was browsing thru some of the military aviation newsgroups reading on P-39 stuff and happened across this....I left it in its larger context....
I recognize Joe Moore's. He later commanded the 4TFW in the
F-105 era. He was a fighter guy in the PI but after escaping from the PI was
put to work shuttling VIPs in a Lockheed transport plane till they got some
more P-40s. He had the bad luck to fly Gen. George, who had been in charge of
the fighter outfit in the PI, evacuated out to Australia, to a new
strip--Livingston?--from Batchlor, couldn't find it, returned to Batchelor and
landed just in time to collide with a P-40 taking off. The collision killed
some passengers, including Gen. George. Hell to pay for that. But I don't see
that episode recounted in the book, so it is not clear what Moore contributed
to the book. Certainly he was doing a lot of flying during those early days,
and must have had a lot of stories to tell. The most famous episode, also not
in BS, at least I haven't noticed it, is how he saved the liquor supply of the
Clark Field O Club, which had been ordered destroyed as the Japs approached.
He earned great honor and lasting fame among men for that heroic action.
Another name i recognize is Art Reynolds, who was a fighter type at Batchelor
and evacuee from the PI and had been among the P-40 pilots who flew up with the
27th AG, also evacuated from the PI, to fight the Jap invasion of Java. The
remnants of the 27th later merged with the 3AG. Reynolds was the guy who shot
down a Zero over Darwin, but sort of in an odd way. One of his bullets
apparantly nicked the Jap in the head and disoriented him so that he flew south
150 miles or so to Katherine Field where he attempted to land, or so it
appeared, but he crashed in the attempt and either was killed in the crash, or
maybe died just as he was trying to land, perhaps from loss of blood. Sort of
an odd story. And when you think about it, a bit pathetic.
Funny how similiar that is to our "pilot wounded" scenario....cant count the number of times I've nursed a cripple home to "die on final"....
