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Spoiling-For-A-Fight Fighter Pilot

Gun-camera views of a fighter strafing a German train in the final months of the war, when lufwaffe planes became scarce.

Kites

Captain Don S. Gentile, of Piqua, Ohio, one of Blakeslee's 4th Fighter Group hot-shots, was quoted in the Stars and Stripes after the March 6 Berlin mission as saying that "There were so many planes up there today that we were choosy about which ones we shot down."

This was considered a characteristic remark to attribute to a spoiling-for-a-fight fighter pilot, although difficult to assign with any certainty to Gentile. He was not given to such quotes. He was not clever and witty as were so many young pilots; Gentile's chief concern was to shoot down more enemy aircraft than any other pilot in the Air Force.

The 4th Group, with its comparatively long history, its Eagle Squadron traditions, and its youthful pride and combativeness, radiated a glow of cockiness, love of battle, competitiveness (among themselves and with the 56th Fighter Group, Zempke's "Wolfpack"). More typical of the general outlook of the 4th was a sentence penned by Captain Allen Bunte, who after a battle had closed his official report with the words: "I claim one Me-109 destroyed and one hell of a lot of intrepidity."

Bunte, originally from Eustis, Florida, though never fated to become one of the aces, was one of the 4th's reliables. His intrepidity never deserted him. Early in April 1944, while on a sweep deep inside Germany shooting up German airdromes, his Mustang struck a high-tension wire and burst into flame. Spotting a nearby lake, Bunte extinguished the fire by the simple expedient of splashing the Mustang into the water. His squadron (334th) mates assumed that was the end of Bunte. The plane nosed into the lake and sank. The impact knocked Bunte unconscious, but though under water he managed to come to in order to free himself of seat belt and chute harness. In time he surfaced, half inflated his dinghy, floated to a tree in the lake, and eventually staggered ashore. There he was found by that rare human in those days, the "good" German, who wrapped him in a blanket, gave him a cigarette, and delivered him to the Luftwaffe and captivity.

In a galaxy of stars, it was Gentile who seemed to outshine the rest, even the redoubtable Blakeslee. Blakeslee, in fact, though a fine pilot, was not a marksman (he still managed to shoot fifteen enemy aircraft out of the air and to destroy two on the ground); his forte was that intangible, "aggressive leadership." Blakeslee spent more than three years leading his men into battle and, in his case at least, back. He carefully doctored his flight time, cutting a few hours here and there (or not at all when serving with a unit other than the 4th) so that he survived over a thousand hours of combat time. Blakeslee was a born warrior.

Gentile's chief rival in the 4th Group was the youthful Duane W. Beeson of Boise, Idaho. At nineteen Beeson enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force (1940), and later the 71st Eagle Squadron. He transferred into the 4th Fighter Group in September 1942, along with the other Eagle veterans, Gentile, Blakeslee, Howard Hively, Oscar Coen, et al. The 4th took over an RAF base at Debden, where they lived - because it was a permanent station - in comparative luxury.

The major discomfort seems to have been the change from the dainty Spitfire to the bulky Thunderbolt. Accustomed to the lighter British aircraft, the ex-Eagles found the heavy "Jug" not much to their liking. The P-47, like all untried planes, had its share of bugs and the "prima donnas" (as the 4th Group men were thought to be) found all of them. When he knocked down an FW-190 in a diving fight, Blakeslee was congratulated on the fact that he had proved the P-47 could outdive a FockeWulf. "It ought to dive," he is supposed to have said; "it certainly won't climb."

Blakeslee, using his persuasive powers, coaxed Major General William Kepner, head of the Eighth Air Force's Fighter Command, into acquiring some Mustangs for the 4th. At this time the P-51s were going to the Ninth Air Force fighter groups in expectation of tactical support for the coming invasion of Festung Europa. Blakeslee talked well for his group and acquired the P-51s in time for the initial assaults on Berlin by the Eighth Air Force. Since the Mustang more closely resembled the Spitfire than the P-47, the 4th Group pilots who had flown the English plane had little trouble in making the transition. Blakeslee promised Kepner that he would have his Mustang group in the air twenty-four hours after delivery of the new fighter. To his pilots he merely stated, "You can learn to fly them on the way to the target."

