Born Fighter

GOD Is My Co-Pilot-- Roberf L Scoff Jr.--Scribner ($2.50).

Robert L. Scott Jr. saw his first airplane at the age of four or five. The pilot went into a spin, crashed horribly in front of him. Little Robert was wildly excited: he saw in the shattered plane the instrument that "freed one from the earth." He begged "destiny" to make him "a fighter pilot." Destiny did--in somewhat less time than destiny usually takes to do things. At 34, Colonel Robert L. Scott Jr. became group commander of Major General Chennault's fighter force in China.

God Is My Co-Pilot reports the resistless rush which carried Colonel Scott from an aerodynamic boyhood in Georgia to a fighter plane over China. It also records his thoughts before & after combat. Few air fighters have set down with such disarming candor the hatred that some U.S. airmen feel for the Japanese enemy--a hatred that buoys them up on thin air as powerfully as the wings and vibrating engines of their planes. Few have put down so ingenuously the feelings of an instinctive fighter. God Is My Co-Pilot has a quality of personal and group revelation that sets it apart among war books. It may or may not be (as General Chennault suggests in his foreword) "an inspiration to all Americans of all ages." It is memorable self-documentation by a born fighter.

First Flight. Author Scott's active air career began at the age of twelve when he cut a piece of canvas from the marquee of a Holy Rollers' church, built a glider with it and crashed 67 feet into a Cherokee rosebush. When General Billy Mitchell led a flight of snappy MB-35 through Scott's home town, young Robert stowed away in a baggage compartment. At 13 he bought his own crate for $75, "got away with murder" flying it.

First Place. Young Scott "had more merit badges than any other [Boy] Scout in the South," but he failed to get into West Point. Failure only made him stubborn. After vainly attending two colleges, he returned to his astonished high-school teachers "to really get the foundation." Then he enlisted as a private, so that he could compete (against 800 other soldiers) for one of eight West Point vacancies. Scott memorized "every old West Point examination as far back as 1920," won his place.

In 1932 Scott reported to Air Corps Training Center at Randolph Field, Tex. Even his instructors were startled by the eagerness with which he approached military aviation, by his daredeviltry acquired while flying prehistoric crates. But at this point Scott suddenly developed "girl trouble"--a serious complication for a young aviator so shy that he sometimes crossed the street rather than speak to a woman.

Scott believes that the girl (she finally married him) was the most important influence in his career as a flyer. "For if any one thing more than another," says Scott, "enabled me to meet the Japanese fighter pilots in the air and shoot them down while I escaped, it was an American Girl. . . " I don't know exactly what democracy is, or the real commonsense meaning of a republic. But as we used to talk things over in China, we all used to agree that we were fighting for The American Girl. She to us was America, Democracy, Coca-Colas, Hamburgers, Clean Places to Sleep, or The American Way of Life. . . ."

Positively Necessary Urge. Later, as an instructor (he trained Colin Kelly), Scott learned to study every pupil to see if he had the "positively necessary . . . urge for combat." To his surprise he discovered that "many of them still thought it was wrong to want to get in the air against an enemy," were content just to fly for airlines. When not flying or teaching, Scott collected orchids--"these beautiful plants" --which he grows for a hobby.

One day General Chennault gave Scott a P-40--"the single fighter plane that was to work out of Assam." Scott had its nose painted with the shark's head emblem: "I don't know how long I walked around the fighter admiring it and caressing its wicked-looking body . . . as if I were rolling old sherry around on my tongue. . . . Like a beautiful woman, it demanded constant attention." At last, with his plane's shark mouth "seeming to drip saliva," he went out for action.

At first he found no Japs. "Sometimes," says he, "I think the 'Great Flying Boss in the Sky' was giving me a little more practice before he put me to the supreme test." But one day Scott flew along the Burma Road, caught a Jap column in a narrow defile.

Almost Human. The six machine guns "seemed to cut the column to bits. ... I could see those who hadn't been hit trying desperately to crawl up the muddy bank . . . and slipping back. ... I came back over . . . kept on cutting them to pieces until my ammunition was gone; I fired 1,890 rounds into those three or four hundred Japanese, and I don't think more than a handful escaped." Back at base, Scott christened his P-40 " 'Old Exterminator' . . . patted the gun sight affectionately [and] knew right then that this ship was almost a human being."

When the Chennault group was incorporated into the U.S. Army, Scott was made its C.O. "I wiped the tears from my eyes and looked out on an improving world. I could hear the birds singing again, and people were laughing; I knew I was the luckiest man in all the world." He celebrated with a farewell bombing, climbed through the clouds reciting poetry in time with the engine. "To the verses of 'Gunga Din' I dropped my first bomb ... on the docks of Homalin. ... I finished my ammunition by strafing the main street of [Lashio] . . . saw two plate-glass windows spatter . . . like artificial snow from a Christmas tree, and I laughed hysterically as two figures ran from a pagoda. . . . I landed back home tired and happy."

More Fun. Old Exterminator finally petered out, bringing a lump into Scott's throat and the feeling that "my sword had been taken away." But Scott put her old guns into his new ship, and they soon became the machine's "real soul." Sometimes he would think of his family and feel homesick. Once he told General Chennault that he wished he could just press a button that would kill all the Japs and let the squadron go home. "Aw now, Scotty," said the General, "we don't want to do that. . . . Think of how much fun it is to kill them slow."

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