by Stout, Jay
During early 1942, the RAF’s Army Cooperation Command was the first to use the Mustang operationally. After several months of operations the type’s exceptionally long range was exploited when it was flown on a daring long-range photoreconnaissance raid against the Dortmund-Ems Canal in Germany on July 27, 1942. Still, despite its exceptionally long reach, the Mustang’s poor performance at high altitude meant that it was destined to be little more than a bit player in the strategic air campaign against Germany.
That changed when the airframe was mated with the license-built, Packard Merlin V-1650 engine which had a two-stage, two-speed supercharger. It was an American-produced version of the same, excellent Rolls Royce engine that powered the Spitfire and other British types. In the event, the combination produced an aircraft that was nothing short of remarkable. The new aircraft, manufactured as the P-51B, preserved the excellent qualities of the original Mustang while also giving it superlative high-altitude performance. Most importantly, equipped with external fuel tanks, it possessed the range necessary to take the Eighth Air Force’s bombers wherever they needed to go.
And it started doing so during December 1943. Its appearance startled the Germans and its performance alarmed them. Moreover, unequaled range aside, it could meet the two main German Air Force fighters, the Me-109 and FW-190 on equal or better terms. And it was flown by well-trained pilots. Accomplished Luftwaffe ace Walter Wolfrum recalled that, “It was an awful antagonist in the truest sense of that word, and we hated it. It could do everything we could do and do it much better.”11
Like its contemporaries, the P-51 was modified over time. Beginning during the spring of 1944, the P-51B (which differed from the P-51C only in where it was manufactured—Inglewood, California, rather than Fort Worth, Texas) was gradually replaced by the P-51D which had a bubble canopy as opposed to the more traditional greenhouse type. Its wings were also fitted with six .50 caliber machine guns, three in each slightly modified wing. This was a significant improvement over the two, jam-prone guns that the earlier models carried in each wing. The P-51D was the model that Righetti so loved to fly. “Don’t guess I’ll ever be satisfied in anything but the ‘five one’ again. What a dream airplane!”
From a career perspective, it is possible that Righetti was so thrilled about his assignment to the 55th because he saw an opportunity to improve a unit that had everything it needed excepting inspired leadership. But for their part, many of the 55th’s men were wary of him; he was unproven and had been dropped into their laps seemingly out of nowhere. For all they knew he was there because he had powerful friends who were giving him a shot at combat at their expense.
Righetti’s first day in combat came at the end of October 1944. It had been five years since his enlistment as an aviation cadet. “Tomorrow is my big day,” he wrote on October 28. “Long mission over rough country—imagine seeing Berlin before London. Am definitely settled in the 51 and love it more each day.” Righetti’s letter underscored his genuine conviction to learn from whomever he could, however he could. “I’m flying wing for a Captain Cramer who has 8 kills to his credit—2 Japs and 6 Huns. He’s really the boy to learn from and I’ll say ‘yes sir’ to him any time they want me to.”
As it developed, weather caused the mission to be scrubbed and it wasn’t until October 30, that Righetti flew his first combat mission. The group rendezvoused with B-17s from the Eighth Air Force’s 3d Air Division, but poor weather forced the mission to be recalled before the target at Merseburg was reached. No enemy fighters were encountered. Although Righetti saw no action, the mission was a good introduction to the procedural aspects of high-altitude bomber escort operations.
“HAVE MY OWN SQUADRON NOW”
Early during the war the Allies understood that before they could send an invasion force across the English Channel they first had to neutralize the Luftwaffe. That is, the German air force had to be degraded to such a degree that it could not stop the Allies from establishing a beachhead. Ultimately, this was done at tremendous cost during 1943 and the first half of 1944 while Righetti was training pilots. Indeed, that cost undoubtedly included the lives of some of the pilots that Righetti had trained. Still, the return on investment was the fact that the Allies in France and the shipping that supported them were seldom threatened by the Luftwaffe to any substantial degree during the months that followed the D-Day invasion of June 6, 1944.
