To Fly and Fight: Memoirs of a Triple Ace

By Clarence E. "Bud" Anderson and Joseph P. Hamelin

Bud Anderson is a flyers flyer.

The Californians enduring love of flying began in the 1920s with the planes that flew over his fathers farm. In January 1942, he entered the Army Air Corps Aviation Cadet Program. Later after he received his wings and flew P-39s, he was chosen as one of the original flight leaders of the new 357th Fighter Group. Equipped with the new and deadly P-51 Mustang, the group shot down five enemy aircraft for each one it lost while escorting bombers to targets deep inside Germany. But the price was high. Half of its pilots were killed or imprisoned, including some of Buds closest friends.

In February 1944, Bud Anderson, entered the uncertain, exhilarating, and deadly world of aerial combat. He flew two tours of combat against the Luftwaffe in less than a year. In battles sometimes involving hundreds of airplanes, he ranked among the groups leading aces with 16 aerial victories. He flew 116 missions in his old crow without ever being hit by enemy aircraft or turning back for any reason, despite one life or death confrontation after another.

His friend Chuck Yeager, who flew with Anderson in the 357th, says, In an airplane, the guy was a mongoosethe best fighter pilot I ever saw.

Buds years as a test pilot were at least as risky. In one bizarre experiment, he repeatedly linked up in midair with a B-29 bomber, wingtip to wingtip. In other tests, he flew a jet fighter that was launched and retrieved from a giant B-36 bomber. As in combat, he lost many friends flying tests such as these.

Bud commanded a squadron of F-86 jet fighters in postwar Korea, and a wing of F-105s on Okinawa during the mid-1960s. In 1970 at age 48, he flew combat strikes as a wing commander against communist supply lines.

To Fly and Fight is about flying, plain and simple: the joys and dangers and the very special skills it demands. Touching, thoughtful, and dead honest, it is the story of a boy who grew up living his dream.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524563424

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 by C.E. Bud Anderson. 724473

ISBN:

EBook 978-1-5245-6342-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 05/11/2017

Xlibris

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Copyright 1990 and 2011

Cover Painting by Raymond Waddey

Cover design by Carol Moody

Website: www.cebudanderson.com

Contents

Foreword By Mr. Jack Roush

Foreword By General Günther Rall

Foreword By General Chuck Yeager

Preface

Acknowledgments

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

2 I remember the incredible, intoxicating smell of the gasoline, oil and airplane dope, like a new car smell.

3 Son, you’ve just signed your own death warrant.

4 At least I’ll be able to outrun those Japs if I can’t outfly them.

5 Oh, yeah, I remember you. You’re the crazy one.

6 Mustang! Mustang! There’s one on your tail!

7 While I’m whooping like I’d just scored the touchdown that won the Rose Bowl, he throws the canopy off and bails out.

8 They simply appeared from behind, ghosts in the mist…and the plane on their left flew into the plane on our right.

9 The Messerschmitt simply flew into the ground at full power and blew up like a bomb.

10 Seeing Ellie didn’t prove quite as painful as I thought it might.

11 It was the biggest concentration of enemy airplanes I ever had seen, coming at us almost head-on.

12 What I remember about the interview was standing at attention from beginning to end.

13 Hey, man, you be careful with that son of a bitch!

14 I hear and feel something smashing into my airplane behind me!

15 All the geisha girls would ask, You fly B-29s, Joe?

16 "There is no evidence of a safety program at Edwards…

17 They were talking about impact zones instead of landing areas.

18 He’d been tearing out wire, and had failed to notice that no one had turned off the power.

Epilogue

Afterword

Addendum

For Ellie, Sandy…

And Ray Simon, who took a chance.

Foreword

By Mr. Jack Roush

Twenty-three years ago, I became the proud owner of a North American P51D Mustang which had been under Civilian Registry for more than 30 years. In that time frame it had gone through more than a half dozen owners, each with their own notion of how a retired WWII Warbird should be operated and presented to the public. The result was not a great example of a contemporary civilian aircraft nor a fitting tribute to the examples proud military heritage.

