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The Last Good War

by Charles J. Brauner

275 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #03-0757; ISBN 1-4120-0388-1; US$21.00, C$24.08, EUR17.50, £12.50

Two 18 year old cousins flying as rear-seat radio-gunners in dive-bombers chase a Japanese kamikaze plane into restricted enemy airspace and trigger an event that radically alters the outcome of the war.

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about the book      about the author      sample excerpt      catalogue info

About the Book The Japanese Rape of Nanking and her sneak attack on Pearl Harbor along with Nazi Germany's villainous use of the gas ovens gave the World War Two Allies a moral justification seldom found in warfare. Yet the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki have cloaked the last days of the Pacific war in endless controversy ever since. Was Japan so badly battered by August 1945 that she would have surrendered anyway? Why didn't America explode one on a nearby deserted island and let the enemy surrender without such horrific loss of life? The Last Good War addresses these issues in a vivid and violent re-enactment of the final months of conflict. Soon after Pearl Harbor two mature fifteen year old cousins enlist in the U. S. Navy and become radioman-gunners flying in dive-bombers in the Pacific. As seasoned combat aircrewmen off the U.S. aircraft carrier Brandywine, the two Canadians take part in a 1945 attack on the Japanese naval base across the bay from Hiroshima. The aerial battle reshapes the conduct of the war. As a result Avaition Radioman's Mate Second Class Carson Braddock and ARM2/c Max Bryson are called upon to help the crew of the Enola Gay on their historic flight to Hiorshima. Soon after, two young Japanese sailors confront Carson and Max in combat. With great courage and ingenuity Gunner's Mate Takijiru Sugihara and Bosun Chikonori Kaijitsu provide their country with a fresh oppurtunity to redress the balance of military power. A major moral decision must be made. The outcome of the war is in doubt. Indeed, Carson and Max face an enemy who is eager and able to use the most cruel weapon in anyone's hands. And in the struggle that ensues the two cousins discover what veterans world-wide have learned from war over the last half century. What separates warring nations is their beliefs; What unites enemies on the battlefield is their courage

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About the Author C.J. Brauner was raised in America during the depression. The death of his father in the South West Pacific led him to quit high school to fly in U.S. Navy dive-bombers during WWII. After the war he worked as an installer for N.J. Bell Tell. The G.I. Bill enabled him to earn a B.A. and a teacher's certificate from The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He took his Masters at Columbia Univ. in NYC. In the 1950s he taught English in the Michigan public schools until he received a Fulbright Sholarship to Greece. After his wife's death at the American Farm School in Salonica he brought his infant daughter back to the U.S. and earned his Doctorate at Stanford U. in California. His early academic career took him to Purdue U., Syracuse U., and Ohio State Univ. For 30 years he was a professor at The University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada where he resides with his second wife and four grown children.

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Sample Excerpt

CHAPTER TWO
The fighter pilot's hand-chase
Holds a slice of history
Men are obliged to watch
Because war
Is the sideshow of Destiny.

In the purple morning light of early August 1945, the approach of dawn swept the gray sea off the coast of Japan like a weak beacon skimming pebbled slate. American sailors on watch scanned the swells and troughs with night glasses. Seasoned lookouts used their sensitive peripheral vision to search for the tiny feather of foam a submarine's periscope trails in its wake. Half hidden in the fading night, the three attack groups that made up Task Force Fifty-eight went into action.

In each group, the minesweepers, the destroyers, the lean cruisers, and the broad-beamed battleships drew their protective rings in tight around the vulnerable aircraft carriers. Moving swiftly, the flattops swung into the wind. The single engine planes were set at odd angles all across the USS Brandywine's flight deck as they unfolded their wings. Belching exhaust and warming up their motors, the deck load of fighters and bombers aboard shook like a swarm of nervous hornets driving off the ocean spray's damp chill.

"Prepare to launch," Squadron leader Lieutenant Commander Gregory Hawkins told the deck-master from the cockpit of his dive-bomber. "And make sure my Helldivers take off from a rising bow."

Seated eight feet behind the pilot, the middle-aged radio operator in the rear cockpit of the squadron leader's dive-bomber looked up from adjusting the tension on his sending key as Greg Hawkins finished. Clean shaven, fleshy in his leather flight helmet, and peering out beneath dark goggles set above bushy eyebrows, the chief aviation radioman's mate fixed the young ensign acting as deck-master with a glare hard enough to shatter glass.