But the Luftwaffe, although it was steadily worn down through the summer and fall of 1944, was not completely moribund. In fact, despite the tremendous bombing pressure, Germany increased its production of aircraft during this period. A chief factor in this accomplishment was the dispersal of much of its aircraft industry from massive factories to small, difficult-to-target shops located in tunnels or forests, or hidden in plain sight in isolated towns and villages. The aircraft components these little factories fabricated were subsequently transported to assembly sites where they were quickly fashioned into finished aircraft and delivered to operational units.
Actually, the primary problem for the German air force was not the availability of aircraft, but rather a shortage of skilled pilots to fly them. The Luftwaffe’s leadership had never foreseen the sort of air war it ended up fighting and consequently failed to train the huge numbers of pilots it needed. It struggled to make up the shortfall, but the shift of the Allied bombing focus to petroleum targets choked off the fuel it needed. This scarcity, together with a lack of skilled instructors and qualified students, made the task impossible. Essentially, by the time Righetti started flying combat, the Luftwaffe’s training machine was an utterly inadequate dilapidation.
Nevertheless, Adolf Galland, the head of the German fighter forces, had a plan to disrupt the American daylight bombing campaign. To that point in the air war the Luftwaffe had maintained a certain percentage of its fighter units in operational readiness, while others were held back to refit or train. But since early 1944, as the number of American fighter escort groups approached its peak, the Germans were typically outnumbered at any given time and place—despite the fact they operated over their own bases. To counter the American numerical superiority, the Luftwaffe massed its fighters in great formations and vectored them against unprotected segments of the bomber stream.
But the tactic was imperfect and the unwieldy formations were intercepted and savaged by the American fighters as often as not. The problem was exacerbated by an inane order from Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, the head of the German air force, which prohibited his pilots from engaging the American fighters: they were allowed only to attack the bombers. Of course when under attack themselves, this mandate was impossible to obey—and to enforce—but it was demoralizing nonetheless. This was especially so when the German fighter pilots found themselves in an advantageous position against their American counterparts and were compelled to give it up and press after the bombers.
Galland bemoaned the lopsided advantage of the Americans and the stupidity of Göring’s directive. “Wherever our fighters appeared, the Americans threw themselves at them,” he said. “During takeoff, assembling, climbing, approaching the bombers, once in contact with the bombers, on our way back, during landing and even after that the Americans attacked with an overwhelming superiority. Yet, even this did not change our orders: ‘Only the bombers are to be attacked!’”1
Indeed, through his career Galland was handicapped by the arrogant incompetence of his boss, Hermann Göring. One of the most cruel and sycophantic of Hitler’s many sycophants, Göring had wormed his way into the Fuehrer’s confidence during the early years of the Nazi party’s expansion, and aside from being made the head of the Luftwaffe, was given a dizzying collection of titles and responsibilities, from the Prime Minister of Prussia to the Marshal of the Greater German Reich, to the Master of the German Forests—among others.
A competent pilot and an ace during World War I, Göring was put in command of Manfred von Richthofen’s Jagdgeschwader 1 late in that war. Nevertheless, his was not an in
tellect or a personality that was suited for the responsibilities with which Hitler entrusted him. In fact, from early during the war—in dramatic contrast to Arnold and the USAAF’s leadership—he was more interested in pleasuring himself, than in his official duties. In guiding the German air force he was grossly overmatched by his USAAF and RAF counterparts in every respect.
And the Luftwaffe paid dearly for that massive deficit in leadership. To say that the fighting was lopsided is one thing, but putting numbers against that declaration underscores how horrific it was for the Germans. During the spring of 1944, the Luftwaffe fighter units assigned to the defense of the Reich lost more than 80 percent of their aircraft each month. On average, a German pilot survived being shot down two or three times before he was killed or wounded so badly that he could not return to service. Accordingly, the American fighter escorts encountered very few opponents with more than three months of fighting under their belts.
