Escape From Davao Read Online Free PDF Page A

oil tanks, and fuel trucks exploded in orange firebal s. Shrapnel, giant sheets of aluminum, corrugated iron, and whipping propel ers slashed through the air, striking men indiscriminately. Strings of bombs smacked the flight line, blowing apart dozens of new P-40s. The flames hungrily spread to tufts of cogon grass and thickets of dry bamboo. Towering plumes of dark, oily smoke bil owed skyward. After the second wave of bombers had passed, dozens of gray Zeros streaked down through the smoke blanket, their blazing guns shredding the silver steel skins of the just refueled B-17s.
    Antiaircraft gunners frantical y fired their 3-inch guns, but most of the corroded fuses—much of their ammunition was World War I surplus—were duds and those shel s that did explode did so in harmless smoke puffs wel beneath their targets. Others peppered the sky with fire from old water-cooled Brownings, rifles, and .45s. Though heroic, their efforts were largely in vain; by the time Grashio had boomeranged his P-40 back to Clark, he found a broiling holocaust.
    Shaken out of his dreamlike trance, Grashio reflected on “how utterly and abysmal y wrong” the officers on the Coolidge had been and prayed for those on the ground. He then spied a handful of Zeros, the blood-red hinomaru , or rising sun emblems, visible on their wings. Drawing a deep breath, he motioned for his wingmen to fol ow, but McCown and Cole were already engaged. Suddenly, a lone Zero darted out of the swirling smoke below his ship, apparently circling around for another strafing run. His heart pounding, Grashio steadied his P-40 and the plane shuddered as he let fly a barrage of bul ets. The Zero slid out of the sky leaking smoke, but Grashio would not have time to celebrate his first victory.
    Wingman Wil iams had spotted nine Zeros preparing to dive, but before they could complete their turn, the two lead planes completed a climbing turn of their own and were now on the tails of the Americans. In seconds, the hunters had become the hunted. Grashio did not know it, but one of the pilots chasing him was Imperial Navy Chief Petty Officer Saburo Sakai. Sakai, the leading Japanese air ace to survive the war, would shoot down more than sixty Al ied aircraft before being grounded by wounds and failing eyesight in 1945. After the war, Sakai would become a Buddhist and renounce al violence, but on this day he was eagerly pursuing his first American victories.
    As Grashio veered left, Sakai fired a ribbon of explosive shel s from his 20 mil imeter nose cannon and ripped a gaping hole into the left wing of Grashio’s plane. Grashio’s sweaty hands white-knuckled the stick. Instinctively, he turned to his faith. As his lips trembled in fervent prayer, the three planes sliced through the sky, molten lead pouring from the Zeros’ guns. “ I was sure I was going to die on the first day of the war,” said Grashio. Suddenly, his prayers were answered. Grashio remembered Dyess’s lectures:
    “Never try to outmaneuver a Zero; go into a steep dive and try to outrace it.” Indeed, the P-40 was much heavier—one pilot had cal ed the armor-plated plane “a streamlined safe”—so he pointed its nose to the ground and pushed the throttle wide open. The needle in his altimeter spun wildly as the earth flashed upward at breakneck speed. Attempting such a maneuver in a new plane was “courting suicide,” said Grashio, “but with two Zeros on your tail, the admonitions in technical manuals are not the first things you think about.”
    Grashio’s luck, as wel as the plane’s virgin engine, held. He pul ed up, skimming the treetops as the Japanese pursuers receded into the distance. When Grashio touched down at Nichols at 0130, Dyess greeted him—he had led the other flights on an uneventful patrol over Cavite—and together they inspected the damaged plane. Grashio shook his head, remarking excitedly between breaths, “By God, they ain’t shootin’ spitbal s, are they?”
    A few