The Mammoth Book of Fighter Pilots (51 page)

Those close to me were conscious of what kind of shape I was in, and they were honestly concerned. But I was also happy to find others I hadn’t thought of at the time who were concerned for my welfare as well, though in most cases I didn’t discover this until after the war. And that was by mail.

Some of the letters were clever, but I especially remember one from a chap who I imagine must have been about eighteen. He wrote me that, after I was missing in action, his partner, “Grease Neck”, who worked on a plane with him, had said that I was gone for good, and the first chap said: “I bet you he isn’t.” The outcome of the discussion was that each bet a hundred and fifty dollars, one that I would, the other that I would not, be back home six months after the war was over. The six-months business referred to the fact that if you are missing six months after the war is over you are officially declared dead. And at one time I had said, just as a morale builder to the other pilots so that they would not worry about me: “Don’t worry if I’m ever missing, because I’ll see you in Dago and we’ll throw a party six months after the war is over.”

I had said it by coincidence just before taking off on what turned out to be my last fight, but the words apparently had stuck in their minds.

But to get back to this letter from the young chap, he told me how thrilled he was about my being home, and he told me about this bet he had made with “Grease Neck”, and how he had just collected that hundred and fifty, and that he was going to spend the entire amount on highballs in my honor in San Diego.

It was a great feeling to get those letters and know that the boys really wanted to see you home – bets or no bets. I also hope, because I never heard any more from this young fellow, that he didn’t end up in the local bastille while celebrating in my honor.

My thoughts then are much the same now in many respects. Championships in anything must be a weird institution. So often there is but a hairline difference between the champion and the runner-up. This must go for boxing and tennis, football and baseball. In my case it was something else, the record for the number of planes shot down by a United States flyer, and I was still having quite a time trying to break it.

After getting twenty-five planes, most of them on missions two hundred miles or better into enemy air, I had gone out day after day, had had many a nice opportunity, but always fate seemed to step in and cheat me: the times there was oil on the windshield and I couldn’t see any of the planes I fired into go down or flame; the times my plane was shot up. Nothing seemed to work for me. Then everybody, including the pressmen, kept crowding me and asking: “Go ahead; when are you going to beat the record?” I was practically nuts.

Then came the day when the record finally was broken, but, as so often happens with one in life, it was broken without much of a gallery. And in this case without even a return.

It was before dawn on January 3, 1944, on Bougainville. I was having baked beans for breakfast at the edge of the airstrip the Seabees had built, after the Marines had taken a small chunk of land on the beach. As I ate the beans, I glanced over at row after row of white crosses, too far away and too dark to read the names. But I didn’t have to. I knew that each cross marked the final resting place of some Marine who had gone as far as he was able in this mortal world of ours.

Before taking off everything seemed to be wrong that morning. My plane wasn’t ready and I had to switch to another. At the last minute the ground crew got my original plane in order and I scampered back into that. I was to lead a fighter sweep over Rabaul, meaning two hundred miles over enemy waters and territory again.

We coasted over at about twenty thousand feet to Rabaul. A few hazy clouds and cloud banks were hanging around – not much different from a lot of other days.

The fellow flying my wing was Captain George Ashmun, New York City. He had told me before the mission: “You go ahead and shoot all you want, Gramps. All I’ll do is keep them off your tail.”

This boy was another who wanted me to beat that record, and was offering to stick his neck way out in the bargain.

I spotted a few planes coming up through the loosely scattered clouds and signaled to the pilots in back of me: “Go down and get to work.”

George and I dove first. I poured a long burst into the first enemy plane that approached, and a fraction of a second later saw the Nip pilot catapult out and the plane itself break out into fire.

George screamed over the radio: “Gramps, you got a flamer!”

Then he and I went down lower into the fight after the rest of the enemy planes. We figured that the whole pack of our planes was going to follow us down, but the clouds must have obscured us from their view. Anyway, George and I were not paying too much attention, just figuring that the rest of the boys would be with us in a few seconds, as usually was the case.

