I remember Jim Clark ambling over to Hofer’s plane after one of the Kid’s more erratic performances, and eyeing the flying mule. Jim’s handsome face was impassive. Finally he took his pipe out of his mouth and said to the Kid: ‘Looks like you can’t make up your mind whether to be an ass or a flyer!’
Because, for all his brilliance, Kid Hofer was a pain in the neck to his commanding officer. A CO had above all to keep his unit together as a fighting force so that it could perform its all-important tasks. In the case of a fighter squadron, this was primarily to protect the bombers. But the Kid was a loner and his squadron discipline lasted only up to the moment there were enemy aircraft in the area, and then he was gone. He knew that the standard German fighter pilot’s defence from attack from above was a vertical dive, so he peeled off before the rest of the squadron were given the order to attack and was down among the enemy before the others.
His flight leaders and squadron commander gave him hell, but were never able to dampen the Kid’s laughing exuberance and happy enthusiasm, and anyway, how do you chew out someone who’s just chalked up his fifth victory in a couple of months?
But one day even the easy-going charm of his CO, Jim Clark wore thin. Hofer had had to turn back from a mission because one of his droppable tanks wasn’t feeding through. The Kid screamed back to base, landed in a steep turn and sped over to the revetment where his faithful Alsatian dog, Duke, and his capable crew chief were waiting. The mechanics quickly fixed the block in the fuel system, and Hofer immediately took off again. But it was too late to catch the main mission, so he simply flew his own separate show, scouring Belgium and France for German aircraft. Not finding any, he did a little ground strafing on his way out over Holland. He dodged the flak coming out over the coast, but the real flak was waiting for him when he got back to base at Debden. Not only his squadron commander, Jim Clark, but the Commanding Officer of the Group, Don Blakeslee, were waiting for him.
That evening, Don, Jim, ‘Gunner’ Halsey, ‘Deacon’ Hively and I were discussing the problem of Ralph Hofer. Someone wanted him busted, someone suggested the toughest punishment would be a transfer to another outfit, and someone said the problem would soon handle itself. If the Kid continued to goof off on his own, one day he wouldn’t come back.
When Blakeslee asked my opinion, I thought awhile before answering: ‘First, as far as Hofer is concerned, I don’t see him as plotting to break out of formation, just to build up his score. His reaction is as spontaneous and uncontrollable as that Alsatian pup of his when he throws a stick for him. But what we’re really talking about is the old argument of flight defensive discipline versus individual aggressive attack. The team approach versus the Prima Donna.’ The average age of our foursome must have been about twenty-three, but they solemnly nodded when I went on:
‘We had flying discipline drilled into us in the early RAF days, and the worst imaginable sin was to go off on your own or attack before ordered to; but we were fighting a defensive war then, and everyone from Air Marshal Dowding on down knew that if we didn’t conserve our outnumbered planes and pilots, we’d probably lose the damned war. But the Battle of Britain is over now, and the Battle of Germany is starting. We’re now on the offensive and they are on the defensive. We’ve got the planes with the range and performance to do it, so we better use them. After all, a fighter pilot is either the hunter or the hunted, and, if he’s the hunted, he’s in trouble. I’d hate to think there was no place in this outfit for guys like Hofer, even if they are wild. The thing is to control them without killing their spirit. After all, the spirit of the outfit is the spirit of the people in it, and we need all of that we can get. You’ll always have plenty of good pilots to keep the squadron going as a fighting force – offensive and defensive, but let’s find a way to keep the wild ones with us.’
The old argument went on until we heard there was a dawn briefing the next morning, and we decided to call it a day.
The Kid’s name wasn’t on the board for a few missions, and Jim Clark told me he had really reamed him out and he was in disgrace.
But at the end of one mission I drove past 334 Squadron’s dispersal hut to ask them how they had made out. In front of the hut, pilots and ground crew were grouped around what seemed to be a wrestling match; and a sort of wrestling match it turned out to be.
