NO TUMULT - NO SHOUTING

FOREWORD

This is the story of a battle that one group of United States naval aviators fought against three enemies. They fought weather ; they fought terrain ; and they fought the " Japs ".

Many of them were not professional men of war. They were " feather merchants " - officers and men of the Naval Reserve who had recently left quiet homes in New England, farms in the Middle West, and bungalows in California, where their business activity had been to fill orders at the chain stores, solicit insurance, set type for newspapers, or jerk sodas for the neighbourhood kids. They came from these sunny environments to fight from the coast of Alaska to the 180th parallel of longitude, where the weather is the worst in the world and the terrain a terror even to the sourdoughs of the Klondike and the Yukon. And they won their fight because they were more rugged than their Creator had dreamed ; more rugged than the weather and the terrain - and the " Japs ".

It is also a report on a gallant and durable old lady called the PBY, a patrol bomber deemed fit for nothing more strenuous than majestic tours of inspection ; the story of how, frantically summoned from her lethargy, she found the strength and ingenuity to slug it out successfully with the livelier equipment manned by our enemies.

There is valour in this story, but there are also shameful practices not countenanced by Navy regulations - theft, for example, and the wanton destruction of red tape and other government property. For this is the true story of Patwing Four - now Fleet Air Wing Four - and how it started from scratch, with two strikes on every sailor who flew its PBY's ; how, with obsolete and inadequate equipment, it halted a well - equipped and deadly enemy in the second invasion of United States soil in all our history.

There is a Nordic cast to the country where Patwing Four won its war ; a Nordic aspect to the bitter cold Winds and sub - Arctic seas where the lumbering flying boats stood th watches as scouts, dive bombers, and even as interceptor fighters. And so it must be true that the Norse gods kept their eyes on this combat, and that the men who fought and died there have been gathered to greater glory than a stone in Arlington. In all probability, their wardroom is in Valhalla, among the nobility of the warriors of all time. If this is so, you can bet that the messboys who serve them are the samurai.