Finding approximately ten enemy planes, George and I commenced firing. What we saw coming from above we thought were our own planes – but they were not. We were being jumped by about twenty planes.

George and I scissored in the conventional Thatchweave way, protecting each other’s blank spots, the rear ends of our fighters. In doing this I saw George shoot a burst into a plane and it turned away from us, plunging downward, all on fire. A second later I did the same to another plane. But it was then that I saw George’s plane start to throw smoke, and down he went in a half glide. I sensed something was horribly wrong with him. I screamed at him: “For God’s sake, George, dive!”

Our planes could dive away from practically anything the Nips had out there at the time, except perhaps a Tony. But apparently George never heard me or could do nothing about it if he had. He just kept going down in a half glide.

Time and time again I screamed at him: “For God’s sake, George, dive straight down!” But he didn’t even flutter an aileron in answer to me.

I climbed in behind the Nip planes that were plugging at him on the way down to the water. There were so many of them I wasn’t even bothering to use my electric gun sight consciously, but continued to seesaw back and forth on my rudder pedals, trying to spray them all in general, trying to get them off George to give him a chance to bail out or dive – or do something at least.

But the same thing that was happening to him was now happening to me. I could feel the impact of the enemy fire against my armor plate, behind my back, like hail on a tin roof. I could see enemy shots progressing along my wing tips, making patterns.

George’s plane burst into flames and a moment later crashed into the water. At that point there was nothing left for me to do. I had done everything I could. I decided to get the hell away from the Nips. I threw everything in the cockpit all the way forward – this means full speed ahead – and nosed my plane over to pick up extra speed until I was forced by the water to level off. I had gone practically a half mile at a speed of about four hundred knots, when all of a sudden my main gas tank went up in flames in front of my very eyes. The sensation was much the same as opening the door of a furnace and sticking one’s head into the thing.

Though I was about a hundred feet off the water, I didn’t have a chance of trying to gain altitude. I was fully aware that if I tried to gain altitude for a bail-out I would be fried in a few more seconds.

At first, being kind of stunned, I thought: “Well, you finally got it, didn’t you, wise guy?” and then I thought: “Oh, no you didn’t!” There was only one thing left to do. I reached for the rip cord with my right hand and released the safety belt with my left, putting both feet on the stick and kicking it all the way forward with all my strength. My body was given centrifugal force when I kicked the stick in this manner. My body for an instant weighed well over a ton, I imagine. If I had had a third hand I could have opened the canopy. But all I could do was to give myself this propulsion. It either jettisoned me right up through the canopy or tore the canopy off. I don’t know which.

There was a jerk that snapped my head and I knew my chute had caught – what a relief. Then I felt an awful slam on my side – no time to pendulum – just boom-boom and I was in the water.

The cool water around my face sort of took the stunned sensation away from my head. Looking up, I could see a flight of four Japanese Zeros. They had started a game of tag with me in the water. And by playing tag, I mean they began taking turns strafing me.

I started diving, making soundings in the old St George Channel. At first I could dive about six feet, but this lessened to four, and gradually I lost so much of my strength that, when the Zeros made their strafing runs at me, I could just barely duck my head under the water. I think they ran out of ammunition, for after a while they left me. Or my efforts in the water became so feeble that may be they figured they had killed me.

The best thing to do, I thought, was to tread water until nightfall. I had a little package with a rubber raft in it. But I didn’t want to take a chance on opening it for fear they might go back to Rabaul, rearm, and return to strafe the raft. Then I would have been a goner for certain.

I was having such a difficult time treading water, getting weaker and weaker, that I realized something else would have to be done real quickly. My Mae West wouldn’t work at all, so I shed all my clothes while I was treading away; shoes, fatigues, and everything else. But after two hours of this I knew that I couldn’t keep it up any longer. It would have to be the life raft or nothing. And if the life raft didn’t work – if it too should prove all shot full of holes – then I decided: “It’s au revoir. That’s all there is to it.”