On the other hand, the 4th's friendly enemies, the 56th Group, equipped with the Thunderbolt, did very well with it. Zempke's Wolfpack led all the other fighter groups in Europe in the number of enemy aircraft destroyed. This did not sit well with the 4th Group pilots, who darkly hinted that while they remained with the bombers as they were supposed to, the 56th went off hunting the "wily Hun" individually. Also, because the 56th was based closer to the English coast than the 4th, the Wolfpack had more time (i.e., more fuel) to spend over the battle area. These were, of course, rationalizations, but they do reveal the curious philosophy which grew out of keeping "kill" scores. When Gentile spoke of being "choosy" about which planes were to be shot down, he may not have been merely tossing off a printable phrase. But woe to the man who had chosen the wrong plane. One fighter pilot, at least, was nearly court-martialed for shooting down his commanding officer's enemy plane. Since the CO was the number one and the fighter pilot was his wingman, or number two in pecking order, the plane they were attacking belonged, according to unwritten law, to number one.

The more zealous pilots were known to remove a fellow squadron member off the tail of an enemy by shouting the warning word "Break!", the signal that an enemy was getting onto your own tail. When you took evasive action, your savior moved in and shot down your victim. It was all in the game.

Beeson and Gentile never, as far as is known, stole from one another, but each followed the other's scores after missions - just as Bong and McGuire had in the Pacific. Beeson was the more volatile personality, more obviously aggressive, while Gentile revealed little emotion or anxiety. Both men raced neck and neck for several months, approaching the magical Rickenbacker number of twenty-six, until the Germans settled the question once and for all. Leading a low-level mission against a German airdrome in April 1944, Beeson was hit by flak, bailed out, and spent the next thirteen months in Stalag Luft I (with some time spent in solitary for having addressed one of his captors as a "Hun").

On the day that Beeson and the intrepid Bunte went down, Gentile had destroyed five German planes on the ground, which officially brought his score to thirty. (In the European theater enemy aircraft destroyed on the ground received official recognition; according to the American Fighter Aces Association, which recognizes only "aerial victories" against "piloted aircraft," Gentile's final score was 19.84 - whatever that means.)

What it did mean was that the youthful (he was then twenty-four) pilot received newspaper space not only in his home town, but all across the United States - and even in England (where the official attitude toward aces continued to be aloof). Gentile was wooed by writers (Ira Wolfert literally moved into Gentile's room, there being a vacancy because his former roommate, Lieutenant Spiro Pissanos, had been forced down in France and taken prisoner). Other correspondents arrived to bring Gentile the attention and fame he had never conceived was possible. He found himself a celebrity with people bidding for his story, girls for his favors, and superior officers for his proximity. It was a heady life.

Gentile's combat record, he was the first to admit, was not entirely of his own making. If the PROs (public relations officers) tended to stress the individual achievements, for the simple reason that the public preferred its heroes singly, the pilots realized that, except for unusual incidents, practically every aerial victory was a two-man job. The wingman concept was an effective lifesaver and equally effective as an enemy destroyer.

Gentile had formed an interchangeable wingman team with a peer, John T. Godfrey. That grand phrasemaker, Winston Churchill, called Gentile and Godfrey "the Damon and Pythias of the twentieth century." But their friendship was purely military. It was so effective that legend has it that Goring said he would exchange two squadrons for the capture of Gentile and Godfrey.

While they were rivals, the two men in battle were all business and operated with a unique give-andtake which enabled them to survive for so long (Gentile was taken out of combat and Godfrey also, though the latter returned and was eventually shot down and taken prisoner; he finally escaped near the end of the war).

Working together the two pilots had developed a technique of interchanging the roles of number one and wingman as the situation demanded. During the March 8, 1944, mission to Berlin the two broke up a large attack upon a Flying Fortress combat box and accounted for six enemy aircraft between them. On the way home, all but out of ammunition, the two men attached themselves to a distressed Fortress, escorting it back to England until they broke off to land at Debden.

