1st Lt George A. Behling,Jr. 362nd Sqn. January 14th 1945, I remember as I climbed into my P-51 called "Chi Lassie"that my crew chief remarked that the spark plugs were leaded, but he believed they were good for one more mission. All that morning as we awoke, dressed, ate breakfast and prepared for take off we heard the constant drone of B-17 bombers overhead, because the bombers flew slower we would take of later and catch them up. when we arrived at our designated escort position over the North sea the B-17's stretched in a continuous line for as far as you could see, all headed for Berlin. In order not to pass the planes we were to protect we flew above them and zig zagged. Several hours have passed since the rendezvous and we are approaching the target at about 30,000 feet. Berlin is easily discernible by the heavy flak smoke at our altitude, suddenly a maze of German pursuit planes come screaming down on us from above. The sky is filled with airplanes, B-17's begin to burst into flames,trail smoke and spin like toys as parachutes pop open. I jettison my wing tanks and take a bead on an enemy fighter. A fellow P-51 drifts across my bow at a 30 degree angle in slow motion, so close I still don't know why I didn't tear it's tail off with my propeller. I'm completely distracted and loose sight of the enemy fighter. I bank to the left and look behind, there's a plane on my tail but it's not my wingman. It has a large radial engine and is easily identifiable as a Focke wulf 190. What happened to my wingman who was supposed to watch my tail, I still don't know to this day but I was on my own. With the 190 on my tail I turn hard to the left, left rudder, left stick, more throttle, I've got to out turn him. I see his cannon bursts but he can't get a hit. I wonder to myself, what am I doing here; a person could get killed. Why did I ever want to be a pilot? I am only 20 years old and should be at home, going to school and going home to my parents in the evening. I pull into a tighter, tighter turn, feeling so many G's I can hardly turn my head. Then the stick goes limp, I'm spinning--but you should never spin a P-51 because it might not come out. My primary training kicks in, I put in hard right rudder, the plane stops spinning and I put the stick forward. I'm flying again at 20,000 feet. This time I turn to the right and look behind, the son of a gun is still there. He followed me through the spin and 10,000 feet, it can't be, these German pilots are supposed to be undertrained.Tighter and tighter to the right,more cannon bursts. Another spin coming out at 10,000 feet and he's STILL THERE. Well if I can't out turn him, surely I can out run him. I shudder at the thought of one of those cannon shells tearing through my plane. In fact I'm utterly paralysed with fear. I point the plane at an approximate 10 degree angle toward the ground and open the throttle fully, it's working, he's falling behind, out of range. Now I am at tree top level just West of Berlin passing over the Elbe River. My engine sputters, intermittently spewing white clouds, I cut back on the throttle and lean the mixture, but the sputtering gets worse. Suddenly the engine goes dead streaming two contrail like bands from each side,Hurriedly, I try the starting procedure several times to no avail. I'm directly over a dense forest, no place to land. Pull up and bail out, but I am going at less than 200 mph and that's not enough speed to pull me up to a good altitude, It would not allow my chute time to open. Look for some place to put this baby down dead stick. Dead Stick! It was my worst thing in basic training. Without power I would have killed myself every time. There -- 20 degrees to the left is an open field running parallel to a railroad track. I'm barely flying so don't turn to sharply. The stick feels mushy,easy,easy! I'm lined up, 50 feet above the ground, wheels up, then, right in front of me are high tension wires, I close my eyes and pull back on the stick. Somehow( I don't know how,I was not looking!) I bounce over the wires and hit the ground with a thud. It's a frozen ploughed field and my plane skids along like a sled. Up ahead is a line of heavy trees and I'm zooming towards them with no way to stop,But I do stop about 50 feet short. I open the canopy, no one around. I hear the sound of an engine, look behind and there's that 190 coming right at me. Get out of this plane fast and get behind the trees,but I get tangled in my straps so I crouch down behind the armor plate in the back of my seat. The 190 does not strafe the plane and passes overhead. Now with him in sight I disentangle myself, get out of the plane and make for the trees. I make my way along the line of trees some 200 feet to the railroad embankment, go over it and head away. Up ahead is a bridge. But two figures are on the embankment coming toward me from the other direction. I STOP AND WAIT... 1st Lt Behling was captured that day and became a P.O.W This is an account by 1st LtBehling of an interesting tangling with a fighter over Germany.
