War worker walks 20 miles through storm
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Russia will snatch ‘club’ from U.S., Bullitt warns
Ex-envoy to France warns against making same mistake as Wilson in 1919
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25 Marines survive sinking
Buenos Aires, Argentina –
Eighty-four survivors, including 25 U.S. Marines, from the torpedoed American ship Staghound, were landed at Rio de Janeiro last Tuesday by the Argentine steamer Rio Colorado, it was officially reported here today.
Japs let Reds receive U.S. aid past backdoor
Lend-Lease report shows how Soviet ships bring in supplies
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Buck private or nothing –
Congress opposes Army commission for OPA man
Ginsburg’s chances ‘to make grade’ believed zero
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New Social Security plan softens ‘blow’ to doctors
Physicians assured decent livelihood; dentists face ‘moving day’ orders
By Merriman Smith, United Press staff writer
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Fund for farm labor slashed by House group
Committee also restricts way in which money can be spent
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Rick advises incentive pay to aid output
Manpower solution simple if all will utilize top capacity, he says
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U.S. planes keep Japs in retreat on Guinea trails
Pittsburgher trained many of pilots who wiped out foe’s transport fleet; jungle strafing his specialty
By George Weller
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
A forward Tunisian airdrome – (March 11)
Everything around a fighter-bomber airdrome is important, but I know of nothing more important than the repair section. It’s vastly different from airplane shops or garages back home, where nothing more than a little inconvenience resulted from the long layup of a plane or car. Out here there are just so many planes. With us and Germany teeter-tottering for air superiority over Africa, every single one is as precious as though it were made of gold. Every plane out of action is temporarily the same as a plane destroyed.
It is the job of the repair section to take the shot-up planes and get them back into the air a little faster than is humanly possible. And that is what they are doing.
At our desert airdrome this section is in charge of Maj. Charles E. Coverley, of Palo Alto, California. His nickname is “Erk,” and he was one of my fellow travelers from England.
His right arm is a quiet mechanical genius named Walter Goodwin, of Grove City, Pennsylvania – a Regular Army sergeant, just promoted on the field to warrant officer. The men worship him and every officer on the field accepts his judgment on plane damage as final.
It’s a crazy idea, but it works
The repair section operates under a theory that seems outlandish after coming from the peacetime business world. Its motto is to give away everything it can. Instead of hoarding their supplies and yelling that they’re snowed-under with work, they go around the field accepting every job imaginable, fulfilling every pilot’s request, donating from their precious small stock of spare parts to any line mechanic that asks for something. For only by doing it that way do planes get back into the air a few hours sooner.
In the repair section are 250 master craftsmen. They are happy and sincere and proud. I’ve never seen greater willingness to work beyond all requirements than these men show.
Let me give you an example of how the section works. After a recent little to-do with the enemy, 14 of our planes were found to be damaged. Some needed only skin patches; others had washtub holes through the wings and were almost rebuilding jobs. Maj. Coverley and the squadron engineers surveyed the situation all morning, driving in a jeep from one plane to another. I rode with them, and when noon came and not a plane had been moved over to the repair area, I thought to myself this is a mighty slow way to win a war. But I changed my mind a little later.
It takes that long to estimate all the damage, plan out your program, distribute your men and machines over the huge field, and get things rolling. But once rolling…
Two months’ work in 3 days
Two days later I checked on their progress. Five of those wrecked planes were ready for missions that first evening. Three more were delivered the following day. On the third day four more were just about finished. That made 12. The other two had been turned into salvage, for spare parts.
Under peacetime conditions at home, it would have taken perhaps two months even in the finest shops to get all those planes back into the air. But here they were fighting again within three days. You can do the impossible when you have to.
This field operates with a dearth of spare parts, as probably do all our fields at the far ends of the earth. So, the field provides its own spare parts by scrapping the most badly damaged planes, and using the good parts that are left. This happens to about one of every 15 planes that are shot up. These condemned planes are towed to the engineering section, and there they gradually disappear. Finally, they are skeletons – immobile, pathetic, skeletons, picked bare by the scavenging mechanics.
They hope inspectors never come
These salvage planes are nicknamed “hangar queens.” Five of them are sitting on the line now. As you know, every bomber has a name painted on its nose. One of these hangar queens is called Fertile Myrtle. Another is Special Delivery. And a third is Little Eva, which happens also to be the nickname of a friend of mine in Albuquerque.
The Little Eva of Albuquerque spends her life raising flowers and being nice to other people; the Little Eva of Africa has given her life that other planes may fly on to help end the war.
You’d be touched by the sight of the repair shops here. All plane work is done right outdoors.
The only shops are tents where small machine work is done. The tents are three-sided, with one end open. The floor is sand. When the wind blows the men have to wear goggles. Beside every tent, almost within one-jump distance, is a deep slit trench to dive into when the enemy bombers come. Theirs is real war work, and you can’t say they’re much safer than the airmen themselves, for they are subject to frequent bombing.
They say their main hope is that no experts from the factories back home show up to look things over. The experts would tell them a broken wing can’t be fixed this way; a shattered landing gear can’t be fixed that way. But these birds know damned well it can be, for they’re doing it.
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U.S. Navy Department (March 13, 1943)
Communiqué No. 308
South Pacific.
During the night of March 11‑12, two Japanese planes dropped bombs on U.S. positions on Guadalcanal Island. No casualties or damage resulted.
On March 12:
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During the early morning, Liberator heavy bombers (Consolidated B‑24) carried out minor bombing attacks on Japanese positions at Ballale, in the Shortland Island area, and at Vila and Munda in the New Georgia Group.
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During the night of March 12‑13, a force of Avenger torpedo bombers (Grumman TBF) attacked Japanese positions at Munda on New Georgia Island. Fires were started in the enemy area.
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One U.S. plane failed to return from these missions.