by Tom Blair
After ninety days of advanced training, those of us who had avoided shooting down the target tug were off to combat, first to Camp Shank and then to the transport ship, everyone hoping for England. Ugly rumors that we would be sent to provide air cover for the Panama Canal ricocheted through the base. Given the distance from the Axis Powers, Panama offered the same opportunity to prove ourselves as defending the Grand Canyon.
The crossing was uneventful, uneventful being synonymous with boring. Fifteen hundred men in a three-hundred-foot-long gray rusting metal container trading under the euphemism of a ship. Sleep, think, eat, read, eat, and back to sleep. Reread Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath and started Sandburg’s Abraham Lincoln. Played some poker; not so much for the enjoyment, rather as a gesture of being one of the guys. Encountered a most thought-provoking intersection of human experience during my cruise.
Crammed on the ship were elements of the 442nd, an infantry unit comprised of Japanese Americans. One of their second lieutenants—Miyamoto, I remember his last name, it was the same as one of Mother’s Japanese author friends, Yuriko Miyamoto, saw me reading Grapes of Wrath. He asked if he could borrow it when I was through. I told him for certain and that he could keep the book. We had a brief shipboard friendship discussing novels and biographies of the day. Then Miyamoto took the sting from my experience with the German POWs at the base theater. He told me of his parents and two sisters, who were living in a barbed-wire-enclosed compound in the California desert with ten thousand other Japanese Americans. Living in drafty wooden barracks with little dignity and no hope, their crime being Japanese descent. Miyamoto asked why not German Americans? Why shouldn’t they be in stockades as were Japanese Americans? I told him I could readily explain the differences between Japanese Americans and German Americans once he explained the difference between black Americans and white Americans.
After a couple of days at sea we knew we weren’t heading for Panama; and after a week or so it was obvious our course was too southerly for England. In time compass and stars revealed our destiny, the Mediterranean, which could only mean Italy. In the third week we sailed into Taranto, a half-moon harbor dotted with islands, islands of rusting steel—capsized ships. In town, scenes from Miss Mitchell’s Atlanta in Gone with the Wind. Rubble and more rubble. But it was the human rubble that was the worst, women with sunken eyes, clothed in rags, babies at their bosoms, pleading for garbage.
We had a few days to organize, then a convoy to Montecorvino, a twenty-hour endurance test in trucks with AWOL springs. Nothing as expected. No barracks, just tents in the dust. A sergeant told us to thank God for the dust; after the smallest shower, mud would suck at our boots like flypaper to a fly.
No P-51s either. Rumor had it we’d be equipped with sleek North American fighters, the best the Air Corps had to offer. We were given weary P-39s, hand-me-downs from white squadrons that had been equipped with newer aircraft. The same sergeant who told us to thank God for the dust told us we should thank God for the P-39s. Said the guys before us had been flying P-40s that were more scrap than aircraft. When I saw a couple of the retired P-40s I realized he could have left the “s” off the “scrap.”
In the air the P-39 was neither nimble nor light on the controls. Its mid-mounted Allison engine struggled at altitude. Many times we were clawing for altitude, while a formation of Kraut JU-88s disappeared over the horizon. Other than the black squadrons, only the training squadrons and the Russians were given P-39s. America sent our allies what we didn’t want.
Daryl and I bunked in a two-man tent, introducing famished Italian mosquitoes to American food. The first morning at our new base, after a hearty breakfast of lukewarm coffee and stale bread, the squadron was formed up to meet Lt. Colonel Davis. He was one of us; Davis had fought the Pentagon to keep black squadrons from being disbanded or deployed to areas of no consequence. Most important he had been in combat; he was a fighter pilot. The first thing he told us was that we weren’t fighter pilots, we were merely pilots who flew fighters. Told us that our number one priority for the first two operational flights would be to not get shot down. After two flights our priority would be either to shoot something down or blow something up on the ground. Davis always kept things simple.
Most important, the colonel told us the only way not to be killed was to keep moving when in a combat area. Never fly straight and level for more than fifteen seconds. Never keep looking forward for more than ten seconds. He said that every fighter pilot of longevity had a stiff neck, and that if we didn’t keep peering over our shoulders to see what Kraut was at our six o’clock, his adjutant would be drafting a letter of condolences to our parents.