I immediately recognized the problem and decided to put things in order by preparing and presenting the aircraft as a WWII European Theater of Operations configured P51 that had been piloted by a successful American Aviator, who may or may not have survived the war. Accordingly, I contacted one of the few WWII warbird operators I knew for the name of a knowledgeable expert on such matters. My contacts name was Mickey Rupp whose family had been engaged in a Midwest manufacturing business for two generations. Mickey had additionally been an Indy 500 race car driver, who just coincidentally owned a P51D Mustang which had previously carried Capt. C.E. (Bud) Anderson’s Old Crow livery. Mickey told me that as an 8th AF, 357th Fighter Group Pilot, Capt. Anderson had in fact achieved triple Ace (more than 5 aerial victories) status with 16 ¼ enemy aircraft destroyed.

In World WWII, the 357th Fighter Group is credited with leading the effort to defeat the German Luftwaffe over Western Europe, thus making possible Operation Overload, the invasion into France by the allies in June of 1944. I then contacted the now Col. C.E. (Bud) Anderson who, after learning my intentions, presented to me information on at least a dozen distinguished American Aces, who had interesting graphics or nomenclature on the engine cowlings of their 357th Fighter Group P51’s.

After reviewing the history of all the great patriotic American aviators Bud had provided, it occurred to me that he had omitted sending me information on possibly the most obvious candidate. One who had served in not only one combat tour including more than 300 hours over hostile German territory, but who, like a smaller group of his contemporaries, had also volunteered for a second combat tour, during which he logged an additional 180 hours of dangerous missions over the same hostile territory.

Bud accomplished all this without ever aborting a mission due to a mechanical malfunction or for any other reason. Remarkably, Bud’s aircraft did not sustain significant damage due to enemy actions in either of his two tours.

I further learned that Bud was in excellent health and very much engaged in activities honoring and commemorating the sacrifices and accomplishments of all our veterans in the war to end all wars.

Looking forward from 1993, I could see many future opportunities to utilize my aircraft to support Bud in honoring our WWII veterans and for helping educate the cascading generations of Americans regarding the sacrifices of so many in Bud’s generation to make our present day security and prosperity possible. The opportunities included the upcoming 50th anniversary of Operation Overload, the end of WWII, the formation of the US Air Force as a separate branch of our Military Service, and the breaking of the sound barrier.

The best and perhaps most compelling factor in my decision was that not only had Bud been an incredible P51 pilot 50 years earlier, but that he had maintained his proficiency as a pilot since retirement from the military and later Defense Industry careers by continuing to fly numerous aircraft.

In other words, he could still fly an aircraft painted like his 1944 P51 Old Crow for many years to come. I could hardly contain my excitement!

In the nearly two ½ decades that have followed, Bud has maintained a personal appearance schedule that would challenge a 20 year old, given countless speeches, participated in more seminars and symposiums than one could count, logged more than 200 additional post USAF retirement P51 flight hours, flown in exhibition for air show opening ceremonies, piloted tens of photo missions and much, much more.

At many recent annual EAA Air Venture Warbirds in Review presentations I have been given the honor of introducing Bud As One of the World’s Greatest Aviators, One of Americas Bravest Hero’s and One of My Very Best Friends, WWII P51 Pilot C.E. (Bud) Anderson. There is not much more that I could or should add to that introduction except to encourage you to sit back and enjoy the ride as you experience the latest updated edition of Bud’s To Fly and Fight, Memoirs of Triple Ace which was first committed to print in 1990.

Jack Roush

Chairman, Roush Enterprises Inc.

Foreword

By General Günther Rall

He is one of the true Greats–as a pilot, as a character, and a friend. Lucky for both of us, Bud Anderson and I only met after the end of World War II. I don’t recall exactly when that was, but this much is certain: had we met earlier in the skies over Germany it would have had fatal consequences for at least one of us. And today we have been close friends for so long that we even share the same mistress. Not one with a woman’s name but - how could it be any different - an airplane’s. It is the Lockheed F-104 ‘Starfighter’.