This was, of course, their primary function, and it was in this special category that these two young men proved formidable. Godfrey, particularly, had his personal reasons. His P-51, Reggie's Reply, was named for his brother, who was lost when his U. S. Navy ship had been sunk by a Nazi U-boat. Besides an exceptional personal motivation Godfrey had extraordinary eyesight - always a valuable asset to the fighter pilot. Quick reflexes and an aggressive spirit, supreme self-confidence, plus the will to excel and, most of all, to survive combined to produce the kind of pilot both Gentile and Godfrey were.

Youth was an essential because of the physical, mental, and emotional drain of air fighting, not the least of which was sucking on an oxygen mask. The tension immediately preceding a mission as well as the letdown after were debilitating. The blackout which came under the pressures of a fast dive, the recovery (if you recovered), and a sharp skidding turn were never pleasant. The world grew dim around the edges or completely black for a fraction of a moment as the pull of gravity pulled blood away from the brain. Tremendous cold too was a hazard. So was gnawing fear, however much selfconfidence the pilot had built up; perhaps he was better than any enemy flier, but there was always the chance that flak would get him. And even the non-superstitious succumbed to the apprehension that at some unknown point luck would run out.

Fighter pilots like Gentile and Godfrey had courage, but they also knew fear - and admitted it. There came the point in their flying careers when even the competition of the "sport" would not sustain them, when it seemed (especially after a very close call) that surviving one more mission was impossible. Instinct and training and the exhilaration of battle brought the pilot through, but many a very brave man landed at his base and found himself shaking so uncontrollably that he was unable to get out of his plane. There were very few "iron men" like Blakeslee, who seemed impervious to the wear and tear of operations and who fought being taken off combat duty "to fly a desk."

As in the Pacific, star performers in Europe were taken off operations when they acquired a certain notoriety and shipped back to the States for the full treatment - adulation and interviews. Blakeslee had little respect for the celebrity treatment, especially after Gentile, on returning from his last mission, and responding to an audience and a full battery of newsreel cameras, decided to "beat up the field." Near the ground he elected to "fly right into the lens" and succeeded only in "pranging his kite," to Blakeslee the supreme delinquency. After so many missions in his P-51 Gentile managed finally to bounce it into the ground for the benefit of the press. Although he was not seriously injured - still the base doctor saw to it that he was kept out of the reach of Blakeslee for several days - the kite was pranged indeed, its propeller bent in two directions and its back broken about halfway between cockpit and tail. Shangri-La would never fly again.

Blakeslee, who always threatened to throw any man out of the squadron who pranged a kite in a pointless buzz job, was livid. He raged at the newsmen, "You people have just ruined one good man!" Thus ended Don Gentile's last combat mission; since he was scheduled to be taken off operations, it made little difference to his career as a hot-shot combat pilot, although it was an ignominious way to end it. He and Godfrey returned to the United States (just in time to miss out on the "fun" of D-Day). Both were given appropriate greetings by their home towns - Piqua, Ohio (Gentile), and Woonsocket, Rhode Island (Godfrey) - and, to dramatize the efficacy of teamwork in aerial combat, appeared together - both sporting rather dashing mustaches - at War Bond rallies. Gentile was a lion, a role Godfrey did not deny him, but Godfrey soon grew restless and wished to get back to the 4th Fighter Group.

Gentile was denied any chance of returning to combat; he married and became an Army Air Forces test pilot (like Bong, his Pacific competitor, he was killed while flying a jet). Godfrey may have gotten himself shipped back to Europe because of certain statements he made about the Air Force training system "spoon-feeding" its future combat pilots. The "kid-glove policy by `brass hats' in this country is endangering the lives of all youngsters now in training camps," he intimated. "They won't let the kids fly when it's cloudy. They won't let them do this or that-until it makes you ill. They wouldn't let me fly the Ohio River with a two-thousand-foot ceiling. I can remember taking off in England when you jumped straight into overcast and stayed that way up to thirty thousand feet or more ..."

This did not sit well with the "brass hats," although taking any truly drastic measures against one of the country's best-known heroes would have been extremely indelicate and risky. So, as phrased by Grover C. Hall, Jr., "... his status as outstanding AAF warrior evoked the quality of mercy and it fell as a gentle rain ..." Godfrey was told to keep his mouth shut and was permitted to return to combat.