I pulled the cord on the raft, the cord that released the bottle of compressed air, and the little raft popped right up and filled. I was able to climb aboard, and after getting aboard I started looking around, sort of taking inventory.

I looked at my Mae West. If the Nips came back and strafed me again, I wanted to be darned sure that it would be in working order. If I had that, I could dive around under the water while they were strafing me, and would not need the raft. I had noticed some tears in the jacket, which I fully intended to get busy and patch up, but the patching equipment that came with the raft contained patches for about twenty-five holes.

“It would be better first, though,” I decided, “to count the holes in this darned jacket.” I counted, and there were more than two hundred.

“I’m going to save these patches for something better than this.” With that I tossed the jacket overboard to the fish. It was of no use to me.

Then for the first time – and this may seem strange – I noticed that I was wounded, not just a little bit, but a whole lot. I hadn’t noticed it while in the water, but here in the raft I certainly noticed it now. Pieces of my scalp, with hair on the pieces, were hanging down in front of my face.

My left ear was almost torn off. My arms and shoulders contained holes and shrapnel. I looked at my legs. My left ankle was shattered from a twenty-millimeter-cannon shot. The calf of my left leg had, I surmised, a 7.7 bullet through it. In my groin I had been shot completely through the leg by twenty-millimeter shrapnel. Inside of my leg was a gash bigger than my fist.

“I’ll get out my first-aid equipment from my jungle pack. I’d better start patching this stuff up.”

I kept talking to myself like that. I had lots of time. The Pacific would wait.

Even to my watch, which was smashed, I talked also. The impact had crushed it at a quarter to eight on the early morning raid. But I said to it: “I’ll have a nice long day to fix you up.”

I didn’t, though. Instead, I spent about two hours trying to bandage myself. It was difficult getting out these bandages, for the waves that day in the old South Pacific were about seven feet or so long. They are hard enough to ride on a comparatively calm day, and the day wasn’t calm.

After I had bandaged myself as well as I could, I started looking around to see if I could tell where I was or where I was drifting. I found that my raft contained only one paddle instead of the customary two. So this one little paddle, which fitted over the hand much like an odd sort of glove, was not of much use to me.

Talking to myself, I said: “This is like being up shit creek without a paddle.”

Far off to the south, as I drifted, I could see the distant shore of New Britain. Far to the north were the shores of New Ireland. Maybe in time I could have made one or the other of these islands. I don’t know. But there is something odd about drifting that I may as well record. All of us have read, or have been told, the thoughts that have gone through other men under similar circumstances. But in my case it was a little tune that Moon Mullin had originated. And now it kept going through my mind, bothering me, and I couldn’t forget it. It was always there, running on and on:

On a rowboat at Rabaul,

On a rowboat at Rabaul . . .

The waves continued singing it to me as they slapped my rubber boat. It could have been much the same, perhaps, as when riding on a train, and the rails and the wheels clicking away, pounding out some tune, over and over, and never stopping.

The waves against this little rubber boat, against the bottom of it, against the sides of it, continued pounding out:

. . . On a rowboat at Rabaul,

You’re not behind a plow . . .

And I thought: “Oh, Moon Mullin, if only I had you here, I’d wring your doggone neck for ever composing the damn song.”

Boyington was “rescued” by a Japanese submarine and spent the remainder of the war in a POW camp.

HEAVY BABIES

HEINZ KNOKE

Heinz Knoke flew over 400 operational missions for the Luftwaffe during World War II, shooting down 52 Allied aircraft before being invalided in October 1944 in a road attack by Czechoslovak partisans. Below is Knoke’s diary for two of those missions, 25th February 1944 and 29th April 1944, undertaken whilst serving with No. 11 Fighter Wing in its defence of the Reich against the Flying Fortress (“heavy babies”) bombers of USAAF.