46 Army fighter pilots down 15 or more planes
Maj. Bong leads with 40 to his credit – Lt. Col. Gabreski, Oil City, fourth with 28
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Yanks will land in Japan, Radio Tokyo warns people
Creation of home guard in enemy homeland urged to meet American attack
WASHINGTON (UP) – Radio Tokyo told the Jap people today that they must expect an American invasion of their homeland.
The warning came as the Jap High Command formally acknowledged that U.S. troops were ashore on Iwo Island, 750 miles south of Tokyo, and the capital itself smoldered from the largest B-29 raid yet on Japan.
Landing possible
“We must now realize that it is not impossible for the enemy to attempt a landing on the homeland,” a Tokyo domestic broadcast said, quoting an editorial in the influential newspaper Mainichi.
The broadcast said:
In the fourth year since the outbreak of the war, the battlefront has gradually narrowed down from the gigantic and elastic defense structure that was won at the outset of the war until now the homeland has indeed become a fighting front. The intention of the enemy to take Iwo Jima is bitterly strong.
Enemy at gates
A German DNB dispatch from Tokyo said the people had come to realize that “the enemy is at the gates.” Jap newspapers, the dispatch said, were urgently demanding the establishment of a Jap home guard similar to the Nazi Volkssturm “in order to be able successfully to meet the United States attack against Japan herself.”
“The Japanese are fully aware that the recent air raids will be repeated on an even larger scale,” DNB said.
Monahan: They’ve streamlined Miss Rosalinda
Die Fledermaus, with new title, arrives at the Nixon Theater
By Kaspar Monahan
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Editorial: Halsey’s warning
The Battle of Iwo Island will be very tough, but not as bad as Tarawa because we have learned a lot since then. That is the judgment of Adm. Halsey, just back in Washington after his spectacular series of victories in the Far Pacific. Few, if any, can speak with greater authority in that field.
In addition to his comment on the big battle now raging over the key air bases within 750 miles of Tokyo, the naval hero had a great deal to say about the Pacific war in general and the nature of the Japs in particular. Apart from the swearing, name-calling fireworks with which he decorates his interviews – a blustering technique unlike the sober effectiveness with which he fights and wins his battles – he has much wisdom to give us.
According to Adm. Halsey, the Japs are going to attempt peace feelers to save themselves this time and prepare for another war. They will try to undermine our determination for complete victory and unconditional surrender. That will be the point of greatest danger. This is how he figures it:
The industrialists in Japan undoubtedly see that their empire, which has taken them a great many years to build up, is rapidly getting in position where it is going to crumble absolutely. When they can get the upper hand… they will take over, and begin to put out very attractive peace feelers… They will appeal to mothers of men who are out there now.
Naturally, the mother wants her son saved, and may not think that by doing that she is sending her grandson and his grandson to death. If we negotiate peace and don’t demand unconditional surrender, we will be committing the greatest crime in our history.
He added that “we had better keep our fleet after victory.”
The peace feelers, predicted by the Admiral, have already begun. Only last week, Tokyo said the Foreign Minister would not “reject any hand offering peace.”
So far, there is no disposition in this country to fall into a negotiated peace trap. But Adm. Halsey’s warning won’t hurt us. We cannot be too alert in a war for survival.
U.S. agencies face big job in enforcement of curfew
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U.S. expert denies Russian bond deal
Sees no settlement of czarist loans
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
IN THE MARIANA ISLANDS (Delayed) – Our chief pilot on the last long leg of our flight from Honolulu to the Marianas was Lt. Cmdr. Don Skirvin. He’s from the family that owns big hotels in Oklahoma City and even if you didn’t know, you could tell from his creased hands and neck that he’s either a Texan or an Oklahoman.
Cmdr. Skirvin has never worked at the hotel business, though. He has to have freedom, and gad about the world. He has been flying 18 years – flew for oil companies in South America, went to Spain during the revolution and flew combat there.
Then came our war and he went into the Navy and flew combat in the South Pacific. But he likes big planes best, and now is trans-Pacific skipper on these huge airliners.
