The Day I Owned The Sky

Long before the Japanese bombers saw us I saw them. We were sittingin the catbird seat, 3000 feet above them and directly in the fiery ball of the sun.

Spread out and ragged after take-off from the runway at Yunnan-Yi, our eighteen P-40s now flew in tight fingertip elements of two.

Before we reached 20,000 feet I saw the glint of their windshields, the discs of their propellers in the sunlight.

My count reached twenty-four as I breathed deeply in my oxygen mask to slow my pounding heart.

Was this what RAF pilots called "getting the wind up"?

I tried hard to swallow, to make the lump in my throat go away.

Time after time I remember flicking the toggles of my gun switches to be certain they had been on ever since our struggling takeoff run from that high-altitude runway.

All the way, there there had been no conversation on the radio.

That had been my only order at the hasty briefing: no yakety-yak, and watch me.

Now we dove to the attack.

Not even the waggle of a wing among the enemy bombers as they grew from vague dots into real Kawasaki Ki-48s.

They still had not seen us - we had the advantage.