Orang-orang kampung antaranya Ujang bin
Mat Seh, Ibrahim bin Wahab, Talif bin Ali, Sudin bin Sidek, Karim
serta dibantu oleh orang Cina dan India dari sekitar Astana Raja,
Semerbok, Kendong dan Kota telah menyelamatkan tentera Amerika dari
buruan tentera Jepun dengan menyerahkan tentera Amerika ini kepada
gerila komunis pada ketika itu yang berada di sekitar Rembau.
Bagaimana pun, dua orang tentera
Amerika telah berjaya ditangkap oleh tentera Jepun hasil maklumat
dari seorang anggota polis berbangsa Melayu.
Menarik bukan sejarah di Rembau ini,
kita harapkan pihak kerajaan negeri khususnya pihak Lembaga Muzium
Negeri Sembilan dapat menjejak kembali tapak pesawat ini terhempas
serta keturunan mereka yang telah menyelamatkan tentera Amerika ini
samada terdiri dari orang kampung mahu pun gerila komunis.
Rujukan di bawah ini :
In 1998, an American visited Malaysia
with his father diary and he contacted one of our team members Mr
Sager Ahmad and told that his father bailed out from a B-29 bomber in
Negeri Sembilan during World War 2. Mr. Sager met the son of the
aircrew from the famous B-29 bomber ‘Postville Express’ which
crashed in Rembau and they visited the crash site together.
Mr.Shaharom later took some pictures to put it in our website, Malaya
Historical Group
B-29 42-24704 which was the third
aircraft in the formation, managed to avoid the flaming wreckages to
carry out their mission. The Japanese subsequently salvaged and
developed the film from a camera taken from a B-29’s wreckage and
one of the photos developed showed “Postville Express” flying
alongside the doomed B-29. The US Army Air Corp lost 14 B-29 bombers
in that mission.
On the fateful day of 11 January 1945,
the ‘Postville Express’ (the aircraft was named "Postville
Express" after the pilot’s hometown of Postville, Iowa) was
overhead their target –The Singapore Naval Dry Dock facilities at
8:54 am. After dropped their bombs, accurate and heavy anti-aircraft
shells from the ground and a floating anti-aircraft platform (the
badly damaged Japanese cruiser Myoko) filled the sky. The Japanese
fighters which included Zero, Frank, Oscar, Tony and others flew in
like swarm of angry hornets from their nest, pumping bullets and
cannon shells into the B-29 bombers, some even dropped aerial bombs
on the B-29 formation. While the pilot Major Humprey tried to help
Col Billing, suddenly the wing gave away and snapped, flipped the
B-29 on its right side and tossing them about in the nose cabin. Maj
Humprey cannot recall how he managed to get out from the spinning
wreckage but he landed safely on Rembau, after opened his parachute
at about 4000 feet.
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