Canned goods to be scarce
Survey shows real picture
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
IN THE WESTERN PACIFIC (delayed) – The main thing I never understood about how an aircraft carrier operates, is what they did with all the rest of the planes while one was landing or taking off.
I had thought the flight deck had to be entirely clear of planes. I thought that as soon as one took off, they brought the next one up from the lower deck by elevator, and sent it off.
It isn’t that way at all. There are always idle planes standing on deck during landings and takeoffs. There have to be, for the hangar deck down below isn’t big enough to hold all the planes. But these idle planes are never along the side of the deck – they are at one end or the other. Here’s how it’s done:
Planes always take off and always land from stern to bow of the ship – or from rear to forward as you simple landlubbers would say.
For the takeoff, all the planes are parked tightly together at the rear of the deck., all have folding wings, which has been one of the great contributions to this war, without them a carrier could hardly carry enough planes to justify itself.
Noise is terrific
These parked planes take up maybe one-eighth of the flight deck – the rear one-eighth. When they get ready to launch planes all the engines are started and warmed up while the planes are still parked tightly together.
The noise is terrific. Angry propellers whirl within inches of the tail of the next ship. “Plane-pushers” by the dozen crawl around, under, and among these flying propellers, adjusting chocks and untying the lines that hold the planes down.
When they are ready, the center plane in the front is taxied out a few feet. His folded wings are unfolded. The pilot tests his controls. puts down his flaps.
A signalman standing ahead and to the right of him indicates by motions when he is to start. He holds on his brakes, speeds up his engine until the noise is ear-splitting, and then the signalman leans over and dramatically swings his arm forward, as though personally to give the plane impetus.
The plane starts rolling. The deck behind him is packed with planes. But the seven-eighths of deck in front is clear. Not a plane or man on it.
No sooner has one plane gone than the next one is ready, has his wings unfolded and is running up his engine. They take off one right after the other, less than a minute apart, until the whole flight is in the air.
Prepare for return
The moment the last plane of the flight is off, a horn signals the fact, and the great flight deck instantly becomes a swarm of men.
Usually there are several planes left on deck, which weren’t scheduled to go. All these are immediately towed to the forward end of the deck, and reparked there.
For, when the planes come back to land, they must use that rear end of the deck. While they are landing, the whole front end of the deck is full of parked planes.
A barrier of steel cables, stretched head-high across the deck, stops any wild-landing plane from crashing into the bunch of tightly parked ships ahead.
As soon as a plane lands, the barrier is dropped, the plane taxies over it, and the barrier is raised again for the next guy coming in. The plane that has just landed is parked among the other inert ones up front and the pilot shuts off his engine.
When the last plane is down, the horn squawks, all the men rush out, and all the planes are towed back to the rear of the deck, ready for the next takeoff.
Almost never, during actual landing of the planes, is the elevator let down. It is used only between flights, to take planes down to the “garage” or bring up fresh ones.
Like cars at carnivals
This moving of planes from one end of the flight deck to the other is called “re-sporting.” It goes on all day long – back and forth, back and forth.
The planes are pulled by tiny tractors. As they run around they look like these little electric cars you bump each other with at carnivals.
At night, probably two-thirds of the planes are “spotted” on deck. They are parked tightly together, and tied down to gratings in the flight deck by heavy rope.
If we’re sailing into a storm, they’re tied additionally with steel cable. And all night long men are posted among them, to see that nothing breaks or goes wrong.
Despite all this, there have been times when the ocean was so rough and the deck careening at such a steep angle, that planes would break all their moorings and go screeching over the side. That would be when I was down in my cabin, very seasick.
Gracie Allen Reporting
By Gracie Allen
My goodness, when all these amazing new medicines they’ve been discovering are released to the public, people are going to live forever. My! Wouldn’t it be funny to live long enough to see Mrs. Roosevelt settle down, and a Republican in the White House, and Jack Benny get a motion picture Academy Award and (George says) a Philadelphia baseball team finish in the first division again.
Georgie Jessel and Al Jolson would be in their prime at 400 or 500, and would be marrying sweet young things who hadn’t been out of high school more than 80 or 90 years.
But even if I live to be 500, I’ll still fib about my age. If someone says “How old are you, Gracie?” I’ll just look them right in the eye and say, “Day after tomorrow I’ll be 472.”
750,000 join parade
NEW YORK – An Easter processional of 750,000 servicemen and women from every Allied nation and civilians from every state belted Manhattan from the East River to the Hudson yesterday in a parade which stretched for 17 blocks along Fifth Avenue.
U.S. war agencies ‘dig in’ to continue after peace comes
In some cases, different bureaus are contesting for privilege of post-war jobs
By Charles T. Lucey, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Rep. Luce: Palestine Jews fight fiercely for freedom, revenge
Volunteers for most dangerous jobs are those who suffered most under Hitler
By Clare Boothe Luce, written for combined U.S. press
WITH BRITISH EIGHTH ARMY, Italy (UP) – On the British Front I visited the Palestine brigade commanded by Brig. Ernest F. Benjamin. The brigade is on a small sector of the Italian ruined country. Its members, who fight for the first time in this war under their own flag, are all Palestinians, though many of them were once refugees from the hinterlands. Their senior officers are all British professional soldiers of Jewish blood.
The formation of the brigade was announced last September 20. On November 1, it sailed for Italy. It had been in the line only a matter of days when I went to see it. Many British officers with whom I talked before and after that visit said there was no more grim and determined unit on the whole Italian front.