Another interesting Air fight: 1st Lt. William Dunlop. 363rd Sqn, P-51D. On the 14th January 1945 a messerschmitt pilot made a score,and 1st Lt Dunlop remembers it well. "I was leading CEMENT Blue flight at 21,000 feet in the trail of White and Red flights, when a large gaggle of enemy aircraft were spotted at twelve o'clock heading for the bombers.I jettisoned my drop tanks and climbed at full throttle,reaching 30,000 ft just as the enemy made contact with the 363rd Sqn(CEMENT). Me 109's were in the sun above so I dived into the main gaggle below, I passed through two groups of 109's and 190's firing and being fired at. Then I tacked onto a gaggle of about thirty 109's at somewhere around 20,000 ft or lower. I had lost Blue three and four at the first gaggle of enemy aircraft but believed Blue two was still with me. "I began firing at the apparent tail end charlie which was an Me 109, and he put his aircraft into a steep dive, kicking rudder violently. I had to cut my throttle to avoid over-running and I fired each time he passed through my sites. I hit him repeatedly from wing tip to wing tip, his canopy flew off to the right and the pilot flew out, and just missed my wing as I flew between him and his smoking Me 109. A fraction of a second later it felt like my guns were firing without me pressing the trigger, and then my controls went out, completely dead. I watched one of my left hand .50 caliber machine guns blow out through the wing skin and my fuselage fuel tank catch fire. The plane was in a drifting dive and going straight down, the pressure held me in the right of the cockpit and was powerful enough to stop me raising my hand to release the canopy. THEN EVERYTHING BLEW Wings,canopy,tail section and fuselage separated and seemed to blow in different directions. The canopy must have left first as I felt the intence heat from the flames that were sucked into the cockpit, I was cooked on the forehead and then felt cool air as I was blown from what was left. I landed still in the bucket seat with the armour plate still attached and my shoulder straps still neatly in place." The engine and one wing lay together about fifty feet away and other pieces of my plane were still floating down all around. Another hundred yards away was the crashed Me 109, ammo still popping". 1st Lt Dunlop did bail out in a way, when his P-51 blew to pieces, throwing him clear, Dunlop thinks that he was at about 5,000 ft, although badly disorientated he finally was able to find and pull the rip cord after which he immediately hit the ground. The most amazing aspect of his escape was that, although still strapped in the seat, the back pack chute was able to deploy in the small space available and deposit him on the ground with no major injuries. Lt Dunlop got out of the wreckage of his aircraft and walked a short distance before he was captured, and was later sent to Stalag Luft XIII at Nuremburg.
Maj "Pete" Peterson.364th Sqn. On January 20th 1945, I was Red Flight leader and my wingman was Ernest Tiede. Lt Ed Haydon was my Element lead and his wingman was Lt Roland Wright,Lt Dale Karger was leading White Flight. I have forgotten what the original mission was, but about the time that we were to return home, we engaged 2 Me-262's near Brunswick(Germany). It appeared that one 262 pilot was checking the other one out in the jet. They did not run away, but seemed to want to engage in a fight. We were at about 20,000 feet and the 262's split......one went down to about 18,000 feet and the other stayed at 22,000 feet. Both flew in a large lazy circle, one opposite the other with me and the flight in the middle.It looked to me that the upper jet was waiting for me to attack the lower one, I called Lt Karger to turn back as if he were going home and climb back to attack the high jet while we circled. Lt Karger and his flight did just that and the upper 262 never saw them return, they shot him down with out any trouble and then Lt Kargers flight headed for home.When the upper 262 was eliminated, the remaining jet headed down for home in a hurry. I rolled over, split S'ed and went to full power.In no time, I hit compressibility with loss of all control at speeds in excess of 650 mph. After finally getting control I pulled out in a wide sweeping arc and pulled up behind the jet for a perfect shot at 6 o'clock. Unfortunatly, I was out of trim and my tracers went right over the top of his canopy. He hit the throttle and left me in a cloud of kerosene exhaust as if I were standing still. My flight had caught up with me so we headed for Lechfeld airbase, this we thought would be were he was heading and maybe we would catch him on landing. We flew over Lechfeld at about 6,000 Ft, there were about 100 262's nose to tail parked on the inactive side of the field, this meant they were out of fuel, no pilots or both. We were not sure which way the jet would approach the runway, so Lt Tiede and myself cruised toward the South end.Lt Haydon and Lt Wright spotted him coming in from the North, so Lt Haydon went for the jet, but he was to high and made an easy target for the flak gunners. He was hit and on the R/T said he was on fire, he pulled up to 400 Ft and bailed out and landed on the airfield, he became a P.O.W. Lt Roland Wright, following Haydon, was at very low level and the flak missed him but he did not miss the Me 262(LINK), he shot it down on its approach to the field. The remaining three of us reassembled South of Lechfeld and I called for them to check their fuel. We would need approx 135 gallons to get us back to Leiston, I had enough but Lt Wright who had been "Tailend Charlie" only had 85 gallons or less. It was pretty obvious that we were not going to make it home, so we needed to find a friendly airport as soon as possible. Flying at about 8,000 feet, deep in Germany in really nasty