Richard Curtis - Dumb but Lucky!: Confessions of a P-51 Fighter Pilot in World War II

Table of Contents

To Emily, Brian, Virginia, and Gregory

That you and your children
will never have to suffer a century of war,
such as we did in the twentieth century

I dont understand what you were trying to prove by flying the way you didscrewing up and disobeying laws.

BRIG. GEN. CHUCK YEAGER (Ret.), fellow P-51 pilot

We then stumbled across a train chugging its way across an open field, heading west ahead of the retreating Germans. So the four of us lined up in single file to put the locomotive in our sights. As Frye went in, suddenly the sky darkened with puffs of flak and tracer bullets from gun positions on flatbed cars of the train, putting him in their sights. The antiaircraft fire missed him and he missed hitting the locomotive, but he took a last swipe at the cars being pulled, including the gun positions and a car possibly loaded with ammunition. I was next. My eyes were glued to that locomotive as it was centered in my gun sight. Ignoring the flak and bullets on all sides of me, I pulled the trigger and, lo and behold, the engine exploded, sending pieces skyward. Already our outfit had lost a pilot who had run into the remains of his target as they shot upward in his path. Would I clear this mess accompanied by a huge belch of steam?

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank Joseph Nye, dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, for his suggestion that I write of my World War II experiences for publication. I also want to thank Deirdre Lanning of Ballantine Books for rescuing my manuscript and sending it to Ron Doering, senior editor of Presidio Books. Above all, I must thank Myrt, my wife for sixty years, for her hours of typing my original manuscript back in 194445, and for her continued encouragement and suggestions.

PREFACE

In recorded history or biography there are two factors vastly underrated in time of peace, and more so in time of war. One is stupidity, the other, luck.

This is a firsthand account, taken from daily diaries and letters, of the adventuresand misadventuresof a P-51 Mustang fighter pilot.

At eighteen, just five months out of high school, when everything seemed possible and no manespecially this manwas vulnerable, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps in November 1942. So impressed was his flight instructor after ten hours in a Piper Cub that he printed in this aviation students logbook, THIS MAN IS NOT PILOT MATERIAL!

Other headswiser heads to be sureprevailed, and this brash cadet managed to complete fifteen months of pilot training. But not before being confronted twice with impending court-martial for antics in the sky unbecoming a potential Army Air Corps officer. In the second instance this involved disobeying a direct order from a major general.

As luck would have it, this maverick escaped his day in court. At the same time he learned that his older brother, Bob, a navigator on a B-17 Flying Fortress, had been killed in action, hit by a German fighter plane, an FW 190. Bobs death was preceded by the death of his twin brother, Bert, at nine. An earlier brother, Philip, had died in infancy. And that was preceded by twin boys miscarried and aborted.

So it would seem that this new pilot, graduating with silver wings and gold bars, was next in line to be marked for death. Dana, a younger brother, was by this time training to be an aerial gunner in the Marine Air Corpsand was later killed in Korea. Betty, the kid sister and the last sibling of this pilot, would still later mourn the death of Tim, her firstborn, in Vietnam.

Shipping out to Italy in May 1944, this second lieutenant came gradually to the realization that perhaps he was no longer invulnerable. The rumor circulated on board ship that this was the hottest shipment in the war to leave Newport News, Virginia. For aboard were thirty or more fighter pilots, green as grass, leaving without the one hundred or so hours of transition and combat training that was customary. Their last plane was an advanced trainer, the AT-6 Texan, with a top speed of just over 200 mph. They were about to step into a P-38 Lightning, a P-47 Thunderbolt, or a P-51 Mustang, all with top speeds more than twice the Texans. In the case of the Mustang, the fastest of them, the 8th Air Force in England required two hundred hours of training in the P-51 itself before the pilot was ready for combat.

Why the rush to send these pilots into action without the requisite training? Because those pilots in the pipeline were not arriving at the 15th Air Force in Italy fast enough to replace those who were being shot down or returning home on furlough, their fifty-mission tour of duty completed. This was simply a stopgap measure to tide over the fighter squadrons that were by this time so shorthanded that there were fewer pilots than planeswhen two pilots per plane was the official complement. This meant that these pilots were being scheduled almost every day for a mission, whether for escort or for strafing. Often lasting from five to six hours, these missions left the pilots exhausted, and more at risk than ever.

To the 52nd Fighter Group went twelve of this emergency contingent. Of the twelve, five were assigned to the 4th Squadron, where twenty-seven Mustangs had but seventeen pilots to fly them. Just how green were these twelve was soon seen when several crashed, either in the minimal twenty hours of transition and combat training or in their first few missions. Learning of this, Nathan Twining, commanding general of the 15th, ordered that all further training be done in the P-40 Warhawk, of Flying Tigers fame. With some reluctance, this particular pilot, having checked out satisfactorily in the P-51, took to the air in the P-40. Slower, more sluggish, it seemed more warhorse than warhawk, and this flyboy promptly crashed on landing, leaving it good for nothing but parts. But he emerged unscathed and was assigned to ferry Mustangs across North Africa and up into Italy to complete his transition time.

Back to the 4th Squadron after two weeks, this pilot learned that half of the original twelve had been shot down, including both his tentmates. A few more hours of combat training, and he was hustled into combat. A month and two days after his first combat mission, he discovered that the only other pilot still flying Mustangs among the twelve had just been shot down over Yugoslavia in a strafing mission. This was the same mission in which this sole survivor of the twelve watched his flight leader, from a distance of less than ten yards, burn to death in his crashed plane, riddled with machine gun fire.

With more than forty missions still to fly, this Mustang pilot confessed to his diary that, for the first time in his twenty short years, he was really scared. But it didnt last long. The dumb but lucky pilot persisted, his antics in the sky never ceasingone court-martial threat after another being issued. If it wasnt for taking up a plane without permission, it was for leaving his jeep unattended, unlocked, and with the keys in the ignition. Finally, eight months later, having completed fifty-one missions in his P-51, he celebrated VE Day on May 8, 1945, by executing a Victory Slow Roll off the roof of none other than General Twinings 15th Air Force Headquarters in Bari. This time a court-martial appeared a certainty, and would have been had it not been that the unabashed pilot had just completed his tour of duty and earned a Distinguished Flying Cross. But his antics did prevent his earning a captaincy, which hed been nominated for by his squadron.