When I first came close to this aircraft, which would accompany my military career as only the Me 109 had before, Bud had already been flying it for some time. He had been responsible for flight test operations at Edwards Air Force Base, the Mecca of military aviation in the Western Hemisphere. Everything that could be made to fly and was considered to have some use for the US Air Force would sooner or later touch down on the huge dry lake in the Mojave Desert, to be tested there to its limits. And not only that: in those days at Edwards the foundation for manned space flight was laid. It was here on October 14, 1947, that Chuck Yeager became the first man to break the sound barrier; record after record was broken here with the famous X-types up to the yet unmatched altitude and speed achievements of the X-15; it was here that an entire line-up of future Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Space Shuttle astronauts earned their spurs in their daily handling of test and experimental aircraft.

In this golden age Bud didn’t just fly his desk, but approximately 200 different airplane types, which constituted just about everything of note in military aviation on this side of the Iron Curtain between 1945 and 1980. It is self-explanatory that the majority of these types were anything but mature, and they only became operational through his knowledge and abilities. More than once he risked his neck and saved others from great danger with his well-founded opinions–as in the context with the hair-raising fighter-to-bomber coupling tests during the fifties. And if he just wanted to have fun, he flew the F-104.

You need an incredible amount of self-confidence and an even bigger amount of self-criticism to run through and survive an aviation career like his. When having been posted to England with the 357th FG to protect the 8th USAAF’s Fortresses from a Luftwaffe still strong and aggressive, he was merely 20 and a Flight Leader. He could have taken the easy way out after 300 hours over enemy territory and gone home. But his understanding of responsibility and obligation was stronger, and made him fly a second combat tour in the world’s toughest air war theater.

It always unsettles me when I realize how closely the lives, passions, attitudes, thinking and actions of fighter pilots of WWII resemble each other. Bud Anderson’s reminiscences bear witness to that. We were still children when the course was set for this war. Then, under arms, we quickly became adults, and had to pay an immeasurable price for the mistakes of our parents’ generation. That bloodshed has put its mark on us like nothing else. All the evil a man can experience, but also the most touching examples of bravery, dedication and comradeship have been compressed into these five-and-a half years. What a blessing that we, the survivors, were afterwards able to reach out, shake hands and serve peace side by side.

Bud has every reason to be proud of his achievements in war and peace, but he doesn’t make a fuss about them. In this respect, his memoir is authentic as well: matter-of-fact, built around proper judgments and conclusions, and, when things get dicey, of an ironic self-distance that won’t necessarily make you an adored movie star, but helps you master your life cheerfully and open-minded.

The story isn’t over yet. Bud is still flying the P-51 Mustang. And as long as he does, you’d better check your Six.

Günther Rall achieved 275 aerial victories in World War II. He was inspector General of the Luftwaffe and ended his military career with the rank of Lieutenant General and as the Permanent Representative of the Federal Republic of Germany in NATO’s Military Committee. Günther passed away 4 Oct, 2009 at age of 91.

FOREWORD

By General Chuck Yeager

In an airplane, the guy was a mongoose. It’s hard to believe, if the only Bud Anderson you ever knew was the one on the ground. Calm, gentlemanly. A grandfather. Funny. An all-around nice guy. But once you get him in an airplane, he’s vicious. Shot down 17 airplanes. Best fighter pilot I’ve ever seen. He’s also the best friend I have in the world. We go back 47 years, Andy and I.

We weren’t friends at first. Andy, Ed Hiro, Lloyd Hubbard, O’Bee O’Brien and Paul Devries were the flight leaders when I joined the 363rd squadron in March 1943. We were training at Tonopah, Nevada. I was the lowest-ranking officer among all of the pilots, and those guys were all like the Pope—pilots the rest of us looked up to. You might test them once in a while in the air, but they’d always whip your ass, put you in your place. I said to myself, I’ve got to be as good as those guys are—knowing I never would be, because they were learning, improving, at the same rate that I was.