On the ground was a tangle of rolling, laughing, barking bodies which turned out to be an enormous Alsatian dog and a mop-haired laughing young giant; Kid Hofer and his faithful dog Duke. Duke had attached himself to the Kid after his original master, ‘Digger’ Williams, had been shot down. Deacon Hively, who’d had his share of trouble trying to discipline the bounding Duke and his equally irrepressible master, said the dog must have been attracted to the only guy on the base as dumb as he was.
Jim Clark ambled out and stopped to view the scene. His disapproval made itself felt without his having to say a word. The spectators fell silent, and finally the Kid and the dog unscrambled themselves.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Jim asked.
Hofer tossed his mane of tousled hair out of his eyes, and with that broad smile of his, which was more like a silent laugh, said: ‘Well, sir, I figured if I was in the dog-house I might as well play the part!’
He snapped a jaunty salute which ended in a happy wave and ran off with Duke leaping all over him. He flung himself into the back of the weapons-carrier as it took off for the mess, and Duke made a flying leap after him.
Jim turned to me, shrugged his shoulders and said: ‘What can you do?’
‘Not a damn thing!’ I said.
But those were busy days, and though Hofer’s name wasn’t put up on the board for missions, he wasn’t grounded, so he kept his hand in, checking out aircraft after they’d been in for maintenance. This was usually in the evenings after the planes came back from the day’s show.
It was at that time too, that I usually took a new pilot up for training. They came over with little training in low-flying and formation, and almost none on instruments. Even after a tough mission, I felt it was worthwhile. It helped me to get to know a pilot’s potential, and maybe give him a slightly better chance when he went into combat for the first time.
Besides it helped me unwind. Sometimes it was fun. To show how important instrument flying was, with the amount of cloud flying we had to do, I used to have the new pilot fly into a cloud and stick myself close on his wing. Whilst he was concentrating on his instruments, I would drop back, turn on my back, and pull back into formation upside-down. Almost always, the new boy would take a quick glance at me, do a double-take, and roll over himself. He usually lost all orientation as his artificial horizon toppled, and ended up in a spin, but if he was able to keep his heading and altitude, I would drop back again, roll over and come up right side up. This resulted in our coming out of the cloud with him upside down and me straight and level.
One evening I was breaking in a new boy, Ralph Saunders, and flying on his wing, when I saw another P-47 pulling up on the other side of him. It came in close with the prop spinning a few inches from Saunders’ wing tip, and sitting in the cockpit sat a large Alsatian dog – and no sign of anyone else. The plane then dived ahead of us, pulled up into a perfect loop and ended up behind us.
When we landed, we climbed into the jeep, and without a word, drove off to 334 Squadron dispersal. The Kid and his dog came over and clambered into the back.
‘Duke’s getting real good at flying!’ said Hofer.
‘Any damn fool can do a loop’, I said, ‘but how is he on instruments?’
‘Great!’ said the Kid.
‘Sounds like a show-off,’ I said.
After we dropped them off, Saunders could not restrain his curiosity any longer. ‘Sir, did he have that dog on his lap?’
‘Yeah,’ I said sourly.
‘That’s fantastic.’ Then, sensing my mood, he added quickly, ‘But I guess you disapprove.’
‘To get enough room, he leaves h
is parachute off,’ I said.
During those evenings when I drilled my new protegés, I glimpsed a lone plane cavorting among the clouds, diving down the white valleys between them, pulling up vertically until it stalled and fell off into a spin, pulling out at the last second and zooming back up in a glorious Immelmann or loop and rolling off the top. And after landing I would drive around the perimeter track to pick up the laughing Kid and his happy dog.
But the group couldn’t afford to keep a pilot like Hofer out of action in those early days of 1944 when we were flying mission after mission, and casualties were mounting. Nearly always it was the inexperienced pilots, fresh from the inadequate training in the States, whom we just didn’t have time to whip into shape before they went out and got shot down.
Kid Hofer was the amazing exception. If asked, the Kid, who had the superstitions common to most fighter pilots, would have attributed his luck to his beloved big snake ring on the third finger of his throttle hand, and his faithful blue football sweater with the lurid orange ‘78’ on the front, which he always wore on missions.