"If even one of our planes leaves the deck as the bow plunges down into a trough," Chief Chester Flannigan warned, "I will personally have you keel hauled stark naked in a shark infested bay. I shit you not-Sir."

The seasoned twenty-year-old ensign grinned knowingly back at the chief. Nevertheless, he eyed the waves with care as he withdrew to his signal platform. Manually, the plane handlers turned the aircraft into the wind and lined them up for take-off. The wave of a white flag started a radial engine Grumman Avenger charging up the deck with ever increasing speed. Having the greatest range, the three-man torpedo bombers took off first.

At the bow, the heavily laden TBF Avenger rushed off into the night with a dip and an engine growl that underlined its struggle to stay airborne. Slowly, the almost black aircraft rose above the invisible union of a purple sea and the violet sky. Only then did the dark wings and glass greenhouse with its tucked down ball turret flash back a muted signal of success.

With the hidden sun defining and then melting the horizon, the rest of the torpedo planes and all of the dive-bombers took to the air. Each single engine Curtiss Helldiver rolled down the deck on a dip that gradually changed into a rising bow as the huge vessel plunged through an oncoming ground swell. That slight rise thrust the overloaded dive-bomber into the air with the added lift of a stiff springboard. Even so, every dive-bomber sank on the brink of a stall. Only its powerful Wright Cyclone engine and howling Hamilton propeller blades hauled it up out of the boundary layer of heavy air that carpeted the sea.

Finally, last of all, the high-speed fighter planes with their fuelthirsty engines and smaller gas tanks finished rising from the flight deck. Before they retracted their landing gear, the Grumman F6Fs looked like long-legged vultures leaving their lair. The noise of their engines blended into a monotonous throb as the several squadrons of orbiting planes climbed up into a pale sky that showered them with invisible light.

Ominous in silhouette, the Grumman Hellcats shed a bit of their menace as the paintings of elongated nudes emblazoned on their cowlings stood out in bright Technicolor. Climbing up to join them, the young radiomen in the trailing flight of dive-bombers surveyed the fighter planes flying top-cover with professional disdain.

"What do you think?" Aviation Radioman Second Class Max Bryson inquired over the squadron's limited range voice frequency. "Does the bare breasted broad on the cowling reflect the fighter pilot's prowess or his intellect?"

"Well, that's easy enough to tell," his cousin, rear seat radiogunner ARM 2/C Carson Braddock replied from an accompanying Helldiver. "Whenever the Lord is serious about the separation of mind from body the victim talks and walks like a movie star."

All through the squadron, idle chatter and flagrant breeches of radio discipline masked the tension that the raid generated. As the opening phase of Operation Downfall, the overall plan for the invasion of Japan, the attack on the anchorage at Kure marked a major escalation in the Fifth Fleet's efforts to silence the enemy's last line of naval defense.

There, just across the bay from Hiroshima, the Japanese battleship Nagato swung at anchor while the battlewagons Haruna, Ise, and Hyuga were tucked away in deep coves. With only Nagato actually afloat, the other capital ships were fixed targets resting on a shallow bottom. Still, their guns remained a menace to anything navigating close to the coast as it sailed the Inland Sea. Indeed, each one was a fortress of firepower that filled the morning sky with a fusillade of anti-aircraft fire as the American carrier planes swept in across the bay. Still climbing and last to commit, the deadly dive-bombers had a commanding view of the assault.

"Even without the combat air patrol we left behind to protect our carrier," Carson Braddock observed, "there must be over sixty planes from the Brandywine involved."

"And nearly a hundred from the Enterprise and the Independence," Max added.

The Japanese harbor was a tight crescent of well traveled water edged by mountains that rose almost straight up from the beach. Yet the wide mouth of the bay was deep enough for the Nagato to anchor within a hundred yards of a shoreline littered with a jumble of service facilities. The loading piers, dry docks, repair yards, storage tanks, and sheet metal sheds rose up the hillsides of the sheltered anchorage behind a tangle of barricades that bristled with guns. The massive firepower and the incredibly steep terrain were enough to make even the most seasoned fliers nervous.

