Black Cat in the Night, Part 2

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Looking out, the moonglow off the ocean, the stars were so different than the sky back home … What was the line from that movie? “We’re not in Kansas anymore”… Warm humid wind, with a dank jungle smell, and sea salt. Closing on Cactus. Slight glow of the sunrise in the east, pink clouds, good omen for Pink, the pilot, and by association, the crew of “Pink Kitty”.

Flaps down, floats out … grease the landing, taxi to the maintenance dock. Guns to be cleaned, engines to be serviced … Haul out, let the ground crew take over. Chow, Spam and rice as usual … Back to his tent and hit the cot that is his rack …

Base activity all around. Try to sleep. Fighter engines coughing on startup, revving to taxi then away down the strip. Krumps in the distance, ground attacks close. Roll over and pull the wool blanket over your head tighter … Can’t sleep, open the jar of “shine” those good ol’ southern boys made, take a couple deep swigs, fight off the natural reaction to retch at a sudden influx of pure alcohol.

Krump, Boom! … the daily harassment artillery fire has started for the day.

Won’t get much sleep (they never do). Tossing and turning for hours, half the “shine“ jar empty, would need to trade for some more. Sweating, hot blasts of humid air, and the stench of thousands of humans, their activity, their waste … and their dead.

The air was stifling, it took an effort to breathe in and out … humid stench.

He got up early and visited the “redneck shiners,” procured another jar, stashed it and grabbed some chow. Back to his tent and load up his gear, K-Bar, 1911, hatchet, extra mags for the pistol, med kit, survival pouch, basic gunsmithing tools in a roll … He wandered down to the docks. “Pink Kitty” was pulled up and getting loaded with ordnance.

No torpedoes, only bombs, and as usual the ground crews found a bunch of interesting items to drop on the Jap airfields. Beer bottles were the most common; some had noise makers such as razor blades to make a whistle on the way down. Anything to unnerve the enemy, whistling things thudding into the ground nearby, enough to keep them up at night. A different tactic was to wrap toilet paper tightly around the “spoon” of a grenade (toilet paper was a valuable commodity so this was uncommon) pull the pin and drop it. Either the impact would break the bond and release the “spoon”… or it sits there in the brush until moisture weakens the paper and … BANG!, random explosion out of nowhere.

If we were low enough we could drop grenades on their own, and they’d explode whenever, air or ground burst, didn’t matter. Anything to mess with the Japs' heads. We’d keep a box or bucket with “harassment noisemakers” at our feet to randomly chuck out on our 20-30 minute fly-bys.

Sun sliding lower, he goes over to the armory and draws 4 belts of ammo and loads them onto the plane. Thinking about it, he draws 4 more belts of .30 cal and 2 more of .50 cal. He loads them and secures them for flight. He puts on his life vest and slumps to the deck, wanting a nap before takeoff. Dozing off, waking to sweat tickling down his nose. Clumps and clatter, voices, the crew is coming aboard. As an afterthought, he checks and locks his 1911, all good.

He then goes through the check of the .50 cal Browning, lube, fit, function. Load and fire later.

Pilot briefs us on the mission, rough coordinates to land along our route etc. Standard harassment mission, we’d fly over the airfield and drop a couple bombs to get their attention. Wake them up, so to speak. Then slow lazy turn back 20 minutes later throw out a few “screaming” beer bottles, to keep them thinking. Then a slow turn back 20 minutes later and drop a couple real 250 lb. bombs. Rinse repeat. Various combinations of live ordnance and inert harassment objects were dropped throughout the night. After the fourth pass, fires were burning illuminating possible targets.

“Light them up lads!”

He already had his Browning aimed toward some interesting things illuminated in the firelight. Round tank or truck? Squeeze, Boomboomboomboomboom! … tracers slightly off … Now, tracers and armor piercing incendiaries zero in on the “tanks”… flashes of light as the rounds pierce the tank wall, followed by a brilliant flash of a fireball when the fuel ignites.

That woke them up … made them mad more likely.

Fighters starting and taxiing, in the dark! Tracers and searchlights frantically sweep the sky, reaching out for us dark intruders. Tracer patterns were an indicator of how squared away the gunners were. Nice tight patterns of tracers reaching up meant a well-trained crew. Huge gaps in the tracers frantically sweeping the sky … they were spraying and praying.

The pilot, Pink, roared down the taxiway giving the bow and port side gunners a shot. Then wheeling to the left, he lined up the starboard side guns. Plane! In the smoke and flickering firelight… making a run down the runway. Lead, reverse lead, squeeze. Walk the tracers up. Nothing … On Target? The fighter never lifts up. It continues on in a straight line to tumble-crash at the end of the runway. Was that a kill?

No time, another pass, 250 lb. bombs dropped, no secondary explosions.

“I’m going to pull a figure eight over this airfield, drop all our ordnance, and I want to make sure you gunners come back empty.”

Steve lugs the ammo cans of .30 cal up to the bow gunner in the nose, “Merry Christmas!”

Then back to his waist gun position.

He locks a new belt in place and slides an ammo can with a belt over to the port side gunner, “Here ya’ go pal!”

Pink banked to one side, the bubble gunner emptied his gun into the Jap base, then he reversed course and lined up the other side … .50’s empty, bombs expended. Time to return to base. It was a beautiful night … Actually morning with the sun coming up.

A black column of smoke rising behind them, pink glow to the east, all ordnance expended, guns empty (save for leftover partially expended belts) for defense if they get froggy enough to send up a couple Zeros out of spite.

Steve gets busy with his dustpan, scooping brass and belt links out the bubble. A few more scoops and he is done, exhausted, just glad he’s not flying. They were far enough away that any pursuit would have been seen. He slumped to the deck, pulled a wool blanket over him and drifted off to sleep.

Pink greased the landing again, and it was two hours later when Steve woke up, he’d missed the de-brief. Oh well, all he’d been able to contribute was “I shot stuff till it blew up or I couldn’t shoot it anymore.”

There was that one fighter that crashed on takeoff. Pink was fighting for one of his crew to get credit for a kill. There would be a review board.

Meanwhile, guns cleaned and stowed, excess ammo turned in to be re-belted. Stumble up to chow, Spam and re-constituted powdered eggs. A piece of toast that he could have used to scrape paint off the Black Cat. Crack open the ½ jar of “shine” gulp and gag … His tentmate calls out “pussy” as he retches against the pure alcohol. Sip … sip … crack open a book by Hemingway, sip some more.

Lucky Strike, to the lips, clank of the Zippo, deep inhale … slight buzz, clouding his head. Another sip, then gulp, gag, inhale another lungful of sweet smoke. Fighter engines sputtering to life on the flight line for the morning sorties. Dawn patrol was already up, they’d passed them on the way in. Outgoing artillery fire for now. They’d expect incoming harassment fire shortly.

Reading about an ambulance driver in WW1 wounded in the hospital … Sip, deep inhale, sip, buzzzz.

Some things made more sense, others only brought more questions. Sweat dripping, humid heat growing with every degree the sun rises. Bugs, rats, the stench …

Eight hours, they’d be at it again.