However, Galland planned to create an attacking force so immense as to be impervious to the USAAF’s escort fighters. Nothing else had been able to stop the seemingly endless streams of bombers and he was anxious to test the notion that sheer numbers could achieve what tactics, guile, and technology had not. His plan was simple. By holding back the bulk of his fighters for a period of weeks, he hoped to marshal more than two thousand—and perhaps three thousand—aircraft. Then, on a clear weather day, he would send his colossus after the Americans. Galland hoped that this Großer Schlag, or “Big Blow,” would knock down perhaps five hundred bombers and he was prepared to lose an equal number of fighters as well as one hundred pilots, perhaps a few more. Such a blow could not help but cause the Americans to pause their campaign and thus give the Luftwaffe—and German industry—time to refit and regroup. What would follow was unknown, but it could surely be no worse than the pounding that Germany was then enduring.
The problem with Galland’s plan was that, as his force of fighters grew, his superiors—desperate to protect Germany’s most important war-making infrastructure—lacked the discipline necessary to keep the carefully husbanded fighters on the ground and out of harm’s way. Certainly the Americans did not alter their bombing schemes to accommodate Galland’s preparations, and as their aircraft motored toward Germany’s most vital targets, Göring and Hitler could not resist ordering Galland’s carefully conserved forces airborne. One of these breaches occurred on November 2, 1944. It was the day of Righetti’s second mission.
On that day the Eighth Air Force scheduled 1,100 bombers and nearly 900 fighters for a raid against the Leuna synthetic fuel refinery at Merseburg, near Leipzig. The 55th Fighter Group was tasked to provide close escort to B-17s of the 3d Air Division. Righetti was assigned once more to fly as wingman to Darrell Cramer as part of the 338th Fighter Squadron’s White Flight. “The mission was just another in a long string of missions,” Cramer recalled. “I don’t remember anything in particular I said to Righetti in my briefing before this mission. He was a member of my flight and I briefed the flight as a whole and not Righetti singularly.”
The 55th launched 69 aircraft at 9:58 that morning. The takeoff and climb were uneventful and the group rendezvoused with their assigned B-17s over the English Channel an hour later. No enemy aircraft were spotted on the way to Merseburg but the antiaircraft fire was heavy and accurate and the group counted seven bombers shot down over the target.
It was only after the bombers turned for home that the 55th encountered the enemy as recounted by the group’s mission summary report. “While proceeding at 32,000 feet on [a] SW course from Merseburg, 100 single-engine enemy aircraft were sighted at 1220, flying on about the same level and heading NW toward the bomber track.” None of the 55th’s flyers had ever seen so many German fighters—a mix of Me-109s and FW-190s—all at once. “They were in three separate gaggles of about 30-plus aircraft each, about 4,000 yards between gaggles, and the last bunch some 500 feet higher than the others, but with no umbrella force above.”
The 55th’s three squadrons—outnumbered for the first time in recent memory—turned directly at the Germans, who started to climb. The enemy formation was “immediately routed as our lead flights passed through their formation.” In fact both sides broke up into groups of twos and threes and fours as the fighting began. At that point, Göring’s mandate against engaging American fighters was obviously ignored by many of the enemy pilots who were “fighting aggressively and attempting to beat off our attack.” Others dived for the protective cover of a layer of clouds while a handful, “were seen to pussyfoot in on the bomber formation from 5–6 o’clock on exactly the same level, the attention of the [bomber] gunners apparently being drawn away by the dog fight.”
Darrel Cramer, with Righetti and two other pilots on his wing, considered the whirling fight around him. He quickly decided that the odds of bagging a German were better below the clouds where many of them had already fled. Nevertheless, after leading the flight down through the murk, he found the sky empty. However, it wasn’t long before Cramer spotted a train and he and the rest of the flight made quick work of the locomotive while also shooting up several rail cars.