After all, many of them have some very bloody personal scores to settle. I certainly never have seen men more eager to do so, or so fiercely glad that when their hour to strike comes they will be fighting as every free man has a right to fight, armed like the enemy and fighting under his own flag for a homeland where his wife and children are.
To return to Palestine
I talked to a young, Jewish non-com., Sgt. Channan Levi of Tel Aviv. He was six feet tall, had blue eyes and blond hair and had been born in Berlin. His English was very poor. I tried a few words in German, and he said very quietly:
I talk Hebrew or English now. I forgot my German when I was driven from my home in ‘39. I do not wish to speak it again except to the German prisoners we take. I never will go back to Germany except with this army. When we have won, I shall return to Palestine and to my farm.
The Jews in Palestine are good farmers. We shall prove here that we are good fighters.
Chaff at delays
A few of the men I talked to at brigade headquarters were unhappy about only one thing – that political pressure had so long prevented the formation of overseas Palestine forces.
They wish that their Jewish military history had not begun so late in this war. They felt that if political action had been taken long ago by Great Britain and the United States at the beginning of the war, Palestine could easily have put, not a brigade, but divisions into the battle against Germany. They know, as well as informed Jewish opinion on the American home front knows, what occasioned this long delay in calling Jewry to arms.
They point with considerable pride to the part that Jewish units have played in British forces all through the bad days of the North African campaign. There has been no conscription in Palestine. Nevertheless, since 1939, Palestinians and refugee Jews coming into Palestine volunteered in many numbers to join the British forces.
50,000 volunteer
I was told that upwards of 50,000 Palestine Jews, men and women, so far have voluntarily enlisted for armed service in the British Army, Navy, Air Force and women’s auxiliary services.
If an American volunteer army had been raised in proportion to the population of Palestine, the USA today would have a volunteer army of about 12 million. Since the war began, Palestine units with the British Eighth Army have seen service in France, Libya, Egypt, Syria and Iraq.
Tales of heroism
In Palestine brigade headquarters, as in all headquarters everywhere in this war, you can hear many stories of heroism in battle. Here they tell of Jewish commando units selected by British officers in the Mediterranean battles for particularly dangerous jobs because the volunteers were all men whose families had suffered horribly at the hands of Adolf’s hordes.
The story of the Jewish part in the war effort in the Near East is one which they feel has never been told successfully. They hope the record of this brigade in battle will draw some attention to that story.
What are these Jews fighting for? Revenge? Yes, but also, like the Poles, for freedom of their homeland and the liberation of an ancient people – the right to work in peace in shop or field. That’s what Sgt. Channan Levi of Tel Aviv – once Hans Levi of Berlin – is fighting for anyway.
Not to be distracted
I did not talk to Sgt. Levi about how he thinks the other Hans Levis of the world would like Madagascar or Eritrea, or British Guiana, or San Domingo for a “homeland” if the white paper policy should remain in force in Palestine.
I did not ask him for two reasons:
- His primary task is to kill Nazis, and he is in no mood to be distracted.
- I think I know how he might answer, anyway.
I have been part of the great miracle of the rebirth of Palestine. I have been among those who have made the desert bear fruit and the swamp yield a rich harvest, who have blasted rocks and crushed them to make roads to ancient, forgotten soil on the frontier, who have worked to make the soil of the Valley of Jordan free of the Dead Sea salt so it would bloom, who have built universities and schools and there worshipped the god of the Jews who gave us this task to do in the land that he promised us: Our home.
the Japanese still HAVE over 1000 planes to lose just like that?
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Völkischer Beobachter (April 3, 1945)
‚Werwölfe‘ gegen den Feind
Proklamation der nationalsozialistischen Freiheitskämpfer
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US-Landung auf Okinawa
Tokio, 2. April – Die seit Tagen erwartete feindliche Landungsoperation gegen Okinawa, die Hauptinsel der Riukiugruppe, begann am Morgen des 1. April. Wie das Kaiserliche Hauptquartier am gleichen Tage dazu meldet, hat der Feind zunächst am 31. März einige Einheiten auf den benachbarten kleinen Inseln Kamiyama und Majima gelandet, und es gelang ihm dann am Morgen des nächsten Tages, im Südteil Okinawas Fuß zu fassen.
Gleichzeitig meldet das Hauptquartier weitere schwere Schiffsverluste des Feindes, und zwar zusätzlich zu denjenigen, welche bereits am 27., 29. und 31. März bekanntgegeben wurden. Demnach versenkten Einheiten der japanischen Luftwaffe und Flotte einen Flugzeugträger, zwei Kreuzer, zwei Zerstörer, drei Kriegsschiffe unbekannter Klasse, und beschädigten ein Schlachtschiff (oder schweren Kreuzer) so schwer, dass mit seinem Sinken gerechnet wird.
Weiterhin erzielten sie Treffer auf einem Schlachtschiff (oder Kreuzer), zwei Zerstörern, zwei Kriegsschiffen unbekannter Klasse, einem Transporter.
Somit belaufen sich die vom Kaiserlichen Hauptquartier gemeldeten feindlichen Verluste in der seit dem 23. März andauernden Invasionsschlacht in den Gewässern der Riukiugruppe auf 105 Kriegsschiffe und Transporter, von denen insgesamt 59 versenkt wurden.