events were significant to the outcome to the war.
I read Gen. Doolittle’ s book after the war and he wrote about the first time he went to visit the 8th Air Force Fighter Command. He brought in a totally different philosophy of warfare at that time. He walked in and there was a big sign over the door that said something like,“ the mission of the 8th Fighter Command is to bring the bombers back safely.” It might not have been exactly those words, but something similar. After reading the sign, Gen. Doolittle turned to General Kepner, the 8th Fighter Command general at that time, and he said,“ Who put that up there?” Gen. Kepner said,“ I don’ t know. It was there when I got here.” Gen. Doolittle responded by saying,“ Well, take it down. The mission of the 8th Fighter Command is to destroy the Luftwaffe.” This represented a significant change in tactics. From now on, fighter pilots were ordered to engage the enemy, take them to the ground, and kill them. Coincidentally, I think most historians will agree that the spring of 1944 is when we broke the back of the Luftwaffe. We didn’ t do it by the classic method of beating them on the ground, destroying the factories, air fields, and destroying the fuel facilities. We broke the back of the Luftwaffe by killing their experienced pilots in aerial combat. It was pursue and destroy.
I was credited with shooting down 16 and a quarter enemy aircraft during my two tours of combat. I quickly learned that you get the hand you’ re dealt up there. You never know if you’ re going to be staring down the Red Baron or the last man in the formation.
To really understand what it was like to be up there, it’ s important to understand some of the ins and outs of how dogfighting plays out on a mission.
On May 27, 1944, just before the invasion, I was still flying the P-51 Bravo model with four guns and a Malcolm hood type canopy. We flew in a finger four, which was a formation invented by the Germans involving a pair of flight leaders and two wingmen. This method was effective because when you broke up in combat you had a shooter and a wingman, the basic unit of a flight. We heard on the radio that the long column of bombers was being attacked ahead of us. These columns at times were hundreds of miles long with as many as 800 to 1,000 bombers and maybe 600 or 700 fighters escorting them. We had to make a steep turn to fly to the front of the column. During this steep turn, I thought it might be a good time to look around behind us. Just as I looked back, my wingman called out that we had four bogies coming at us from five o’ clock high. They were coming up on our tail and getting after us, no question about it.
The Germans were flying in a string formation, with one, two, three, four planes in trail behind us. We turned into them, to break the attack. We went through them head on. As we broke up their attack, they started a left circle. I thought they might go on through and try to hit the bombers, but their maneuver suggested that they wanted to dogfight. They were attacking us and we were in a vulnerable spot, but after two turns, we started to gain on the last aircraft in the strong formation.
These enemy planes were Messerschmitt 109G’ s, Germany’ s best high altitude fighter. They probably had confidence in their aircraft and so they rolled out and flew level, trying to outrun us. The number four ME-109 started to climb and I didn’ t want him to get above us in a position to attack as we chased the other three Germans. I sent two of my guys to after him and they shot him down, rejoining us later. So now we had three German M-109s and our two Mustangs facing them.
When you want to shoot somebody down, you’ d try and come right up the stern, get as close as you could, to about
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