In their own words...

[McQ59]

Love this read Bobby. Keep'em comin'!

And; Thanx!

[Lost Apiarist]

Great stuff, very interesting. Keep em coming

[scottyvt4]

some epic reading there bobby .............. you're a rascle, i was going to put "the white rose" on lol

[bobbysocks]

sorry scotty...had i know i would have surely let you post it...

On September 16, 1943, three days after arriving at Snetterton Heath, Nevin Beam, the bombardier, and I were awakened at 9:15 in the morning by an orderly, who told us we were needed at Operations to fly with a different crew, of the 413th squadron, on a raid that day. We had been sleeping very late that morning after having attended a late party the night before. We scarcely had time to dress when a truck arrived at our barracks to take us to Operations, where we arrived about 10:00. The 413th operations officer was in a panic. The briefing had just ended, and it was his responsibility to provide complete crews for the raid. We were his replacements for a navigator and a bombardier who had been injured on a mission a few days before. When I told him I had not yet been issued any cold-weather clothing or other equipment, he and another person gave me some of theirs, and the rest of the clothing and equipment were located somewhere. Because we had not had time for breakfast, he scrounged up some K-rations for us. He also handed me a stack of maps and charts, and told me only one thing about the mission: The target was Bordeaux, in southern France, for a late afternoon bombing, with the primary target being an air field and the secondary target being an aircraft assembly plant. So here I was, a green navigator in the European Theater of Operations, on his first raid, and knowing almost nothing about the mission except what was in the battle order.

When I told the crew's pilot, Lt. Tanner, at planeside of my total inexperience as a combat navigator, he told me not to worry, because we would be flying in formation all the way there and back. I thought to myself, "Yes, but what if we are damaged and have to leave the formation?" It was his crew's 21st mission, so they had a lot of combat experience. His regular bombardier, whom Beam was replacing, had been shot down off Heligoland (an island in the North Sea northwest of Germany) while flying as a substitute on another crew, and after floating for a considerable time was picked up by the British Air Sea Rescue team, and returned to England.

We took off around 12:00 in the second element of the low squadron (at "suicide corner"). Assembly was over the field, and the formation flew at very low level to Land's End at the southwest tip of England, to keep German radar from detecting the formation. Beyond that point, the course took us far enough out to sea to miss the Brest peninsula of France by a wide margin. Much of the flight, straight southward until even with Bordeaux, was spent by me in arranging maps and charts to make it easy to navigate by dead reckoning in order to cross-check the flight plan positions over water. This was difficult, because ammunition boxes piled on the navigator's table made it necessary for me to do my navigation on my lap.

At a point off Bordeaux, we made our turn toward the target and started a climb to a bombing altitude of 20,000 feet. I got my first view of enemy aircraft as we approached the French coast. Four ME-110s (Messerschmitt fighters) appeared at one o'clock just out of range. I also saw my first flak; it was fascinating to me because it looked like black pop-corn, and it sounded like pop-corn when it exploded close to us. At first the German fighters attacked only other groups in the 45th Combat Wing. We could see a B-17, in flames, go into a spin and dive toward the ground. Six parachutes came out of the airplane, and while they looked like white blossoms floating down, it was a real shocker to realize that those were living men going down into enemy-occupied territory. A layer of clouds formed underneath us before we reached Bordeaux, so a decision was made not to bomb either the primary or the first-alternate target. The policy established by the Eighth Air Force was that German-occupied friendly territory would not be bombed through an overcast, because a miss could result in tragedy among friendly civilians near the targets.

So the wing lead altered course toward a different alternate target, the submarine pens at La Pallice, where there was no overcast. On the way there, about ten more enemy fighters joined the two that were already there, and they came from every direction. Two more Forts were damaged and could not stay with the formation, and the Messerschmitts directed most attention to them. They both finally exploded, with no parachutes leaving either plane.

Between Bordeaux and La Pallice, I got my first taste of real aerial gunnery. The .50-caliber machine guns had been installed by the ground crew while I was preparing for takeoff. I had a problem keeping my oxygen hose connected, so I had to hold the hose with one hand and fire the gun with the other. Nevin Beam helped me look for enemy planes. One of them made a run on our group, hit a plane in our high squadron, and more parachutes appeared.