To put a crimp in the enemy anti-aircraft fire, the attacking Grumman fighter planes strafed the forty-millimeter gun platforms with rockets and machine-gun fire. As they pulled up, they dropped their external fuel tanks and two hundred fifty-pound bombs on the heavy guns nestled in the foothills. The explosions and the return anti-aircraft fire raised a curtain of sand and smoke that half hid the mountains in a blue and gray haze. Despite the powder-curtain, however, the Navy Hellcat struck by a four-inch shell cut a swath of fire through the heavy battle smoke as it shed a wing and smashed into the mountain. The bright burst of yellow flame and the great ball of black smoke that rose from the crash site wrenched the gut of every man aloft. Yet each phase of the assault continued to unfold along well-established lines without a break in the radio chatter.

The flights of torpedo bombers following half a mile behind the fighter planes bored in through that swirling smoke shield just a few feet above the water. Each stubby Grumman Avenger carried a radio operator in its belly compartment as well as a pilot and a top turret gunner at opposite ends of the long glass greenhouse that stretched the full width of the wing. Instead of torpedoes, however, each TBF Avenger carried an overload of high-explosive bombs. Driving in at two hundred forty knots, the formation of "Turkeys" skimmed the waves. The slipstream from their noisy propellers pressed shallow troughs in the water. Accustomed to both the hazards and the deep concentration the assault demanded, however, the seasoned aircrew only intensified its banter as they bore down on the Nagato.

"You can't beat barreling-in deck high on an anchored battlewagon," the middle-aged enlisted pilot flying the leading Avenger declared. "It's almost as good as slipping it to a hungry broad from behind with your hands full of tits."

"If you don't mind dodging tracers," the aging Chief Gunner's Mate Larry Walsh contended. "But I'll grant you this. It's a damned sight better than air-sea rescue."

The mindless chatter kept the crewmen in touch as they penetrated the killing zone. By half blotting-out the unavoidable dangers that engulfed them it actually intensified their concentration and improved their battle task performance. Even so, however, the enemy's counter-thrusts were everywhere. The anti-aircraft fire from the battlewagon rushed past the midnight-blue wings and cream colored underbelly of the TBF with the flap and flutter of long streamers in a wind tunnel. Deftly, the single engine Grumman Avenger darted in under the cannon fire from the battleship's heavy guns. Chilled, bathed in sweat, and alert to every rasp and shudder of the aircraft, the young radio-gunner seated in the belly compartment felt an unwanted nervous sneer creeping into his voice.

"Talk about your generosity," ARM3/C Barry Chapman scoffed. "Just about anything beats landing a float plane held together with library paste and bailing wire right in the Jap's back yard."

The huge cannon shells that roared over their heads rattled the fragile greenhouse. Facing backward, Chief Larry Walsh swung his Sperry ball turret from side to side and riddled Japanese gunnery barges with his fifty-caliber machine-gun as the plane left them behind. Through his sights he caught a glimpse of a blown up Japanese gunner stiffening in mid-air as he took a burst of hot slugs in his chest. Seated in the belly with a thirty-caliber Browning between his legs, the radioman sprayed anything they passed over. Lacking a gunsight, Barry Chapman's eyes lingered on the bearded old man he riddles as the poor devil dove from his elevated fishing platform. But not even the sight of that innocent victim could take his mind off his own danger.

"Don't push in too close to shore, Skipper," Barry warned. "The mountains looming up on either side of us look like they climb away into a two mile high slab of horned alligator hide."

Suddenly, the dark blue Grumman Avenger rose up in a steep climb and banked sharply across the face of the mountain. The heavy anti-aircraft fire exploding all around it shook the wings and peppered the tail surfaces with shrapnel.

"BOMBS AWAY," Chief Enlisted Pilot Peter Cramer shouted. "HOLD ON TO THOSE BOOZE SODDEN, GUT-WRENCHING, FUCKED-UP STOMACHS."

Straining hard as it skimmed the pointed treetops of a less than vertical evergreen forest, the battered Grumman Avenger rattled like a paper bag holding peanuts. Below, and only a bit behind the escaping aircraft, the straight sides of the cylindrical bombs hit the brittle top layer of the water at almost two hundred eighty miles an hour. All four of them bounced along the surface of the sheltered bay like two rows of skillfully skipped stones. In their final leap they rose just enough to strike the Nagato high above the torpedo bulge and hit the lighter armor that shields the crewdeck. Aided by staggered detonation, the two bombs with delayed action fuses penetrated the battleship's citadel.

