Johnson Robert S - Thunderbolt! : The Extraordinary Story Of A World War II Ace

Contents

Dedication

...to all those men within whom burns the spirit of the fighter pilot; the men who fought as aces; the others to whom fate was unkind and who fell in battle; to the countless others who sought eagerly to fly the fighters, but who fought a war equally vital and deadly in the bombers and transports, the tiny liaison planes and the swift reconnaissance ships; to all these men, and to the youths of today who have yet to share with us the wonder and the spirit of our world on high; to all of you, I respectfully dedicate this book.

Robert S. Johnson

Acknowledgments

The telling of Thunderbolt! depends upon many sources, and the most vital of these are not to be found in the official histories of the 56th Fighter Group. I am deeply indebted to several close friends for all the personal attention and effort which contributed so highly to this book. I am grateful especially to Captain Carl B. McCamish, USAF, for all those wonderful hours spent aloft in cloud chasing, for our detailed discussions over the years on that never-tiring subject of fighter flight and tactics; to Steve Gentle, whose skill as a pilot is unexcelled and who knows no peer as an instructor; to Herbert Tommy Walker, whose own story of flight and combat is truly incredible, and who spent many hours with me in the air, beating a sense of flying into the writer; and last, but by no means least, to that long sufferer, Major James Sunderman, USAF, whose hand grew so weary with the declassification of all the official records required to document properly the combat scenes in Thunderbolt!

Martin Caidin

Foreword

The key to our victory during World War II in Europe lay in superiority gained in the air, and this superiority was not to be achieved without our first meeting, and irrevocably defeating, the fighter pilots and the planes of the Luftwaffe. This was done, in a series of blows, crushing and without disputed issue. It was not a simple task, for the German fighter pilot was a superb flier, aggressive and confident, well trained, courageous; in every respect a formidable and deadly opponent. The German pilot flew fighter planes which then were the equal of any in the world. The Focke-Wulfs and Messerschmitts were marvels of design and of performance, imparting to their pilots flashing speed, telling firepower, maneuverability, tremendous performance at low and high altitudes. These facts should be repeated again and again, for they reveal in its true light the tremendous victory in the air won by our own men.

Today the United States Air Force is without question the most powerful fighting force the world has ever known. It has achieved this singular position not without struggle, or even without defeat which at times approached complete disaster. But of its current status there is no argument.

Ever since its inception, through its early days of financial and visionary lethargy, the Air Force has struggled to achieve its uncompromised goal of quality in men and in weapons; above all, in the most effective use of those weapons. Through this decades-long rise to its present power, the margin of the Air Forces superiority over its opponents has been the fighter pilot and, with greater definition, the ace.

This is the man to be singled out from all the others, the man imbued with a sense of air fighting, a desire to pursue and to kill, who is the indispensable guardian of our strength in the air, of our strength as a nation. Since the volunteers of the Lafayette Escadrille first entered battle in their flimsy bi-winged coffins, the ace the fighter pilot who has destroyed in aerial combat five or more enemy aircraft has been a breed unto himself. From the early days of World War I, through all of World War II, and continuing on through Korea, fewer than one percent, fell nearly forty percent of all enemy aircraft destroyed.

Aces are all manner of men. Some are quiet, reflective, moody, not given to quick or strong friendships with their fellow pilots. Others are gay and boisterous, impetuous, dare-devils in the air, wild and free with life. They come from all over America; engineers, farmers, musicians, doctors, truck drivers, bakers, carpenters, teachers, professors, mechanics, students. They are a cross section of our country, all different except for their one common bond.

All of them, from the first to the very last, are possessed with a hunger to pursue the enemy in the air, to force a fight under all circumstances, to hound the quarry, and to make the kill. When they fly as fighter pilots, this is their sole justification for being in the air. They are, perhaps, unaware of this distinction, and individually they might even question its validity. But when the records are compiled and studied, when each battle is dissected to learn the motives that compelled these men to repeat, again and again, their victories against the enemy, the conclusion becomes inevitable. The ace is a hunter, a pursuer.

Robert S. Johnson is such a man. Quiet, possessing a deep and unshakable confidence in himself and in his country, skilled almost to perfection in his piloting ability, he rose from the ranks of his fellow pilots to become one of our deadliest aces. In his combat tour with the 56th Fighter Group in Europe, Bob Johnson in his Thunderbolt destroyed no less than twenty-eight German airplanes.

He was not our leading ace, for several other pilots in various parts of the world went on to score a greater number of kills. Johnson escaped, to his good fortune, the terrible battle wounds that were suffered by other pilots with whom he flew. He believes that God was responsible for his final return to his wife and his family, and he knows, too, the moments when he enjoyed incredible good luck. He attributes his tremendous success as a fighter pilot to many things; perhaps one of the most vital was his astonishing eyesight. Johnson again and again emphasizes this point; for his ability to scan a sky, to sight enemy fighters in an area where his fellow pilots saw nothing, provided him the precious moments in which to maneuver into the most advantageous attack positions long before the enemy could sight his own flight.

His fellow pilots never agreed that Johnsons tremendous number of air kills came from his good luck. These men have described Bob Johnson as a fearless, aggressive pilot, always eager for a fight in the air, anxious to resume the hunt each time the Thunderbolts roared away from England. They are impressed with his strong beliefs, with his courage, with his brilliant skill as a pilot.