weather,we headed West through the weather front on instruments only. By know I was getting concerned about Lt Wright, about this time his fuel would be very low, and being on instruments flying on me he would not have a chance if his engine was to cut out.We finally broke out and spotted a large town near a river and we turned to it.Lo, and behold there was an airport,covered with snow,no tracks from aircraft traffic, but there appeared to be an Me-109 near a hanger. I told Lt Wright to land,tail first because of the unknown depth of the snow, and to wave his arms if the field was friendly.If they were not he must get clear as I would shot up his plane. Out came a vehicle full of people to the airplane as Lt Tiede and myself circled, eventually Lt Wrights arms started waving so we both landed. We were Southeast of Paris at Auxerre,France, and the front line was 60 km down the road at Dijon. Auxerre had a small company of MP's as the town had recently been "liberated", we asked them for help to get fuel.The fuel was ordered and would come from Patton's tank corp but we did not know how long it would take. Finally, Five days later a truck arrived full with 5 gallon Jerry-cans, so we filled up the planes and in lovely weather we headed off for England. By the time we got to mid-channel the weather had turned against us, it was a solid wall of fog from 1500 feet all the way down to the water,It looked like a wall of concrete along a straight vertical line. We radioed Leiston for information and heard quite a roar from them, as the last they heard we were in combat with the 262's.Major Gates got on the radio and said there was no way we would be able to land at Leiston as they were fogged in solid, he thought that we may have to bail out.Can you imagine that after what we had been through to get us and our planes back? I decided to give an instrument approach a try! At mid-channel, we were flying in a "V" formation with both wingmen stacked above me as I started a letdown in an attempt to get below the fog. I got down to where the altimeter read "0" and suddenly one of the guys said "Pete, you better get up here......a wave has just gone by!!" At this point it was decided to climb above the fog to about 2,000 feet. We arrived in the approxamate area of Leiston field and asked the tower to fire a rocket so we could get a fix, the rocket appeared above the fog so I told Lt Wright and Lt Tiede to circle that point whilst I tried an instrument approach. Since the longest runway at Leiston had a bearing of 240 degrees, it gave me a clue that maybe I could apply my high school geometry to an instrument letdown and we could then make it in. So I headed out a little way toward the channel and turned straight North at 0 degrees. As I kept talking on the radio for bearings, they fed me bearings to the field backto me, Firts 300 degrees, then 290, then 280. When they called 270 degrees ( making a 90 degree angle with my heading true North), I clocked the time that it took for the bearing to change to 240. Twice that time was the time it would take me to reach the field on a heading of 240 degrees which was the alignment with the runway. The runway 240 heading and a heading of 270 makes a 30/60 right triangle as I flew North. In a 30/60 right triangle, the side opposite the 30 angle is half the length of the hypotenuse. In this case, the "Hypotenuse" would be my line of approach toward the 240 bearing. As I decended toward the field I got down to about 50 feet above the ground, I could see straight down and spotted the end of the runway! I knew then that we could make it by repeating what I had done. I climbed back up on instruments and picked up Lt Roland Wright who flew off my right wing and we went through the same routine, we started the approach, I put down my landing gear; Lt Wright lowered his and stayed back just far enough to still keep me in sight and follow me down. I dropped flaps; he did the same. As we got to about 50 feet I saw the runway and called it out to him, he picked up the sight of the runway and landed, I then did the same with Lt Tiede and he landed. I was last and did a tight 360 degree turn at about 50 feet off the ground and landed. The people in the tower could hear us; could hear the tyres squeal on landing; but could not see us. At no time did the tower see us until we taxied by. The tower and DF guys did a great job without them we would not have made it. Without an automatic pilot, instrument landing system, or GCA to assist us, we managed to get down safely without losing airplanes or pilots. It was the best flying that I had ever done........or ever since!. Sadly Maj Peterson Passed away on 4th June, 2000. I hope uve enjoyed reading these interesting accounts
WW II luckiest soldier The 9th air force's 50th fighter group was only one of many P=47 outfits that took the war into the heart of Germany. As the luftwaffe suffered from shortge of experienced pilots and petrol, the thunderbolts just shifted their emphasis to ground targets. They came in at treetop level on strafing runs against highly defended targets, trains, convoys, etc.they also attracted lead like steel to a magnet!. The debris the Group's aircraft brought back lodged in the wings' leading edges and cowls covered a wide spectrum. The aircraft either sucked it up during explotions as they flew over them or were hit flying just a few feet above the ground. Sometimes, the dust kicked up by the lead thunderbolt's props blinded the pilots who were flying clcosely behind. Going against ground target with only a split second to react to automactic-weapons fire produced a lasting adrenaline rush. this unique story involves !st. Lt. Philip Savides-a pilot who logged much combat time over eastern France and Ger,many with the 313th fighter Squadron. He relates this most unusual story