But when he did, early in August of 1944, the Luftwaffe was no longer so much in evidence, and like so many fighter pilots of the Eighth and Ninth Air Force, he took to shooting up trains in lieu of aircraft. Strafing missions were considered more dangerous than escort missions because of the hazards of ground fire and the proximity of the ground itself - not to mention high-tension wires, trees, and other obstacles. While churning up Herzberg airfield in Germany, Godfrey was struck by flak and plowed into the ground. Though he attempted to hide out for a couple of days, he was captured by the Germans. He succeeded in escaping from his Stalag Luft (on his third attempt) and made it back to the Allied lines on April 17, 1945, at Nuremberg. By then the air war was all but over in Europe.

While Gentile and Godfrey were the most celebrated of the 4th Fighter Group's high-spirited crew, there were many others of note also: Duane Beeson, already mentioned; Ralph K. "Kid" Hofer, who liked to hunt on his own and disappeared one day in July 1944 over Hungary; James Goodson, who was known as "the King of the Strafers"; and Howard Hively, Fred W. Glover, Willard Millikan, Nicholas Megura, James A. Clark, Kendell E. Carlson, and Pierce W. McKennon, to name but a few more of the dozens of colorful characters of a colorful group.

When the war ended the group was commanded by Colonel Everett W. Stewart. Blakeslee had returned to the States, to other duties and to marriage. When he left the 4th Group, it was with a minimum of emotional display, as befitted the man. But, as a curious sequel to the Gentile incident, the always alert Blakeslee unwittingly revealed his inner feelings during a simple flight after he had been relieved of his command and forbidden to fly in combat. While coming in for a landing, bemused and out of sorts, he put down but without remembering to lower his landing gear. Blakeslee, the imperturbable, had pranged his own kite. It was time to go home; and he did.

When the war ended there were fifteen fighter groups in the Eighth Air Force (and eighteen in the Ninth); the entire war effort, obviously, had not fallen on the 4th Fighter Group. It was that this unit closed the war as the highest-scoring group in the ETO (1016 enemy aircraft). Second was its archcompetitor, the 56th Fighter Group, Zempke's famed Wolfpack, with 1006. 5 enemy aircraft destroyed (both in the air and on the ground). "A fighter pilot must possess an inner urge to do combat," Zempke once told his men.

The will at all times to be offensive will develop into his own tactics. If your enemy is above, never let your speed drop and don't climb, because you'll lose too much speed. If you're attacked on the same level, just remember you can outclimb him. Beware of thin cirrus clouds - the enemy can look down through them but you can't look up through them. Don't go weaving through valleys of cumulus clouds, either with a squadron or by yourself. The enemy can be on your tail before you know it.

When popping down out of a cloud, or up, always do a quick turn and look back. You may have jumped out directly in front of a gun barrel. When attacked by large numbers of enemy aircraft, meet them head on. In most cases half of them will break and go down. Handle all those remaining in an all-out fight until you're down to one - then take him on.

If there are twenty aircraft down below, go screaming down with full force to pick out the most logical target at the point of firing. Then pull up to a good altitude and develop an attack on one of those remaining enemy pilots who had been shaken out of his helmet by your sudden onslaught.

I stay with the enemy until he is destroyed, I'm out of ammunition, he evades into the clouds, or I'm too low on gas and ammo to continue. When you have your squadron with you and the enemy has so much altitude you never would get up to him, stay below and to the rear of him - he'll be down.

Learn to break at the proper time to make a head-on attack - the enemy doesn't like it. Don't run. That's just what he wants you to do. When caught by the enemy in large force, the best policy is to fight like hell until you can decide what to do.

Zempke, a forestry major from the University of Montana and a prewar Army Air Corps pilot, happened to be in Russia demonstrating the P-40 to Soviet Air Force pilots when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. During December 1942-January 1943, as commanding officer he brought over the 56th Fighter Group and its massive new Thunderbolt fighter (the P-47B). Zempke's group joined the 78th - which had lost most of its P-38s and pilots to the north African invasion. It too was issued the heavy, ungainly, but powerful P-47.

