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pg. 90

skewed off to the left on the take-off and crashed into a nearby machine-gun position killing one occupant of the latter and spraying the others with flaming gasoline.  A black cloud of smoke arose from the burning plane and bodies (the pilot escaped unharmed) but the take-offs continued.  I watched all this in horrified fascination when suddenly the 50 caliber ammunition in the burning wreckage started popping.  From a standing position on top of the trailer whence I watched I dropped flat and listened to the stacatto bursts.  Then another P-51 swerved off and crashed just ten feet from the first but in this one no one was hurt.  The plane was wrecked completely.

Two hours later the planes returned and landed.  Weather had forced them back for the fourth successive time.

The other crew went out for gas mask drill (we had ours yesterday) and we took over for them in the afternoon.  We practiced with a Super Dumbo (A B 17 with a power boat slung under its fusilage) who insisted on coming down to ten feet above the runway and scaring hell out of the crew of SeeBees working on the strip.  Incidentally the SeeBees have almost completed the entire runway, 200 feet wide, 8800 feet long and blanck-topped[black-topped?].  I received a phone call from a guy who said he was a