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246 CHAPTER ELEVEN “He Was Wholly Unrecognizable” on the road between Maylands civil airdrome and Perth’s port of Fremantle , 1st Lt. Robert Morrissey was supervising a strange procession during the wee hours of Friday, February 20. Flatbed trucks were slowly towing thirty-two P-40Es by their tail wheels over the twenty miles that separated the airfield from the port. Lt. Gerry Dix and the other intended pilots of the pursuit planes were driving the 6x6 flatbed Aussie trucks, while ground crewmen from the 51st Pursuit Group were riding on the tailgates to ensure that the tie-downs held. There were no obstructions on either side of the road to block their movement. The only possible impediment, large trees in the residential area of Perth, had been furtively chopped down at midnight.1 Moored at the Fremantle dock astern of the U.S. cruiser Phoenix, where it had arrived on the afternoon of the nineteenth, the old former aircraft carrier USS Langley—now a seaplane tender—was ready to take aboard the P-40s and their thirty-three pilots for the trip to Java. Also waiting to go aboard were twelve crew chiefs selected for the voyage from the 51st Pursuit Group’s men who had arrived at Fremantle the day before on the USAT Holbrook and the Australian troopship SS Duntroon as part of the MS-5 convoy from Melbourne .2 For the next five and a half hours the Langley’s air officer supervised the hoisting aboard of the P-40s, using special slings the Langley was carrying for that purpose. To his relief the whole operation went off without a hitch. On the cut-back flight deck, now reduced to fifty-nine percent of its original length, twenty-seven of the P-40s were spread out, while the remaining five were positioned on the quarterdeck, below the flight deck, along with barrels of gasoline.3 He Was Wholly Unrecognizable 247 After the planes had been loaded, the thirty-three pilots—including Joe Martin, whose ship had been wrecked at Maylands but who wanted to go to Java anyway as a spare—boarded the seaplane tender. The twelve enlisted men of the 51st Group boarded as well, but shortly after they settled in they were recalled by the 51st Group’s CO, and twelve others—a radio mechanic, a propeller specialist, and ten crew chiefs, drawn mainly from the 35th Group’s Headquarters Squadron men on the Duntroon—were substituted for them. “See you in Java!” one of the twelve replacements called out to his 35th Group buddies on the Duntroon as he prepared to board the Langley. The Duntroon men were envious, wishing they had been picked to travel to Java on the U.S. Navy ship, with its great meals, rather than on an Australian transport.4 When the loading of men and machines was completed, the Langley’s skipper, Cdr. Robert P. McConnell, invited Morrissey and Capt. Boyd “Buzz” Wagner, commanding officer of the 13th Pursuit Squadron (Provisional), to join him for breakfast, along with some of the pilots. Morrissey and Wagner were toying with the idea of remaining on the Langley for its voyage to Java, but a message arrived ordering them to report back. (Later, when Morrissey returned to his Perth hotel room, he was confronted by the irate owners of the trees he’d ordered chopped down. They rejected his promises to seek compensation for them from USAFIA headquarters and finally left only when he persisted in arguing that there was nothing else he could do.)5 before daybreak on friday, February 20, crew chiefs at Ngoro Field were busy hooking drop tanks on the bellies of sixteen of their P-40s on the line. The 17th Pursuit was being ordered to fly down to Singosari to link up with seven A-24 dive bombers and three LB-30s for an attack on the Japanese invasion force that had landed off the southern coast of Bali the day before. Bud Sprague himself at the head of the first flight would be leading the formation, with Grant Mahony, Walt Coss, and Joe Kruzel heading up the other three flights of four ships each. Just the day before, Sprague had been promoted to lieutenant colonel.6 At the order for takeoff, the sixteen pilots climbed into their P-40s parked at the east end of the main, east-west, runway . Sprague wanted each pilot to take off individually in rapid succession so...

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