"Dudley Henriques" wrote in message
...

Bob, being a fine author of many books on several subjects beside flying,
naturally gave many lectures on the rubber chicken circuit through his
life. He always laughed when he told me he spent the better part of that
life answering the same question time and time again about his "famous
dogfight" with Tokyo Joe. (Richard Loo, the wonderful character actor,
played TJ in the film as you probably know. )
Bob said that no matter where he was talking, in the questions afterward,
somebody would always ask him what it was like to have shot down Tokyo
Joe. He had to spend the following 10 minutes explaining how Warner Bros.
had put Joe in the film to make it more "exciting" for the movie goer. Bob
could never figure out why the actual events of the air war in China
needed any "extra" excitment. He said it was "darn near exciting enough as
it was" :-)
Privately, he laughingly told me one night that shooting Joe down wouldn't
have been all that hard anyway, since somebody forgot to tell Joe that he
didn't have any guns on that AT6 he was flying at the time :-))
Dudley

Thanks for that Dudley,

It was something I had always wondered about, but just shrugged it off as a
"Hollywood addition". :-)))

In any event, the film does present Col Scott as the way he was--a fine
soldier!!! As I said before, I envy your friendship with him., I just wish I
could have known him personally.

Paul