August 21, 1944

Over the years Mark Fuller often wondered if he was really a significant part of the war effort. Although he flew in the Russian evacuation missions and frequently did special ops which provide more than enough flight time to keep his flying status he never felt he was pulling his weight. For nearly six months he had been assigned to review all the film and the reports from the over island flights, to assess what the Japanese were doing that would impact the air groups. Today he got a package with the data from the August 17 raid. He was expecting it so he came to work early. He knew it should be there by 0600 so he was waiting when it arrived. He was in a foul mood. The ankle of his artificial leg froze the day before. It was sitting at home and he was on crutches. Carol would drop the leg off at the shop today. With luck it would be fixed within a week. But in spite of this he was there to see the film as soon as it was available. Although front line people had looked at it there was a significant value to a second look. He knew the importance of getting everything out of intelligence. These flights put men at risk. Their result should be handled prudently. He read the report of the fighters getting up to altitude and actually making a successful pass on the B-17. He pulled the tail gunner’s film and ran it several times, stopping and counting frames as he watched the plane climb. He then pulled the film from a previous flight that was attacked. He watched it as the fighters came up and fell off. They never got nearly as close. They never got as high. He counted frames again.

It was obvious the new fighters had a speed advantage over the old ones, possibly as much as 40 knots and the maximum altitude of a zoom climb was at least 1500 feet higher. The Japanese had made more than a slight improvement in the fighter.

He started writing his report. This was bad news for the air crews. Luck held with this crew. They were able to make it home. At the minimum flights should avoid this area. He then spent more time looking at the island photos. They showed an airport and some buildings. He checked and found that there were some old photos of the island. He pulled them and began a comparison. There were several significant additions to the structures on the island. The army base on the one side of the island was still there but on the other end of the island the Japanese had constructed an airport with two sets of very long two parallel runways that intersected at about 45 degrees. This wasn’t the ideal. But an accident would not likely shut down both sets of runways. There were hangers, five that were big enough to collectively handle over one hundred fighters and two big enough for a dozen medium transports. The photos showed planes being serviced and some other buildings that Mark did not recognize as related to military aircraft. There was also a barracks building that could easily hold over 200 people.