ow Harmon Escaped from Enem Fire Chutes to Safety From 4,000 Feet Avoids Enemy Fire by Playing Dead; Hid by Chinese Guerillas for 32 Days By LEONARD SCHLEIDE R - Special to The Daily - WASHINGTON, Jan. 24.-First Lt. Tom Harmon of the Army Air Forces, looking a little older and a lot wiser, came to Washington today to tell how he narrowly escaped being machine gunned by Japanese pilots after parachuting out of his Lightning fighter over China's Yangtze River. Harmon said he'll never know why the Japs held their fire, as he drifted slowly to earth. Today must have seemed like old times for the famed Michigan All-American. For more than an hour he withstood a barrage of questions from newspaper and radio men. And then he sweltered under the hot lights while the newsreels put him through his paces. Basically, Harmon hasn't changed much. After 11 months of combat duty in North Africa and China, he still retains the same calm- ness and poise he displayed on the gridiron. He's deeply tanned, has lost about 10 pounds and some of his hair, and wears six campaign ribbons, one of them the Purple Heart.° He told of being lost twice in the past year-once in the jungles of Dutch Guinea, where he wandered for seven days-later in Jap-held China, where, aided by friendly Chinese, he got back to his base in 31 days. Harmon is on a 20-day furlough now and his only ambition is to get back to Ann Arbor as quickly as possible. He hopes to arrive home Friday. Harmon related how a routine, every-day dive-bombing attack on Japanese docks and warehouses at Kiukiang on the Yangtze became a fierce dogfight, during which he shot down two Zeros, and then, when trapped from behind, was himself shot down. 9 That was Oct. 30, 1943-a year to ° the day after he had received his f .> 2< "'wings at Williams Field Ariz. Eight fi . fir,..: , f. ..,. P-38's were assigned to bomb the Jap , installations at Kiukiang. Four were to do the actual dive bombing, while Harmon and three others served as "top cover" escorts. To Harmon, an old safety man, fell the job of "Tail End Charlie. He . r.was the last man in the formation, behind and above the dive-bombers. They were almost over the target when things began to buzz. The top cover leader shopted "six Zeros at 3 o'clock" into the interphones. Har- mon says he turned around and saw six more enemy ships at 6 o'clock. -Assoc ated Press Photo "It was plain," he says, "that we TOM HARMON were in a beautiful trap. The Japs December photo. had been tipped off before we came in. He says hecounted 20 Zeros in the sky.From then' on, it was "every man for himself. To tell the story in Tom's own words: "I turned into the six Zeros behind me and busted right in between them. I got one in my sights, let go a burst of tracers that went into the cock-pit. Then I let go with my cannon. The Jap exploded and plunged straight into the ground." At the time, Harmon says, he was diving at a speed of more than 400 miles an hour. "I turned back into the fight," he continues, "and came up underneath another Zero. My guns tore a chunk out -of his wing. Then I closed in at 50 yards and let everything go. The plane went up like a matchbox." Harmon says he looked around for his comrades then. His squadron leader had been shot down. In that foray, four American planes were to be lost,including Harmon's. "Suddenly," he says, "two shells hit into the armorplate behind me. A third shell went right between my legs." Apparently that third shell was an incendiary for it started a gas- oline fire in his cockpit. He turned the ship over and tried to beat out the flames with his hands. He still bears the scars of that blaze on his hands and legs. "I saw it was impossible," Harmon declared. He unfastened his cockpit cover and the suction tore him out of the cockpit, ripping off his trousers below the knees. Harmon says he didn't know his altitude at the time he bailed out, so he pulled the ripcord immediately. Later he was to learn he jumped from 4,000 feet. That almost proved fatal. Two Zeros started circling him as he swayed helplessly in mid-air. "The Japs are notorious for machine-gunning our fliers," he asserts. "I'll never know why they didn't machine-gun me." He played dead, hanging there in his chute. "I came down in a lake," Tom goes on, 'but I didn't dare swim. The Japs continued circling. Every time they came over I ducked underneath my chute. They left after a while." That was all he could- tell. All we know is that Harmon was back at his base a month later. Presumably he was guided and fed by Chinese guerillas behind the Jap lines. "I can't say anything more," Harmon ex- plained, "because reprisals on the Chinese people would be very heavy." Harmon doesn't show much wear and tear for all his experiences. He says he flew about 20 missions in China. He's not sure of the exact number. Many pilots, he pointed out, keep an accurate count of their missions, in the hope of' going home after the 50th. But for a lot of the boys number 50 turns out to be a jinx. Michigan's "Old. 98" doesn't know what his next assignment will be. When he arrived in Miami, he hoped to surprise his parents, but, he says iolefully, "Somebody tipped them off." Harmon says that being lost in China couldn't be compared with his previous adventure in the jungles of South America. "China," he says, "is mountainous, but in Dutch Guinea, you couldn't walk 10 yards without using a knife." He was in those jungles for a week-after his B-25 bomber crashed. He was the only man in the crew to turn up alive. A reporter asked Harmon whether he had lost his way today in Wash- ington's gigantic Pentagon Building, the super-duper headquarters of the War Department here. Harmon wisecracked, "I did almost as much walking in the Penta- gon as I did in that jungle." Tom said he had received a letter recently from Forest-Evashevski, who as a Wolverine quarterback,cleared the way for many Harmon touchdowns. Evashevski, now a lieutenant in the Navy, wrote: "I don't know how you got those Zeros without me." VOL. LIV No. 62 ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN, TUESDAY, JAN. 25, 1944 PRICE 10 CENTS U.S. Steps- Up Pacific Air Offensive DesperateNazi Army Attacks Allies in Italy German Blows Strive To Fix Epic Blunder; Troops Take Nettuno By EDWARD KENNEDY Associated Press Correspondent ALLIED'HEADQQUARTERS, Al- giers, Jan. 24.-Small but determined German tank, artillery, and infantry forces were disclosed tonight to have opened counterattacks against the Allied beachheads south of Rome, where another Salerno-type battle may be in the making. Even while the main divisions of the most powerful Nazi army ever massed in Italy lashed savagely at Allied positions along the old Fifth Army front to the southeast, some of Field Marshal Gen. Albert Kessel- ring's combat teams opened a series 6f hot fights for canal bridges in the flatlands where British and Ameri- can troops landed Saturday virtually unopposed. The Germans battled all-out in an effort to repair the epic staff blunder that permitted American and British troops to land between their cross- Italy defense line and Rome. Stowe To. Talk ' On Experiences In Russia Today His exerienees 'as a war" corres- pondent in Russia will be described by Leland Stowe in a lecture, "What I Saw in Russia," to be held at 8:30 p.m. today in Hill Auditorium. The author of "They Shall Not Sleep," a book which was published last week, Mr. Stowe has covered al- most every political and diplomatic event in Europe and South America. Since 1941 he has been in the Far East sending news over the wire from such remote places as Burma, Ran- goon, Chungking, India and Russia. His ability to forecast the trend of international events won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1930 for his stories and articles about the Young Repar- ations Conference. Engine School Petitions Due Any freshman or scholastically el- igible sophomore, junior or senior is eligible for a class position on the Engineering Council. Petitions to be placed on the ballot must be in the dean's office of the College of Engineering by noon Wed- nesday, Feb. 9. Petitions must in- clude signatures of 15 classmates, candidate's qualifications for office, and address and telephone number. Infantile Paralysis Yictim Joins 'March of.Dimes' Drive Petitions for V-Ball Posts Due Tomorrow at Union