After leading the flight away from the shot-up train and taking a southwesterly heading, Cramer sighted an enemy aircraft approaching head-on. “The bandit was called by Captain Cramer,” recounted Righetti, “who immediately pulled up toward the enemy aircraft. The Me-109 started a turn to the right, and Captain Cramer fired one burst, getting strikes.”2 The enemy pilot, desperate to escape, dived for the ground and rolled out of his turn directly in front of Righetti. “Since I had outrun Captain Cramer on his pull up, and had turned sharply left, I became positioned in between my leader [Cramer] and the 109.”
It was the moment of truth. All of Righetti’s years of experience, all of his training, all of his requests for a combat posting would—or would not—be validated during the next few seconds. His heart pounding, he nudged the aircraft’s control stick and leaned forward. Through the gunsight he framed the German fighter underneath the gently moving illuminated reticle and checked that his guns were armed. “At 200 yards,” he said, “I fired one short burst and observed several strikes back of the cockpit. The enemy aircraft attempted very little evasive action but headed for a flak nest straight ahead. Just before reaching the flak, I fired a three-second burst and observed numerous strikes in the vicinity of the cockpit.”
At that point, the German pilot and his pursuers turned sharply away from the antiaircraft position. Out of the turn the enemy plane skidded into the ground where its wingtip caught a hedgerow that knocked it akimbo. The aircraft “was washed out completely.” The four, silvery P-51s flashed past and winged for home.
Righetti had scored, but his flight leader, Darrel Cramer, was angry. He recalled the encounter with the Me-109. “When I got into a good stern chase position and closed to firing range, I opened fire. Shortly thereafter I was amazed to see another P-51 converging on me from my left and he too opened fire on the Me-109. My bullets were missing his plane only by a few yards, and I immediately quit firing.”
Cramer realized the other P-51 was Righetti. “In the excitement of his first combat, he had ignored his responsibility as a wingman and he did not have any idea where I was,” Cramer recalled. “If I had not gained a little altitude as he attempted to get into firing position, I might not have seen him and a midair collision could have resulted.”
After landing, Cramer took his turn with the rest of the pilots to debrief with the squadron’s intelligence officers. “Righetti was as excited as any new lieutenant would have been after his baptism under fire. I did not want to dampen his excitement with what I had to say to him, so I waited until we were alone.” Cramer’s discretion indicated his considerable maturity.
“Then I gave him a chewing out like he probably had not had in his military career,” Cramer said. “I told Righetti that if he were a new ‘dumb John’ lieutenant I would have grounded him for at least two weeks and thrown at him all other disc
iplinary actions I could take. He had violated air discipline and had failed in his responsibility as a wingman. He had left his position as wingman and he didn’t have any idea where his leader [Cramer] was when he went after the Me-109. I asked him how he could expect air discipline and enforce it when he became group commander if he violated it when he was a wingman.”
Although the justified upbraiding came from a man who was considerably junior in both rank and age, Righetti’s response was on the mark. After all, he desired not only to learn as much from Cramer as possible, but also to gain command of the 55th. “Righetti immediately acknowledged that he had goofed up in the excitement of the moment,” said Cramer. “And he promised it would never happen again.”
Righetti was as good as his word. “On the remaining missions during which Righetti flew under my supervision,” Cramer said, “his performance was excellent and there was never another breach of air discipline.” Ultimately, the two men shared a half-credit each for the Me-109 they downed on November 2, 1944.
Righetti’s rounds found their mark the first time he fired at an enemy aircraft. This was unusual as many men—subject to buck fever if not outright fear—sprayed their machine guns wildly during their first few encounters with the enemy. Righetti had the advantage not only of greater flying experience and skill over the typical young fighter pilot, but he was also an experienced hunter and marksman. There was the additional fact that the enemy flyer he and Cramer knocked down fled in a straight line rather than maneuvering aggressively.
That late in the war, Righetti also had the advantage of the K-14 gyroscope gunsight. The manual for the device, in very simple terms, described its virtues: “As you adjust the K-14 gyroscope gunsight, it automatically gives you the correct lead and shows you the range of the target. In other words, it’s the answer to a poor deflection shooter’s prayer.”3