I had imagined combat for months, mostly while lying in the darkness of the barracks. I wondered whether I would panic. Wondered whether the sound and the fury would spook me. After a year of pondering combat, it was about to bolt from the soft abstract to hard reality.
Reality made its appearance on my first operational flight. It was supposed to be just a milk run, a flight led by one of the seasoned squadron pilots, Roland—a fellow I would never forget. But not because of that day’s flight. Roland explained that he would be leading a flight of five. He briefed us on frequencies and headings between waypoints. Told us our goal was to get a feel for the topography and landmarks that we could use when our planes were shot up and we only had our wits to get us home. It was the back leg of our tour when Roland called out, “Bogies at twelve o’clock high.”
At first I thought he must be kidding. There couldn’t really be German aircraft in the air. Krauts were nothing more than an evil force in an unfinished novel. I wasn’t ready. I was physically ready, but my brain wasn’t ready. I glanced upward, and there they were, six black dots, each with a single white thread trailing behind.
The radio crackled as Roland instructed us to keep our heading, but if they peeled down we should turn in to them. I figured there was no way they could see us. I could barely see them as black dots against a clear blue sky; they couldn’t see the same dots against a background of grays and browns. At first I didn’t think they peeled. But the black dots stopped moving; then they started to become larger; then they grew wings.
Roland called “Now!” and while I was wondering if I had heard him, his aircraft whipped upward in a tight turn. Onto full power and up with him. Stopping his turn when the Krauts were centered in our windscreens, straight we went. Then, on the front of the Kraut wings, flickers of light—but the lights didn’t stay on their wings, they grew larger and flashed over our aircraft.
Roland’s aircraft opened fire. Tracers in a line toward the Krauts. I pushed the firing button, nothing, hadn’t released the safety. Quickly off, I pressed again. My P-39 shuddered; then in a blur the Krauts passed over. I banked to the right and looked back but couldn’t catch a view. Scanned forward and Roland was gone. No one was around. Pulled up and over, rolled the wings level, pushed into a shallow dive, looking. Nothing.
Then to the right a P-39 with a Kraut Me-109 tight behind. With a jerk the P-39 banked and pulled; the Me-109 stayed glued. Another P-39 rose up from below with a deflection shot that was far wide, but the Kraut broke off. Then fear. I had been watching while straight and level. I made a quick bank to the left and a pull to the buffet, pushed down on my seat, and strained to twist my head back for a clear view. Nothing. Then a quick turn in the opposite direction and a scan below, only landscape, no friend or foe. A half hour later I was landing at our base. Straight and level, it would have been a fifteen-minute journey. Even when safely on the ground, taxiing to the ramp, I glanced back to make certain no harm was in my shadow.
As the engine coughed its last, a sergeant up on my wing reached across and threw the safety back on the guns. I was lucky I hadn’t killed somebody while taxiing. I unstrapped and got my feet on the ground, looking as if I had gone for a swim. Next to me Daryl’s plane was already parked. With a roar, three aircraft overhead peeling off to the downwind: Roland with two rookies in tow.
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br /> Excited ground crew called me to the tailplane of my P-39. I gaped at a burnt trough along the side of the vertical stabilizer; a Kraut cannon shell had creased me during the head-on attack. Three feet lower and it would have deceased me.
Once on the ground Roland herded his animated chicks into the operations tent for a debrief. Started off with the basics, said that if everybody gets back it’s a good mission. Everybody got back. It was Roland who made the wide deflection shot that got the Me-109 off Daryl’s backside. He chewed on Daryl for a while. Told him that he was in a turn, but not a tight turn. Told him that he’d had enough altitude that he should have pulled the nose down and run away from the Me-109 … that their ailerons get stiff at the higher speeds. He went through all the basics again: Never try to outclimb a Me-109, and don’t try and out turn them at higher altitudes. Asked me why I was late in firing. Before I answered he speculated I hadn’t moved the guns off of safety. Then he grinned and said we hadn’t done that badly and we should think things through and figure out for ourselves what we did right and wrong.
