japs in the town. As I passed . three thousand feet’ the nearest barge went under me, and I began to . pull outs and count: ‘One—two— three—pull’’—putting in the extra short. I felt the bomb let go as I jerked the belly-tank release, and I turned to get the wing out of the way so that I could see the bomb hit. The five hundfed pounds of TNT exploded either right beside the . leading barge or between the barge closest to shere and the docks. As the black smoke cleared, I saw pieces of the barge splashing into the river a hundred yards from the explosion. I went down and strafed, but the black smoke was: so thick that I could see very little-to con-. centrate on; so I climbed to-three —_ : get almost to ; : . te count to insure me against being . : wes * For Reel. 3 Enjoyment; _. Eat 35 MEAT Our patrons find that despite. ¢ rationing and. wartime condi, ; thousand feet and waited for the smoke to clear. Then I dove for the two barges that were drifting down . the river. hundred rounds into each of them. I got one to burning, and from the black smoke it must have been loaded with gasoline. The other would not burn, but I’m sure I left enough holes in it to sink it. Coming back Japs in the water. who were either floating dead or swimming towards Shore. — : On my second raid I dropped a five-hundred-pound bomb on the largest building in Homalin, which the British Intelligence reported the next day had been the police station. They said that two hundred Japanese were killed in that bombing, and that between six hundred and a thousand were killed in the series of bombings. Many bodies. were picked up about thirty miles down the Chindwin at Tamu and Sittiang. All four of my bombs had done some damage, and I was quite satisfied. In British Intelligence reports I read that Radio Tokyo had men-. tioned Homalin. One bombing had. taken place, it seems, with verySlight damage, and that only to the, innocent Burmese villagers, but the Imperial Japanese Army had evacuated Homalin because of the serious _ malaria that. was prevalent there. I must have put two '# tions the quality of our meats measures up to the same high-* stadnards) we have always ¢ from the best cattle, lambs and ¥ swine that money can buy. Our ‘ on @ foundation of high qual4 ity and reasonable prices. Ask your meighbors about us. They DAVE RICHARDS, Prop. 213 Commercial Street = ¥ Phone 67 Nevada City : < 2 a i ait, ths Rt sl, . 500-pound packages of good old thing to do with the monkey-men’s' deciding that the malaria was too bad along the Chindwin. My raids with ‘Old: Extermina-. tor” continued through May and into June. Some days I’d climb out of India through the rain-clouds of the monsoon and fly on into Burma. The trip back would then be one to worry me, for I never knew exactly when to let down. Almost every day, however, if I worked my takeoff time properly I’d get back from the mission as the storm clouds were breaking, and I’d have a nice, welcome hole to dive through. On other days when I wasn’t so lucky, Pd just have to roll over and dive and that’s where I always came out, or I wouldn’t be here to tell about it. Some of the flights into Burma were just a waste of gasoline; I would see nothing. It follows that I have written of the more nous as to fly for four hundred miles times for two hundred to three hundred miles with a heavy bomb at-— tached, and find nx » it. dark monsoon clouds, land the 500 pounds of TNT as if I had a crate of eggs aboard. After all, we didn’t have bombs to waste. Early in June I did have one ex. . citing trip. From reports of the ferry pilots I heard that the Japs were Anyway, I always like to think that . my four trips to Homalin with four ” ‘ American Picatinny TNT had some¢ for the valley of the Brahmaputra— . ones. There’s nothing so monotoplace to drop it. . } J building a bridge over the report reached me, I went over bridge. And I nearly got for the efficient Japanese had moved ient Japa had : enges E F H 3! E i g g 8 : a iT 9 ij § : & 5 i