But Andy and I developed a rapport flying Mustangs in England, particularly after I was shot down, made my way back, and finally got the OK to finish my tour. We were both small-town boys who liked hunting and fishing. We kept finding things in common, and developed a tremendous mutual respect. By the time we finished up and went home, we were pretty damned close, although making friends wasn’t something either of us went out of our way to do. It was risky in wartime. We lost an awful lot of guys over there.

We had the same kind of eyes—20/10. We saw everything that went on in the sky, before anyone else in the squadron, or even the group. Andy was leading the squadron this one time, and I was leading Green Flight, above and to his left. It was a long mission; we were 34-35,000 feet, throttled back to max range, 2,100 rpm, when I spotted what looked like a cumulus cloud starting to form maybe 50 miles away, at 11:30 (12 o’clock being straight ahead). It was a relatively clear day, and I kept looking at it, kept looking…and finally Andy says over the radio, You lookin’ at what I’m lookin’ at? I said, Yep, looks like a cloud, don’t it? And he says, Yeah, but I think I see some little dots. There were dots, all right. It turned out to be 150 Me 109s and 50 Fw 190s, coming almost head-on, right at our altitude.

I don’t know why they didn’t hit us head-on like they would do with the bombers. But they veered right, and Andy called out to punch tanks and break left, which put me in the lead, right in the middle of them. I remember, on a single small frame of my 16mm gun-camera film, being able to count 30-odd airplanes going every which way, P-51s and 109s and 190s. I got four 190s that day, and Andy got two and a probable. Anyhow, no one else in the squadron, or group, had said a word. We’d been the first ones to see them. The rest just listened, and Andy and I called them out.

When I was done chasing the last 190, everybody had scattered, and I found myself at 5,000 feet, with no airplanes anywhere. Just a bunch of smoking wrecks in a stream south from Magdeburg. You don’t call out. You just stay quiet. I started climbing to the west, got up to 36,000 feet, looked around…and saw three specks to the north. I thought maybe they were 109s or 190s. I had some ammo left, so I began to turn toward them. And the moment I rolled my wing up, I heard Andy’s voice saying Bogey down south. He was one of the specks and he’d spotted me! I joined up and we flew home together. And that’s when we ran into headwinds without really knowing it—we couldn’t see through the undercast. And when Andy finally did take us down through it, figuring that by now we were over the water, we broke out at 2,000 feet right above the Dutch coast. Hell, they threw everything at us: tracers, 20mm, 40mm and bigger stuff. We ducked back into the clouds as quick as we could. I’ve never let Andy forget about that one.

What made Andy unique was that he flew so many missions, logged so many combat hours and never had battle damage or aborted a mission. An incredible record! It shows what a meticulous professional he is, especially in combat. The same attention to detail is what made him a hell of a test pilot. He had those eyes, too, and he developed the combat skills to take advantage of the opportunities his eyes brought him. But luck was also a part of it. Luck plays a big part in anything you do in combat. Some guy you don’t see can always sneak up and shoot your ass off. No question, Andy is a very, very lucky guy. Anyone who got through the war was.

Generally speaking, getting killed was the least of our worries. When it happens, you don’t know anything about it anyway, so what the hell. That’s the attitude, I think, that most of us had. Duty was paramount. Dammit, it’s your job. The fact that you might get killed doesn’t enter your mind after the first couple of times.

One time, though, we were assigned to strafe Rechlin, the Germans’ Wright Field, where all the experimental aircraft were tested. We knew it’d be bristling with guns. I was leading that mission, and Andy was leading one of the trailing flights. I knew I might get through with my flight, being the first to attack, having some surprise on my side…but the numbers 2, 3 and 4 flights would take heavy losses. I knew there was every chance Andy wouldn’t get back. We’d been briefed, given a course, and were in the airplanes, sitting in the cockpits with the engines running, when the mission was canceled because of bad weather. Damn, I was never so happy in all my life.

