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They Fought With What They Had - The Story of the Army Air Force in the Southwest Pacific 1941-1942, by Walter D. EdmondsPublished by Zenger in 1951, 532 pages. Hardback and Dust Jacket (A13U)From the inside front fly leaf: This is the resourceful, valiant, and at times heartbreaking story of the Army Air Force in the Philippines, 1941-1942. It begins in the lull before the attack on Pearl Harbor when hasty attempts were being made to build up the defenses of the Philippines. It tells of American over-confidence and of how seriously we underestimated the Japanese Air Force. It gives an hour by hour account of that fateful day in December 1941, and explains why American planes were destroyed on the ground at Clark Field five hours after headquarters had received the news of Pearl Harbor. From that day on it is a story of Americans who were out-bombed and out-planed, but never out-fought. This is partly the story of the planes, some obsolete, some silver-new: the old B-18's; the new Fortresses; the old Brewster Buffalos; the B-10's which as Mr. Edmonds said were like pumpkins in the sky; and the P-40's - of which we had so pitifully few - the only pursuit ships at all able to match the Zeros in speed and toughness. But chiefly and all the way through, this is the story of men who did the impossible gainst impossible odds. Men like Boyd Wagner who learned from every single dog fight and who was a one-man pursuit force in himself. It is the story of Grant Mahony, a quiet Irishman, who, surprised by a flight of Zeros while strafing a Japanese field led his pursuers around a mountain at tree-top level and back over the field again so that he could finish the job he'd begun. It is the story of Pappy Gunn, ostensibly too old for combat, but a civilian pilot who knew the Japanese were coming and who turned his little Beechcrafts into an Air Transport Command. It is the story of Ed Oyess and the red-headed West Pointer Sprague who instilled courage and fighting spirit into all the pilots and men. After Sprague's death, young Corporal Perry wrote in his dairy, "He flew for the love of flying and fought for the sake of fighting and to avenge the deaths of his partners in the Philippines. He was a square shooter and hell on wheels for the Japs. He was usually first to take off on an alert and never asked his pilots to do something he could not do himself." It is the story of the crew chiefs and the master mechanics, of Master Sergeant Silva, and of a cook like Robinet who still found good things for his men to eat when they were in the Jap prison camp. It is the story of how the squadrons were crushed and driven disorganized into Bataan; of how a fraction of the pilots were flown out to Java, and there regrouped only to be smashed out of the skies again. It is, as Mr. Edmonds says, the record of how we traded heroism for defeat when heroism was all that we had to hold on to.The condition of the book is generally ok. The dust jacket is very tatty, with lots of scuffs and blemishes, and creasing and tears along the edges and corners, but the spine is intact, and all pages are intact, unblemished and tightly bound. There is some foxing to the outside page leaves.
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