One thing happened that was extremely embarrassing to me. As I jumped up once to man the gun, the hand release of my parachute caught on something, and all of the silk of the chute spilled out onto the floor of the nose compartment. I gathered it into as tight a ball as I could, and placed it on the floor behind me, in case it became necessary to bail out. I'm not sure what would have happened if I had had to jump out into the 150 mile-an-hour wind with an armload of silk.

I saw a B-17 spinning at ten o'clock, pulling out of the spin into a dive, with a Jerry fighter on his tail. I got the fighter in my gun-sight, with the proper lead, as a veteran gunner would, and fired many rounds at the "bandit". The pilot congratulated me over the interphone, but added that the fighter was probably out of range when I fired at it. Ultimately, the Fort was knocked down by the fighter, with no parachutes in sight.

Finally, the target was reached, bomb-bay doors were opened, the lead bombardier released his bombs, and the other planes toggled their bombs on that signal. The formation headed out to sea, reducing altitude again, so as to fly back to England out of view of German radar on the French coast. The fighters deserted the formation, and headed back to their home bases. I navigated primarily by flight plan, calculating occasional dead-reckoning fixes for practice, and was pleased to find that these fixes agreed closely with the flight plan.

About 20 miles from the English coast, darkness was setting in, and we hit a bank of "soup". The formation had to split up, and each plane was on its own to return to its home base. We took a heading that would be certain to hit the coast of England, and not the Brest Peninsula. At one time in the past, the Eighth Air Force had lost a returning squadron by flak and fighters over the Brest Peninsula. I was now at the point I dreaded, being unfamiliar with navigating over England, particularly at night. In addition, it would have been helpful if I had had practice using the Gee box on board. However, at one point searchlights over a vast area on the ground lit up, and waved back and forth in the direction of the airbases of each group. With the help of the pilot, I found a pundit that was located on our home base, we landed, and that was the end of my first combat flight. On the raid, I had managed to record a considerable amount of data concerning the mission that may have done Intelligence some good.

I was quite shaken up by something I found out after returning from this first raid. It happened that planes on this mission had carried steel plating on the floor as a test by the Air Force for partial armor plating. (The idea was ultimately dropped because its weight reduced the bomb payload that could be carried.) I found out back home that a chunk of flak from a shell burst below us had bounced off the armor plate and lodged in the fuselage directly under me. Its direction was such that it would have hit the box of ammunition I had used as a seat. By the time I had decided to to recover the piece of flak as a souvenir, an anonymous ground crewman had already adopted it as his souvenir.

I'm afraid that my performance as a navigator on that mission was anything but exemplary. However, I didn't feel bad about it because, in my view, the 96th Group had sent me out to navigate long before they had trained me to navigate under combat conditions. The pilot told me that this was only a medium-rough mission compared with the many others he had already flown. But I later found out that this raid, at ten hours and 30 minutes, was the longest in the 8th Air Force up to that point in time. After this raid, the rest of our own crew hounded me and Beam, asking questions about "how combat was." They looked at us just as we had previously looked at other crews who had flown combat missions. But we managed to assume an air of nonchalance, as if there was nothing to it. One clear advantage of having been surprised by an unexpectedly early first mission was that there were not several weeks to look forward to it, nervous with expectancy.

[bobbysocks]

George "Buzz" Beurling - The Top Scoring Canadian

On June 7, 1942 he boarded carrier Eagle in Gibraltar, with 32 brand new Spitfires Mk Vc destined for Malta.1 Two days later, Beurling took off from the deck of Eagle for dangerous and long flight over the Mediterranean. He arrived safely at Takali, a dusty piece of airstrip in the middle of the island. As soon as he stopped taxing, group of mechanics unceremoniously pulled him out of precious fighter, immediately starting to refuel it and load its guns. Disoriented, he glanced around and found only dust, ruins, craters and bunch of miserably looking people, with war written all over their faces. Finally, Beurling found his place.

The RAF pilots considered beleaguered island of Malta a damned place. Living conditions and food were very poor. There was short supply of everything, and the British desperately tried to provide Malta with necessities, to help defenders of this strategic island. Luftwaffe and Regia Aeronautica tried to blast it into oblivion. There were daily bombing raids, and badly outnumbered RAF pilots were fighting heroically. Beurling arrived in the middle of this, and he loved it; especially, since there was very little of a formality among squadrons. The place was made for Beurling. He did fit its historical image perfectly: island standing proudly with the sword in one hand and the cross in other; him flying a Spitfire with blazing guns and the Bible in a pocket. It was there where he finally spread his wings and really fulfilled himself.

