Editorial: Saving bonds
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In Washington –
House, Senate confer today on mustering-out pay bill
Proposal for $300 for 60 days service and $100 for less is considered likely to be adopted
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Soldier vote speeded
Washington (UP) –
Administration forces in the Senate today defeated a Republican attempt to prevent immediate consideration of soldier-vote legislation.
The decision to take up the legislation ahead of food subsidies was reached by Democratic Party leaders in caucus. When the Senate convened, Senator Robert A. Taft (R-OH), an opponent of the administration-sponsored bill, tried to upset the Democratic program by moving to consider subsidies first, but the Senate rejected his motion 38–33.
Five Democrats voted with Senator Taft.
Democratic Leader Alben W. Barkley (D-KY) said the committee discussed only the legislative program – the order in which the two issues would be taken up – and did not try to bind party members to any particular side on either question.
Democratic ranks are split on both subjects. Southern Senators have resisted the administration-favored soldier-vote bill on the ground that the federal ballot it provides amounts to an invasion of state’s rights. Democrats are also split on the subsidy issue, with farm state Senators leading a fight to outlaw the present food subsidy program.
Monahan: Soldier in training prefers war movies
But at the battlefronts his tastes are completely ‘escapist’
By Kaspar Monahan
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Johnson: Man who knew him when defends crooner Sinatra
Memphis newspaperman says Sinatra is what is known as ‘a musician’s singer’
By Lee Johnson
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Missing Army nurse is reported safe
Lt. Gertrude G. Dawson, 29-year-old Army nurse, is safe in Allied military territory, according to word received by her mother, Mrs. J. A. Mathewson of Vandegrift.
Lt. Dawson was reported missing in November when a plane carrying her and 12 other Army nurses overshot an airport at Bari, Italy, in bad weather, and was believed to have made a force landing somewhere in the Balkans.
Miss Dawson is a graduate of Southside Hospital and served as a United Airlines hostess six years before enlisting in the Army in October 1942. She was assigned overseas last September as an air evacuation unit attaché and was participating in operations between North Africa and Bari when reported missing.
Mightiest warship will join armada
New York (UP) –
The mightiest battlewagon of them all, the new 45,000-ton USS Missouri, will slide down the ways at the Brooklyn Navy Yard next Saturday to take her plate later in the greatest war armada of history, RAdm. Monroe Kelly, commandant of the yard, announced today.
More powerful than any craft ever to sail the seas, the Missouri, on completion, will be the fourth dreadnaught of the Iowa class to be put into service by the Navy since the start of the war.
The sponsor of the ship at Saturday’s launching will be Mary Margaret Truman, 19, the only child of Senator and Mrs. Harry S. Truman of Independence, Missouri. She is a sophomore at George Washington University.
Present plans call for completion of the Missouri nine months ahead of schedule because of accelerated production at the yard. Her keel was laid Jan. 6, 1941.
Flattop launched
Quincy, Massachusetts (UP) –
The aircraft carrier USS Hancock – the third vessel named for the famous signer of the Declaration of Independence – slid down the ways into the Fore River today at colorful ceremonies at the Bethlehem Steel Corporation’s shipyard.
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
In Italy – (by wireless)
Our fighter and bomber pilots laugh about some of their accidental successes.
A light-bomber outfit was making a run with a brand-new replacement pilot, out on his first mission. Their target was very close to our own lines. As they were making their turn, this new pilot lost formation and swung way out on the outside of the others.
Realizing his mistake, and seeing he was about to get left behind, he just salvoed his bombs and went streaking to catch up with the formation.
The squadron leader saw it and felt sure this neophyte had dropped his bombs on our own troops. When he got home, he sat there by the telephone, sweating, waiting for the inevitable phone call.
Pretty soon the phone rang. A voice announced itself as Gen. So-and-So. The squadron leader’s heart sank. When a general phones, it bodes no good. The general boomed:
Say, who is that crazy pilot that left your formation and dropped his bombs off to the side?
The squadron leader got ready to faint. He knew the next sentence would be that those bombs had killed 300 American troops. But instead, the general shouted:
Well, whoever he was, give him my congratulations. He got a direct hit on a gun we’ve been trying to get for two weeks. Wiped it off. Excellent work.
Direct hits on straw stacks
Another time, one of our artillery observers saw three big German tanks pull into a field several mules back of the German lines. The crews jumped out and began pitching straw over them, and in a few minutes, they resembled a straw stack.
Not five minutes later, our dive bombers came over. Their target was a gun position in an adjacent orchard. But their aim was bad, and their bombs landed directly on the three straw-covered tanks.
It was just an accident, but the Germans probably winder what the world’s coming to when Americans can have planes over and blowing up your tanks five minutes after you’ve hidden them.
One time our dive bombers couldn’t find their principal target because of bad weather. They were on their way home when they picked up their alternate target, a supply dump at a crossroads.
The first plane dived in and dropped its bombs. Instantly a gigantic flame shot 1,500 feet into the air. Before the last plane had finished its dive – a matter of only a few seconds – the pillar of smoke was 4,000 feet high.
They really hit the jackpot, but they don’t know what the jackpot was. They can’t conceive of anything that would flame that high so quickly.
Lost pilot fires 12 planes
Another time a pilot went out on a reconnaissance mission. Because of hazy weather, and because two adjacent passes in the mountains looked exactly alike, he took the wrong one and got lost, although he didn’t know he was lost.
He kept on flying by his map for a long time, although actually he was far north of where his map ran out. At last it began to dawn on him that something was wrong.
Just as he was getting good and worried, he looked down and directly under him was a field with a dozen or more small German planes lined up alongside the runway. So down he went in a surprise dive, set the German planes afire, and then headed rapidly south.
He found his home field just as he ran out of gas. When the boys asked where he’d been, he didn’t know. It took the pilot and his squadron commander two hours of intense study of their maps to figure out what field he had shot up so beautifully. He had been 200 miles north of where he intended to be.
Timing of war puts military in the saddle
Invasion plans restrain labor, affect WPB and politics
By John W. Love, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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In post-war era –
Plane industry likely to make first ‘real’ czar
Engineer says auto makers are shackled with outmoded tools, dyes
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Loss of foot fails to stop Yank soldier
After killing two Germans, he’s wounded, but gets third
By James E. Roper, United Press staff writer
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Inside story of ‘peace now’ –
Pacifists seek aid of Congress for peace parley now
America Firsters have prominent role in growing movement to influence isolationist Senators, Representatives
By Thomas M. Johnson
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U.S. Navy Department (January 25, 1944)
CINCPAC Press Release No. 238
Heavy bombers of the 7th Army Air Force attacked Wotje Atoll in the Marshall Islands at dusk on January 23 (West Longitude Date). Approximately 50 tons of bombs were dropped. No fighter opposition was met, and all of our planes returned without damage.