The five-hundred pounder exploded in the battleship's main galley and wiped out the rescue team waiting for orders. Concussion tore the steel structure apart and the incredible heat set the entire mess hall on fire. Japanese sailors stacking benches and rolling out fire hoses were blown apart by a blast hot enough to scorch their limbs in mid-air. But the thousand pound bomb was worse. It skidded into the sickbay like a greased hippopotamus and erupted with a force that blew out every bulkhead. The blast killed all the patients and the ship's entire medical staff. Doctors, pharmacist mates, male nurses, influenza victims, and men recovering from surgery all perished from shock waves that burst their lungs and sucked their hearts dry. As the dead collapsed, burned, writhed, and crumpled, a great surge of heat ignited some powder bags in the magazine below the forward gun-turret. A series of secondary explosion blew open the undogged hatches on the main deck and sent thick arms of flame shooting high above the ship's clean-lined pagoda. Black ash and dark smoke shrouded the exposed gun crews in the gray mist that settled on the weather deck.

Each wave of torpedo planes that followed added high explosive bombs to the destruction on the beach or close to shore. The torrent of five-hundred pounders smashed into docks, clobbered sheds, blew up barges, set a loaded freighter on fire, sank a mine sweeper, and reduced a harbor tug to splinters. The thousand pounders uprooted piers, blew tin roofs off repair sheds, and knocked the windows and walls out of barracks, office buildings, and machine shops. But the most spectacular destruction took place in isolation.

The heavy bomb that struck the ammunition ship unloading in a narrow cove sent the bridge of the decimated vessel hurtling up into the air atop a brilliant black and yellow fireball. Battered, stunned, and blistered with burn-boils but still conscious and moving about, the officers and ratings inside coughed and choked on the acrid cordite smoke as they hurtled to their death. All around the bay, the harbor facilities were ablaze with pockets of devastation. Seen from the dive-bombers orbiting high above, the destruction looked complete.

"God-damn," Carson Braddock commented. "Those Turkeys sure lay volcanic eggs."

Three miles above that ash-strewn inferno, the cold air was still and the sky was clear as the dive-bombers moved into position for their assault. In the early morning sunlight the straight leading edge and tapered wing of each Curtiss Helldiver sent a champagneglass shaped shadow speeding up the heavily treed mountain slopes as three of the four flights of dive-bombers tightened their formation for a swift peel-off.

"As the dive unwinds you start skimming the mountainside at ten thousand feet and its two miles straight down to sea level from there," Squadron Leader Gregory Hawkins warned. "Watch out for tall trees and any outcropping of bare rock."

Waiting a moment for the advice to sink in, Chief Flannigan in the rear seat of the squadron leader's Helldiver spit in his palm and extinguished his cigar in the moisture. As he flipped the butt out of the open cockpit he pressed the throat mike attached to his oxygen mask to make sure that his warning reached his squadron mates loud and clear.

"The hot shot who comes away with pine branches in his bomb bay doors will lose a month's flight pay," Chief Aviation Radioman's Mate Chester Flannigan threatened. "I shit you not."

At sea level the narrow inlets ran up between the separate mountain ranges like sky blue felt spread between the extended fingers of a gnarled hand. The mixture of yellow sunlight and dark green shadow dappled the ridgeback crests below with a seamless intensity that gave the mountains the appearance of a huge camouflage net. And the forest green marked with patches of yellow alder leaves and rusted larch branches made the battle blue dive-bombers all but invisible from above.

"Our Marines flying top-cover report that there are no enemy aircraft within fifty-miles," Squadron leader Hawkins broadcast. "So let's get some hits."

"Irregardless," Chief Flannigan added. "Each rear-seat gunner will quarter scan the sky above and behind like it was a virgin's snatch hiding a dose of the crabs. I sh..."

Chief Flannigan's routine oaths were too frequent and vehement for the young aircrewmen to resist. Together, a chorus of voices cut him off in a cadence and timbre that mocked his own.

"I SHIT YOU NOT," the fifteen aviation radiomen doing doubleduty as aerial gunners bellowed. "AND THAT'S THE NAKED TRUTH."

The gag was rhythmic, well practiced, and familiar. It drew almost no comment. And even though Chester Flannigan waited it out with the skilled timing of a stand-up comic milking a belly laugh, he acted annoyed.

"Belay the chatter," the chief ordered. "It's battle alert from here right down to the deck. So get those cockpits straightened away. Keep a tight ass hole. And for Christ's sake check-six."

Automatically, every rear seat gunner made a swift but penetrating scan through the six o'clock position that swung around in a thirty-degree cone that circled the tail of his aircraft. The lack of anything to report gave the pilots assurance that there were no enemy planes moving into firing position.