Just before daylight Cmdr. Skirvin sent the orderly back to wake me up, and asked me to come forward to the pilot’s compartment. Then he had me sit in the co-pilot’s seat, and from that exalted vantage point on this monster of the air I saw the dawn gradually touch and lighten the cottony acres of clouds out there over the wide Pacific.
Little peaks of grandeur
Flying is mostly monotonous and dull. But there are always little peaks of grandeur in every flight. Seeing this dawn come was one of them. It was an exaltation, and you couldn’t help but be thrilled by it.
Cmdr. Skirvin takes movies as a hobby, and has taken 1,500 feet of color film of just such dawns and sunsets as this one. He said the folks at home wrote that if he saw such things as this often, no wonder he liked to fly.
We came out of the boundless sky and over our island destination just a little after dawn. The island was green and beautiful – and terribly far from home – down there in the fresh dawn.
Do it all the time
It seemed unbelievable that we could have drawn ourselves to it so unerringly out of the vast Pacific spaces. It was like a blind man walking alone across a field, and putting his finger directly on some previously designated barb of a wire fence on the other side. But as I say, they do it all the time. (Thank the Lord!)
Then Cmdr. Skirvin asked me if I would like to stay up front while we landed. Indeed I would, for that is a rare invitation. I stood just behind the two pilots while we circled the field and dropped lower and circled again.
Landing one of these immense planes is like a ritual in school. The co-pilot takes a printed list, encased in plexiglass, from off the instrument board. Then he starts reading aloud, down the list. After each item the pilot calls back “Check.”
Thorough check
It takes five minutes to go through all the complicated adjustments to change the plane from something that will only fly, into something that will also merge successfully with the earth. Always the typed list is read aloud and checked to make sure that no single thing is forgotten.
And then we were ready. It was hot down close to the ground, and sweat was pouring off us. Over his radio the co-pilot asked the ground for permission to land. Cmdr. Skirvin twisted himself more firmly into his seat, took a heavy grip on the control wheel, pushed forward on the stick, and down we went.
When you fly, there is no sense of speed at all. It is as though you were sitting forever in one spot. But when you land, the earth comes up to you with appalling speed. Things go faster and faster. Everybody is tense. The whole field comes up at you almost as in a nightmare. It is the most thrilling thing about flying.
Landed at last
And then you blend into the earth. These planes are so big and stand so high that it seemed to me we were still 50 feet in the air when we felt the wheels touch. The plane stuck to the runway and rushed on forward with shocking speed.
The runway was long, and Cmdr. Skirvin called, “We’ll use all of it, for I don’t believe in tromping on the brakes.”
Then gradually we slowed and when we’d come almost to a stop, a jeep pulled out in front of us. On the back of it was a big blackboard and painted on the board were the words “Follow Me.” The jeep slowly led us to our parking place.
Then the co-pilot read off another list, while the pilot pulled levers and turned switches and called “Check.” It took more than a minute to transform that great metal bird from something animate and miraculous into something that stands lifeless on the ground.
And then the door opened and we stepped down onto the strange soil of the Mariana Islands – close at last to the vast sprawling war of the Pacific.
Gracie Allen Reporting
By Gracie Allen
Well, I see that Congress wants to raise its own pay, but is a little timid about it, remembering the “Bundles for Congress” movement that sprang up the last time a hint was dropped.
Personally, I think they could get the raise if they dramatize their plight the way it’s done in the movies. The pleading Congressman should appear before the Ways and Means Committee clasping a tiny ragged urchin in either hand while a hidden hundred-and-ten-piece orchestra plays Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique.
And no wonder we see so many Congressmen nowadays who play banjos and guitars. Probably the only way they can exist is to make a little on the side at chautauquas and club smokers.
In the early days of our republic, some of our backwoods Congressmen used to live by trapping small animals and eating them. If conditions keep up today, I’m afraid the squirrels in Potomac Park are in for a nasty surprise.