MEN AT WAR: Colossal, History-Making

While put-putting over Italian battlefields in his Piper Cub, bored Artillery Observer Lieut. Arley Wilson used to dream great dreams for his hummingbird plane. Occasionally he strafed Germans with his .45 automatic, or dropped leaflets urging them to surrender to his “superior air forces.” Last week he organized a bombing mission.

Eight Piper Cubs flew across German lines on Mt. Ceracoli. Over the target their pilots solemnly pushed out a few five-gallon tins of gasoline, circled to see what would happen. As they had reckoned, nothing much did. An enemy-held tree burst into brief flame, a pillar of smoke soared all of three feet into the air. The armada wheeled, made for home at 70 miles an hour, while bored Germans took desultory pot shots at them.

Back at headquarters Wilson’s airmen burlesqued the glamorous fighter pilots, gesturing with their hands to indicate dives and half-rolls. “Somebody above me nearly hit me with one of those cans,” complained a sergeant. “Please, gentlemen, let us refer to those cans as bombs,” corrected a lieutenant.

“We should all get the Air Medal,” said Staff Sergeant Edward Cooper, who described the attack as “epic, colossal, historymaking. It is the only one in recent months not made by mighty swarms of four-engined bombers. We failed to shoot down 120 enemy planes. We did not obliterate the target, and despite flak which was not thick enough to walk on, we did not start fires visible for 80 miles.”