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CHAPTER THIRTEEN: “Every Day a Nightmare!”
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269 CHAPTER THIRTEEN “Every Day a Nightmare!” it was 0430 when Paul Gambonini climbed out of bed in his house at Blimbing and with fifteen other pilots and their mechanics headed out in the dark for the field at Ngoro on this Tuesday, February 24, for yet another day of alert duty. This time he was assigned as an element leader in Jack Dale’s C flight. Ed Kiser was to head up B flight, and Joe Kruzel D flight, while their CO, Grant Mahony would be leading A flight.1 Not surprisingly, an interception order came through from the ADC, this time at 0915. Japanese bombers had been picked up heading west. The ADC was assuming that Soerabaja was the target again. With Mahony in the lead, the pursuiters thundered down the field and headed northeast in a climb to meet their adversaries. As they approached the Soerabaja area at about 1000, flying at twenty-seven thousand feet, they spotted the Japanese in the distance; they looked like twenty-four Betty bombers in two waves. It appeared they had bombed Soerabaja harbor and were beginning to head home. The Americans took after them, but only the four in Kiser’s flight were able to coax their struggling ships at such a high altitude to catch up with the speedy bombers. In firing passes, Kiser and Robert “Dock” Dockstader scored hits on the Bettys in one of the formations. But nine unseen Zeros were now after the Americans. Several of the P-40s were shot up before the four flights headed back to Ngoro.2 At about noon, all sixteen P-40s came in to land back at Ngoro Field without incident. Ed Kiser put in a claim for one of the bombers he believed had crashed into the ground, while the ADC reported seeing another fall into the sea, which the pursuiters thought was the one that Dockstader had attacked. 270 Chapter Thirteen The pilots regarded themselves as lucky to have survived the attack by the Zeros. An inspection of their ships revealed that six were too badly damaged to take up again without repairs.3 With no more P-40s expected as reinforcements , the ground crews were straining to keep their dwindling number of ships in airworthy condition. The Allison engines were wearing out, with too many hours on them, but there were no new motors available to replace them. The brakes were in bad condition, too, and the planes’ tachometers gone or broken. The squadron’s armorers were struggling with rust in their efforts to keep the .50-caliber wing guns in firing condition, yet often only half of them were working. Ammunition for the guns was running short, too, and they could not expect any additional supplies.4 That afternoon, the squadron got the news that they would be losing their new CO after only two days as head of the 17th. FEAF headquarters in Bandoeng had ordered him out to serve in a position directly under Major General Brereton in India. Mahony was going “to prepare the place for us,” he told Bill Hennon and the others, but that was just Mahony’s assumption. No official word was forthcoming on what their “secret destination” was. In addition, Maj. Bill Fisher in Soerabaja was ordering two more of the squadron pilots, plus twenty-five enlisted men, to depart as well, again to an unknown destination . In his last meeting with his pilots, Mahony picked Gene Wahl and Ray Thompson as the two to leave. Hennon refused to be considered for the evacuation . He had asked Mahony to let him stay to the last.5 Later in the afternoon, Mahony left with Wahl, Thompson, and the enlisted men for Soerabaja, where they were to board a train for Jogjakarta. Mahony ’s 40-A flying school classmate, Bo McCallum, was left in charge as the most senior officer remaining. McCallum had been promoted to captain five days earlier.6 In charge of the enlisted men in the van taking them to Soerabaja was MSgt. Murray Nichols, the thirty-year-old armorer from Lubbock, Texas, whom Mahony had appointed as the squadron’s first sergeant the day before. On arriving at the Soerabaja railway station, Nichols ran into Capt. Frank Kurtz, Colonel Eubank’s liaison officer, whom he had known as a cadet at Randolph Field in 1938. At Kurtz’s request, Nichols and the men helped some wounded sailors from the USS Marblehead get on the train to...