I couldn’t sleep. Felt good about most things. First combat after over a year of contemplation. Two things I checked off. I wasn’t a coward. For the past year my mantra against fear had been a line of Stephen Crane’s, “Death thrust between the shoulder blades more dreadful than death about to smite between the eyes.” I never thought I’d break and run, but I’m not sure that anybody who breaks and runs thought they would. Of course, I had no choice; I was in a flight with others, I did what I was told. A true test of my resolve would be when I was alone in flight, with no one to see me retreat from a fight. The second thing: I pushed the button. I fired the four machine guns and cannon without the slightest hesitation. No consideration of killing a human.
The surprise was the time. Not so much the time, but the pace. One or two minutes at most from the Krauts peeling off to attack to losing sight of everyone. For over a year I had imagined aerial combat as a series of chess moves—a pull, a turn, a dive, a reversal. But there was no choreographed flight; rather, lighting jabs of shells with no finesse, only noise, vibration, and confusion. Reaction, not action, defined my first combat.
Two days later another sightseeing flight with Roland in the lead; this time no Germans joined our group. Then came real missions, missions to destroy inanimate and animate. These first sorties included some momentary skirmishes, but no real gladiator struggles-till-death in coliseums of clouds. Then on a bright spring afternoon my first brief-but-deadly dogfight.
We were escorting a squadron of B-24s that were after the railyards in Palo. On the way to the target we wove back and forth over the lumbering formation, otherwise our speed would have left them behind. Once near the target the fighters broke off and orbited south of Palo—no point in dancing with the Kraut flak. After their string of bombs were laid, the B-24s arced a painfully slow 180 degrees to retrace their path.
Just as we all rejoined came a flash of tracers, and three Kraut Me-109s swept through our flight. Two pulled up and one broke to the left, toward the back of the bomber formation. I yanked and pulled, turning my P-39 on its wing tip in a tightening curve, trying to claw behind the lone Me-109. As my target drew near the bomber formation, other Me-109s darted through the gaggle of B-24s, one of the bombers already trailing dark smoke while firing its .50-calibers at the streaking Krauts.
My prey was five hundred yards in front, his tight arcing turn too acute to lead him into a stream of my shells. As I drew closer he lessened his turn to line up on the trailing B-24. I relaxed my pull as the Me-109 drifted into my sight. Off with the safety and a push on the firing button; tracers showed the stream of shells toward the Kraut. My aim was wide, too wide, but close enough to let the Kraut know death was stalking him. A quick roll to the inverted, a pull, and the Me-109 was in a dive. I followed.
Down almost vertically, the airspeed quickly rose past 300, then toward 400. The flow of air not a rush, but a complaint. From 300 yards another stream of lead from my guns and cannon. A slight waggle of the Me-109’s wings, but no fire, no smoke, no sign of damage.
Slowly the distance between pursuer and pursued became less as we hurtled down. At 200 yards I was again poised to fire, my eyes focused past the Me-109, Mother Earth closing at a rate never seen before. With all my might I pulled the stick back. Centrifugal force exercised its prerogative; my vision grayed as blood flowed from my head. Enough tunnel vision remained to show I was about to die.
Then, as first light on a newborn’s eyes, the earth in front of my windscreen slowly lowered, replaced by bright sky, replaced by life. Once zooming upward I relaxed back pressure and stole a glance over my shoulder. In a barren field rose a cone of smoke from a circle of flame—a funeral celebration for the Me-109. I felt no sorrow; rather I cursed the bastard German. While my second burst didn’t disable his aircraft, it must have killed the Kraut. I’d been so determined to shoot the Me-109 out of the air that I succumbed to target fixation, and this Kraut pilot almost killed me after I had killed him.
Daryl, more by chance than by merit, was my wingman. It would have been no less fair if I had been his. As wingman Daryl’s job was simple, but exceedingly difficult. While I twisted in high-g maneuvers to latch on to the tail of an Me-109 or FW-190, Daryl flew behind me and to my side. His role, with two consequences if not done properly—either I would be dead or we would both be dead—was to protect my tail. With my eyes fixed on a Kraut, a Kraut pulling and twisting to save his life, I would not have an instant to check my six o’clock to see what black-crossed agent of death might be twisting behind to rip me with streams of lead. Daryl’s job was to keep a watch behind. If a Kraut fighter closed in, Daryl would call break, and both of us would yank and bank, saving ourselves but forcing me to abandon pursuit. Thus Daryl had to watch behind us while simultaneously following my twists, which retraced the most violent maneuvers of my prey.