Yet those of us who watched his performance realised that this was one of those rare natural pilots, whose enthusiastic, aggressive, brilliant flying ability, and a certain unique flair, combined to make them stand out from the rest of us, who, over a long combat career, flew their missions or led our squadrons as best we could, and in the process, if we survived, inevitably built up our scores. But they were the loners who blazed their brief trail through the skies like a shooting-star. Since World War I there have been many of them in all air forces, but probably the most dramatic was Hans-Joachim Marseille of the German Luftwaffe. In less than two years’ flying in North Africa, he shot down 158 RAF planes, 57 of them in the one month of September 1942, and 17 of them on the single day of 1st September. By the end of September he was dead. He was twenty-four. Like most of those rare birds, he was considered a Bohemian, with a tendency to wear his hair long, ignore discipline, operate on his own, and able to charm every man and, particularly, woman, he met with his extraordinary good looks and happy personality.
He also started his combat career as a sergeant pilot, but ended it as a captain with Germany’s highest decoration: Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds and Italy’s ‘Gold Medal for Bravery’.
Finally, Hofer also became a second lieutenant, and his victories continued to pile up. If anyone got a kill on a mission, it was usually the Kid. Our new P-51 Mustangs allowed us to range further afield and add to our scores.
On the morning of 18th March, we took off for Munich. We climbed through some 20,000 feet of cloud, and even there, the visibility was bad. Don Blakeslee was leading the Group with 336 Squadron and I had a flight on his right. We were really in the soup and I was on instruments, but constantly glancing around to avoid collisions. 334 was the low squadron. They must have had a little more visibility down there, at least occasionally, because we heard Gerry Montgomery, who was leading one of their flights say, ‘Blue Section, let’s go down on those 109’s.’ Hofer was number 4 in that section and they confirmed that he got one of the 109’s, but that was the last they saw of him.
Up at 27,000 feet, the weather got worse. Blakeslee realised the chances of a rendezvous with the bombers was practically nil and called for us to turn back for home.
That evening in the Mess Jim Clark, ‘Bee’ Beeson, ‘Red-Dog’ Norley, and some of the others were sitting together. Things were quiet and the conversation lagged. Ashcraft, 334’s Intelligence Officer, had reported that Hofer was officially NYR (Not Yet Returned). Jim kept looking at his watch, but we all knew that he had to be down somewhere.
Pierce MacKennon had been playing the piano, but the usual boogie bounce wasn’t there, and he finally gave up. Suddenly everyone looked up as Ashcraft came straight to Jim Clark, and said, ‘Kid Hofer’s landed at a base on the South Coast.’
Nobody said anything, but you could feel the tension ease like an unheard sigh of relief. Jim put one hand over his eyes and rubbed them, then lurched out of his chair. ‘That god-damn stupid bastard!’ he said, and abruptly left us. Ashcraft looked surprised rather than shocked. I had never heard Jim use that kind of language before.
‘It was a term of endearment,’ I said.
‘I know,’ he replied.
The next day, Hofer flew in to face the inquisition from his squadron and flight commanders. Apparently his radio had gone dead on the climb out, and although this was normally a good reason to abort, he had decided to keep going. He hadn’t heard Montgomery’s order to go down on the two 109’s, but he followed them down, picked out his target and shot him down. In the process, however, he ended up below the clouds, saw an airport which he circled, but found no joy, so started climbing back to join the Group. On the way up, he found and attacked a second 109. The pilot bailed out. The Kid found a third 109 which escaped him by flying into some of the cloud which constantly blanketed most of the sky and towered from about five thousand feet up to thirty thousand.
After chasing around and through the clouds, the Kid set course for Munich at full bore, but couldn’t see a single plane. The Group by this time was on its way home, but Hofer continued on course. He spotted two 109’s above him, and immediately zoomed up to attack them. Before he could get in range, however, he ran into technical problems. He described it as ‘the prop running away’. The RPM’s went up and the engine boost was strong, but there was no thrust and the plane started losing speed and altitude. The problem, I believe, is caused by the pitch control malfunctioning so that the angle of the propeller blades changes to high pitch, taking smaller ‘bites’ of air. This is fine for take-off but serious at altitude. The Kid’s Mustang lost altitude fast and dropped under the clouds where the weather was clear. He knew he had to bail out, but glancing south and west, he could see snowy mountains, which he knew should be the Alps. Checking his map, he figured he was close to that corner of Europe where Germany, Austria and Switzerland meet. This was confirmed when he saw Lake Constance, and he realised he had a chance to cross into neutral Switzerland and bail out into a friendlier reception than he could expect in Germany.