Confident, each of the first three flights of dive-bombers swung inland to take up a position above a different shallow bottomed cove tucked deep in the steep mountains that lined the harbor. As a four-plane formation crested the ridge all eyes peered down at a scuttled capital ship tied up to a dock like an overloaded steel canoe. Instantly, the whole flight of Helldivers came under light and heavy enemy cannon fire.

A flurry of one-inch shells rose to meet them and mark their speed and precise direction. Black puffs from three-inch shells blossomed above and below to bracket their altitude. Five-inch anti-aircraft shells spiraled up to their flight level for effect. Audible bursts that erupted beneath the wings rocked the blue divebombers like angry hands on a cradle.

"Christ," Max Bryson commented. "They're throwin' up enough tonnage to beat our bomb load five to one."

An explosion just ahead of Carson's banking dive-bomber sent the sizzle of hot steel rushing through the propeller arc and along the slipstream. The shredded smoke filled his cockpit with the bitter tang of cordite. Regardless of the hazard and discomfort, however, both Canadian rear-seat gunners concentrated on the final preparations for the dive.

"With gunnery like that," Carson Braddock observed, "the bastards don't need the proximity fuse."

Suddenly, a Japanese four-inch shell blew the cowling off a Helldiver in the leading flight as it dove into a narrow gorge. The wounded pilot slumped forward and struggled with the controls. The battered dive-bomber banked hard as the pilot pulled the plane up into a steep stall. Slowly, she flopped over on to her back, dove down, rolled right side up, and fell off into a violent spin. The fatally injured pilot smeared blood all over the inside of his cockpit canopy as he fought to gain control and unload his bombs. The five-hundred-pound bombs spilled away from the plane like pebbles from a wagon wheel. Knifing down, they exploded among the trees as the damaged wingtip began to fold.

"MAY DAY! MAY DAY!" the radio-gunner in the rear seat broadcast. "This crate is coming apart like a peeled banana!"

In slow motion, a nylon parachute blossomed from the rear seat. Caught in the spin and the churn of the slipstream, the canopy snagged on the tail fin and wrapped the rudder and the elevators in white cloth. Wild centrifugal force tore the helpless gunner out of his cockpit and spun him around at the end of the shroud lines in a wide and accelerating arc. Shedding cockpit covers and torn wing panels, the doomed plane dropped far into the steep and incredibly narrow valley. As the fliers above watched, the parachute's long nylon cords whipped the young airman into the face of a cliff just before the plane crashed and exploded. Crushed like a fly on a windscreen, the inert body of Chris Foreman from Gila Bend, Arizona, clung to the sheer granite wall as flames and smoke engulfed it.

"Their luck ran out," Chief Flannigan declared in a somber voice over the squadron frequency. "Now let's all get back to work."

Released from the spell of the crash, the two Canadian radiogunners flying in the squadron leader's formation prepared for their dive by following a fixed routine. Expertly, Carson Braddock and Max Bryson cranked open their cockpit covers and braced their bodies against the icy slipstream that swirled around them. The stout stay wires that held their machine-guns in place were easy to unhook. As soon as the twin-barreled weapons were swung outboard, a few pumps on a steel handle lowered the turtleback shelter fared into the tailfin down and out of the way. With gloved hands they secured the smoke bombs in their sheet metal racks on the floor, smoothed out the folded ammunition belts running up from the feed cans, charged both thirty-caliber machine-guns, and fired off test busts. Swiftly, the cordite in the gun-smoke bit into their sinuses like raw ammonia on a winter day.

"Make sure your inflatable life raft is secure in the overhead tube," Max Bryson advised. "You don't want it sliding into the back of your head in a sharp pull out."

Facing backward, the rear-seat gunners remained on almost continuous lookout as they completed their cockpit duties. From fifteen thousand feet the sky above was a brittle blue bereft of clouds and enemy aircraft. Ignoring the continuous burst of antiaircraft shells, each gunner turned from side to side in order to scan to the right and the left, above, and below. Their trained eyes caught, registered, and quickly looked past every friendly plane aloft. Circling in a wide arc, the four planes in the squadron leader's flight kept tabs on the rest of the Curtiss dive-bombers as they moved up to their dive points. Busy, alert, and on guard, the cousins felt the tension mount. Bright, keen, and bristling with nervous energy, the young men pinned their trust on technical ability and fast reflexes.

