Story 2056
Marivales, Bataan, May 20, 1943
The lieutenant from Boston cut the engine. The blockade runner had made a day light run into Bataan carrying thirty five tons of food and ten tons of field artillery shells. Air attacks were not a concern as the Japanese airfields north of Manila was almost empty of workable aircraft. Squadrons had been committed to stopping the invasion of Palawan and once they entered the fleet’s radar networks or the ever expanding and increasingly capable army radar and fighter direction network, squadrons had become flights and flights had become sections over the past two weeks. Continual combat flying had run those pilots into the ground almost as fast as their machines. Mechanics were waiting for spare parts to arrive from Formosa and the Home Islands even as gasoline drums were being tipped over one more time for the last few pints of high octane fuel.
Eighteen miles north of the port, a battery of seventy five millimeter guns began to fire. The four guns each had two dozen shells available for today’s fire missions. This was more shells than the gunners had fired for weeks at a time during the siege. Now the gunners waited a moment as a correction was called in. They were two hundred yards short and one hundred yards to the right of the target. A minute later, the first of six shells per tube were on the way to help a patrolling company break contact.
