World War II Chronicle: January 27, 1944
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Page three says that an Army Air Forces tail gunner parachuted from his B-17 Flying Fortress and landed on a grazing horse. Sgt. Jack M. Webb’s incredible story will soon be featured in “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not…”
It’s been a long time since we discussed the massive Martin Mars. The Navy is using the flying boat, and it just returned to the States after a flight from Honolulu. Former heavyweight boxing champ Gene Tunney — now a Navy commander — was among the eight passengers that made the 2,400-mile trip. The pilot is Lt. Comdr. William E. Coney, who will perish in a 1947 Eastern Air Lines DC-54 crash…
George Fielding Eliot column on page eight… Sports on page 12, featuring a Grantland Rice column about Arlie Latham, the clown prince of baseball in the 1800s. Latham played ball for the National League’s Buffalo Bisons in 1880, six years before Connie Mack put on a uniform. John McGraw made Latham a third base coach in 1909, and the 49-year-old played in four games…
Speaking of baseball, the New York Yankees outfield is losing more players to the war and is definitely no longer the pitcher’s nightmare from two seasons ago. Johnny Lindell split time between right and center last year and made the All-Star team. This year he moves to center full-time, as Roy Weatherley looks to be destined for military service. Bud Metheny may stay in right, but with Charlie Keller in the Merchant Marine, left field looks to be up for grabs.
| Outfield (LF, CF, RF) | Avg. | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | |
| 1941 | Keller, DiMaggio, Heinrich | .310 | 493 | 94 | 26 | 74 | 332 |
| 1942 | Keller, DiMaggio, Heinrich | .289 | 474 | 83 | 27 | 60 | 289 |
| 1943 | Keller, Weatherley/Lindell, Metheny | .260 | 415 | 58 | 28 | 51 | 201 |
| 1944 | ?, Lindell, Metheny |
Most of last year’s performance came from King Kong Keller, so regardless who takes over in left it will be a huge downgrade. So far it looks like his replacement will either be one of the rookies alluded to in the article or 32-year old Tuck Stainback, who has served as a backup since coming over from the Tigers after the 1941 season…
Cincinnatti Reds pitcher Johnny Vander Meer has been reclassified 1-A, and Jimmie Foxx was turned down by the draft board. Foxx retired after the 1942 season, but we haven’t heard the last from him yet… And Harry “The Flash” Clarke, the Chicago Bears’ top rusher last season, has been drafted by the Navy…
John Wayne is featured on the ad for The Fighting Seabees which made its debut today in Los Angeles — see page 29… It’s been a while since we last discussed Hollywood’s Jimmy Stewart, and he is mentioned on page 31. Captain Stewart commands a bomber squadron in England, and has been offered a promotion to major, which he has turned down.
Roving Reporter by Ernie Pyle
IN ITALY — Around the airdrome they joke about how one pilot won his victory over an enemy plane.
It seems he caught a tiny observation plane, similar to our Cubs, while he was out on a low-level mission. As soon as the frightened little enemy saw our ships, he got as low to the ground as he could. One of our planes pulled up and came down at him in a dive. The little plane was so slow that our pilot misjudged its speed and completely missed him. But as he shot past, his propeller blast caught the little ship, threw it upside down, and it dived into the ground — quite fatally.
There’s more than one way to skin a cat, as they say.
You laugh at some very sad things in wartime. For instance, the pilots tell with merriment about the fate of a German motorcyclist.
Our planes were strafing a mountain road one day. They saw this German motorcyclist, who in his terror kept looking back over his shoulder at the approaching planes, and consequently rode right off the highway and over the edge of a 400-foot cliff.
In describing what it feels like to fly one of our high-powered fighting planes, one of our pilot said, “You’re just sitting there with a thousand horses in your lap and a feather in your tail.”
One night I went into a little Italian town with some pilots to see the movie, “This Is The Army.” The Air Forces had taken over a local theater, and as long as you were in uniform all you had to do was walk in and sit down. About a third of the audience were pilots and the rest mechanics. I couldn’t help but be interest in their reaction to the picture. On the whole they applauded, but every time the action got a little gooey or mushily patriotic, you could hear a combination boo and groan go through the audience. Soldiers at the front can’t stomach flag-waving from back home.
I’ve just had a letter from a couple of lieutenants in the Army Postal Service enclosing their plan for saving a lot of letter writing.
Their plan is based on the theory that the soldier could write just one V-letter and have it mailed to eight or ten different people back home. That would be accomplished by writing extra addresses on a special pad; then in the laboratory the letter could be photographed over and over, slipping on a new address each time.
It’s a novel idea, but I’ve inquired around among soldiers about it and I’ve yet to find one who wants to write the same thing to a lot of people.
Imagination still occasionally gets the best of some of our letter writers. I heard the other day of a soldier who wrote to his girl that he had been wounded, and then wrote his mother and tipped her off that he had just made it up.
An another one who doesn’t fly at all wrote home that he had just shot down three Zeroes. That’s really good going, especially in Italy, and tops my own record. The most I’ve been able to destroy in one day was two Spitfires and an Italian vegetable cart.
Geographical notes: Mount Vesuvius has a couple of streaks of red lava running down the side from the cone. They show up wonderfully at night and are fascinating. The volcano smokes continually.
The other night in Naples we had a couple of small earthquake shocks which shook our cots and scared us half to death.
Evening star. (Washington, D.C.), 27 January 1944. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1944-01-27/ed-1/