He joined Squadron No.249, with S/L Stanley Grant as commanding officer and F/L P.B. "Laddie" Lucas his flight commander. Canadian Robert McNair(who was the other flight commander) did not want Beurling in his flight. He had a very firm, negative opinion about him. Other pilots described him to Lucas:

"...the chap's a loner. Can't be relied on. He will either shoot some down or 'buy it'."

After a straight talk with Beurling, Lucas decided to give him a chance. Later he recalled:

"I felt I was in the presence of a very unusual young man. He didn't give a damn for me. A youngster really, who was champing at the bit to get to it, to get an airplane and have a go."

Beurling was assigned to fly with Lucas' good friend: Raoul Daddo-Langlois. When asked his opinion about Beurling after couple of flights, the latter replied:

"God Almighty, he's quick and he's got the most marvelous eyes but, he's a hell of a chap at being able to keep with us."

After nearly a month on the island, Beurling had almost nothing to show for. In one of the six patrols he flew at that period, he shot down one Bf-109, which got its whole empennage blown off from a single burst of his guns. Since no one saw it crash; he was credited with only a damage.

The big day came on July 6th. Beurling flew in one of the eight Spitfires, intercepting three Cant bombers and thirty Macchi 202's escorting them. Spitfires dived on them from 22,000 feet, with sun in the back. Beurling sprayed one Italian bomber with bullets and went after the fighter, which plunged down trying to escape. Beurling caught up with it at 5,000 feet, and with two short bursts of fire scored a perfect hit. At Takali, he found his Spit full of bullets holes. Since it was his flying day, for next sortie he took off in another aircraft. On his third fly that day - a patrol with three other pilots - he split the formation of two Ju-88 and twenty Bf-109F's. Typically for him, he "yahooed" through the opposition and went after the lonely prey. During this lone-wolf performance, he easily finished one Bf-109. Thus, he achieved a status of an ace. However, he was snubbed by his fellow pilots for individualistic performance, and celebrated alone.

After every successful sortie, Beurling promptly recorded all the data of his victories in his black notebook. He analyzed it and invented a set of formulas and graphs, which involved speed of aircrafts and angles. This served him to become (in opinion of many of his contemporaries) the best "deflection shooter can be." This mathematical calculations, together with lizard-practice-shooting, showed his great devotion to the science of killing. He was a zealot when it came to aircraft's guns, and had stuck to his armourers rather than his squadron mates. Since he did not drink and constantly talked about shooting and killing - occasionally adorning it with the Bible verse - the other pilots withdrew from him. When waiting for combat flying, he always checked all the guns in aircraft designated to him. He was obsessive about it. The same time George was completely unconcerned about his tidiness and exceptionally imprecise in his discipline. He was also very eager to fly missions. Unlike many others, he never complained about having to sit in the cockpit while being in readiness. He seemed to be indifferent to scourging sun and foul smell of cordite, glycol, grease, sometimes even vomit and urine.

Around that time he got his first nickname: "Screwball." In his book Malta, Laddie Lucas recalled: "He possessed a penchant for calling everything and everyone - the Maltese, the Bf-109s, the flies - those goddam screwballs.... His desire to exterminate was first made manifest in a curious way. One morning, we were on readiness at Takali, sitting in our dispersal hut in the southeast corner of the airfield. The remains of a slice of bully-beef which had been left over from breakfast lay on the floor. Flies by the dozen were settling on it ... Beurling pulled up a chair. He sat there, bent over this moving mass of activity, his eyes riveted on it, preparing for the kill. Every few minutes he would slowly lift his foot, taking particular care not to frighten the multitude, pause and - thump! Down would go his flying boot to crush another hundred or so flies to death. Those bright eyes sparkled with delight at the extent of the destruction. Each time he stamped his foot to swell the total destroyed, a satisfied transatlantic voice would be heard to mutter "the goddam screwballs!"