Both Canadian rear-seat gunners were bundled in reddishbrown leather flight jackets. They wore white silk scarves to keep their necks from chaffing as a result of the almost continuous sector scans their gunnery demanded. With their machine-guns balanced against the slipstream, they pulled their yellow cowhide gloves tight on their hands. A few adjustments fitted the green Polaroid goggles more comfortably to their faces and eyes.

At eighteen, Max Bryson was pale skinned and freckled but the fine lines that open cockpit flying had etched around his mouth added a grim and brittle intensity to his blue eyes. Each time he chinned his machine-guns and worked out an imaginary lead in the iron sight mounted between the two gun barrels the thought of avenging his uncle's death hovered nearby. Just a wingspan away, eighteen-year-old Carson Braddock had dark and unruly hair that never stayed completely hidden beneath his leather helmet. Nor did the anguish and pain of the loss of his father stay locked up inside his head. Although he never spoke of it, the care he took in bore sighting his weapons and reinforcing his Scarff ring for the maximum concentration of his gunfire reflected Big Carson's wish to see him excel. Despite a casual look, his full lips and slender nose took on a menacing edge as soon as he turned serious.

"Boost your oxygen intake for a few minutes," Carson Braddock recommended. "There's no sense having your stomach juices up in your throat just because we have to go down backwards to cover our rear-ends in the dive."

The Curtiss SB2C-5E Helldiver was three inches short of a fifty foot wing span. She weighed just over eight tons on take-off. The flat nose, long greenhouse, and rounded fin and rudder made the stiff landing hook that stuck out behind her tail wheel look like an afterthought. The "Beast" was driven by a nineteen hundred horsepower Wright Cyclone engine that gave it a cruising speed just two miles an hour slower than that of the navy's top fighter plane, the Grumman Hellcat. The pilot sat high above the leading edge of the wing embedded mid-way down the plane's fuselage. Being atop the plane's center of gravity, he suffered fewer Gs during a pull out than the man in the back seat.

"Scanning this unbroken blue sky is like staring hard in a dream," Carson ventured. "With nothing to focus upon it soon starts to hurt."

The Helldiver's rear-seat cockpit had a Plexiglas cover that opened forward. The enclosure half sheltered the radio-gunner's ANARC 13 pre-tuned radio and the orange screen of his radarscope even when the cockpit was open. Around him there was a chest high steel ring that allowed his swivel mounted machine-guns to travel forward as far as his arms could push them against the stiff slipstream. In action, he operated a pair of hand-held thirty caliber Browning machine-guns. The rudder and the horizontal stabilizer both stood in the way of shooting directly astern. So it required intense concentration to keep from shooting your tail off. But the worst part was the pull out. The G force always drained away Carson's consciousness for a second or two.

"I still get a knot in my stomach," Max confessed, "tighter than a monkey's paw."

Anticipating the pain and stress of the blackout already, Carson and Max locked their hands on the gun grips so they could open fire on any available target even before the mist cleared from their brains. Poised and ready, well in advance of the peel off that started the dive, each gunner's entire body was as tense as a leaf spring under a heavy load. And all the while, they twisted, tilted, and turned their heads slightly to keep their eyes from focusing on a fixed point in empty space. Sky-lock was the aerial gunner's most common failing since it dulled and even deadened the vision for short periods. So the cousins regularly pinched their necks and tapped their goggles to fend off the lure of that restful blank stare and reported the slightest irregularity.

"Skipper," Carson Braddock warned. "I'd swear there's metal glinting in the sunlight at angels twenty-five some thirty miles astern."

"Our Vought Corsair fighter-cover tops out at angels twenty three," Max Bryson advised. "And whatever it is ain't big enough to show up brighter than static snow on radar. So it's nothing as large as a B-29 or even a Jap Betty."

The warning of a possible bogey that was some six minutes flying time away was an unwelcome distraction. Still in tight formation, the young ensign at the controls of Max's dive-bomber gently fishtailed their Helldiver through a mushy bank and turn that signaled his concern to his fellow pilots as he replied to the Canadian gunners.

"I'll be damned," Carson's twenty-two year old pilot commented. "If you guys had any better eyesight you'd see the Lord in the sunrise."

"My guess is that it's a lone Army Airforce P-38 on a re-con mission," Max's pilot replied. "But keep an eye on it until it's our turn to dive."

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Catalogue Information

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