LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE, Va. –
Editor's note: Jim Graham, past president of the 1st Fighter Association, was a P-38 pilot with the 71st Fighter Squadron during World War II. He now lives in Seattle, Wash., and was prescient enough to write down some memories of the Second World War. VicJohnston from the 633d Air Base Wing Public Affairs office compiled and edited these recollections in tribute to the 71st Fighter Squadron, scheduled for inactivation in October 2010.
A checkout flight to remember
I joined the 71 FS at Salsola Field, Italy in early November 1944. Lt. Janacek was assigned to check out my flying capabilities. His only instruction to me was to tuck in close on his wing and never to lose him.
Over the course of a few flights, I managed to hang in there as he tried to shake me off. On what was to be his last checkout flight with me, it was a beautiful fall afternoon with the sun illuminating the mountains of the "spur" of the Italy "boot," just east of the Foggia valley.
Janacek spotted a lone B-17 flying near our altitude and headed east. He flew toward the B-17 and motioned me to join up on its right wing as he joined up on the left wing. He instructed me to tuck it in close. The B-17 rocked its wings in acknowledgement and after a minute or so, started a gradual nose down while picking up speed. To my amazement, I found us in a very steep dive.
The B-17 proceeded to pull up and over into a loop. I think I must have slid outboard some to avoid overrun, but I breathlessly managed to complete the loop in formation.
That was a fitting completion for my checkout period! Later, Janacek told me that the B-17 was a stripped down private toy of one of the 15th Air Force generals. He found that he could depend on "those fork-tailed friends" to ride herd on his gaggle of big boys.
A mission to remember
March 31, 1945; 1 FG Mission #1328, a fighter sweep in the Vienna area and rail strafing northwest.
It was my 22nd mission and I was flying "White 2" as wingman to Lt. Norman Crawford. The group encountered a solid overcast en route to the target area, so the three squadrons split formation.
The 71st came down out of the overcast at about 3,000 feet just west of Viener Neustadt and found a spectacular battle going on between the Germans and the Russians. The Russians were driving the Germans out with an intense barrage of all kinds of artillery. When the 71st came out of the clouds both sides decided we were the enemy and directed all sorts of anti-aircraft fire at us. I was flying Crawford's left wing when his left engine erupted in smoke and he veered left and down and was last seen heading east, but to the north of the battle.
The squadron wheeled north and proceeded to sweep the Vienna area and to take up rail strafing toward Prague.
The 27 FS lost two planes and the 94 FS lost Col. Arthur Agan, the 1st Fighter Group commander, who became a prisoner of war until the war ended. Crawford crash-landed behind Russian lines and was later sent by rail car to Yugoslavia where he was handed over to the partisans and then later returned to the squadron.
The mission accounted for one enemy aircraft destroyed, the destruction of 14 locomotives, 26 oil cars, 16 freight cars and two other tank cars. I was credited with one tank car destroyed and two freight cars damaged. It was a lively, but costly mission. Three pilots were shot down or crashed and were killed.
Another loop to remember
In the spring of 1945, I was assigned a shiny new P-38L. What a gem! It was a dream to fly after the old Gs & Js of my early missions. It had the flaps to avoid the compressibility factor in dive bombing, a tail pointed radar to warn of sneaky bandits, and above all, the aileron boost that allowed finger tip rolling!
As I recall, there were a couple of flights to the Naples area to buzz the shuttle boat to Capri that carried pilots and nurses to and fro from rest camp. Riffling the water as we buzzed by and then doing a multi-roll pitch straight up was exhilarating.
Upon return to base one day after a local exercise flight, I felt particularly cocky. The field wasn't busy. It was a fine day and I thought it to be a good time to show off. I asked the tower for a straight-in approach, then I dove in toward the end of the runway and pulled up and over in a loop. I dropped the wheels when gravity took over in the proper direction and lowered flaps.
There were a few moments when I wondered if the landing gear would lock and if I'd judged the right spacing for a landing before the runway ran out. I'm here to tell about it, so I guess it must have worked. I can't recall the comments from the tower, but I judged that they were not favorably impressed.
A flight I'd just as soon forget
After a strafing mission in the Regensburg or Munich, Germany area, one of our planes was hit by flak in the wing and the rubberized fuel tank continued to smolder as the pilot coaxed the plane over the Alps and landed at an emergency base in northern Italy.
As I recall, it was at Rimini and the field was home to a P-47 squadron. After some time, the base repaired the P-38 and notified the 1 FG that it was available to return to duty at our Lake Lesina, Italy base.