By July 11, Beurling had shot down two Bf-109s, three Macchi 202s, had a probable kill on a 109 and a few other aircraft damaged. On July 14, when flying alone(!) at 30,000 feet, Buerling attacked a group of Me-109s and Macchi 202s. During his dive he was spotted, and enemy aircraft, split its formation, let him go through, and closed after him. Starboard were Macchis, and Beurling turned toward them, trying to avoid Messerschmitts. Somebody got him anyway. He was flying for his life, using all helpful maneuvers. When being riddled with bullets directly from behind, he resorted to certain Spitfire advantage. If jumped from behind, the Spitfire, if its stick pulled too hard - 60 lb.. of torque was exerted on it (40 lb.. of shorter stick in Bf-109) - would enter a violent stall, flick over and spin. The maneuver was so quick and rough, that it proved to be an excellent escape. Another trick he often used was: "an aileron turn where you kick everything (the stick and the rudder) into corner." Aircraft flips over and drops like a rock.

"Screwball" landed at Takali in a shot-up aircraft, with bullet fragments in his heel. Doctor took it out, and Beurling was back in dogfighting business very next morning, littering St.Paul's Bay with two Macchi-202.

Next big day came on July 27. Beurling was part of a interception of the major attack on Malta, involving Ju-88s escorted by Messerschmitts and Macchis. He shot down 25 year old Faliero Gelli, who survived by pancaking his Macchi into a rocky field, and being found by merciful Maltese who did not battered him to bloody pulp, like they often did. Supposedly, Gelli is (he lives in New Jersey) the only man who survived Beurling's attack. After trouncing Gelli, Beurling destroyed another Macchi and one Bf-109. He also got probable second Messerschmitt. Since Takali airstrip was full of bomb craters, Beurling's squadron landed in nearby Luqa. After quick re-arming and refueling, they took off again, this time to meet a party of 20 Bf-109s. George went after separated rotte, and finished both of them. Two days later he victimized yet another German fighter. Thus after nearly two month on the island, his score was 16 destroyed, one probably destroyed, and four damaged.

Then Beurling got very sick. Lack of proper diet, strain of combat and severe case of Dog (form of dysentery) left him barely able to walk and weighting only 125 pounds. During this sickness he was ordered to accept an officer's commission. Sniffing a hero, the press wanted to interview him; and that had to be an officer. This time, he was too weak to protest. Once officer, Beurling moved from a dusty shanty to a charming villa in the hilltop Mdina. From its terrace he could watch the airfield located immediately below and all the drama of bombing and strafing.

On August 8, "Screwball" got shot down by a German, and crash-landed in a field. That was his third crash, and third without a scratch. Next few weeks were uneventful except, of a dramatic arrival of bits of convoy (operation "Pedestal") with desperately needed supplies. Among them was crippled tanker Ohio, and to salute her, Beurling did some stunt flying over Valetta's main street. By the end of August he collected a shared victory over a Ju-88 that had been separated from it's fighter escort.

October 14 was another of his flying days. Fifty fighters and eight bombers were heading toward the island. This time two whole squadrons of Spitfires scrambled. In the melee, Beurling snared one Ju-88 and two Bf-109s. But he forgot about his own tail, while going after his next victim. His Spit got peppered with cannon shells and plunged 16,000 feet down. Wounded in chest, leg and heel again.(he never even met Achilles!) Semiconscious, he managed to escape from burning cockpit and pulled the ripcord. Thus, he barely survived his fourth crash. Next two weeks he spent in hospital. He received another "gong": Distinguished Service Order, and was also told to pack up and get ready to go home for a bond tour. He was extremely agitated by this, since he would do anything for flying. During the farewell party, he said that he would fly even for Germans, rather then be a prisoner or not being able to fly at all.
Thus, his carreer at Malta came to a halt, with 27 enemy aircraft shot down. Also worth mentioning is (but can not be document) that, for almost every victory achieved, Beurling lost a wingman - or so is belived - and experienced pilots refused to fly with him. (Many veteran would confirm this. The fact however, is always omitted in every publication I have seen so far.) Later he openly admitted shooting a pilot in the parachute, during his days in Mlata. Annihilation of a Ju-88 crew in a floating dinghy, was also attributed to him.

Around that time the press started to call him "Buzz" and he was eagerly expected in Canada. On his way home, he survived yet another crash. This time it was a Liberator, which was taking him to Gibraltar. Only him, another ex-Malta pilot and one of the passengers survived. In England he was hospitalized for shock and wound infection.

At home he got a really big hero welcome, and media had their go with him. He gave many interviews, and that is where we learn a lot abount Beurling.

