War Stories III (22 page)

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Authors: Oliver L. North

BOOK: War Stories III
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Yeager's “matter of fact” narrative on how he got five kills in one day is extraordinary—but typical of the understated way in which his fellow World War II aces described harrowing air-to-air combat. A month after this engagement, Chuck Yeager became one of the first fighter pilots to shoot down an enemy jet—the ME-262.
After the war, Yeager became a test pilot. On 14 October 1947, flying another “Glennis”—the experimental X-1 aircraft—he became the first man go faster than the speed of sound. Asked what he considered his greatest accomplishment, he replied, “Probably the most
useful
thing I ever did was break the sound barrier. But the most
exciting
flying I've ever done was in combat.”
That's a common sentiment among World War II fighter pilots. Most of them seem to have been born with an innate aptitude for flying—and an instinct for survival on the ground when they found themselves downed behind enemy lines. Walker “Bud” Mahurin of Fort Wayne, Indiana, demonstrated both of these qualities during the air campaign against Hitler.
Mahurin joined the Army Air Corps in 1941 and was in primary flight training when Pearl Harbor was bombed. By 26 November 1943, he had already become an ace with seven kills to his credit. That afternoon, while escorting American bombers on a raid over Bremen, Germany, he downed three German ME-110s. Now with ten kills, Mahurin ranked number eight in the Army Air Force “Double Ace” club. It was an impressive achievement—to everyone but Bud.
LIEUTENANT WALKER “BUD” MAHURIN, USAAF
Occupied France
21 May 1944
When we got into the war we didn't know much of anything about the capabilities of the German and Japanese planes. We barely knew what they looked like. We had questions like: What's their range? Can they bomb the United States? How good are their fighters? We really had very little information.
I joined the Army Air Corps in 1941 and after training I was sent to England in 1943. We were flying a lot of escort missions over France at the time. That's where I got to know the German planes really well.
The first ones I ran into over France were Messerschmidt 110s—twin-engine fighters with a gunner in the back. I brought my P-47 Thunderbolt in from above and behind, got as close as I could, and opened fire. I hit him repeatedly and he eventually went down. I pulled out from that one, turned over, and saw another ME-110. I went after him, shot him down, and then found a third, which I also smoked. And then I found one that was headed back into Germany, and I followed him a while, took a shot at it, and damaged it but he got away.
The main thing that I learned from that dogfight was that as I went by the first airplane I hit, the gunner in the back had obviously been wounded, and maybe killed. His body was caught in the wind as the airplane went down. And as I watched it I'm aware of the fact that we're chasing after other human beings, and not just a machine that's flying in the air.
Our victories and our challenges were not that impressive to me. A lot of the Royal Air Force pilots we met over there had flown in the Battle of Britain and had shot down twenty or twenty-five German airplanes. So after awhile I stopped counting.
On 27 March 1944, I was shot down over France and started my stint behind enemy lines. I had never used a parachute before but it worked as advertised and I made it safely to the ground.
I knew that I wasn't far from Orleans—but that was over 130 miles from the coast—and I was in the heart of German occupied territory. I made up my mind right then that I wasn't going to get captured.
I hid in the fields for a day—and then made my way to a farmhouse. The farmer could have turned me in, but instead, he took me to the local French resistance group. Once they were sure that I really was an American, they started making arrangements to get me out of France.
Nearly every night the group I was with would move me to a new hiding place and hand me off to a different Resistance unit. This was extremely dangerous for them because the Gestapo and the German Army were always looking for downed American and British pilots. Whenever the Germans saw a parachute coming down—or they found one of our planes wrecked but no body in it—they would flood the area with search parties. If I got caught, I'd be sent to a POW camp. But if the Resistance guys got caught, they would be executed on the spot.