I was called upon to ride in the back of the "piggy-back" P-38 to pick up the repaired plane. It was a beautiful clear morning as I hunched down over the shoulders of the PB P-38. After a bit of paper work, I was taken to the P-38 with the new wing. I did a walk around, and crawled aboard. The engines started flawlessly and sounded like sweet music. After a quick wiggle and visual check of the control surfaces I taxied out in the beautiful sunshine.
I checked in with the tower and started the roll. There was a slight breeze and the left wing dropped slightly, so I put in a tad of aileron to the right. To my consternation, the ship took a dip to the left!
With a tender touch I tried aileron to the left and found a slight roll to the right. Somehow those P-47 mechanics had cross-controlled me! My trip in the sunshine down the Adriatic coast was with extreme concentration and befuddlement. How could this be?!
I informed our tower of my situation and they gave me a straight in approach. This time I made my landing with a minimum of maneuvers. I can't recall the diagnosis of the error in repair, but I believe it was a hydraulic mistake.
Life in tent city
Squadron housing was a double row of pyramidal tents housing four with folding canvas cots and sleeping bags. Upgrading with innovative stoves and wash basins was an ongoing activity when not on flying duty. Belly tank crates were the prime material for making floors and sides for the tents. Packing crates for machine guns were often used for doorways.
The stoves were the most ingenious. A 55-gallon drum was shortened by cutting the middle section out and welding the top and bottom thirds together and adding a hinged door. The chimneys were often 75mm shells welded end-on-end. A burner was made by making an iron pipe closed tube in the form of a "U" on its side with small holes drilled in the inside of the bottom leg. Tubing from wrecked air conditioning units was connected from a tank of aviation gas on a rack on the outside of the tent to the U-tube in the stove. The U-tube was stuffed with steel wool to aid in vaporizing the fuel.
Lighting and regulating the burning aviation gas was a skill to be learned with some hazard. There were occasional fiery events and the flight surgeon was kept quite busy. It is also to be noted that the flight surgeon used a significant amount of grain alcohol in treating burns - at least that was the rationale for ordering supplies. However, most of that alcohol was consumed by weary pilots at the Officer's Club, mixed with fruit juices or, at holiday time, with dried milk and dried eggs for crude Tom & Jerries.
One pair of pilots, obviously from the upper class, decided that tents were below their lifestyle. They built themselves a nice one room home out of tuffa stone, easily cut sandstone that was indigenous to the area. With a fine roof of belly tank sides and a plate glass window from an abandoned control tower, the proud owners decided to have a house warming party for their buddies.
The stone home was replete with a fireplace made from the tuffa stone and outfitted with an aviation gas burner, a la the aforementioned design. As the guests arrived and beers and cocktails were hoisted, the housewarming party began with the lighting of the fireplace. The gathering was greatly impressed!
It seems that the aviation fuel tank behind the house had a slight leak in the tubing connection. Over the hours after filling the tank, the gas drizzled along the tubing to the fireplace of tuffa stone. The porous stone eagerly absorbed the leaking gas. It was a 'housewarming" worthy of great cheers by the gathering and great tears by the owners!
Another use for aviation fuel
To avoid long trips to the privy on the hill at night, the local sanitation experts devised a scheme for midnight relief closer to the tent quadrangle. A 55-gallon drum with both ends cut out was sunk into the adobe soil in the middle of the row of tents. The drum was filled with crushed rock and was the target of the nocturnal relief. Occasional deodorizing with chlorine wash made the scheme tolerable. This handy relief station was known as the "desert lily."
It was the custom for one of our tent-mates to play poker at the club until he had won everything that was in the ante. This activity was naturally accompanied by various forms of alcoholic beverage.
When the party broke and the noisy group returned to their quarters, the custom was to stop at the "desert lily" relief station and to loudly discuss the evening's poker. Our tent was only about 20 feet from the post-poker bedlam and often some of our tent mates were eager to sleep before an early mission wake-up call the next morning. Something needed to be done to disperse the noisy gatherings.
The Italian adobe soil in the region soaked up water and then, as it dried out, would form cracks in the soil. The constant influx and drying around the "desert lily" created a sunburst of deep fissures in the soil radiating outward -- some cracks even reached our tent.
One fine evening while the poker gang was having a jolly time, a couple of us non-poker playing tent mates took measures that produced laudable results. We poured several gallons of aviation fuel into the "desert lily" and a few more in the deep fissure radiating back to our tent.
When the happy poker gang arrived for their post mortem at the 'desert lily', we dropped a match into the end of the long fissure behind our tent. With a "bloop, bloop, bloop," the flame travelled toward the drum and climaxed with a loud "WHOOM!" of blue flame erupting in the center of the startled gathering. Post-poker habits changed and pre-mission slumber was undisturbed.