"I came right up underneath his tail. I was going faster than he was; about fifty yards behind. I was tending to overshoot. I weaved off to the right, and he looked out to his left. I weaved to the left and he looked out to his right. So, he still didn't know I was there. About this time I closed up to about thirty yards, and I was on his portside coming in at about a fifteen-degree angle. Well, twenty-five to thirty yards in the air looks as if you're right on top of him because there is no background, no perspective there and it looks pretty close. I could see all the details in his face because he turned and looked at me just as I had a bead on him. One of my can shells caught him in the face and blew his head right off. The body slumped and the slipstream caught the neck, the stub of the neck, and the blood streamed down the side of the cockpit. It was a great sight anyway. The red blood down the white fuselage. I must say it gives you a feeling of satisfaction when you actually blow their brains out." Brian Nolan: "Hero"

In another interview he referred to the Italians as "ice-cream merchants", saying:

"The Eyeties are comparatively easy to shoot down. Oh, they're brave enough. In fact, I think the Eyeties have more courage than the Germans, but their tactics aren't so good. They are very good gliders, but they try to do clever acrobatics and looping. But they will stick it even if things are going against them, whereas the Jerries will run."

[bobbysocks]

Here is a small, but most vivid and full of WW II air combat spirit, describe - excerpt from "Bud" Anderson book:

"He Was Someone Who Was Trying to Kill Me, Is All"

"The sky above was a bright crystal blue, and the land below a green-on-green checkerboard divided by a silver-blue ribbon. Below was occupied France, beyond the river lay Germany, and it all looked the same, rolling and peaceful and bursting with spring.

... The day was unusually, incredibly clear. In better times, it would have been a day for splashing through trout streams with fly rods, or driving so fast that some giggling girl would beg you to slow. But these weren't those kinds of times. These were the worst times God ever let happen. And so the trout streams were left to the fish, gasoline was a thing you used sparingly, and it was just one more day for flying and fighting and staying alive, if you could, six miles high over Germany.

... This particular day, out of the year I flew combat in Europe, is the one I have thought of on a thousand days since, sometimes on purpose and sometimes in spite of myself. Sometimes it's in cameo glimpses, other times in slow motion stop action, but always, in Technicolor. I sit on my porch, nearly a half-century and half-world removed from that awful business, looking out over a deep, green, river-cut canyon to the snow-capped Sierra, thinking about getting tires for the Blazer or mowing the lawn or, more likely, the next backpacking trip . . . and suddenly May 27, 1944, elbows its way to the front of my thoughts like a drunk to a bar. The projectionist inside my head who chooses the films seems to love this one rerun.

We were high over a bomber stream in our P-51B Mustangs, escorting the heavies to the Ludwigsbafen-Mannbeim area. For the past several weeks the Eighth Air Force had been targeting oil, and Ludwigshafen was a center for synthetic fuels. Oil was everything, the lifeblood of war.

... We'd picked up the bombers at 27,000 feet, assumed the right flank, and almost immediately all hell began breaking loose up ahead of us. This was early, still over France, long before we'd expected the German fighters to come up in force. You maintained radio silence until you engaged the enemy, and after that it didn't much matter since they knew you were there, and so people would chatter. They were chattering now, up ahead, and my earphones were crackling with loud, frantic calls: "Bandits, eleven o'clock low! . . . Two o'clock high, pick him up! . . . Blue leader break left!" It sounded as though the Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs were everywhere.

You knew how it was up ahead, and you knew it would be like that for you any minute now, the German single-seat Fw 190s and Me 109s coming straight through the bombers, mixing it up with the Mustangs, the hundreds of four-engined heavies and the hundreds of fighters scoring the crystal blue sky with their persistent white contrails.

The Germans liked to roar through the bombers head-on, firing long bursts, and then roll and go down. They would circle around to get ahead of the bomber stream, groping for altitude, avoiding the escorts if possible, then reassemble and come through head-on again. When their fuel or ammunition was exhausted, they would land and refuel and take off again, flying mission after mission, for as long as there were bombers to shoot at. They seldom came after us. Normally, they would skirmish the escorts only out of necessity. We were an inconvenience, best avoided. It was the bombers they wanted, and the German pilots threw themselves at them smartly and bravely. It was our job to stop them.

It seemed we were always outnumbered. We had more fighters than they did, but what mattered was how many they could put up in one area. They would concentrate in huge numbers, by the hundreds at times. They would assemble way up ahead, pick a section of the bomber formation, and then come in head-on, their guns blazing, sometimes biting the bombers below us before we knew what was happening.

