The Long Job

QUEENS DIE PROUDLY--W. L. White--Harcourt, Brace ($2.50).

In the New Guinea jungles, Australian soldiers pushing the Jap back, mile by bloody, sweaty mile, grinned as they heard the planes coming over. They had air power now to help them. But they could remember when things were different. . . .

Lieut. Colonel Frank Kurtz, ex-Olympic high diver, pilot of the old Flying Fortress Swoose, which has "worn ruts" across the Pacific ferrying Lieut. General George Brett, former United Nations Air Force Commander in the Southwest Pacific, knew the story. He had flown the long battle of airfields from Clark Field in the Philippines to the bastion of Australia. This week the story was out, in a new book by War Correspondent W. L. White (They Were Expendable, TIME, Sept. 28). Using the formula that was such a sensational success in the tale of the PT boats in the Philippines, Author White lets Frank Kurtz and his crew talk of those dark, terrible days.

Queens Die Proudly pounds home some lessons: 1) the importance of airfields in the Pacific; 2) the strength of U.S. combat formations if they can be properly used; 3) the systematic tactics of Japanese airmen, who learned the lessons their German allies taught in Europe to polished perfection.

For Pilot Kurtz the war began on a sunny day at Clark Field near Manila when the news of Pearl Harbor had just begun to sink in. The exact moment came when the pilots were waiting for orders for their first combat mission: a reconnaissance of Formosa, which they could not attack because the U.S. Congress had not yet declared war. From the direction of Formosa, as they knew they would, some 70 Japanese bombers came over and blew Clark Field to hell with a beautiful pattern of bombs, unmolested from the air, little molested from the ground. Twenty-four Flying Fortresses had stood there: after the Japs had passed, "only five could be called airplanes any more . . . and none of them could fly. But. by pooling the five wrecks ... we could salvage in all ... three planes which might get into the air--when the runway was cleared."

The Long Retreat. Frank Kurtz lost his plane and his entire crew. From the control tower of the field, later on, he watched Colin Kelly die. Kurtz heard a plane coming in, looked up at the low-hanging clouds. Eight parachutes dropped from them; then he saw "a dark object go hurtling into the ground." That was Kelly, who stuck with the ship until it was too late for his own chute to open.

For Frank Kurtz and his crew the war was a succession of airfields from which they flew until they were lost. There was Del Monte on Mindanao, "a pretty turf field right up against the big pineapple cannery." They used it first as a base, then, as the Japs drew closer, as a place to load bombs and gas on missions flown from Australia, "touching it as lightly as you would a hot stove." They flew 18 hours a day, with minutes of cat naps in between, until they were sent down to Java.

Nightmare Field. Malang Field near Surabaya was "a better job of camouflaging than anything we'd ever dreamed of in the Philippines." Before long, it was a nightmare field. From here the shattered remnants of the U.S. 19th Bombardment Group tried to stop the massive Japanese advance down Macassar Straits to Java.

They tried it in all kinds of weather; they flew from Malang to Samarinda Field on Borneo, loaded bombs, flew out to attack, went back to fly out again. They bombed convoys "stretching back as far as we could see," with a half-dozen Fortresses flying unescorted against the Zeros.

They knew how to handle their planes. Master Sergeant Rowland A. Boone was gunner on a Fortress that flew a night mission. Clouds hid the target, bombs were precious, so the plane came back to Malang with its bomb bays full. It was raining hard when they reached the field. "The turf was soaked into apple jelly. . . . We knew that a single pound weight on the brakes would start our 25 tons sliding over that slippery field like it was the frozen surface of a pond." To save plane, crew and bombs, the pilot deliberately ground-looped, then, with the plane sliding backwards, gave his motors the gun. "Even if the wheels couldn't bite into that slippery ground, the propellers could bite the air. It was neat."

They learned that the Japanese flyers were no supermen. Pilot Kurtz, in his Olympic diving days, had known a Japanese diver named Kobi Ishi, whom he had twice beaten. He thought of him when he heard the story of six Fortresses encountering a lone Zero: "He starts in, thinking here's a chance to pick off a Fort, and then suddenly sees all those guns and thinks how sweet and cute his little almond-eyed geisha is back home. . . . The little geisha finally wins out over the Emperor, because he doesn't go in, but he thumbs his nose at them in his way: flying alongside, with all of our gang watching, he starts doing Immelmann turns ... as much as to say: 'Boys, I'm not coming in, but don't think I can't fly.' ... As he flipped off into a cloud, our gang waved their applause for the flying circus. ... To me he was Kobi Ishi. I'd like to meet him after the war."

The Job Begun. Not long after, Pilot Kurtz and his crew were heading the Swoose homeward, out over the wide Pacific. She was the only one of the 24 Flying Fortresses originally based on Clark Field to return home. An hour out of an island steppingstone base, they sighted ships on the sea below: four carriers, "a fog of destroyers, at least 15 cruisers, and one thundering big battleship." It took them a while to realize they were American, not Japanese. When they did:

"We swing out wide and away, but with what a different feeling. ... At last, even after Pearl Harbor, we can hold up our heads in these Pacific waters! We'd stopped them in the air, holding them back to Timor and Lae, and at last I can see we're beginning to sweep them off the top of the waters. A long job, but we've begun it!"

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