GOT BOMBER HOME

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 2, 4 January 1943, Page 4

GOT BOMBER HOME

STORY OF AMERICAN

BRAVERY

How a 19-year-old engineer-gunner of a United States Liberator plugged a hole in a fuel line with his fingers and enabled his four-motored bomber to return from a raid on Lille, in France, despite damage by innumerable Nazi machine-gun bullets and cannon fire, is told in the "New York Times." The Liberator made a belated return to its base. Aron F. Moses, of Monroe, Ind., held his hands over a broken gasoline line until they froze, but he succeeded in stopping the loss of fuel and enabled the stricken bomber to get back. The Liberator, known as the "Ball of Fire," was commanded by Lieutenant J. S. Tate, 24, of St. Augustine, Fla. It shot down three Focke-Wulf fighters and damaged several others in a scramble that followed an attack by about 30 Nazi planes as the bomber turned from a successful run over warehouses and railway yards al Lille. "One 30-mm. cannon shell hit our tail and a couple went into the bomb bay, cutting cables and tearing a three-inch rip in the gas line," said Lieutenant Tate. "Then another 20----mm. came in right under the pilots' seat. When it blew up it busted our oxygen lines." Lieutenant Tate kept the plane at from 20,000 to 26,000 feet, and instructed the crew to use emergency supplies of oxygen in "walk-about" bottles and bail-out flasks. "After we got to safe territory and were about half-way back across the Channel Moses crawled from his upper gun turret and down through the bomb bay," Lieutenant Tate continued. "Gas squirting from the broken line blew into his face, blinding him, but he kept feeling about until he found I the hole." By that time »;asoline was half an inch deep in the bomb bay. At freezing altitudes Gunner Moses held the ! break closed until he was relieved by I Lieutenant Orval Huff, of Waterman, 111., bombardier. Then turns holding the line were taken by Lieutenant Thaddeus Isaiah Hawkins, jun., of Griffin, Ga., navigator, and Staff Sergeant Edward W. Eichmann, of Milwaukee, a gunner. Co-pilot Lieutenant Alfred Asch, 22, of Beaver ton, Mich., also was rated a hero by his mates for his quick action in taking over control of the plane when Lieutenant Tate passed out from lack of oxygen. Lieutenant Tate later revived and landed the plane on an R.A.F. fighter field. Staff Sergeant Cleiborne Booker, of Augusta, Ga., engineer, and Sergeant Corbett Wright, of Indianola, Miss., radio man, were the rest of the crew. No one was hurt.