In the distance, a red and black smear marked the spot where a B-17 and its 10 men had been. Planes still bearing their bomb loads erupted and fell, trailing flame, streaking the sky, leaving gaps in the bomber formation that were quickly closed up.

Through our headsets we could hear the war, working its way back toward us, coming straight at us at hundreds of miles per hour. The adrenaline began gushing, and I scanned the sky frantically, trying to pick out the fly-speck against the horizon that might have been somebody coming to kill us, trying to see him before be saw me, looking, squinting, breathless . . .

Over the radio: "Here they come!"

They'd worked over the bombers up ahead and now it was our turn.

Things happen quickly. We get rid of our drop tanks, slam the power up, and make a sweeping left turn to engage. My flight of four Mustangs is on the outside of the turn, a wingman close behind to my left, my element leader and his wingman behind to my right, all in finger formation. Open your right hand, tuck the thumb under, put the fingers together, and check the fingernails. That's how we flew, and fought. Two shooters, and two men to cover their tails. The Luftwaffe flew that way, too. German ace Werner Molders is generally credited with inventing the tactic during the Spanish Civil War.

Being on the outside of the turn, we are vulnerable to attack from the rear. I look over my right shoulder and, sure enough, I see four dots above us, way back, no threat at the moment, but coming hard down the chute. I start to call out, but . . .

"Four bogeys, five o'clock high!" My element leader, Eddie Simpson, has already seen them. Bogeys are unknowns and bandits are hostile. Quickly, the dots close and take shape. They're hostile, all right. They're Messerschmitts.

We turn hard to the right, pulling up into a tight string formation, spoiling their angle, and we try to come around and go at them head on. The Me 109s change course, charge past, and continue on down, and we wheel and give chase. There are four of them, single-seat fighters, and they pull up, turn hard, and we begin turning with them. We are circling now, tighter and tighter, chasing each other's tails, and I'm sitting there wondering what the hell's happening. These guys want to hang around. Curious. I'm wondering why they aren't after the bombers, why they're messing with us, whether they're simply creating some kind of a diversion or what. I would fly 116 combat missions, engage the enemy perhaps 40 times, shoot down 16 fighters, share in the destruction of a bomber, destroy another fighter on the ground, have a couple of aerial probables, and over that span it would be us bouncing them far more often than not. This was a switch.

We're flying tighter circles, gaining a little each turn, our throttles wide open, 30,000 feet up. The Mustang is a wonderful airplane, 37 feet wingtip to wingtip, just a little faster than the smaller German fighters, and also just a little more nimble. Suddenly the 109s, sensing things are not going well, roll out and run, turning east, flying level. Then one lifts up his nose and climbs away from the rest.

We roll out and go after them. They're flying full power, the black smoke pouring out their exhaust stacks. I'm looking at the one who is climbing, wondering what he is up to, and I'm thinking that if we stay with the other three, this guy will wind up above us. I send Simpson up after him. He and his wingman break off. My wingman, John Skara, and I chase the other three fighters, throttles all the way forward, and I can see that we're gaining.

I close to within 250 yards of the nearest Messerschmitt--dead astern, 6 o'clock, no maneuvering, no nothing--and squeeze the trigger on the control stick between my knees gently. Bambambambambam! The sound is loud in the cockpit in spite of the wind shriek and engine roar. And the vibration of the Mustang's four. 50-caliber machine guns, two in each wing, weighing 60-odd pounds apiece, is pronounced. In fact, you had to be careful in dogfights when you were turning hard, flying on the brink of a stall, because the buck of the guns was enough to peel off a few critical miles per hour and make the Mustang simply stop flying. That could prove downright embarrassing.

But I'm going like hell now, and I can see the bullets tearing at the Messerschmitt's wing root and fuselage. The armor-piercing ammunition we used was also incendiary, and hits were easily visible, making a bright flash and puff. Now the 109's trailing smoke thickens, and it's something more than exhaust smoke. He slows, and then suddenly rolls over. But the plane doesn't fall. It continues on, upside down, straight and level! What the hell . . . ?

The pilot can't be dead. It takes considerable effort to fly one of these fighter planes upside down. You have to push hard on the controls. Flying upside down isn't easy. It isn't something that happens all by itself, or that you do accidentally. So what in the world is be doing?

Well. It's an academic question, because I haven't the time to wait and find out. I pour another burst into him, pieces start flying off, I see flame, and the 109 plummets and falls into a spin, belching smoke. My sixth kill.