The Wolfpack went into combat in April of 1943 and by November of that year had exceeded its own goal of a hundred enemy aircraft destroyed by Christmas. It was the first American fighter group in Europe to achieve this score - which was more than mere scorekeeping, for it represented, in the words of fighter commander Major General William Kepner, "an untold number of our bombers ... saved."

The 56th Fighter Group had its full share of aces, among them Zempke himself. Others included Gerald W. Johnson, Walker Mahurin, David Schilling, Robert S. Johnson, and Francis Gabreski. Zempke, Schilling, and Gabreski were called by the Germans "the Terrible Three," in recognition of their deadiiness as fighter pilots.

Gabreski was enrolled as a pre-med student at Notre Dame when he enlisted as an aviation cadet in July 1940; he was commissioned the following March. On December 7, 1941, Second Lieutenant Gabreski was serving with the 45th Fighter Squadron of the 15th Fighter Group and stationed at Wheeler Field, Hawaii. The Japanese bombing and strafing of the field, Gabreski recalls, was "effective." But so was U.S. antiaircraft gunnery later. When he was able to take off some two hours after the attack had begun (and, in fact, was over), Gabreski and the other eleven pilots in their P-40s had their formation broken up over Pearl Harbor by American antiaircraft fire. Gabreski remained with the 15th Group for almost a year (a year of near inactivity) and then was transferred to 8th Fighter Command in England because of "linguistic qualifications." He was able to speak Polish as well as a little Czech.

So for a while Gabreski continued with near inactivity, serving with Intelligence as interpreter. But "I wanted to fly airplanes." That became a clear, rather loud statement after a month, and the Air Force, wishing to keep Captain (as he was by then) Gabreski happy, shipped him to Ferry Command at Prestwick, Scotland, where he flew airplanes, all types, from the B-24 to the P-38. "It was pretty dull after two months and I started saying `get me out of Ferry Command!"' Which was easier said than done; Gabreski languished for another month until in November 1942, after a chance meeting with Polish fighter pilots serving with the RAF in London, he got himself transferred to No. 315 Squadron ("Deblin"). Technically Gabreski was assigned as a liaison officer to the Polish Air Force on TDY (temporary duty). Flying the Spitfire, Gabreski participated in twenty combat missions, acquiring good training in aerial combat.

So it was that when the 56th Fighter Group was forming up, Gabreski was ready when asked by Colonel Robert Landry, then lining up "talent" for the group. Gabreski joined the group as the operations officer of the 61 st Squadron; in time he commanded this squadron as "Keyworth Blue Leader."

Making the transition from the Spitfire to the Thunderbolt posed no serious problem for Gabreski; he soon learned to love the plane's ruggedness. During an escort mission to Oldenburg, Germany (November 26, 1943), Gabreski was leading a section of the 61 st Squadron when he caught sight of a large formation of Me-110s. These were the rocket-firing fighters which tore up the bomber formations so badly. In turn, the 110s were themselves escorted by single-engined fighters above.

Keyworth Blue Leader immediately swept in to break up the attack. With the squadron behind him, fanning out and selecting their targets, Gabreski made a pass on the Messerschmitts. The Big Thunderbolt tore through the formation and Gabreski kicked it into a turn and looked back to see what the result had been. He spotted a lone Me-110 which had broken away from the others and seemed headed for home. Undoubtedly he had made a hit, for the plane had begun a descending spiral.

Gabreski closed in "rapidly, firing on the way. At first I was really wasting ammunition. Then I got a real good burst into the cockpit and the engines. All my guns were bearing on the airplane when - about a hundred yards away - it exploded and instantly decelerated. "It appeared to me as if I would ram right into him; quickly I pushed forward on the stick. Burned parts of the plane came through the vent system into my cockpit, fragments of the Messerschmitt hit the Thunderbolt, but I managed not to run into an engine."

