George Alber photo collection continued...
| Me above, Gil Millif below. While enroute to New Guinea to join the 49th FG flying P-38s, we were diverted into Canton Island because of a small pox scare. We spent 2 weeks there in quarantine. |
| Above: An unknown officer on Canton Island, 1943. Can anyone identify this person? Send email if you know. |
| Then it was on to Port Morseby, New Guinea. This is the nose of my P-38, down there is the airstrip at Port Moresby, rather sophisticated with revetment areas, taxi ways... we didn't have that at Dobodura, just a wide area next to the runways. When we went to Gusap we just had PSP to fly off of. |
| Here we have P-38s lined up on the right and P-40s on the left and way back there is a gaggle of P-38s. This is on the Port Moresby side, frequently we would fly from Dobodura on the East Coast, fly over the mountains to Port Moresby to form up there for an attack further up the island. So that is why we have such a conglomeration of airplanes. Back up here you can see the Owen Stanley Mountains straight up. |
| Here is a line up of the alert P-38s and a jeep. There are probably
three to four more jeeps behind there on the left, with the pilots playing
cards or just laying about.
We didn't do strip alerts having the pilots in the cockpits at all times. It wasn't necessary because the radar and ground observers could inform the controllers the position of the enemy. We could get a scramble off in about 1-½ minutes because you could start both engines at once. |
| L-R: ?, Spence, Barnes? |
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