The other two Messerschmitt pilots have pulled away now, and they're nervous. Their airplanes are twitching, the fliers obviously straining to look over their shoulders and see what is happening. As we take up the chase again, two against two now, the trailing 109 peels away and dives for home, and the leader pulls up into a sharp climbing turn to the left. This one can fly, and he obviously has no thought of running. I'm thinking this one could be trouble.

We turn inside him, my wingman and I, still at long range, and he pulls around harder, passing in front of us right-to-left at an impossible angle. I want to swing in behind him, but I'm going too fast, and figure I would only go skidding on past. A Mustang at speed simply can't make a square corner. And in a dogfight you don't want to surrender your airspeed. I decide to overshoot him and climb.

He reverses his turn, trying to fall in behind us. My wingman is vulnerable now. I tell Skara, "Break off!" and be peels away. The German goes after him, and I go after the German, closing on his tail before he can close on my wingman. He sees me coming and dives away with me after him, then makes a climbing left turn. I go screaming by, pull up, and he's reversing his turn--man, be can fly!--and be comes crawling right up behind me, close enough that I can see him distinctly. He's bringing his nose up for a shot, and I haul back on the stick and climb even harder. I keep going up, because I'm out of alternatives.

This is what I see all these years later. If I were the sort to be troubled with nightmares, this is what would shock me awake. I am in this steep climb, pulling the stick into my navel, making it steeper, steeper . . . and I am looking back down, over my shoulder, at this classic gray Me 109 with black crosses that is pulling up, too, steeper, steeper, the pilot trying to get his nose up just a little bit more and bring me into his sights.

There is nothing distinctive about the aircraft, no fancy markings, nothing to identify it as the plane of an ace, as one of the "dreaded yellow-noses" like you see in the movies. Some of them did that, I know, but I never saw one. And in any event, all of their aces weren't flamboyant types who splashed paint on their airplanes to show who they were. I suppose I could go look it up in the archives. There's the chance I could find him in some gruppe's log book, having flown on this particular day, in this particular place, a few miles northwest of the French town of Strasbourg that sits on the Rhine. There are fellows who've done that, gone back and looked up their opponents. I never have. I never saw any point.

He was someone who was trying to kill me, is all.

So I'm looking back, almost straight down now, and I can see this 20-millimeter cannon sticking through the middle of the fighter's propeller hub. In the theater of my memory, it is enormous. An elephant gun. And that isn't far wrong. It is a gun designed to bring down a bomber, one that fires shells as long as your hand, shells that explode and tear big holes in metal. It is the single most frightening thing I have seen in my life, then and now.

But I'm too busy to be frightened. Later on, you might sit back and perspire about it, maybe 40-50 years later, say, sitting on your porch 7,000 miles away, but while it is happening you are just too damn busy. And I am extremely busy up here, hanging by my propeller, going almost straight up, full emergency power, which a Mustang could do for only so long before losing speed, shuddering, stalling, and falling back down; and I am thinking that if the Mustang stalls before the Messerschmitt stalls, I have had it.

I look back, and I can see that he's shuddering, on the verge of a stall. He hasn't been able to get his nose up enough, hasn't been able to bring that big gun to bear. Almost, but not quite. I'm a fallen-down-dead man almost, but not quite. His nose begins dropping just as my airplane, too, begins shuddering. He stalls a second or two before I stall, drops away before I do.

Good old Mustang.

He is falling away now, and I flop the nose over and go after him hard. We are very high by this time, six miles and then some, and falling very, very fast. The Messerschmitt had a head start, plummeting out of my range, but I'm closing up quickly. Then he flattens out and comes around hard to the left and starts climbing again, as if he wants to come at me head on. Suddenly we're right back where we started.

A lot of this is just instinct now. Things are happening too fast to think everything out. You steer with your right hand and feet. The right hand also triggers the guns. With your left, you work the throttle, and keep the airplane in trim, which is easier to do than describe.

Any airplane with a single propeller produces torque. The more horsepower you have, the more the prop will pull you off to one side. The Mustangs I flew used a 12-cylinder Packard Merlin engine that displaced 1,649 cubic inches. That is 10 times the size of the engine that powers an Indy car. It developed power enough that you never applied full power sitting still on the ground because it would pull the plane's tail up off the runway and the propeller would chew up the concrete. With so much power, you were continually making minor adjustments on the controls to keep the Mustang and its wing-mounted guns pointed straight.

