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170 CHAPTER EIGHT “Someone Is Crazy—This Is Murder” at amberley field the twenty-four pilots assigned to the 33rd Pursuit Squadron (Provisional) had just finished lunch on Wednesday, February 11, when they were called together by their commanding officer, Maj. Floyd Pell. He told them to get ready to leave for Port Pirie, South Australia, in two hours on the first leg of their transfer trip to Java. Their first stop would be Sydney, a 450-mile hop, where they would spend the night. The RAAF would be providing them with maps over the full fourteen-hundred-mile route.1 As instructed by Pell, Bob McMahon left all his belongs in his tent except for his musette bag, his camera, his .45-caliber pistol, and a .22-caliber pistol he wanted to bring along too. As he stowed his bag and other items in his P-40E, whose fuselage he had decorated as Bahootee the Cootee, his buddy Wally MacLean came up to him, “down in the face,” to say goodbye. MacLean was assigned to the assembly depot at Amberley and would not be going out with McMahon’s outfit. “Well, we gotta go some time,” McMahon told him, then, thinking of the recent war news, added, “The way things are going we are all damn well going to get killed.” But only eleven of the squadron’s pilots would be leaving that afternoon, Pell had decided: those in his A flight and in McMahon’s D flight, plus Jack Peres, the leader of B flight, and John Glover with him. Gerry Keenan, the C flight leader and deputy to Pell, would lead the others out the following day.2 The takeoff signal was relayed down the line of the partially dispersed P-40Es at 1530. At the far end McMahon taxied out past his wingman and his element leader, giving them the “follow me” wave. After Pell cleared the field, his wingman and other A flight members followed at ten-second intervals , then Peres and Glover, and finally McMahon’s three.3 As Pell came back This Is Murder 171 over the field at only one thousand feet, McMahon and the others were barely able to slide under him and form up, in stacked-down position, as instructed before takeoff by their CO. It was nerve-wracking to form up with only a couple hundred feet clearance above the ground. But by the time Pell headed the formation for Brisbane, all eleven were in a “reasonable facsimile of formation .” However, McMahon, among others, felt that their leader was “a little new at leading a pursuit formation.”4 In Pell’s flight Jim Naylor was having serious trouble with his ship. On takeoff his prop had “run away,” and he was unable to correct the problem either manually or electrically after joining up with the formation, his engine revolutions on or near three thousand. About twenty minutes out of Amberley , he decided to abort. Flying ahead to Pell’s wing, he signaled his CO that he had a problem and wanted to return to Amberley. Pell signaled his okay, and Naylor reversed his direction and flew away from the flight.5 On the return flight Naylor was becoming increasingly desperate. His Allison engine was “running extremely hot,” and he was losing power. To get his oil and engine temperatures down, he was throttling back. Figuring he had no chance to get back to Amberley in time, Naylor decided to look for some place for an emergency landing. He spotted a rather large clearing in trees ahead and to the left and descended to about five hundred feet before seeing that the clearing was full of tree stumps after a recent cutting. Naylor felt trapped; now he could not gain any altitude. About one or two miles out of Amberley, limping on towards the field, he noticed his oil pressure gauge had dropped to zero, then saw smoke and a burst of flame from his engine. “This is it,” he realized. He pulled the throttle and mixture back, cut all switches, dropped his belly tank, and opened his canopy for the crash landing. But then he saw a long row of Avro Ansons directly in front of him, parked wingtip to wingtip at the edge of the field. Reacting immediately, he glanced to the right and spotted a small clearing in the trees. Cocking his plane on its right wingtip, he pushed his nose down and hit the ground...

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