The Kid gave a breathless account of trying to nurse his struggling plane over the forbidding snow-covered peaks of the Alps. But somehow he made it, prepared to bail out over Switzerland, and jettisoned his canopy. He pulled the plane up to reduce the wind pressure and had actually crawled out of the cockpit in order to slide off the wing when he felt the prop suddenly begin to operate normally. He climbed back into the plane. The prop continued to pull normally, and he considered the possibility of heading for home, but a glance at his fuel gauge told him he could hardly make it. Maybe he should play it safe and drop into Switzerland. What decided him was the thought of the precious film in his wing camera, which, since he’d been alone, carried the only proof of his two 109’s destroyed. So he carefully nursed his plane back over those miles of enemy territory and English Channel, landing on a small South Coast airfield with an empty tank.
After this recitation, Don Blakeslee and the squadron commanders stayed behind. Each had some caustic comments to make. Finally Don asked me: ‘Goody, what do you think of The Perils of Pauline?’
‘Well’, I said, ‘I imagine his precious film will confirm his kills, and I suppose when he pulled the plane up to bail out the additional strain on the prop in the climb plus the lower speed could have snapped the prop back into normal pitch, so I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for most of the story, but, in that case, he was a long way south of where he says he was.’
‘How do you figure?’ the Colonel asked.
‘There are no mountains between Munich and Switzerland, unless you go way south and cross Austria.’
On my way round the airfield to 336 dispersal area, I saw the ‘Salem Representative’ outside the big hangar waiting for a new cockpit canopy. I got out of my jeep and climbed into the cockpit.
As I climbed out, I met the Kid heading for his
plane. ‘Hi, Major,’ he said. ‘You want to trade planes? You know it’s bad luck. Five guys who borrowed my kite went down with it.’
‘No, no, I was just relaxing.’ I got into my jeep. ‘And listening to the radio.’
His face was suddenly serious; then he gave me a sheepish grin.
The Kid continued his happy-go-lucky meteoric career. Whenever there was a spontaneous breach of radio silence, it nearly always came from the Kid, as on the first long mission to Munich when, just as we got over the target, and could see the mountains down to the south, the tense silence was broken by a gleeful voice: ‘Gee, ain’t the Alps pretty?’ Don Blakeslee didn’t need to ask who it was.
‘God damn it, Hofer, shut up!’
But also, the Kid was usually among those who reported victories. When asked how he did it, he would laugh and show his snake ring. ‘I’m one of the lucky ones,’ he would say.
I tried to draw him into discussions on tactics, strategy, methods of attack, deflection shooting, and all the tricks of the trade that I was constantly discussing with the others, and particularly with those great technical and strategic perfectionists ‘Millie’ Millikan and ‘Bee’ Beeson. The Kid would just laugh and say: ‘Hell, if I worried myself about all that theoretical stuff, I’d never shoot anything down. I just go get ’im. I don’t aim my guns at them, I aim myself at them.’ And I think he meant it sincerely.
What came to most of us after years of training, study, trial and error, came to pilots like Hofer perfectly naturally and intuitively. I believe most of those virtuosos were the same. General Galland rated Marseille the best shot in the Luftwaffe, scoring kills with fewer shots expended and from more impossible angles than anyone else. Indeed it was Galland who gave Marseille the name which stuck with him: ‘The unrivalled Virtuoso of the Fighter Pilots’, but he admits that Marseille never spent much time studying tactics and theory. It all came to him suddenly and naturally, as if his mind was a computer operating subconsciously. Most of us made it the hard way, like Millikan who flew fifty-two missions before scoring his first victory. Hofer shot down his first enemy plane on his first mission, and kept right on going.
Tumult in the Clouds Page 12