There were three little palm-sized wheels you had to keep fiddling with. They trimmed you up for hands-off level flight. One was for the little trim tab on the tail's rudder, the vertical slab which moves the plane left or right. Another adjusted the tab on the tail's horizontal elevators that raise or lower the nose and help reduce the force you had to apply for hard turning. The third was for aileron trim, to keep your wings level, although you didn't have to fuss much with that one. Your left hand was down there a lot if you were changing speeds, as in combat . . . while at the same time you were making minor adjustments with your feet on the rudder pedals and your hand on the stick. At first it was awkward. But, with experience, it was something you did without thinking, like driving a car and twirling the radio dial.

It's a little unnerving to think about how many things you have to deal with all at once to fly combat.

So the Messerschmitt is coming around again, climbing hard to his left, and I've had about enough of this. My angle is a little bit better this time. So I roll the dice. Instead of cobbing it like before and sailing on by him, I decide to turn hard left inside him, knowing that if I lose speed and don't make it I probably won't get home. I pull back on the throttle slightly, put down 10 degrees of flaps, and haul back on the stick just as hard as I can. And the nose begins coming up and around, slowly, slowly. . .

Hot damn! I'm going to make it! I'm inside him, pulling my sights up to him. And the German pilot can see this. This time, it's the Messerschmitt that breaks away and goes zooming straight up, engine at maximum power, without much alternative. I come in with full power and follow him up, and the gap narrows swiftly. He is hanging by his prop, not quite vertically, and I am right there behind him, and it is terribly clear, having tested the theory less than a minute ago, that he is going to stall and fall away before I do.

I have him. He must know that I have him.

I bring my nose up, he comes into my sights, and from less than 300 yards I trigger a long, merciless burst from my Brownings. Every fifth bullet or so is a tracer, leaving a thin trail of smoke, marking the path of the bullet stream. The tracers race upward and find him. The bullets chew at the wing root, the cockpit, the engine, making bright little flashes. I hose the Messerschmitt down the way you'd hose down a campfire, methodically, from one end to the other, not wanting to make a mistake here. The 109 shakes like a retriever coming out of the water, throwing off pieces. He slows, almost stops, as if parked in the sky, his propeller just windmilling, and he begins smoking heavily.

My momentum carries me to him. I throttle back to ease my plane alongside, just off his right wing. Have I killed him? I do not particularly want to fight this man again. I am coming up even with the cockpit, and although I figure the less I know about him the better, I find myself looking in spite of myself. There is smoke in the cockpit. I can see that, nothing more. Another few feet. . . .

And then he falls away suddenly, left wing down, right wing rising up, obscuring my view. I am looking at the 109's sky blue belly, the wheel wells, twin radiators, grease marks, streaks from the guns, the black crosses. I am close enough to make out the rivets. The Messerschmitt is right there and then it is gone, just like that, rolling away and dropping its nose and falling (flying?) almost straight down, leaking coolant and trailing flame and smoke so black and thick that it has to be oil smoke. It simply plunges, heading straight for the deck. No spin, not even a wobble, no parachute, and now I am wondering. His ship seems a death ship--but is it?

Undecided, I peel off and begin chasing him down. Did I squander a chance here? Have I let him escape? He is diving hard enough to be shedding his wings, harder than anyone designed those airplanes to dive, 500 miles an hour and more, and if 109s will stall sooner than Mustangs going straight up, now I am worrying that maybe their wings stay on longer. At 25,000 feet I begin to grow nervous. I pull back on the throttle, ease out of the dive, and watch him go down. I have no more stomach for this kind of thing, not right now, not with this guy. Enough. Let him go and to hell with him.

Straight down be plunges, from as high as 35,000 feet, through this beautiful, crystal clear May morning toward the green-on-green checkerboard fields, leaving a wake of black smoke. From four miles straight up I watch as the Messerschmitt and the shadow it makes on the ground rush toward one another . . . . . and then, finally, silently, merge.

Eddie Simpson joins up with me. Both wingmen, too. Simpson, my old wingman and friend, had gotten the one who'd climbed out. We'd bagged three of the four. We were very excited. It had been a good day.

I had lived and my opponent had died. But it was a near thing. It could have been the other way around just as easily, and what probably made the difference was the airplane I flew. Made in America. I would live to see the day when people would try to tell me the United States can't make cars like some other folks do. What a laugh. ..."