After our final mission, the celebration began right on the flight line. We used to really get hammered, drink goddam Scotch whiskey until we’d pass out, get hung over, and wind up in the sorriest of conditions. But for some reason, once we strapped our fannies into that airplane, we were always able to get with the program. We flew out last missions together; then we broke out a bottle of Old Methuselah, real rot-gut whiskey, got two canteen cups, and tossed down almost a pint apiece on empty stomachs. Old Doc Tramp timed it. I think it was about 18 minutes before we fell down the first time.

When Andy is drunk or excited, his voice goes up a few octaves. He gets really wound up. We were going from the operations hut where we’d debriefed to the squadron area, riding on the back of a weapons carrier, and we rolled by one of the British construction crews laying a road. I remember Andy screaming and raising hell: Goddamn limeys, he yelled, "you were working on this stupid road when we came here and you’re still working on it!" You could hear him a mile away, like a jaybird.

The next day, we packed up and went down to London. We’d been running with a couple of gals down there. The morning after, we were supposed to catch a train out of Liverpool station to go to some base up north and fly home from there. I remember grabbing Andy’s ankle and trying to pull him out of the sack. We finally got to the station, threw our bags on the train, and then the conductor wouldn’t let us get on! I told Andy, That’s the last time I want to run with you, ever. But we took the next train, caught up with our bags, and we’ve been running together for damn near half a century.

Last June, we got to fly a couple of P-51s together. First time in about 40 years. And that was a thrill, I’ll tell you. I’d stayed current flying all kinds of airplanes, but Andy hadn’t flown a Mustang in 30-odd years. Still, I could see that he knew what the hell he was doing. It was like he’d been flying P-51s right along. I was proud of him. It was nice to see things haven’t changed a hell of a lot. He’s still like the Pope—the good, good leader. He’s still a guy I look up to. Always has been.

PREFACE

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There are a few things you should know about Bud Anderson before hearing his story.

First of all, this fellow is different. At 68, he still thinks it’s great fun to trek 30 miles through country so high and rugged that it’s avoided by mountain goats. He still flies, fishes, hunts, tinkers with cars—and he still runs into the yard when an airplane flies over. When told he was too old to make general, he decided instead to fly combat in F-105s. Bud is living proof that enthusiasm isn’t necessarily a thing you outgrow.

There is also still something about him, a certain steeliness in those curious, deep blue eyes that would turn a crook in an alley to jelly. Bud is gray now, and has always been slight, but one look is enough to tell you not to mess with the guy.

He doesn’t like to talk about himself much. Sometimes, getting the details about some deed or other was like pulling rhinoceros teeth. I lived within walking distance from his house in the same small town for several years before learning a triple ace lived there. He keeps a low profile. I’m sure there will be neighbors who’ll be stunned to know the guy down the block is a somebody.

Beyond that, he’s the king of all pack rats. He still has his World War II leather helmet, the purchase receipt for his ’39 Ford, almost every letter he ever received or wrote, and even the scrapbooks he kept as a kid. He has a picture file that’s alphabetized. There are so many boxes in his garage, there isn’t room for the cars.

He spent hours out there, I’m sure, sorting out memories. He is as meticulous as a neurosurgeon, a stickler for detail. When Ian Ballantine twisted his arm, insisting that Bud get his life story down on paper, he set out to capture the time and events in typical test-pilot manner. Methodically. Precisely. This is no ordinary, as-told-to book. It’s a product of 200 hours of tape-recorded interviews, and more hours or preparation than Bud cared to count. He wanted it right, if at all. The truth, no more, no less.

He would show up with volumes of notes. We would tape, I would write up a chapter, and then he’d review it, criticize and elaborate on it, and I would rewrite it…and rewrite it…until either it pleased him, or I simply stopped giving him copies.

The technical stuff—the control changes while taking an F-86 through the sound barrier, or the trimming out of a Mustang in combat—he sometimes gave up trying to make me comprehend. Instead he would write it out himself, in longhand on a big yellow legal pad. He has written for magazines. He could have done quite nicely without me. Sometimes I was the writer and other times merely the typist. Either way, it was always a pleasure.