During daylight I hid in haystacks, barns, farmhouses, and basements. Then at night, we would move to a new location. Finally, they made arrangements to have a light airplane fly over from England to pick me up. We went to the field where he was to land and waited but the plane didn't make it. Later on I learned that the airplane that was supposed to pick me up flew over a German airbase and got shot down.
It took five more days for the Resistance to make arrangements for another flight to come over and get me. During those five days, I lived with the Inspector of Police in the city of Orleans. He decided to hide me in plain sight.
Each day, the inspector would go into the Gestapo headquarters in the center of the city. It had a big Nazi flag hanging over the door—and German soldiers standing guard. Because I didn't speak French, the inspector dressed me up in old French farm clothing and told me to pretend
I was goofy. He would go into the Gestapo headquarters for his daily meeting and I'd wait outside—right on the street in plain sight of the German soldiers, mumbling nonsense and stumbling around. If anyone tried to question me I would pretend like I was nutty—that way I wouldn't have to answer any questions.
After five days of acting crazy, another rescue attempt was made. This time the little plane made it in. The inspector and all the Resistance guys kissed me on both cheeks and I flew back to England.
Because I had seen so many of the French Resistance people and knew how the rescues were being done, I was sent back to the States for a war bond tour, and then reassigned to the Pacific.
The experiences of fighter pilots like Robin Olds, Bud Mahurin, and Chuck Yeager were typical of those of many who fought in the air against Hitler's Luftwaffe. By virtue of their courage and exceptional skill they became aces—members of a very select group of pilots from any war.
During World War II there was another very select group of American fighter pilots who were unique not just because of their daring and ability but because of the color of their skin. The tails of their planes were painted red—but their skin was black. They became known as “The Tuskegee Airmen,” named for the place in Alabama where they trained to wield fighters against the best that the Luftwaffe could put in the sky.
Moton Field in Tuskegee, Alabama, was a tiny municipal airport in 1941, when war was raging in Europe and America was getting ready to fight. In July of that year a small group of Americans—all of them volunteers—gathered there to build the only all-black unit for the U.S. Army Air Corps.
In the 1940s the American military, like the rest of our country, was segregated. While the degree of segregation varied from state to state, it was strictly adhered to within the U.S. military. Mess halls, barracks, barbershops, and all other facilities were all separate.
Though black Americans had been a part of the U.S. military in every war since the Revolution, with few exceptions they were assigned to
segregated, all-black units—usually with white officers. Even after the start of World War II, with the desperate need for men in every branch of the service, there were many who believed black men couldn't fly combat aircraft.
Foreseeing the likelihood of war when Hitler unleashed his blitzkrieg and invaded Poland in 1939, President Roosevelt had convinced Congress to create the Civilian Pilot Training Program. The CPT was open to all Americans—male, female, black, white—and in most cases the program was administered in affiliation with a local college or university. Among the scores of centers offering CPT there were only six all-black schools where the program was offered. One of them was the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.
At the beginning of 1940 there were just 125 licensed black aviators. A year later, there were 231. This small evidence of progress gave these young black men hope that the U.S. Army Air Corps would let them fly. And it did.
In January 1941, FDR ordered a reluctant General “Hap” Arnold, chief of staff of the Army Air Corps, to start accepting black American pilots. Arnold formed the all-black 99th Pursuit Squadron as an “experiment,” and announced that training would take place in Tuskegee, Alabama.
The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor occurred as the first cadets were training. Four months later, the first class got its wings. But the course was tough—two out of three cadets washed out. Many might well have been good enough to earn their wings—but there were only thirty-five pilot slots available in the 99th Pursuit Squadron. Lee Archer grew up in Harlem, and he wanted one of those slots.
CAPTAIN LEE A. ARCHER, USAAF
Ramitelli Airbase, Italy
21 August 1944
I was born in New York and raised in Harlem. In 1939 I volunteered to come into the service—and asked for the Army Air Corps. I took all the necessary tests and passed them easily. But then a lieutenant told me,
“You're not going to be called. The Army Air Corps is not going to take any colored. We never had any, we never intend to have any, and so you're out.”
