Ransom a World War II pilot serving in the Pacific Theater, is shot down in China!


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Partial Transcript:
Ransom Rideout: I was on my 38th mission and I was told by this squadron commander that I would lead this mission and that it would comprise of flight from Nanking to Hankow, so it's a river sweep on the Yangtze River. And he chewed us out, I'll never forget that. Because we were always exposed to danger and he chewed us out for not getting more results. Not sinking enough ships and not destroying enough enemy... whatever.


So that was stuck in the back of my mind. I lay awake most of the night. Even though I had 38 missions, China was never familiar to me at any time. There were no landmarks that you could use, just a vast, vast country. There were no streets, highways, railroads that you could use. You did have the Yangtze River.


Early morning I went down to ops and was briefed and told that if anything happened to go north as far as you could from the Yangtze because everything else was all in Japanese. So we were showing our flak, zones of flak. After the briefing the Chinese two guys on my wing and I, we climbed in our P51-D's we had two, each one of us had two demolition bombs. And of course we had our six...


J.R. Warmkessel: 50 caliber?


Ransom Rideout: 50 caliber machine guns. So we were heavily armed. And we took off, joined up, and headed for Nanking.


It was a gorgeous day, it was a pilot's day to fly. The air was so smooth, the Merlin just purred so smoothly, and I look over to my left side and I see in the early morning sunlight this ten-story, I figured it was ten-story, it could have been twelve or five, but it was a beautiful white marble pagoda. And as I gazed down at that gorgeous pagoda I thought to myself, "How could there be killing going on and everything below me?" It was just a serene setting, it made it hard to believe there was anything harmful going on. And about that time I could see Nanking in the distance and I told my wingman, "Let's drop down to 5,000 feet," and we did and we started our sweep from Nanking to Hankow which was approximately 800 miles.


We were now 1,000 miles behind lines into Japanese territory. And of course we had no radio aids at all and that's what made it spooky. If weather could come in behind you, how the Hell am I going to find my way home? We'd write our courses down on the back of our hand so that we had at least a small reference but everything was dead reckoning. We had no radio aids whatsoever.


After we got down to 5,000 we started our sweep and an hour went by and shoot, no luck, we didn't see anything. I figured about this time the old man is going to have fun with this when we get home 'cause we're not sighting anything. And about that time I saw in the distance this gorgeous big, white yacht. I mean, what a thing to see. A big gorgeous yacht. Big power yacht.


Now that time of year, the Yangtze River is way down. The banks of the river are some 40 feet high. And this big yacht was nestled right up to the base. Before a bend in the river, it was based down here.


I told my wingmen to give me cover while I went down and strafed it up a bit. So I took a pass at that beautiful yacht, gave them a long burst with my 50s, couldn't get a fire started. I don't even know if I ever hit them or not. Anyway, I broke to the left and my wingmen were screaming to me at that time, "Rideout, they're shooting at you! They're in the bank of the river there. They're firing at you."


So I made one more pass and this time I broke to the right. Well, as I broke to the right, I could not, I was down on the deck, I had just finished my pass, and I was breaking down to the right. I couldn't believe it. I'm under the biggest camouflage net in the world, it stretched for miles. And underneath this massive camouflage net are 11 huge, huge landing craft. I mean, they were big and there were 11 of them. Well this time of year the Japanese were pulling back their forces for southern China and India. I mean, all from the continent of China, comeback to protect their homeland, and these obviously were waiting for the troops to come and then they would take them back to Japan. I didn't have time to make any decision, it just was natural. I pushed the throttle to the fire wall, armed my bombs, and took on the first landing craft. And, holy smokes, I had not gotten into that run two, three seconds when all hell broke loose. Boy, I was just hit by big 40 millimeter stuff, and the side of my cockpit was ripped off and I knew my engine was hit and I was just lucky I wasn't hit. I broke immediately. As I was down on the deck I broke right down to the top of the water on the Yangtze River, and as I headed towards the north side, which we were alerted to do, I had no idea how much longer my engine would run. I went by a channel marker buoy and the sides dropped as I got by it and there was a quad with four 20 millimeter canon in it, just pounding me. The nose of my 51, I don't know whether you're familiar with it, but it stretches out quite a ways in front of you, and it just looked like a cheese grate all of a sudden. And I kept heading and climbing steadily, but very slowly, up for altitude on the north side of the Yangtze River, and my wingmen are all screaming at me, "Get out, Rideout! You're on fire! Get out! Get out!" I couldn't get out. I'm only, down on the deck, and I just nursed that little plane up, just kept going. I was just so thankful for it, and after about, oh, two minutes maybe, I got up to about 5,000 feet when the oil pressure just dropped down. So I saw the oil pressure go, but I had gotten at least to 5,000 feet so I knew I had to get out and I was just so grateful to that little Merlin Rolls Royce, but when that oil quit and that engine is windmilling, I'll never forget the feel and the sound of the rotating gears with no oil in them. Oh, what a horrible crunch and growling sound it made. My wingmen still calling for me to jump, get out. Well, I reached for my cockpit to roll my canopy back and there's no lever. It's gone. There's no crank. That's blown off the aircraft. Well I got an emergency lever. I reached over for this little red emergency lever to eject the canopy and it just went like that. The wires had all been cut, so what in the hell can I do? I lowered the seat of my cockpit down to the very bottom and I got my feet up pushing up on the top of that canopy, and they are heavy. I didn't realize how heavy they are. And then I jumped my fingers gradually into the entrance of it like a gradually jerked out heavy canopy back to where I could climb up through it. Well, that was good. So I trimmed the aircraft for she had a beautiful gentle glide of 19 knots. I trim her up, so she goes straight, load my flaps, my gear so she glided straight. I didn't want that thing to swing around and hit me after I bailed out. I stood up on the pilot's seat to go over the side and realize holy cow I've still got my headset on. I took it off, passed it down into the cockpit and as I looked down there's my cigarettes one the instrument panel. So I grabbed those, put them in my pocket, zipped it all up. I don't know why you do things like this. I did. And then I climbed up onto the seat of the pilot, pilot's seat, to jump over the side. And as I looked down, I say "Holy Smoke!