Viewing page 33 of 140

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

pg.32

infiltrated our lines and were back somewhere in our area. That night the trailor looked more like an arsenal than a blind landing radar system. In addition we had guards posted about. We learned that the Japs were headed for all the P-51's , P-61's, and B-29's on the field but by mistake had wandered into the 549th Nite Fighter billeting area. Their technique was to slit a hole in a tent of sleeping men with their knoves and toss in a hand grenade and walk away. Eight Americans were killed and fifteen were wounded that night but the Jap raiding party was surrounded and lost over two hundred men with only a few escaping. The airstrip was a veritable no-man's-land with bullets whizzing back and forth mostly from trigger-happy guards who fired at shadows and sounds.

We continued to land P-61's at night and were getting pretty good at it. Naturally the pilots were delighted with the system and amazed with its accuracy. The weather was getting pretty bad and the ceiling and visibility were poor almost all the time. Without quite knowing it we had drifted from just practicing landing the P-61's returning from night patrol to actual tactical operation. Many times as a result of fog, mist and fogging up of cockpit windshields the pilots were on the ground before they were aware they were down and knew it only when they saw