When I got to Camp Wheeler in Macon, Georgia, I learned about the Civilian Pilot Training program—and heard that it was open to everyone, so I applied—and got accepted. In November 1942 I was officially transferred to the Army Air Corps and sent to the special unit at Tuskegee.
I seemed to have no trouble flying. I flew solo—graded as first in my class—was cadet first captain in basic training, and cadet first captain in advanced training for the whole Aviation Cadet Corps. And I graduated number one in my class, with orders making me a second lieutenant in the United States Army Air Corps, on 28 July 1943.
The 99th Tuskegee squadron was as good as any other fighter squadron in the Army Air Corps. One of the things that made us so good was that we stayed together as a unit. Because we were all black, we didn't get moved around to different squadrons like other pilots. We trained together, lived together, and eventually fought together. We knew each other so well by the time we went overseas, you could tell who was who by the way they talked, walked, or flew.
In April of '43 the 99th was ordered to North Africa and we were given the mission to fly a lot of patrols and provide support for the ground troops—dive-bombing, strafing, and the like—a lot of air-to-ground combat. We saw a lot of action but never got close enough to any enemy aircraft to engage them.
We spent most of the summer and fall on bomber escort missions over Sicily, fending German aircraft off our bombers. Then in January 1944, during the Anzio operation, the 99th became part of the 332nd Fighter Group. We were stationed in Ramitelli, Italy, near Naples, and our primary mission became bomber escort.
About the time we got there, the bombers were just getting the new Norden bombsights. The bombardiers claimed that with this new sight they could drop a bomb in a pickle barrel from 30,000 feet—and they wanted to stick to all-daylight bombings to get pinpoint accuracy on factories, airports, oil refineries, and mines.
The only trouble with daylight bombing runs is that it's a lot easier for the enemy fighters to find the bombers. On some raids 400 or 500 bombers would be sent out on a mission and the German ME-109s would come up and just rip into 'em. We heard of one raid where we lost
eighty
bombers. On every B-24 there's ten crew people—and the B-17s had a crew of thirteen. So if we lost 80 bombers—we lost
at least 800 men
.
After trying that a few times, they decided that the bombers ought to have fighter cover for these raids. The 99th was then given the mission of escorting the bombers of the 15th Strategic Air Force. Our job was to accompany the bombers on their runs to and from their targets and protect them so that the German fighters couldn't get take 'em out.
When we got this new mission they also gave us a new airplane. One day we were flying P-39s—and the next day we were in the P-47 Thunderbolt. It was a huge airplane—with a 16-cylinder radial engine—and built like a tank. It had eight machine guns—four in each wing—and at any altitude it could fly with anyone else. Later on we got the P-51s—an even better airplane. It could go further, stay longer, and go higher.
The guys in the bombers loved us—we never lost a single bomber to an enemy aircraft while we were protecting them. Sometimes over the target there were so many planes in the sky dodging around the bomber formations that the gunners couldn't tell friend from foe. One of the guys in the squadron had the idea of painting the tails of our fighters red so that the gunners wouldn't shoot at us by mistake. It was a good idea—and the bomber crews thanked us.
It was while we were flying those escort missions that I got all my kills—five of them. That should have made me an ace—but after my fifth kill, someone “reviewed” my first kill and sent me a notice that they had decided I should only have gotten credit for “half ” a kill—meaning that another pilot or gunner had also hit the Me-109 I downed. The only trouble with that is that no one else ever claimed the other half! I figure somebody up the line just wasn't ready for a black guy to be an ace.
Racism wasn't really a problem overseas. We just did our jobs—just like everyone else. But when I came back to the States we came into Norfolk,
Virginia, and as I came down the gangplank there was a sign: “Colored troops to the left—white troops to the right.”
I was surprised and disappointed that things hadn't changed while I was gone.

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