For Bud, it was a catharsis. Many of these stories have never been told, even to his family…which is not unusual, I’ve discovered, among such men. While speaking of the time a wingman crashed during training, he stopped, gathered himself, and said, You’re getting me to talk about things I don’t want to talk about. I told him, Thank you. We got along nicely.

Clearly there were a few things I missed. After one taping session, when he told how daydreaming about some good time in London had nearly gotten him killed over Germany, I went home and wrote, as I thought he might write: I don’t remember what I was thinking about exactly, but I must have had one hell of a time. He’d volunteered nothing. I assumed he’d forgotten. But Bud has an elephant’s memory, a job requirement for test pilots in the days before mini-recorders and telemetry systems.

That’s not right, I remember him muttering as he studied the manuscript.

What’s not right?

I remember.

You remember what you were thinking about?

Yep.

"In the airplane? That day? Forty-some years ago?"

Yep.

It was that special, huh? Yep.

So are you going to tell me about it…?

Nope.

Will you tell me if I don’t…

No chance.

…put it in the book?

No way.

In places, then you will have to use some imagination. When you do, be bold about it. In a world divided into talkers and doers, it’s pretty clear where Bud Anderson fits. It’s like mothers tell their daughters: you have to watch out for the quiet ones.

Joseph P. Hamelin

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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Many people contributed to the making and shaping of this book, among them Chuck Yeager, O’Bee O’Brien, Bill Overstreet, John Skara, R.A. Peterson, Merle Olmstead, Bob Smith, Doc Tramp, Frank Waseka, Dick Johnson, Ed Horkey, R.D. Hunt, David Hudson, Mickey Rupp, Ed and Connie Bowlin, Bill Cassidy, Dell Riebe, Barrett Tillman, Joe Engle, Deke Slayton, Marilyn Laird Cruthers, Harold Struble, George Metteer, Ed Leak, John Fitzpatrick, S.R. Childs, Jim Wood, Joe Fernandez, Fred Lewis, Dan McGrath, and especially Ellie and Jim Anderson, Kitty Burlington, Sandy Haelin…and Ian and Betty Ballantine, who conceived and nurtured the project, and polished the manuscript. Special thanks to Raymond Waddey, John Dibbs, Paul and Gail Bowen, Ron and Diane Fagen, Eric Hammel, Jack Roush, Dr. Kurt Braatz, Gen. Günther Rall, Wolfgang Czaia and Curtis Fowles for contributing to the eBook version of To Fly & Fight.

1

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

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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.

But this was an overpoweringly sinister place. From our perch six miles up, we couldn’t see the enemy, some huddling over their guns taking aim, some climbing into their airplanes to fly up and get us, and some, on the far side of the river, waiting with pitchforks and hoping we’d fall somewhere close. All we could see was the green of their fields and forests. But we knew they were there, looking up, watching us come, and thinking how they could kill us.

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.

Staying alive was no simple thing in the skies over Europe in the spring of 1944. A lot of men couldn’t. It was a bad thing to dwell on if you were a fighter pilot, and so we told ourselves we were dead men and lived for the moment with no thought of the future at all. It wasn’t too difficult. Lots of us had no future and everyone knew it.

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 Ludwigshafen-Mannheim 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. Nations can’t fight without oil. All through my training, and all through the war, I can’t remember ever being limited on how much I could fly. There always was fuel enough. But by 1944, the Germans weren’t so fortunate. They were feeling the pinch from the daily bombardments. Without fuel and lubricant, their war machine eventually would grind to a stop. Now that the Mustang fighters were arriving in numbers, capable of escorting the bombers all the way to their targets and back, Germany’s oil industry was there for the pounding.

The day would come, and it would be soon, when the German Air Force, the Luftwaffe, would begin picking its spots, contesting some missions and not others; or concentrating on isolated bomber formations, to the exclusion of all the rest, largely at random from what we could tell. The Luftwaffe’s idea was to conserve fuel and pilots. But for the moment, at least, there seemed no great shortage of fighter planes between us and the target.

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 he 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 he 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 he 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, he can fly!—and he 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.