In seconds Gabreski had swept through the debris and, finding himself still air-borne and his P-47 apparently operational, scanned the battle area. He saw another Me-110 maneuvering into position out of the bomber's gun range in order to begin lobbing rockets. Gabreski throttled the Thunderbolt into position and with a few short bursts sent the second Messerschmitt burning in a steep dive. Though outnumbered, Gabreski's section had succeeded in breaking up the attack by the rocket launchers (for which he was awarded with the Distinguished Service Cross).

It was only after he had returned to his home base at Halesworth that he actually realized what the exploding Messerschmitt had done to his P-47. The wing's leading edges were crushed and the left wing was badly torn. The engine cowling was dented and gouged and the plane was scorched. A 20-mm. shell was lodged in the engine. One cylinder was cracked but not seriously enough to have impaired the engine's efficiency. Having studied his aircraft, Gabreski walked into the debriefing session and claimed "two Messerschmitt-110s destroyed and one P-47 half destroyed."

By the summer of 1944 Gabreski had thirty-one aerial victories to his credit-the highest score in the European theater. (His ground-destroyed score was 2.5 officially.) He had accumulated hundreds of hours of combat time and at least a dozen decorations, including those from the Polish, British, and French governments. The air war had changed a great deal in the twenty-one months he had been flying in fighter planes. The war was not over, but it was more difficult to find the Luftwaffe air-borne. Consequently, the fighters went down to the deck to shoot up the Luftwaffe in its own nests, on the ground.

On July 20, 1944, after escorting bombers on a mission, Gabreski led the fighters in an airdrome strafing. This had become customary at this phase of the war. Having spotted the airfield, near Coblenz, Gabreski decided to finish off its parked planes.

If no planes rose to challenge the Thunderbolts, there was plenty of flak. Gabreski dived the big aircraft down to treetop level and began working the field over, leaving a trail of pockmarked concrete in his wake along with burning planes. Racing over the field close to the ground Gabreski found himself "overshooting a plane on the ground. I stuck the nose down a little to get on the target and the propeller hit the ground. Oil sprayed all over my windshield and canopy ...

The engine was obviously failing and this meant I must either belly-land or bail out. But bailing out meant climbing up into the flak. So I found a nearby wheat field and despite excess speed - about one hundred and seventy, two hundred miles an hour - I set the plane on the ground with the wheels up. Just before I struck, I kicked to the side so that the wing crumpled and took much of the shock of the impact.

Crumpling and crackling, the plane plowed across the field and then stopped. The aircraft was still in one piece - but smoking. That scared me. I tried to open the canopy but couldn't open it more than four or five inches. I removed the parachute but I still couldn't push through the narrow opening. The smoke got thicker and thicker. I was really frightened by that time; my adrenalin was flowing heavily and I managed to pull the canopy open enough so I could jump out and began running from the burning plane. There was a crackle and whistle which I realized was bullets from some troops approaching the plane.

I outran the troops and moved into a nearby woods, where I found a shelter inside which there was a religious shrine. I hid under the shrine and when the soldiers searched the shelter I was hidden within a foot of the search party.

After that, for four days, moving only at night, I walked for what I thought was Luxembourg. On the fourth day I became more ambitious and even walked in the daytime. I walked right by a farmer and a little boy with a few cows.

The two immediately set up a hue and cry and within minutes Gabreski was in the hands of the Wehrmacht and on his way to Stalag Luft I at Barth on the Baltic Sea in northern Germany. There he would join the Air Force elite, among them Gerald Johnson of his own 56th Fighter Group, Duane Beeson of the 4th - and, eventually, even Zempke.

Gabreski was turned over to the Luftwaffe and sent to the interrogation center at Dulag Luft. As one of the Terrible Three, his fame had obviously preceded him. He opened the door and walked in to confront the interrogator - "we called him `Stone Face' Scharrf." The stone face cracked into a smile. "Well, Colonel, we've been expecting you for a long time."

Edward Jablonski. : The victorious climax of ther Airwar against Germany and Japan. Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York. 1971.

Fighter Pilot The author conveys the fighter pilot experience as he was the first American pilot of the RAF Eagle Squadron, and later the first U.S. air ace. From action in 1943 through Vietnam, he flew 378 combat missions and pens a gripping story in delivering an historical document.

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