More than one wingman had chewed off his lead’s tail with his ten-foot prop; with the tail gone, a short journey to death. But just as a miscue by Daryl could extinguish my life, I had the same power over him. If he called break but I continued to pursue and not break, Daryl was the first in line for the pursuing Kraut’s killing fire.
On average the temperature in the cockpit of the P-39 was a pleasant 70 degrees—problem being that that was the average of 120 and 20 degrees. For each 1,000 feet of altitude, the temperature dropped three degrees. If we took off in comfortable 60 degrees, by the time we reached combat altitude, 20,000 feet, it was frigid—ice crystals clogging the oxygen mask, fingers stiff with pain. Much like Arctic explorers, we dressed in fur-lined leathers with heavy boots and double-thick gloves. Wearing this garb we were shoehorned into the cockpits of our sunbaked P-39s, hothouses once the canopies closed. By liftoff the clothes closest to us were soaked with perspiration—sweat that became stiff and brittle as we climbed to freezing altitudes.
Some days we strafed. Shot up anything that moved, a train, a truck, a car—if nothing better, a tired horse and cart. Flying low on these missions gave every Kraut with a rifle the chance to bring us down. Other days we bombed—rolled over from 10,000 feet in a 60- to 75-degree dive, released our bombs and pulled up while Krauts perfected skeet shooting with anti aircraft guns. Some days, but not often, we intercepted German bombers, mostly JU-88s. Coming in from behind, I tried mightily to kill the rear gunner before he could put a shell through my windscreen.
Often we flew escort missions, weaving over boxes of B-17s or B-24s. Four hours at 25,000 feet in mind-numbing cold, coaxing the mixture back and the RPMs down to conserve fuel, lest a high-energy dogfight suck down the fuel necessary for a safe return. But always we faced the prospect, the potential, for air-to-air combat, the birthright of every fighter pilot. One man against another, both astride aluminum chariots bolted to a throbbing engine that vomited hot gases while gulping two gallons a minute of liquid nourishment, with the power of 1,000 horses to carry the machine guns and cannon for the kill.
If the weather was shit Daryl and I would get a reprieve, no flying. Whatever it took, we would beg or steal a ride to Salerno. While four or five from my squadron might bunk in a single room, a hotel room with a bath was coveted, no matter how many of us shared. As the number of rings of the giant Redwoods standing north of Oakland confirmed their great age, so the rings in the tub confirmed how many weary pilots soaked off the grime of Montecorvino. Trying to refresh at base was futile. Every couple of days I would sponge myself down with cold water and a gray soap that smelled like spoiled meat.
Sleeping in our base tents was no better. I’d lie in my cot under the weight of hot, stagnant air churned only by winged entomology surveying me for mineral rights. But the noise, always the noise. Even if they didn’t stand a chance in hell of scoring, most nights Krauts would send over a JU-88 to drop a string of bombs. Then came our ack-ack shooting into the darkness, threatening no German, but making certain no one slept. Our gunners couldn’t have cared less. They rested peacefully during the day as we sweated out yet another mission.
After fifty combat missions pilots were rotated home, perhaps to a training squadron, perhaps to a non-flying post. Most knew precisely their count. Knew how many more times they would be thrust into harm’s way. Most never made it to half the count. I tried not to count, but it was involuntary; the brain clicked each mission and totaled.
For whatever reason, mere chance, fate, or perhaps something self-imposed, it was the first and last few missions of the fifty that courted the Grim Reaper. Many fresh-faced pilots never made it past the first half-dozen missions; raw, tender meat obligingly served warm to the Krauts. If a pilot got through the first sorties, he had proved his piloting and survival skills. But then as the last missions were counted down, the missions that were the ticket home, a foreboding arose; a self-fulfilling prophecy permeated the pilot’s being. Perhaps it was just the odds; perhaps some sort of survivor’s guilt, that it would not be right to return when so many had not. No one knows why. But for whatever reason, the last of the mission count took the highest toll. So it was with Roland.