as it unfolded. "During my combat tour with the 50th group, I frequently dive-bombed railroad freight yards, strafing with 8 .50 caliber machine guns while descending to a very low altitude. Not surprisingly, angry germans often expresed their objections to the presence of me and my fellow pilots by filling the air with thousands of glowing golf balls ( flak). On this particular mission, the others pilots chose to exit the area of heated activity by zooming up as quickly as they could to reach altitud that would be out of the range of the enemy gunners. But this time, I opted to stay on deck-flying as low as I dared. I was hopping over buildings, dodging trees and folowing the land's contour. My reason was that I would be far enough away inone minute to be out of range of all the ground fire." It is difficult to imagine the skilled "touch " on the stick that most experienced pilots developed during their many hours of combat flying.By today's standards. the speeds of fighters such as the P=47 and P-51 seem almost like standstill.but from the cockpits of those planes, everything was a blur, and even a minute loss of concentration could have been fatal. "As I flew in this harrowing manner, I saw in the rearview mirror that my propeler was kicking up a continuous wake of dust and dirt! All of sudden- dead ahead and seen through the whirling circle of my propeler- a german soldier was running toward me! amybe he was trying to find a ditch or bomb shelter to protect himself.My fighter was hugging the groun and moving a blinding speed, and my first thought was that he better hurry because of our rapid closure! You have to understand that there was no thought in my mind to squeeze the trigger and certainly no urge to run him down. But my right hand ( as if it had a mind of its own) resolutely grasped the stick and, with minut movements, held the thunderbolt down low; it was all but scraping the soil.for me to have turned aside would have caught a wing tip-with fatal results for me!. there is no doubt that a quick tug on the stick would have made my aircraft hop over him, but that maneuver would have put me at an altitude that would have drawn horrendous fire at point-blank range. We had stirred a hornet's nest with our attack on the neighboring rail yard, and I would have every weapon within a mile drawing a bead to my plane. As my fighter swept toward the running soldier, I prayed that he would throw himself onto the ground, but he did not.Instead, incredibly, he stopped upright in his track-clearly paralyzed by fear!. I saw his face, his mouth agape,looming toward me. I saw the buttons on his coat and finally, I saw his helmeted head disappear close under the engine cowl. But there was no sickening thud and no abrupt deceleration. There was only the steady hum of the engine driving the 13 ft, 4-blade propeller that was knifing my P-47 through the air. how it was possible that with two foes so resolved to occupy the same space, there was no gortesque flutter of severed limbs, no gory splattering of blood and no sudden vibration of the engine that would have signaled the loos of a prop blade? Compeately puzzled by the absence of a collision, I kep my distance just a few feet from the ground until I have traveled about a mile.I pulled back on the stick and went in to full throttle, shooting skyward toward the rest of my squadron. I never mentioned that incident to anyone fro several decades, but that face, those buttons on his jacket and the image of that german helmet were deeply embedded in my memory." Many years latter, Lt Savides managed to do some math on this incident. He figured that his rpm were 2,250, and multiplying this by 60 minutes, the result netted 135,000 revolutions per hour. Multiplying this by the four blades, and there are 540,000 slashing porpeller blades per hour. Taknig this step further, Lt. Savides states that when flying at 250 mph, the aircraft moves at 1,320,000 feet per hour. Dividing that by trhe 540,000 blade rotation reveals that the aircraft and propeller blade moves forward 2.44 feet each time a blade moves past the six o'clock position on the propeller's arc. To better illustrate this, imagine a plane flying with the porpeller tips lightly striking the tarmac. The nicks in the runway would be 2.44 feet apart. The german, standing upright and facing his fate, escaped sudden death because, willy-nilly, he chose to stand on precisely the correct spot. A foot neared would have been fatal! The first propeller blade swept an inch from his nose, and as the aircraft advanced 2.44 feet, the second one moved through its arc, all but brushing the soldier's buttocks. Lt. Savides said," I have always wondered whether, after he had coughed my thunderbolt's gas exhaust out of his lungs, he shohuted a curse at me; or maybe he was not a vindictive soul and muttered a prayer of thanks for his good fortune!"
I think there are only two correct reactions to an experence like that. 1) Head for the nearest bar. 2) Head for the nearest place of worship.
This is a good story. Some Jappanese pilot was flying an attack on B-26s that were coming in at Beball (i don't know how to spell that). He flew at the B-26s and fired at one head on. It exploded. Then he flew through the explosion and the bombers thought he had collided with the B-26, so they ignored him. He flew around and attacked a different B-26. He hit it several times, but it landed safely. This pilot finds out the Lindon B. Johnson was on the plane he almost downed. He said "every time I went to America people would say 'Why didn't you shoot at Johnson's plane first?' then there would have been no president Johnson". I don't know much anbout LBJ, but I can imagine a lot of people wishing he was never president. What do you think of that? P.S. Sorry about not knowing the Jappanese pilot's name.
