Dogfight ends in an unlikely bond
Barrie Davis has long wanted to look into the eyes of the pilot who nearly blasted his P-51 Mustang out of the sky over a field in Romania during World War II. After 65 years, he'll finally get his chance.
In a rendezvous arranged by a magazine writer and his filmmaker son, Davis and his wartime nemesis, Ion Dobran, will meet face to face for the first time later this month.
It will be different now, of course. Davis, who flew for the U.S. Army Air Corps, and Dobran, a Romanian Air Force pilot, both went on to become aces during the war. Just months after their dogfight, Romania changed sides, fighting with Allied forces to defeat Hitler.
After the war, both men went home and resumed their civilian lives. Davis went into newspapers and printing, running Gold Leaf Publishers. Dobran worked a series of trades before becoming a pilot in civil aviation. A world apart, they worked until they could retire. But each held on to the memories of military service and wondered, at times, about the fellow in that other plane.
"I'm just eager to see him," Davis said of Dobran. "I never saw him or his airplane the day he shot me up."
Davis had been an eager recruit.
A 1940 graduate of the former Wakelon High School in Zebulon, Davis enrolled in early 1941 at Wake Forest University. That fall, he dropped out to enlist in service just as America was about to enter the war.
The way he remembers it, the Air Corps sorted men this way:
"If you were smart, they made you a navigator. If you were steady, they made you a bombardier. All the rest of us, they made pilots."
Davis was trained as a fighter pilot and assigned to the 15th Air Force in the U.S. Mediterranean operations, based in southern Italy. He was 20 years old.
His primary job was to escort bombers on raids. The one-man fighter planes protected the slow-moving bombers and their crews.
But from Italy, the planes sometimes had to travel three hours in one direction just to reach a target. After some delicate negotiations, the Soviet government agreed to let Allied forces put temporary bases in what is now Ukraine from which to launch bombing runs.
Davis and his P-51 Mustang arrived on June 2 at a base so remote that some of his fellow "Checkertails" -- named for the tail design on their planes -- feared they would run out of fuel before they found it.
On June 6, they were assigned to escort a fleet of B-17 bombers attacking a Romanian railroad yard, a nerve center in the network that sent war supplies to Germany.
He didn't see it coming
Three squadrons of P-51s and the bombers left around 7:30 a.m., with Davis in his trusty Mayfair 24. Right over the target, they were met by the Romanian air force. Almost instantly, it seemed as if there were 100 planes in the air. Then all at once, they were gone.
In fact, Davis could seeonly one other plane, that of fellow pilot Wayne Lowry. They fell in side by side and started back to the base.
Lowry spotted the plane that came from behind Davis. He later told Davis he had thought it was one of their own.
At first glance, historians say, the German-made Messerschmitt Bf-109G looked a lot like a P-51.
This one came in fast, firing its cannon and machine guns. The first cannon round blew the canopy off the Mustang and knocked Davis unconscious. Lowry went after the Messerschmitt, firing, and saw the pilot head for the ground.
When Davis came to, all he knew was that he was cold.
"The dew on my shoes from where I had walked through the grass that morning was frozen," he says. The plane was still flying along at 20,000 feet, where it was 4 degrees below zero.
He took the controls and surveyed the damage.
"He had just mutilated the right wing," Davis says of his attacker. "He was a pretty good shot."
He flew it back to the base, where he later learned there was an unexploded shell in the gas tank. It should have blown the thing up.
A surgeon and his assistant picked metal and plastic bits out of Davis for half an hour, wrapped him in gauze and sent him to his tent. There was no hospital.
That night, he says, the bandages started falling off, so he unwrapped them and went back to work. A few days later, he was back in Italy, minus Mayfair 24, which, as far as Davis knows, never flew again.
The Air Corps lost two other P-51s and their pilots on that mission.
First enemies, now pals
By October 1945, Davis had flown the 70 missions he needed to get sent back to the U.S. He chalked up six in-air "kills" and six more on the ground, more than enough to qualify for the title of ace.
He also gathered stories to last a lifetime.
Dan Dimancescu wanted to hear them. Dimancescu is a retired management consultant and sometime adventurer who has written about several expeditions for National Geographic magazine. He and his son started a film company in Romania, where Dimancescu's parents were born.
They learned of Davis and Dobran a couple of years ago from an amateur historian in Romania who has spent hours studying World War II records and Romania's role in the war.
Records show that Dobran claimed a victory over Davis that day, but that Dobran had to land his own damaged plane on its belly, and it likely never flew again.
About a year ago, Davis and Dobran exchanged letters.
He seemed relieved, as Davis was, that there were no hard feelings.
"In wartime," he explained, "my permanent motivation had been to put down planes, not to kill people. I was always content and thankful when seeing a parachute opening up out of the plane I had hit, because I thought that, somewhere, far away, a mother or a girlfriend were ... waiting and hoping."
Now two old men who have come to hate war - Davis, 86, and Dobran, 90 - are waiting and hoping. Davis, along with one of his sons, and Dimancescu and his son will fly to Bucharest toward the end of January to meet Dobran. During the trip, they will stop at the graves of some of the American aviators who died during the war.
"You have given me much joy," Dobran wrote to Davis. "I have got a new friend and I have received confirmation of a victory, fortunately not over Barrie Davis, but only over Mayfair 24."
http://vimeo.com/9245684
video of the meeting ( takes a while to load )
Two World War II fighter pilot 'aces' who faced one another in a dogfight over Romania met in Bucharest on January 23rd, 2010. The was the first time they met face to face in 66 years. Dobran would tell Davis: "I always wanted to destroy the plane, not the pilot." In response, Davis said: "I'm definitely the lucky one as a shell was found unexploded in my P-51 Mustang's fuel tank." Dobran shot Davis' fighter from his own Romanian Air Force Bf109 Messerschmitt only to be later by Davis' squad leader.